On this particular day, I was touring Cappadocia, a region in central Turkey where the population has lived in caves for centuries, tunneling into the earth, 10 stories deep. The four of us had exhausted ourselves exploring underground cities and hiking through valleys.

Photo by the author.

I hadn’t expected to see anyone from Northwestern all summer long. But traveling with three other Northwestern students to obscure cities in a faraway country had revived something in me. The four of us had never met on campus, but when we met in Turkey, we were something of a force. We were Mexican, American, Pakistani, and Kurdish. We spoke twice as many languages, and everywhere we went, the Turks were fascinated with our diversity. As the four of us had fallen asleep the night before in a small hotel room built into a cave, I thought about where I was and who I was with and it felt like it might have been a dream.

I’d bought a bus ticket to Istanbul in a last-minute decision, and was accordingly unprepared for the 12 hour ride ahead. I didn’t have an iPod or a book. I hadn’t had a cell phone in weeks, and the only things in my bag were a sour Turkish yogurt drink and my almost-full Moleskine.

It wasn’t until I actually stepped on the bus that I questioned my decision to take a 12-hour overnight trip to Istanbul by myself. The motor coach was packed with Turkish families that spilled into the aisles, and I lingered on the stairs, wondering where I’d sit, anxiously waving goodbye to the Northwestern students I’d been traveling with. Though I had met the three of them only a few days earlier, parting ways made me suddenly aware of being alone.

On the bus, when a wrinkled woman made room for me in the seat beside her, relocating a small boy to another relative’s already crowded lap, I realized how tired I was. I protested but not too strongly, already feeling the soreness starting to spread in my legs from the day’s efforts.

Later, I woke up to a woman beside me shaking my wrist, feeling a disquieting blankness before remembering — Turkey, traveling, alone. Twelve-hour bus-ride. I sat up. The women said something I didn’t understand and gestured towards the window.

Outside, the landscape had been drenched in red. The sandstone towers were achingly pink and seemed to be melting back into the earth in the permeating redness. In the darkening sky above, the sun was a heavy piece of fruit, blurring my eyes in brightness as I watched it dip below the horizon.

The woman and her family and all the families were silent and transfixed, and I took out my Moleskine. The reddest thing I’ve ever seen, I scrawled.

I was silenced, too, and I sat still and let the light bleed into memory. In the penetrating light our faces were translucent, revealing the blood beating beneath, and I felt for the first time the wayward pull towards home.

Back at Northwestern, life is lovely and full of the familiar comforts I’d missed. I can strike up a conversation with anyone – in English. I haven’t run into a squat toilet yet, and I have a working cell phone at my convenience. I’ve also yet to see a sunset so red, or a moment so immersive. But I know all that is not as foreign as it seems. One of the best days of all my faraway months was spent with Northwestern students. So though I know I’ll be back, for the miscommunication and strange experiences and sunsets, I am happier than ever to be here.

Swimsuit bottoms again? It’s really time I do laundry and get my act together. Photo by the author / North by Northwestern.

You know those days where it’s raining, you’re coughing so hard people swerve to avoid you, someone steals your umbrella in Norris while you inadvertently skip your group project meeting (for the second time), and next you realize you have a midterm you didn’t know about tomorrow on top of a quiz and a paper? Well, that was my day. And of course, as it always is, that was all on top of the usual no-time-for-laundry mode, except that I’ve been in that mode for the past few weeks, and I’m currently transitioning from underwear to swimsuit bottoms and wearing mismatching wool hiking socks that reach halfway up my calves.

I decided I’ve had enough. Enough surprise midterms; enough unearthing semi-kind-of-sort-of-clean outfits through the exhaustive process of excavating my small but growing laundry mountain. I’m sick and tired of watching everyone else have their shit together, while I am perpetually running through Evanston, backpack a-bouncing and Solo cup of Special K a-sloshing, late as always to catch the Metra to my 9 a.m. class in Ravenswood. It’s just hard to handle anything well when you’re wearing bikini bottoms beneath your pants, so I’ve decided to get my shit together. In doing so, I thought I’d write a guide so that that you too can be the envy of all those kids with mismatched socks who are late to class. Here’s how.

1. Eliminate your friends. If your friends are like mine, they may be systematically trying to decrease your level of success, solely so they can outperform you. Signs of this include, but are not limited to: frequent invitations to lunches and dinners, which often exceed a 15-minute time span with idle chatter; calls asking you to join in on picnics and power hours; and including you in plans to go camping all weekend long. These are all naught but thinly veiled attempts to sabotage your efforts on what really matters — homework. If you want to be successful (and success can be measured only on a grade-point-average scale), you must react immediately, with adamant decisiveness. Do not be fooled when they tell you to bring along your course packet, saying they have lots of work, too. What they really mean is that they’ve already finished all their homework and want to prevent you from doing the same. They will spill ketchup, beer and mud on your precious readings, and all will be ruined. If this is often a problem, or if you have a tendency to value your friends a bit too highly, do not even pick up the phone. Better yet, delete your contacts altogether. Your GPA will begin to rise with every friend you shake off your back — guaranteed.
2. Refine your anal personality. The only way to make it to all your meetings is to meticulously plan each and every day, minute by minute. Spontaneity is unacceptable and should be cut out of your lifestyle accordingly. Unless an event, conversation or meal is written into your hourly planner at least one week in advance, you should not participate under any circumstances (no exceptions). An impromptu meal at 6 p.m. could easily run over an allotted 15 minutes per meal, in which case it could conflict with your important daily activities like “third read-through of Absolutism, Revolution, and Democracy in the Middle East” at 6:15 or God forbid, run all the way into “spell-check class notes” at 6:40. The dangers of spur-of-the-moment philosophies are quite evident, and extreme caution should be taken to avoid such a threatening mindset.
3. Abstain from showers, laundry, housekeeping and exercise. These superfluous activities do not contribute to earning high grades and should be systematically excluded from your routine based on the fact that they detract from the time you have to spend on homework and studying. Such wasteful, pointless diversions should be looked down upon in others, and participating in them will decrease your success and well-being.
4. Eliminate all unnecessary communication. The only way to achieve pure concentration is through the deletion of your Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter and e-mail accounts. These tend to be distracting and should not be tolerated. Similarly, do not ever waste a moment talking in person to people if it is not directly benefiting your grade. Chatting with custodians, chefs, taxi drivers or people you meet around campus is an incredible drain of productivity. Imagine the wonders of a world without communication! The amount of time saved would be incredible. You can get close to achieving such a utopia by refusing to communicate by any means other than stamped and enveloped letters. This will reduce all unnecessary correspondence and foster a clean, distraction-free aura, which is the first step to a perfect GPA and thus world peace/domination.
5. Refrain from getting “involved”. IM sports, volunteering and writing columns are all examples of useless involvement that does not contribute constructively to anything of importance. Having fun, helping people and gaining practical experience do not bolster your GPA, and grade points don’t grow on trees, you know. If you’ve already made the foolish mistake of involvement, it’s not too late — you can always get uninvolved. Quit the team, stop showing up to the homeless shelter and become so unreliable that you don’t even have to break up with the campus publication you work for — let them break up with you. Once you’re free of all of these commitments, you’ll finally be independent and free to focus on things that really matter.

Have you already begun to feel it? The buzzing sensation of perfection, of a 4.0 grade point average and admittance to the exclusive Dean’s List Club (which I hear throws great parties)? If not, alas, you may be doomed to be known as the kid who wears swimsuits in lieu of underwear. Shame. But hey, it’s supposed to near 80 degrees this weekend — if you make it to the beach, at least you’ll be prepared for something.

Go ahead and mock me, but I love this stuff. Photo by John-Morgan on Flickr, licensed under the Creative Commons.

I love chalk. I love chalk hopscotch and chalk racetracks and crime-scene-style chalk outlines, but most of all, I love the way our entire campus is blanketed in a rainbow of chalk ASG campaign ads, or was until the rain washed it all away on Monday. You might trace this deep-seated love of mine to something more serious, like a full-fledged Peter Pan complex and a denial of adult responsibility, but I don’t really think so. I’m just happy that here and now — in a generation and campus that is often deemed apathetic — we can care about something enough to not leave a single sidewalk square blank.

In fact, this may actually be my favorite time of the year. I’m a bit capricious in my affections, and I generally declare this same statement about once a month, but it’s usually about the weather, not politics — something that rarely gets me too excited.

But thanks to the current campaign, my habitual long, late-night walks between North and South campus are no longer the dull treks they once were, with a myriad of multi-colored slogans along the way. And it’s not just the ads that make the annual ASG campaigns so great.

The sheer effort that candidates put behind their campaigns is impressive. Anyone who’s gone flyering or chalking knows that the work is nearly back-breaking and will leave you sore the next day. ASG hopefuls are undoubtedly busy assembling their massive campaign teams and securing the endorsements of many, yet all the while, they make time to go door-to-door just to talk to students.

I was in the student offices on the third floor of Norris last week when Bill Pulte stopped by just to chat, and the week before that, Muhammad Safdari, running unopposed for Academic Chair, stopped by my room in Allison. Though he was just asking for signatures in order to acquire the 200 needed to run, he stayed to talk for 20 minutes, discussing his platform and the possibility of a student book exchange and enlightening me on just how one gets involved in the mystery that is ASG.

Usually, politics is something convoluted and abstract, something that is so distant and so filtered that it’s hard to trust at all. As excited I was about the 2008 presidential election, I don’t feel like my day-to-day life has been greatly affected. But campus elections, as silly as they may seem, really do make a difference. I love making fun of ASG as much as the next Impeach ASG-reading student, but in truth, I really do think the student government here does a lot of good work. I think off-campus housing evaluations and Saturday shuttles to Chicago are more than I could have expected from ASG in the last year (granted, I set the bar low). If anything, the student body should make better use of these.

What’s cool about a campus campaign is that you’ll more than likely not only shake hands with the candidates, but if you’re interested, you can discuss policy with them. Not many people get to do this with the real U.S. of A president. Of course, shuttles and CTECs aren’t of the same weight as public health policy or relations in the Middle East, and of course it’s impossible to know with any certainty the sincerity of anyone’s campaign — but you have to have a little bit of faith and perspective, put aside all the snide, uninformed remarks, and appreciate what ASG does do.

The good news is that it’s easy to vote for ASG. No registrations, no absentee ballots sent perilously through the postal service, no lines to wait in on election day. The people we elect have the potential to improve our day-to-day lives directly within the next year, and we should hold hold them up to these standards. In the meantime, enjoy the chalking and gratuitous conversations with soon-to-be campus politicians, and don’t forget to vote!

Prospies make great targets. I’ve always fantasized about pulling off the classic tour group prank, planting a fake prospective student in the group and kidnapping them while dressed in a banana costume, gorilla costume or bandit costume, complete with lengths of rope to tie the victim to a nearby tree. Though the pull of terrorizing prospies is hard to resist, I’ve found that it’s almost more fun and definitely more rewarding to convince prospective students that Northwestern is the place where they’ll be happiest for the next four years.

Last year, I hosted a whole slew of prospies. My roommate quickly tired of tripping over pre-frosh sleeping on our floor, but I kept getting calls from the admissions office, and I kept offering my already crowded floorspace to a high school stranger for a night. Sometimes, I had too much homework to effectively entertain a visitor, and on other nights, the prospies were the ones who disappointed. One of my prospies spent 75 percent of her time on the phone with her boyfriend, discussing how much more she liked USC. But all the other prospies I hosted were vibrant, inspirational, and made my whole day more fun. Showing them why I like Northwestern so much only made me appreciate going here even more.

Today, a total of four of my former prospies are now full-fledged freshmen at Northwestern. When I run into them on Sheridan, I feel a little burst of pride that I helped convince them to come here, where they appear to be happy and well-adjusted college students. Two of them are even good friends of mine who I see on a weekly basis.

Over spring break, my younger brother called me on my birthday from Hawaii and told me he had a present: he’d just been accepted into Northwestern. However, like most of the approximately 6,000 accepted students, he is deciding between Northwestern and a few other schools. So when he visited for three nights this past week, in what was only the beginning of a vast wave of prospies on the way, I knew I had to show him why he should come to Northwestern.

When my brother, Michael, visited, he was bombarded by students who wanted to answer his questions, tell him about their experiences and convince him to come here. Everyone seemed to be studying engineering like he intends to, or had chosen between the same schools he is considering, and I’d like to think that no matter what he decides in the end, he had a very encouraging experience here. Sure, it helped that before he came I sent an email to 60 of my closest friends, explaining that he was visiting, and then creepily attached a picture.

But even without that, Michael’s visit seemed perfect. Despite weather.com’s prediction of rain in every single slot of their hour-by-hour forecast, the days he visited were sunny and vaguely warm, which is as good as you can hope for in April. And amazingly, it seemed like we packed the whole Northwestern experience into two days. When we walked by the Rock, people were guarding it and playing music, and when we went to the Lakefill at night, the city glowed on the horizon and the waves were crashing. When we walked up north, people were tossing frisbees and footballs, and when we went to Cozy’s on Friday night, we had intellectual conversation and stayed way past our welcome. Sit and Spin’s stand-up comedy show was hilarious, and everywhere we went, we ran into people who wanted to talk about how much they love Northwestern.

Not every visit can convey all the reasons Northwestern is great, though, especially if it’s short. When I visited during Wildcat Days two years ago, the weather was cold and rainy, the other prospies were weird and took notes in the class we visited (actual notes taken: students appear bored. Three people arrived late. Some of the questions asked are stupid.) My host ditched me to do homework, I got locked out of Sargent, and I was pretty sure I couldn’t see myself here. Then, just before I left, a Medill senior intercepted me while I was crossing a quad, asked if I was a prospective student, and excitedly told me all the reasons he liked Northwestern and what he would miss when he graduated. He had no motivation to talk to me except a genuine love for Northwestern and his own friendliness. It was only then, between the three minutes he said hi and I left to catch a taxi to O’Hare, that I decided I just might like it here after all.

If you love Northwestern, you don’t have to be a campus tour guide or donate money after you graduate to give back to our school. You don’t even have to host prospies yourself. All you have to do is be friendly and welcoming to the prospective students when they begin to swarm campus in the upcoming weeks and during this year’s Wildcat Days on April 13, 20 and 27. Taking just a few minutes to say hi between classes or offering them an impromptu tour of your dorm can be the make-or-break point in their decisions. Prospies may be naive and sometimes annoying, and their parents may shoot you dirty looks when you don’t know quite where Francis Searle is located, but prospies are just potential students looking for a place that will feel like home.

Between writing and editing this column, I got an e-mail from the Student Admissions Council (unfortunately abbreviated SAC, but whatever) informing me that I would be hosting a prospie on Tuesday. I don’t even mind the short notice — I can’t wait to show her around Northwestern and make her fall in love with Lake Michigan and the concept of flyering and Mannie’s chicken wraps at Allison dining hall and most importantly, all the lovely people who already chose Northwestern.

It’s old news by now, but Café Ambrosia, known for its hospitality towards students and its tasty drinks, has closed its doors and boarded up its windows, apparently for good. Anyone who frequented Ambrosia can tell you that its many couches and tables were filled with studying students, but Ambrosia was more than just a great place to study. We seem to be shocked by the sudden closure, and once the grind of Spring Quarter begins, I know that we’ll be missing the couch-filled study haven that provided a welcome respite from the library. And the events that regularly occur in Ambrosia’s basement (like Sit and Spin’s stand up comedy) won’t be the same in any other venue.

My own love for Ambrosia dates back to my first day on Northwestern’s campus as a student, when I arrived early for pre-orientation and was taken to the Cafe by a Project Wildcat counselor. It was only then, over a delicious chilled chai, that I decided I might be happy at Northwestern after all. During reading and finals week, Ambrosia was my home base for highlighting all the chapters I hadn’t read throughout the quarter. I squeezed into the jam-packed basement to listen to friends strum melodically on their guitars, and almost every week, I met around tables with tea and muffins for book clubs and writing workshops. Ambrosia was a lot more than just any coffee place. It housed my friends and hopes and memories, and it will be missed.

I wish Ambrosia’s closing mirrored Juicy Campus’s, soon to be quickly replaced by an extremely similar establishment. Though Evanston is full of coffee places and bistro cafes with wireless internet, none of them are as hospitable to heart-to-hearts and cram sessions as Ambrosia. They lack the comfy couches, warm ambiance, and cozy familiarity of the place I’ve so often heard abbreviated to “Ambrozhe.” In this economy, which has been blamed for Ambrosia’s closing, I doubt that something similar will come along very quickly, if ever.

But while many of us seem to be distraught over Ambrosia’s untimely end (I’ve seen Gchat statuses changed to “RIP Ambrosia” and blogs about the sad demise), nobody seems to be actually doing anything about it. I only wish we had known that Ambrosia was struggling. I would have made an effort to stop buying bagels at Einstein’s or lattes at Starbucks in favor of the selection at Ambrosia, which provided a far better hang out locale than either of the aforementioned places. I can easily envision a student-run effort to bring more business to the cafe, which was opened with the intentions of catering to us in the first place. Unfortunately, the closure came without warning: no hikes in basement rental fees or visibly stronger efforts to encourage patrons to make more purchases.

The papers over the windows may be dispiriting, but if we as a campus truly care about Café Ambrosia’s closing, we should take a stand. It may seem nearly impossible or overly idealistic, but if we sign a petition urging Northwestern to buy the space Ambrosia once occupied, I think we might just have a chance. It may not be an issue of equality or social justice, but Ambrosia is a one-of-a-kind feature for our community, and if we let it go with nothing more than a “tweet” or transient status change — that would be a tragedy.

An hour ago I was at a barbeque, where a girl declared that now we could finally bash on DM, as anyone involved was currently in Norris, preparing for the culmination of the fundraiser marathon. Everyone in the circle around her, including me, joined in. We complained about what an inefficient fundraiser DM was, donating only 71% of the money they raised to charity. We questioned why participants spent 30 hours dancing, something no one seems to look forward to anyways, instead of doing community service or raising more money for 30 hours.

It’s easy to criticize DM, the Northwestern fundraiser that overshadows all the others, and takes over campus for an entire weekend at the end of every Winter Quarter.

But at 7 p.m. on the opening night, as the dancing is about to commence, the atmosphere here is unlike anything else. The participants are beaming, jumping, singing, and chanting. They are enthusiastic about something that seems like an impossible feat. From the ceiling on the first floor hang DM logos and facts about AIDS. In the bathrooms, there are signs made by HIV-positive teenagers, with their stories, poems, pictures, and aspirations. “Dance for me because my hope is vital and I depend on you,” said Brryan, 18. “Dance for me because I want my mom at my wedding,” said Ally, 11.

As the MCs count the seconds until dancing begins, 4-3-2-1, broadcast on the many flatscreen TVs of Norris, I feel like I’d do almost anything to be in the crowd of more than 800 that are participating in the craziest, most feel-good event I’ve ever witnessed. DM may be easy to criticize, but I believe that those involved are doing more than simply raising nearly a million dollars for charity. They are instilling the importance of awareness and community involvement in a way that I believe will stick with participants and organizers for the rest of our lives. In this way, DM makes a far greater impact than the money it raises each year. This is why students will spend an entire weekend dancing when their peers are partying, studying, and sleeping. This is why we do DM.

Monday

Only a few hours into the week, I’m already hungry, thirsty and skeptical of my decision to sign up for this in the first place. I usually head to Norris after my 9 a.m. class and grab a snack and bottle of water, but today I bypassed the Norbucks line and opted to hit up the drinking fountain instead, water bottle in hand.

Photo by John Meguerian / North by Northwestern

I caught myself envying the students waiting to eat their muffins and scones and realized how much money I waste on things like bottled water. It’s easy enough to drop $1.50 on water here and there, but just one bottle a day adds up to $548 a year. How can I justify that? I don’t mean to criminalize buying bottled water, but I’ve realized how often I do it without really thinking about it. It’s something to ruminate on while my stomach growls.

It’s 5:30 p.m. and all I’ve had to eat is a sugar cookie from the box my roommate’s mom sent her for Valentine’s Day, so by this point I’m in a bad mood and feel a little sick. I sleep it off until 7 p.m., when I skip lecture to go to dinner and discussion with a panel of speakers focusing on poverty and inequality sponsored by the Northwestern Community Development Corps (NCDC). I’m overjoyed to find out the event is catered by Dave’s Italian Kitchen, and I pile my plate high with pasta, salad and bread. I feel extremely proud that I haven’t spent a cent but am still enjoying a legitimately delicious and filling meal.

The lecture focused on the inequality that is present even in our own affluent communities at Northwestern and in Evanston. One of the speakers, Hinman Chef Rafael Marquez, spoke about a fellow Northwestern employee who had four children but was homeless. Marquez had helped organize an effort amongst his co-workers to help her out by donating their honorariums to her cause.

“We’re going to take the initiative because actions speak louder than words,” he said. Marquez also spoke of the recent improvements since he started working at Northwestern. “Now that we have a union, I have a little bit of a better outlook,” he said. “Maybe my daughter could come here one day.”

I wish that the friends I had invited to go with me to this panel had not declined my promises of free food. Going without money for a week — a feat my friends seem to be astonished at — hardly seems like an accomplishment at all in comparison to working a job, raising four kids and not having a home.

Tuesday

Today my best friend told me she didn’t understand what I could possibly gain from this project. I struggled to articulate exactly what my goals were, and was suddenly unsure of what I was really aiming to get out of this. It was hard to tell if I was really gaining any insight, or if this was just a naïve gimmick. I felt very guilty for letting her buy the cookie we habitually share after our Tuesday class knowing that I wouldn’t return the favor on Thursday as usual.

I also did something I swore I wouldn’t — I spent 14 cents printing a paper in the library right before class. Especially after last night’s little revelation, I really wanted to be serious about not spending a cent all week, and I’m pretty embarrassed that I messed this up only two days in. The worst part is that I know places to print for free, but I didn’t leave enough time and opted to break the rules to avoid being late to class or taking a late grade. This really illustrated the limitations of this kind of stunt, because even if I hadn’t spent the 14 cents, I still know all along that I could, if I needed to. All I’m really doing is an exercise in willpower. It would be impossible to simulate the demoralizing awareness of having no other options or a backup plan. I’ve always been drawn to putting myself in others’ shoes, like fundraisers against homelessness that involve sleeping outside for a night to experience what homelessness is like. But the thing is, you can’t artificially create what it’s like to live the real thing.

I had another great meal I didn’t pay for, this time from Pomegranate at an event titled Islam & Judaism 101 that was sponsored by the student group Peace of Mind. Like last night, there was not a huge turn out, despite a very relevant subject matter and delicious free food. I am not sure why students don’t flock to events like these. They are advertised well enough, sent out over emails and flyered all over campus. Smith has a personal listserv he sends to more than 1,000 people that lists all the free events on campus. Just stopping to read the signs in Norris will yield numerous interesting events with catered receptions or dinners. They are easy to forget about, but it’s not hard to make the time to go to them, either.

Wednesday

Photo by John Meguerian / North by Northwestern

This shouldn’t be a surprise at all, but I’ve eaten some horribly unhealthy foods so far this week. Normally I stick to sushi, salads and sandwiches, but so far most of my meals have been either sugar cookies or 69-cent Sbarro breadsticks I sucker my friends into buying. These greasy salty giants are perhaps the most filling thing you can buy for so little money, and they’ve kept me from starving this week — but it’s pretty clearly illustrated an alarming paradox in our society. If you are poor, you can’t eat very well. If you don’t eat well, you’re going to have health problems. But if you’re poor, you have limited access to health care. You don’t have to be an expert in nutrition or health care policy to figure this one out.

I’ve actually been eating such random food at such strange intervals that I’ve been feeling sick every day so far. I’m cranky and tired, and definitely too exhausted to even contemplate going to the gym. I had ambitious plans to talk to some of Evanston’s panhandlers today, but I passed out in exhaustion this afternoon. Hopefully tomorrow will be more fruitful (hopefully literally as well as metaphorically, since I haven’t had any fruit all week).

The high point of the day was going to Allison Munchies, which happened to be pancakes from Clarke’s. I was scolded for taking more than two but I didn’t care. I even went back for more to stash in my room for breakfast and lunch tomorrow. Things are looking up already!

Thursday

I woke up for a fantastic breakfast of soggy pancakes leftover from last night, and then spent most of the day meeting with a few particularly involved students about awareness, activism and inequality on our campus.

Smith is in Guatemala for the quarter, so I spoke to some of his friends who, like him, were especially passionate and outspoken. I also spoke with Max Fletcher, a co-chair of NCDC. I guess I was looking for an answer to why nobody goes to all the cool events on campus and, perhaps too optimistically, a solution to the problem of apathy our campus is accused of all too often.

The answer, as you probably guess and I should have known, is that there isn’t one, at least not a definitive one. Fletcher, a SESP senior, believes that students can make a real difference when they volunteer at NCDC’s 25 sites across Evanston and Chicago. But not everyone agrees.

Loren Balhorn, a Weinberg senior, used to volunteer very often as a freshman. But since then, he has become disillusioned with volunteerism altogether, and views organizing politically as the only real way to bring about change. “The way students on this campus try to change the world is really embarrassing and naïve and intellectually dishonest,” Balhorn said.

“We sure as hell don’t have all the answers, or even most of the answers,” said Peter Luckow, a Weinberg junior and co-coordinator of the GlobeMed national office. But there is a genuine desire on our campus to get involved, to make a difference. It might not always be carried through with or executed the right way, but the initial seed is there.

Not spending money for a week is not going to change the world, obviously. But it’s made me a lot more conscious of how often I take the time to think critically about an issue I care about, and the different ways that students on campus have found to act on their desires to better the inequities of the world.

Friday

Today was my last day, and to be honest, I was a bit tired of the whole endeavor. It didn’t help that there was a dearth of free food events today. I ended up casually walking into a dining hall through the exit for lunch today. I’m not particularly proud of this, especially since it might be cheating, but it was really nice to eat a full meal. I also grabbed a bagel and cream cheese for dinner tonight (which would otherwise pose a challenge, as there’s not a lot of free food on a Friday night and my friends would probably want to go out to eat).

After classes, I took a trip to CVS with a friend and stopped by to chat with one of Evanston’s panhandlers, a man who goes by Aaron or “Heavy,” and one of his friends who introduced himself only as “Breeze.” They were very suspicious about anything resembling an interview, referencing the many times they’d been approached. Heavy said that someone offered him $5 to take his picture, and the next day, his face was blown up on the cover of the Daily. I thought of the audio recorder I had in my pocket, and decided not to even bring it up after they mentioned students who hid audio recorders and video cameras under their coats. I was pretty aware that although I walk by these guys multiple times a week, the first time I’d stopped to have a real conversation with them was for a journalism project.

I don’t know how truthful these two guys were — we’re often warned that the panhandlers we see are not the ones in need, that they aren’t truly homeless, but it’s hard to really say or know for sure either way. Regardless, going for a week without money doesn’t seem like much compared to hoping, each day, that you’ll collect $40 from an apathetic crowd’s spare change, just enough to get a room to spend a night. I think that taking the time to talk to the people it’s more comfortable to avoid is perhaps at the heart of being aware, and the first step to changing the inequalities in our community.

My next main concern was how to get through a Friday night without spending any money. I had to skip a trip to visit a thrift shop I’d been planning with a few friends because I couldn’t pay for the El or buy anything, not even at a thrift shop. I was a little irritated that I had to miss out on this just because I couldn’t spend money.

Going out was pretty much out of the question, since I couldn’t spend money on cabs or drinks, so I ended up staying in with a bunch of friends in Bobb. This was fine by me, but tonight really drove home how money is a limiting factor socially.

Saturday

This morning I woke up early, walked to Einstein’s, and bought a steaming hot bagel with cream cheese. It wasn’t fancy or expensive, but the ability to buy what I wanted, when I wanted and not have to depend on someone else to provide it—that was fantastic. It flooded me with this great warm feeling of power and independence, and it wasn’t hard to imagine what the opposite feeling must be like: to be depend on handouts; to not know when you’ll eat next or where you’ll sleep tonight, or to face the constant insecurity of living paycheck to paycheck, which is not such a rare reality.

Though inequality exists right here on our very on campus, most of us are in a comfortable position to ignore it and not feel any worse for doing so. But the general thoughtlessness with which we stand in line at Norbucks and serve ourselves food prepared by a homeless employee and walk by people who sleep outdoors at night — that’s a problem.

Fortunately, there’s an enormous wealth of opportunity on our campus to get involved in almost any issue that inspires you. You can volunteer at a local school or help a village in Africa or participate in a political rally. Maybe more importantly, we’re living with future leaders who are full of ideas and opinions and who are organizing these very opportunities, and we have a lot to gain just by talking to each other.

Trying to live entirely without money, especially if you’re required to be on a university meal plan, is not terribly realistic or productive. I ended up relying on friends to spot me for a 99-cent crêpe or a bread stick occasionally, which was not exactly the point of the project. But there are so many opportunities on a college campus like ours to not only widen our horizons, but to eat a delicious, filling, and free meal while doing so that not taking advantage of them is hard to justify.

It may be impossible to recreate the experience of poverty, even by doing something “extreme” and going entirely without money. But the ways in which we can better understand inequality abound, and by being just a bit more mindful — of what we are consuming and what we’re paying attention to — we can make a big difference.

A friend from Miami once told me that until he came to Northwestern, he never understood why weather was always the default conversation topic in movies and on TV. In Miami, the temperature hardly varies from the yearly average of 76 degrees. The weather is always there, but rarely remarkable, and bringing it up in conversation would be like saying “Hey, what’s your nose up to?” Because the answer is most likely “nothing at all.”

Here, however, that’s far from the case. The weather is such a talking point, in fact, that often seems like we spend all of Winter Quarter bemoaning the cold and wind and snow. Once Spring Break is in sight, it seems like all of campus becomes afflicted with tunnel vision, placing all our hopes on a better, warmer spring. We disregard the weeks of winter still left, and the uniquely wintry experiences they make possible, like enjoying a mug of cocoa and having a snowball fight. And once spring arrives, it seems like nothing but a lengthy exercise in patience, waiting for a warmer day that hardly arrives. The result is that we get caught in our own meteorological purgatory, and fail to appreciate each day in its own right.

Winter days weigh heavy on our shoulders, to be sure. There may not be a gloomier feeling than contemplating your impossible burden of work, sniffling back the dregs of a never-ending cold, and reading a forecast that promises such delights as below-zero wind chills and a “wintry mix” of snow and rain. It’s achy, bitter and dreary, and an experience we all have in common.

This, perhaps, is the reason it’s so “Northwestern” to bandy around our collective hatred of winter, engaging in a constant mindless conversation of how much “winter sucks” and how excited we are for spring, pronouncing the phrase as if the very word for the season is a magic elixir that will solve all our problems.

Winter Quarter, though, is almost over, and soon it will be spring, or more accurately, waiting-for-spring, since the slow procession towards good weather seems to drag on for months. We effectively put our lives on hold, hanging all our hopes and plans on this metaphorical warm tomorrow, until imperceptibly, with an apparent suddenness, we’ll look around and all the grass and trees will be freshly green, and we’ll wonder when it happened. I’ll plan picnics on the beach and trips to the Lincoln Park Zoo, telling everyone all the things we’ll do “when the weather’s nicer.” Inspiration itself gets crossed out and pushed back to a later date, again and again until the school year unravels and we fly our separate ways for the summer.

The problem is that spring introduces expectations, and so the weather never seems quite good enough. Though a 50-degree day would be heralded as incredible in February, we want more out of spring, and knowing that it could be warmer casts a chill on what would be an enjoyable day. But it doesn’t have to be this way; it’s all in our heads, anyhow. By making everything relative we give more value to some days than others, to warm over cold and sunny over cloudy. The weather, however, is something we have no control over. It’s simply a backdrop to our days, a variable fabric that flows behind all our experiences.

I wish it were easier to retain a child’s perspective on the world, to run out in the rain just because it’s wet and not worry about your books and clothes getting soaked or how silly you’ll look with your hair plastered to your face. Inevitably, we don’t — we get older and fall victim to common sense. But if we practice, from time to time, accepting the weather as it comes, blustery and frigid or puddly and wet, there’s so much more to enjoy, and we’ll find things we didn’t even know we loved, like running in a downpour without an umbrella or admiring the way the ice piles up like broken glass on the shores of Lake Michigan or piling on an impossible number of layers just to sit in the snow and enjoy a Freezepop. Those are the things I’ll remember from this quarter, anyhow, and they’re all things I couldn’t have experienced if I’d locked myself in my room and counted down the days until beach weather.

Whether we like it or not, the weather is a talking point in Evanston. It’s harsh and unpredictable and full of unwelcome surprises (like thunderstorms in February and snow in April) but if you open yourself up to it, it’s also jam-packed with the stuff that makes things remarkable and memorable, and this is what we should hold on to.