Miami Student

One of life's small joys is discovering new, inventive ways to piss off your parents. I thought I'd gone through everything: I went to conservative, fratty Miami instead of liberal, female-armpit-hair Oberlin, I stopped checking my grades on Bannerweb a year ago, and I finally got that full-fledged sex-change operation. Thankfully, a brand new opportunity presented itself last week. My impressionable 18 year-old sister, fresh off her high school spring break, came to stay with me for the weekend, and I decided what could be better for some sibling bonding than to get her a tattoo. So my parents are going to kill me. …

I went home to Toledo last weekend. Of course I probably didn't have the time, but I always have some reason for going home. This weekend it was my dad's birthday and Easter, but the truth is there was more to it than just going home. I am living a double life: the life I have in Toledo and the life I have at Miami, and lately the two seem to be drifting farther and farther apart. At Miami I am probably just like every other college student. I order pizza at least once a week, do the laundry about once a month and walk around with a dazed look on my face from the realization that the amount of work I have to do far exceeds the amount of time I have to do it. That is my college life, the life I lead when I am at school. But it isn't my only life. …

I recently (and when I say recently, I mean over the weekend) had the opportunity to see my cousins from Boston when I was back home for the Easter weekend. They're both seniors in high school and are, like most people their age, in the midst of deciding upon where they would like to go to school next fall. For the sake of not embarrassing them should they actually go to school here next fall, I'll refer to them as Anna and Becca. They are indeed looking at our very own "public ivy," Miami, among other small universities in the New England area. When I was talking to them about why they were looking at Miami, it was pretty obvious that one of the biggest reasons is that their dad (my uncle) graduated from here in the 1970s. …