It's happened. It's finally here. The thing you've been dreading, and thus the column you've all been waiting for. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, winter has arrived. Brace yourselves.
Winter is the season of The North Face and puffy jackets that turn perfectly acceptably sized humans into giant marshmallows, myself included — actually, I look more like a marshmallow than most, because my gigantic puffy is white. It is the season of getting coffee at 9 p.m., not because you need the caffeine but because, in order to walk around outside, you need something warm to hold on to.
It is the season of Hanukkah, Christmas, Kwanzaa and New Years. It is the season of finals and final papers and the Naked Quad Run.
NQR is one of the nights when I am reminded how incredibly happy I am to go to Tufts. (Other instances include, in no particular order, TDC, Quidditch games, finding out the lax bro in your Spanish class is crazy smart, Tuftonia's Day, Spring Fling, "Call On Me" parties and discovering that Tisch Library is the most social place on campus).
While back home all the UCs have "undie runs," we one-up them and run laps, butt-naked in below-freezing temps. We're that hardcore. Or that dumb. Or have that much steam to burn off. Whichever "that" you go with, NQR is one of the best parts of winter, hands down.
However, even the epic-ness that is NQR cannot combat the horror that faces me as I consider the prospect of my second winter in New England in all of its 30-degree-and-below glory. There's the freezing cold, but that's not the real issue.
The real issue is the precipitation. And it's not even snow that I'm disgusted by. It's the February-April sleet that's the worst. It's wet jeans and overheated classrooms that make you go from being freezing to boiling in under 10 seconds.
New England, why the hell do you abuse heat as much as you do? It's cold outside; I want to wear a sweater, not a tank top! Do not heat classrooms to the point of sweating! If it's frigid outside, I will dress to beat the frigidity, thus screwing me over the second I step inside. It is impossible to dress for both 75 and 28 degrees at once.
I spent all of last winter getting made fun of for the number of layers I managed to fit on my body. I thought it was completely reasonable to wear two pairs of leggings under my jeans and three pairs of socks under my boots. Turns out, as the hard-core New Englanders will tell you, that is not how one deals with cold.
All my friends from the East Coast have taught me the true secret to winter, and it has nothing to do with layers. The true secret to getting through winter like a native New Englander is to realize that it's cold, accept that you're going to freeze your butt off when you're outside and stop complaining.
I have yet to master this. I generally just add another sweater and keep whining.
On the bright side, all my Californians and I get to go home for the worst parts of December and January. We get to see sun that actually is bright enough to give off the requisite amount of Vitamin D, get to hang by the Pacific, get to go out bare-legged on a Friday night and not risk frostbite.
It's a sick situation, to be honest. We miss the worst of winter and come back tan and sort of excited to see snow again. It's all about the contrast, which is why this bi-coastal thing is kind of the best, even though winter is totally the worst.
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Samantha Jaffe is a sophomore who has not yet declared a major. She can be reached at Samantha.Jaffe@tufts.edu.
