Elihu

Sometimes, not often, I get the insatiable urge to blog. So I thought I'd flip open my computer and hammer something out......

I'm at Yale! Lost somewhere in this gothic wilderness- my God it is beautiful here. Towering cathedrals, soaring spires, beautiful stonework, peculiar statues etched from the imagination of a glib architect. You know, it really makes you wonder what the insurance must be on this place.

Most of the buildings here are actually only around 70 years old. Yale, however, wishing to appear as venerable as Oxbridge, commissioned James Gamble (the architect- I think that's his name) to employ the time-honored traditions of all sane architects-pour acid down the sides so that everything looked appropriately weathered. It doesn't really fool you though. I appreciate the buildings for what they are- magnificent works of art. I don't really feel the kind of awe that bona fide ancient sites inspire you- the kind where you think reverently of the people who have walked before you. The only real old building on campus is Connecticut Hall and that's in the Georgian style so nobody ever cares aobut it.

I'll post some pictures later on- providing, of course, that I a) figure out how to post pictures and b) take pictures. The latter is very unlikely- you know that I'm no shutterbug- so my words will probably have to suffice. Unfortunately, even the Yale website doesn't have any good pictures either- they are all taken at frustrating angles designed to reveal nothing but happy students lounging the lawn in their Ivy League finery.

_

I am, of course, signing up for everything here- old habits die hard. There's just so many things I want to do: mock trial, debate, community service/international development, write for the Yale Daily News.......I hope I can fit it all in.

I'll probably get overwhelmed- with classes and everything else- so I think I actually have to practice some variety of restraint.

_

If anyone out there is thinking about going to Yale, I recommend it on the strongest possible terms. I know, I've only been here for a few days, so my credibility is severely undermined by Freshman Euphoria; still, this place is amazing. The best part is that, for a university as large and renowned as Yale, you aren't just a number. You don't get lost in the crowd- the advising system here is so thorough and comprehensive that I've never had a question unanswered.


_

I dropped into Target briefly, before I'd moved into Yale, and something extraordinary happened.

I was searching up the coaxial cable aisle--which is a regular haunt I assure you--wondering whether a cable came with the $59.99 TV that I had bought, when I decided that I needed help. For a male--so long as those assertions, that males are reluctant to ask for directions or help, hold true--it doesn't take a lot of time for me to do this. Its mostly the product of impatience- I hate waiting too long for anything.

So I stopped one of the employees walking down the aisle, an African-American wearing a bright red shirt with a large bullseye on it. As I was making my query--in an articulate and coherent way, as I thought befitted someone wearing a Yale hat--my eyes happened upon her nametag.

"My Name Is: ROSHAN"

Ok, I know, not a great story. But still, I've never met someone with my name before; even more surprisingly it applied to a) a female and b) someone who doesn't look, at least, Indian.

_

More later!

Back

Just checking in.

I know I haven’t been here in a while- I can’t really be that casual. Perhaps this should have the air of a return, with long suffering motley crew no less; a grieving ostensible widow and some shocked relatives. Teary moments ensue. Unfortunately, I can’t trust to that kind of an ending—or beginning--because nobody reads this anyways.

Regardless, I’m back and hopefully here to stay. A great deal has happened since the last post—nearly a year ago—and I won’t bother trying to cover it with the usual disgusting thoroughness and scintillating pretension. But I will mention that I got into Yale-that is context, by the way, not braggadocio-and that my twin did as well.

So, I figured that I might reinvent this, make it a frank account of freshman year, but I have neither candor nor anything particularly revealing to say. I am a quiet person, I prefer the predictable and cautious and would be therefore unlikely to suggest anything hitherto unknown about the university experience. Besides, there’s always Tom Wolfe.

Instead this is just as the title suggests and has always suggested- the Chronicle of an Overachiever.

-

Yale, I think, is trying to pique our anticipation for September by sending us innumerable mail outs. Everything from our room assignments to a linen catalogue, it’s like a couple of steps; you feel like you’re coming closer to university with each letter, with each banality and triviality out of the way.

One of the more interesting steps sent loyally along was instructions for activating our e-mails- and The Facebook. For those not well versed in college jargon, The Facebook—before it assumes the aura of a nameless entity, it can more tangibly found at http://www.thefacebook.com--is a compilation of the profiles of college-going people across the nation (you can only really access the profiles of your friends or those at your own college). You can “friend” people (or “facebook” them as the lexicon goes), which means little else then having a link posted on your profile. Really, the entire setup seems to be aimed at aspiring philanderers; they can figure out how to access those who catch their fancy by finding friends they have in common (facebook even maps it out for you) or courses they both attend.

Anyways, my profile is noticeably sparse; I don’t really buy into it. It seems like another way to postpone actual contact. Also, we all know how much of a philanderer I am, right? So I used it for a more benign purpose- to get an idea of what courses other Biomedical Engineering majors took freshman year.
-

Finally, I can read.

For two years I've been entirely engrossed in getting my IB Diploma. Now that high school is over, and I satisfactorily passed said diploma (by the way, I got 100%-45 out of 45! I haven't been able to enthuse about this to anyone except Twin and I think he's tired of hearing me say it) I can actually spend some time doing something else other than studying or stressing out, which were my primary occupations hitherto.

So, in the space of a month and a bit, I've read five amazing books:

“The Club Dumas” by I-forget-who: A crazy, intertextual thriller/mystery- great for those who are of the literature-latin mold (I’m not, so a lot of the Dumas and Stendhal references flew right by me). The story centers around an unlikely protagonist named Corso; a veteran, middle aged, book-hunter who finds himself in a very peculiar plot involving occult worship and real-life characters from “The Three Musketeers”. The end is great, the writing is marvelous and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

“A Short History of Nearly Everything” by Bill Bryson: Strongly recommended to anyone who is literate. I don’t normally do non-fiction, but the cover of this one was particularly attractive (I’m judgmental). I started it out of mild curiosity and literally couldn’t put it down until I had finished reading the last of the copious endnotes. The writer- apparently one of the world’s most “beloved” according to the back-undertakes a prodigious task: to write about most of known science. He takes you on a lucid and witty journey through centuries of science, deftly widening your perspective and keeping your interest constantly engaged. He’s also hilarious- his well-written caricatures of some of science’s more eccentric figures made me laugh out loud.

“Sense and Sensibility” by Jane Austen: For a debut book (this was Austen’s first), “Sense and Sensibility” is remarkable. Although it takes a while to adapt to the British style of writing (involving lots of semicolons, dashes and stoic narration), the story is interesting, not predictable and actually quite funny. If you’ve read it, you should know that Mr. Palmer is my favorite character. Such charming sang-froid! Anyways, I’m going to move on to “Pride and Prejudice” which is supposed to be better.

“Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince” by J.K. Rowling: It was OK. I don’t know; I didn’t like it as much as the other ones. I didn’t find it as well-written, either. I think she’s losing her touch. I won’t reveal the end, but I will note that I hated it.

“The Human Stain” by Philip Roth: Now, unequivocally a part of the Roshan Canon. It was brilliant and mind-blowing. Not only is Roth an amazing writer (his prose is erudite but it is so discerning that you can’t stop reading his sentences, if only to marvel at their construction) but the plot itself is appealing. The setting is 1998, a year fraught with outrage over Clinton’s impropriety in the Oval Office. Against this backdrop, Roth describes the past and present of Coleman Silk, a classics professor at the fictional Athena College. I don’t think I’ll say anything else more to give the plot away- just read it.
_
This is really long, so I think I’ll post the rest later on.