Catastrophe at The Cubbyhole

This past weekend was officially the second weekend of my summer at Vassar experience-if you can even call it an experience. In fact, it was rather dull to say the least. In order to avoid being a complete loser (I would consider myself somewhere along the middle of the loser spectrum), I decided that I needed to find something to do so that the weekend wouldn't be a complete waste. While brainstorming through a number of bad ideas, I came across an invitation I'd received to a performance by a couple of friends from NYU at the local coffee house called The Cubbyhole. A few minutes walk from campus, I'd been to the Cubbyhole several times with friends during the school year, but I wouldn't call myself a regular. But whenever we did go it was typical to run into someone we knew or at least recognized, which always gave me a good vibe. Thinking that attending the performance sounded like fun (or at least more fun than the previous Friday night), I left campus around 8:30 in order to reserve a seat.

When I got to The Cubbyhole, I was a little surprised. I don't know what I was thinking, but for some reason I had assumed that it would still be a college hangout. Shockingly, I found the place mobbed by high schoolers instead. Feeling a bit out of place, I tried to blend in with the crowd by sketchily reading a sewing magazine in the corner. Perhaps it was my casual clothing style or maybe the poor choice of reading material, but I felt like they knew I didn't belong. Feeling self conscious, I decided I would say hi to my friends before the performance then leave partway through the set. But my friends never came; a tall, skinny teenager in girl's jeans and work boots showed up instead. And as soon as he put the words to his own song on the floor next to him so that he could glace at them, I knew the performance wasn't going to be any good. Frankly, it was pretty bad. I wish I had brought my Harry Potter book instead.

Summer weekends at Vassar are certainly different from normal weekends at Vassar. I kind of feel like I'm in the Twilight Zone. Normal weekends at Vassar are usually a lot of fun, and for most students consist of three day weekends due to class placement by professors. Most classes are two 75 minutes periods on either Mondays and Wednesdays or Tuesdays and Thursdays, unless the professor is really mean. As a freshman, most of my classes were three 50 minute periods on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, but at this point I haven't had Friday classes in over a year.

Over the weekend at Vassar, there is usually a wealth of things to do. Not to say that my friends and I are too typical (is any Vassar student typical?), but here is a sample of things we like to do:

1. First and foremost, the classic late night diner-run! The Acropolis Diner, located a short walk away from campus, is open 24 hours- meaning I've probably been there at every hour of the day/night. Now come on, what's not fun about french fries at 4am? Okay, maybe the stomach ache you have after waking up the next morning.... but seriously. You have to try it at least once for the novelty of the experience.

2. Vassar College is not exactly comparable to National Lampoon's Animal House, but that doesn't mean we don't party. Parties come in all varieties, from organization specific parties (for example, the bi-annual Campus Patrol Party) to campus wide parties such as "Heaven and Hell." And if your parents ask "What did you do last night?" when you finally stumble out of bed at 2pm, just say you had a late night at the library. College is not about having fun, it's about studying. Sheesh.

3. So maybe my friends and I are just really lame, but sometimes nothing sounds better than just sitting around and chilling out. This may or may not involve video games. Of course, my friends aren't really big into video games so we just play endless rounds of Mario Kart, which is definitely a worthwhile activity.

4. And of course, as Vassar is a liberal arts school, there are always performances. My boyfriend plays in the college orchestra, so I've missed very few performances since we started going out our freshman year. Vassar has everything from Acapella groups to theatre and improv groups to the student run orchestra known as Mahagonney Players Orchestra, which plays music by contemporary composers. And yes, I've been to a lot of their performances too. (And they're usually really good!) There are also clubs such as the Film League that have movie screenings in some of the buildings on campus, and a lot of times they are new releases. It certainly beats paying $10 for a movie off campus. For a complete list of student clubs, check out http://vsa.vassar.edu/index.php/organizations/.


Of course, this weekend I did things more along the lines of sitting around and talking to my rat. Class reunions took place between Friday evening and Sunday morning, but that definitely wasn't as much fun for me as it was for the Alum. Saturday evening I got mauled by the Class of 1957 as they tried to make their way up the stairs of Main Building-really slowly of course. One guy called one of the women who could still walk a "show off," which definitely made me feel pretty uncomfortable being the "young whippersnapper" that I am (or so the old folks might say).

In short, I never would have believed during the year that weekends at Vassar could be so boring. I think it's time for me to get some hobbies.