I was 22 when I took my first solo cab ride. I was 22 and a half when I hailed my first taxi. I was 23 when I was first certain I was being ripped off by a driver. ($25 to get from Park Slope to Bushwick? Really?)

There are no taxis where I come from. There are trucks. And 8-wheeled trailers. And four-wheeler ATVs. Growing up, the closest I came to a yellow cab was sitting in a bucket seat surrounded by peeling buttercup paint on my father’s farm-use vehicle. In a small town with no public transportation (aside from school buses), there was no need for taxis. Everyone had their own wheels. And you better believe tractors count.

After I left the county with no stoplights, I moved to Washington D.C. Then Chicago. Then New York City. As I gradually increased the size of the population around me, I also increased the frequency with which I take taxis.

I like cabs. They generally make me carsick, but I find that they’re a great place to have… moments.

One of my favorite rituals was taking a taxi from Midway airport up Lake Shore Drive and to Lincoln Park, where I lived in Chicago. My apartment was about three blocks from the water, so most of the trip was spent with glorious high rises on my left and steely Lake Michigan on my right. I usually flew back in the evening, so all the buildings were lit, and most of them were close to the road. I loved feeling the dark, moving expanse of the lake on one side and catching glimpses of fancy art and track lighting on the other.

It was on that same Lake Shore Drive that I was once taking a cab with three visiting friends. It was a frigid — and I mean bone-freezing — January day and we were off to meet other friends at the Shedd Aquarium. We’d taken the bus downtown, but due to my er, miscalculations, we overshot Shedd and couldn’t bear to stand outside waiting for a bus in the opposite direction. After an icy ten minutes, once our arms were frozen in an upright position, a cab finally stopped and we clambered in, all yodeling for the driver to turn up the heat. It couldn’t have been ten minutes later that we merged onto Lake Shore Drive and blew a tire. The driver pulled over. Philip, one of my friends, gallantly offered to help repair the tire. Rachael, Jen and I stayed in the car. Philip and the driver soon gave up and we were told to get out and find another vehicle. Chivalrous (and shiver-rous) Phil stood on the narrow strip of snow beside a streaming highway for almost 20 minutes trying to get an empty cab to stop on the side. Finally he did. Memories.

I’ve been in cabs that hit other cars. I’ve been in ones that came so close to crashing that one of my impeccably mannered New England WASP friends, who never says anything more offensive than “oh, shoot” exclaimed “Jesus Christ! Are you a maniac?!”

I was in a cab, coming home from a bar with a friend I was preeeetty sure was intrigued when I invited him back to my apartment. “Two stops,” was his only response.

A taxi was taking me to a cocktail party (I was wearing impossibly high heels, poorly suited to subway surfing) when I found out one of my best friends was engaged.

As I get older and spend more time in transport in taxis, I can’t help but feel a fondness for them. They’ve been around for some of my finest moments.

We had…an incident at our farm last Saturday. It ensnared all of us, including two undocumented aliens. They were vacationing geese. You know, real wetbacks.

I am a staid intellectual who enjoys the finer pursuits in life but who isn’t afraid of getting his toes wet when it comes down to it. I take care of our farm and try to make my wife and daughter’s lives more comfortable by offering them what wisdom I have.

I’m a steady guy. I keep an eye on things. I read the Sunday papers on Sunday mornings, and when it’s warm enough, I sit on the porch swing. If I feel frisky, I’ll smoke a $7 Churchill with a name like Pablo Escobar or Chiquita Banana 100.

The porch faces our pond, a cleanly-painted white fence and several willows, all of which weep. When I look toward the pond, I see down the valley, down the spine of Devil’s Backbone. I give the water a once over from time to time, checking for snapping turtles or muskrat or…who the hell knows what. Pirate ships! Mermaids! White caps.

Melissa, my wife, speaks loudly and carries a big stick. She is a highly vocal woman with a distinct ear – the only person I have ever met who is both a loud talker and a loud listener. She grew up in a large North Carolina family where the meek inherited Oreos with the cream filling gnawed out. She’s never left a decibel standing alone out in the cold. She speaks an uptown version of low-down North Carolina, and if she’s not declaring that she’s just died about nothing in particular at least twice a day, I know somethin’ ain’t right.
On our first date when she asked where I’d gone to college and I said, “Yale,” she repeated the question at a higher volume. All of this masks the fact that she graduated first in her graduate school class and has a JD to boot.

My daughter is four and properly. I say properly because she has just the right fixings for a delightful young girl – pigtails swathed in crisp pink ribbon, charmingly round and rosy cheeks, a keen curiosity for life. She has blue eyes and blonde hair that will undoubtedly darken with age. I’ve darkened with age.

Last Wednesday, I was sitting on the porch swing, dangling my legs and thinking about how much I hated repairing fence, which is what I’d been doing all day. I tried to cheer myself by remembering the writings of O. Henry. I was chuckling when I heard the pitter patter of Molly’s tiny, yet delightfully well-formed feet.

“Hullo, Daddy.” She said, as she lifted her arms.
“Good afternoon, darling.” I said, as I brought her aboard.
“You smell bad, Daddy,” she sniffed.
“Boys sweat; girls get dewy…is what Mom says.”
“And who gets Huey and Louie?”
“You’re getting too verbal for my own good.”
“Wharr you reading?”
“Use your words. Enunciate and no one will ever misunderstand you.”
“Wharr you READING?” she said. (I decided to shit-can enunciation.)
“O. Henry.”
“Oh, Henry!” blasted Melissa from inside the house.
“How did Mama know that?” Molly asked.

Before I could answer, my wife rounded the corner on two wheels. Melissa has always had the build and grace of an athlete. She did a sprint triathlon last year and won the title of “fastest local female.” She is also a certified nut case when it comes to her pets, Soapy and Lulu, two yellow labs with their idles set way high. They too came crashing and leaping and drooling and shedding into view.

S&L landed in a heap, on their backs. They then fought each other to see who could get whose four legs under whom first. This ended with a lot of snippy huffing and chuffing and two big, boxy yellow heads in Molly’s lap, which was on my lap. They eyed each other to see whose head would be patted first, whose ear would be scratched best. Their dust continued to rise, generating the occasional cyclone that spooked the cats and sent Dorothy packing for Oz.

“Down, flotsam, down jetsam!” Melissa cried, shattering maple limbs three trees away. She waved a hairbrush in the direction of the labs who took that as a starter’s flag, giving them the go to start racing in figure eights.
“If we cut off their heads, they might calm down,” I suggested.
“Daddy!”
“They’re just frisky with puppyhood,” Melissa said, looking away from the 110-pound mastodons who last were puppies when Lewinsky was a household name.
“Darling, why do you have a hairbrush?”
“I was having a whack at braiding Molly’s hair but she wandered off.”
“Mama, why didn’t you tell me you had special powers and you could read Daddy’s mind?” Molly asked.

At the sound of her voice, the whelps rushed towards her with the speed and intensity of two professional linebackers, and it was all I could do to fend them off with one arm as I held Molly protectively to me with the other. Somewhere in the process Melissa got involved and I quickly found myself being dragged away by the collar until I was lying on the floor, cowering under my arms as she brandished the hairbrush in the air.

“Oh, it’s you.” She said.
“Don’t fire!”
“What are you doing down there?”
“I was protecting Molly.” I said, looking over Melissa’s shoulder at our child, who was standing on the backs of the dogs, moving rapidly into the distance, looking much like King Neptune on his dolphins.
“Oh, Henry.” Melissa extended a delicate hand and assisted me to my feet. “Something’s got to be done.”
“You’re right about that. May I suggest volunteering them for space? If that’s too good, how about the pound?”
“The pound? What are you talking about?”
“The dogs. We were discussing where to dispose of them.” By this time, Molly was making her way back to the porch. She and the dogs vaulted up the steps and came promptly to a halt next to the swing. She dismounted, gave a curtsy to the sound of her mother’s wild applause and bade the mongrels sit, whereupon they sat.

“No, Henry.”
“Mama, it’s O. Henry,” Molly chirped.
“What?” Melissa said.
“No, Molly—“ I said.
“Not no, O., Papa!”
“No, it’s—“
“—Ands or buts!” sang Molly.
“What?” Melissa said.
“O. Henry!” Molly said.
“Oh, Henry.”
“Would anyone like to admire the fence?” I asked.
—
Later that afternoon I was making myself useful around the house, changing light bulbs and licking stamps, doing the things a man does to help his wife preserve the quality of his home. I was just sitting down again with a tall glass of iced tea when Melissa entered the kitchen. I noticed she was still carrying the hairbrush but lacking the labs. Pleased to find her alone, I patted my lap in indication that I desired her to sit there. She placed the hairbrush on my legs and descended into a chair next to me.

“Goose.” She said.
“Melissa!” I exclaimed. “A lady of your upbringing ought not to call her husband names!”
“No. We have one.”
“Surely Molly hasn’t merited such insulting language. She’s just a child,” I said.
“No, an actual goose.”
“An actual goose?”
“On the pond. Geese. Two.”
“Two geese? On the pond?”
“Yes. It appears they’ve taken up residence. They’re just swimming around, taunting me. Not budging from their stations, just there. Like, like sitting ducks.”
“But,” I wondered, “who, who…. who invited them?”
“Stop speaking like an owl and think of what to do.” Melissa cast a look in my direction. Somewhere behind me, glass shattered.
“Listen here,” I said indignantly. “I was enjoying my afternoon glass of tea when you entered into things with all your… ornithology! Besides, what’s wrong with having geese? Isn’t that what the pond is for?”
“Not our pond. Our pond is for pets, not animals.”
I decided not to question this logic, but instead said, “Darling, they have such a lovely call.”
“I hate that quacking. Noisy things.”
“You don’t think their call is lovely?”
“No.”
“What of the larger implications, dear, to have our humble home serve as an intersection between civilization and nature.” I said, warming to the idea.
“Noisy things.”

There is something you must understand about my loving wife. When she gets something in her mind, much like a barnacle on a boat, she sticks to it. I knew all my talk of greater implications would get me nowhere. Yet I couldn’t quite resign myself to getting rid of the poor things. Nor did I know how.

I spent the next few days trying to learn as much as I could from the ducks. Not in a psychoanalytical way, of course. It would be utter madness to try to get a goose to lie on a couch. No, I was learning about their feeding habits and swimming habits and trying to decide whether it was accurate to assume the one with a deeper honk was male.

Molly split the days between standing next to me, hoping to make a communication breakthrough by chattering like a demented descendant of Donald Duck, and stomping after her mother who was thrashing around the house, muttering darkly and gesturing wildly (which, I might add, was putting our many delicate antiques at risk of further repair, having been clamped and glued a hundred times already from the mace-like tails of S&L). Occasionally I heard the words “foie gras” echoing from the upper reaches of the house, but I couldn’t be sure. All the honking had hardened my hearing.
—-
Saturday dawned bright and cheery. I was awakened by the bright and cheery calls of the geese, who were paddling around brightly and cheerily in the pond. I turned to Melissa and said, “Good morning, darling!” Years of marriage and her bloodshot eyes signaled to me that I ought not to go on. Instead, I wrapped my arms around her waist and lay gazing up at her, smiling adoringly. I heard a low growl.

“Dear, you must be hungry!” I said and patted her stomach. I got up and opened my closet door to locate my dressing gown. When I did so, my grandfather’s old shotgun fell from its pegs above the door onto a pile of laundry.
“Good gracious!” I said. “ I’d forgotten we kept that old thing in here.” I swung the door open wider so my wife could see the ancient weapon. I watched her mouth fall open and then close again in a very tight smile.
“Melissa?” I said feebly. “Darling?”

I was discussing thistle-whacking with Molly over cereal when we heard the first shot. I bleakly hoped that a neighbor’s car had backfired, but I knew better. There were calls of “Honk this!” followed by gunshots, all coming from the yard. We ran onto the porch, only to be wing-flapped in the face and threatened with the pecking of our lives. Well, I was the one beaten about the face. Molly was a good three feet lower, so she just jumped up and down clapping. (One might mistake the emotion on her face for joy and the giggling in her voice for pleasure, but I know she was just caught up in the excitement of the moment.) It was some moment, that’s for sure.

“Duck, Henry!” Melissa yelled from the yard.
“Goose, Mama!” Molly hallooed over to her.
“Gugh!” I said and wildly tried to extricate my head and upper region from the fowl who were zooming crazily around our gingerbread lattice like Tony Hawk on some extreme sport course. Before I new it, Molly and I were scampering down the porch steps as Melissa reloaded, keeping a weather eye on the geese, who were now dazedly flying towards the pond.

“Melissa! What in the world has come over you?” I panted.
“Mama, are you using your special powers to get rid of the geese?”
“No, I’m using your great-grandfather’s shotgun!” She replied, and to punctuate the phrase, sent another powerful burst into the air after the geese.

I could stand it no longer. It was time for me to stop being kind – as the man of the house, I had to put my foot down. So I did. After much howling, I apologized to Soapy on whose paw I had just put my foot down. Lulu thought stepping on Soapy’s foot was a new game and bounced around, wanting more of the same.

After a strong reprimand from Melissa, I apologized to the trodden dog and said,
“Stop shooting! I command you as your husband to put the gun down.”
Melissa snorted a bit and pushed a jumping Lulu down with the flat of her hand.
“I won’t have you tormenting two geese just because they stopped at our pond to rest on their long trip South.”
Melissa raised her eyebrow.
“It’s me or the geese, dear. Put the gun down and let’s have a sit on the porch.”
“Molly,” Melissa said slowly, “Put this on the kitchen table. Don’t touch anything but the handle.” Molly took the empty gun and did as she was bidden, and I guided my wife to our swing, where I began to educate her in the finer points of tractor maintenance to soothe her nerves.

Her heart rate was at a plodding 185 – the lowest Melissa’s gets — when the dogs began to bark. Well, it was more of a gurgle really, but we got the point. Melissa, ever-ready to defend her pets, jumped to her feet and emitted a shrill squeak that might have meant something to a dolphin. I too stood and was stunned by the sight of the geese attacking the surface of the pond. I couldn’t make head nor tail of it and the whole thing seemed entirely incomprehensible until I saw the golden heads of two dogs in the pond. The dogs were swimming and being pecked by the geese!

“Swim, girls, swim!” Melissa shouted at them.
“Duck!” I called. “Submerge!”
“Go, darlings!” Melissa yelped.
“Go, goose!” rooted Molly.
“Go under!” I suggested.
“Go to hell!” Melissa said to me and with wings on her feet, was beside the pond with a large stone in her hand. She threw it with great strength and accuracy, but the dexterous geese dodged the missile and it fell instead on Lulu’s rump. She turned on Soapy who claimed innocence. Nothing doing. Lulu knew a nip when she felt one. So she nipped back. Then Soapy nipped Lulu, tit for tat. And on it went, nip and duck, so to speak, with the Canadians egging them on. I haven’t seen a rumble like that since Johnny Testa and Joey Mustardmelli got it on in the seventh grade, behind Yopp’s Five and Ten.

I watched in awe as my wife continued hurling items at the geese and nearly drowning the paddling pups.

“DO something, Henry! This is your fault.”
(It’s always a good idea to assign spousal blame early in any crisis.)
“I’m a pacifist. Nature sorts itself out.”
“They’ll hurt the dogs!”

I was about to point out that a very large nuclear explosion could not hurt either dog, much to my dismay, when Soapy lunging for Lulu’s tail came up with some dangling part of goose instead. That led to a kerfuffle of which roaming minstrels would sing, were there any minstrels still a-roaming. We were saved by a suggestion from my keen four-year-old.

“TREAT!” Molly yelled.

Moving at roughly mach 15, the labs churned out of the fracas and onto the porch. Where they shook themselves and looked expectantly at us. Melissa went into the kitchen, leaving puddles in her wake. She emerged with two biscuits.

“Good dogs,” she said, flipping one to Soapy while Lulu tried to catch hers and Soapy’s at the same time.

The geese pulled themselves onto the dock where they preened and spread and
honked, “Ya wanna another piece of me, dog breath?” Fortunately, S&L were more interested in a second round of biscuits, which Melissa dutifully fetched, saying, “Well, they used a lot of energy out there.”

That evening, I was sitting on the porch again, reviewing the events of the day when I heard the geese honk out of the pond, heading north. Molly came to sit beside me and we watched them vanish into the sunset, never to be seen again.

She turned to me and said sweetly, “You smell bad, Daddy.”

This story is unpublished. It was written for a class while Molly was attending Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism.

Taylor Corbitt answers the door wearing a white cowlneck sweater. She is 23, beautiful, in many ways a modern Southern belle, and her son, born out of wedlock, is sleeping in the next room.

Benjamin Corbitt is a calm baby, with many fine strands of golden hair. He is nine months old.

“This little guy was not precisely planned, although once he understands us, we are not going to talk about that,” his mother said.

She graduated from the University of Virginia in three years with a double major in molecular biology and performance violin. She is from Atlanta, Ga. and spent 13 years at Westminster, a Christian school and one of the top prep academies in the Southeast. She started violin lessons at 3 and played with the Atlanta Symphony Youth Orchestra for three years. She will complete her J.D. at DePaul University in May and has already been hired at Foley & Lardner LLP, a renowned Chicago firm.

She’s divorced. She had a baby. This is not what she expected.

Part of the Bubble

“In high school, there was a two-mile radius that was everything. I was happy with that,” Corbitt said.

She was born and raised in Buckhead, a wealthy neighborhood in Atlanta. Her mother stayed at home; her father was a successful financial planner. They still live in the old white house with the wrap-around porch.

“She was normally the first one up,” said her father Ashley, who is named after the character in Gone with the Wind. “Seems like it was around 5:30 in the morning and she’d get up to watch the Weather Channel to see what to prepare for that day.”

Corbitt lived one mile from Westminster. She and her friends called it “the bubble.” Her junior year, she volunteered to teach inner-city children how to play string instruments.

“It became part of the bubble,” she said. “That’s what affluent, upper middle-class people from my neighborhood do. They do service work… I kind of have a preppy background.”

I see the clean lace towel hanging in her bathroom, the green toile bedspread, the white and gold Holy Bible. The fact that she has a nine-month-old child and her apartment is spotless.

Corbitt is making an understatement.

An Education

“When I went to college, I had never had an experience in my entire life where I didn’t know anybody around me,” Corbitt said.

Corbitt, a member of the Zeta Tau Alpha sorority, finished two majors in three years. She devoted much of her time to violin. The rest went to biology. She planned to be a researcher.

“I spent two years looking for one receptor on one type of protein on one type of cell in one part of the brain. We weren’t even sure it existed, because it was so incredibly small,” she said. “I didn’t think I could take 20 years of that.”

Now, her specialty is chemical and pharmaceutical patent law. Foley & Lardner, which is ranked 27 out of America’s top 100 highest revenue-grossing firms, hired her two years in advance. Corbitt has been working 30 hours a week there and attending school full-time ever since.

She married Christopher Martin, a native of Marietta, Ga., and the principal trumpet for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, after her third year at U.Va. She wore a Vera Wang gown with a cathedral-length train, which by definition trailed at least seven-and-a-half feet.

She was 21. He was 32. And after her first year at DePaul, they divorced.

A Checklist for What Makes Babies Cry

Corbitt went into labor during a trial. She filed her memo from the hospital, wearing a green gown that was open on one side.

Ben’s delivery took 22 hours. He was supposed to be a meager seven pounds, but entered the world at 10, a bigger burden than expected. The only people in the room were doctors and nurses. Corbitt had two weeks to rest – during which she lost the 30 pounds of baby weight – and then returned to work.

“I don’t care how far we’ve come in recognizing the contributions of women in the workplace – if you’re a 22-year-old pregnant girl at a large, international law firm with mostly male partners, they will assume you’re on the family track, not the partner track,” she said. “I was killing myself all that winter. I was there all the time, working nonstop. I kept thinking, ‘I will show everyone. All of you, I will show.’”

Michael Steele is her assistant at Foley & Lardner. He’s worked with her a year and never seen Ben in the office.

“A lot of people assume that she would be kind of harried and overwhelmed, but I don’t get that sense at all,” he said. “She’s pretty unflappable.”

Corbitt both bucks and is constrained by her conservative Southern background. Her mother and older sister stay at home, but from an early age Corbitt wanted to work. Now instead of conflicting with her mother about having a career, she has conflicts with herself about how long she can stay at the office.

“I really love my work. I would be at my office Monday through Friday 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. if I could, and that’s not how I would want to raise a kid so that’s why I thought I’d never have any,” she said. “I never planned to have kids. Ever, ever, ever.

“I felt like I wasn’t doing anything well for a few months. My schoolwork was suffering, I wasn’t at work as much as I wanted to be, and then when I was home I didn’t know what I was doing,” she said. “I was unhappy for awhile.”

Corbitt keeps a checklist by the crib so she can identify what Ben’s cry might mean. She worries the nanny might be more maternal than she is. She thinks she should probably give Ben more time than she does.
He doesn’t like when she plays the violin.

Corbitt describes herself as creative, determined and extremely organized.

“I thrive under lots of pressure,” she said. “I don’t get stressed out unless something goes wrong because then everything has to be shifted around. Then I get a little self-pitying and we can’t have that.”

She lifts Ben from his crib onto her small hip and takes him to the clean kitchen for his supper. “Oh no, we must stop that,” she said as she walked through the door, Ben’s fist twisting in her hair.

This story was published in 2006 for FastWeb, an online education resource and scholarship search engine.

I’m sitting on a red leather couch. There are two yellow Labradors, Sophie and Lucy, snoring at my feet, a warm wood stove and the Redskins game sounding in the background. Home.

There are a lot of things wrong with this place, sure. The couch is garish in color and sticky in nature, especially in summer when the slightest drop of sweat will stick your leg to the seat and peel off parts of your skin like layers from an onion. From the dogs come bursts of noxious gases, disgusting at a few paces and deadly at close range. As for the Redskins… I don’t want to talk about it.

Part of the college experience is learning to live without your home, but it’s also about making smart choices when you recreate the old nest. Here are my thoughts:

Chooseth thy roommates with care. Haste makes waste, but it also makes for a miserable year if you don’t pick winners. I lived in a single room in an upperclass dorm my second year and loved it. It gave me the structure and safety of having people around, but my room was my own. My third year I lived in an apartment, and now I live in a house with three other girls. Each situation posed different challenges and rewards, but I’ve been the princess and the pea of choosing roommates and haven’t regretted it.

Sometimes you can’t help who shares your space. I lucked out, and my first-year roomie and I were very close. We had to choose housing contracts for our sophomore year in October – when we’d been living together for a month and a half. That was hardly enough time for me to commit. She took a risk and signed a contract to live with some other kids in our dorm. She was pleased in the end – after some minor kerfuffles — but I wouldn’t recommend her strategy. The ideal roommate is not someone you’re best friends with, but rather a person who shares your basic ideas of living space. If you’re messy, don’t pal up with a neat freak. If you study at home, don’t bunk with party animals. It’s an easy equation, but often disregarded.

The fact is, whether you get along as people has little to do with your success as roommates. Living with someone will bring different topics to the surface. It won’t matter that they’re playing your favorite band, but that they’re blaring music in the first place.

Another thought: location, location, location. It’s irrelevant. I’ve lived on opposite sides of the University of Virginia’s campus and found that everything was more pleasant when I lived near my friends. Proximity to the coffee shop will seem pretty petty compared to being neighbors with your buds. Convenience is relative.

Finally, don’t be in a hurry to move off campus. There are benefits to living next to a dining hall, gym or classroom. It’s probably less expensive, and if you can convince some of your friends to stay on campus it with you, that whole un-cool factor will dissipate like a gaseous spurt from Sophie.

This story was published in 2006 for FastWeb, an online education resource and scholarship search engine.

Questions are like itches. You know you aren’t supposed to scratch, but sometimes you just … gotta. One question that should remain tickly and untouched is the one everyone’s always asking: “So, what’s it like being a fourth year?”

I’ll tell you. It’s dreadful. To be a senior in high school is to gaze at your future with bright eyes, smiling serenely at the open arms of the world. As a senior in college, lack of sleep will prevent you from getting the old orbs open in the first place, and if you somehow manage it, they’ll be blurred and crusted over with Red Bull and pencil shavings because you zonked out with your head on your desk last night.

Fine. That’s an exaggeration. But, being in this transitory position forces students to make tough choices about their futures, while they’re simultaneously afflicted with nostalgia and a strong desire to reminisce about the past. And then we’re expected to go to class.

I’m pretty pleased with my performance in college. I haven’t made any unforgivable errors, though I’d like to remind readers that there are still nine months until graduation. There are, however, things that I wish I had done differently.

I regret taking the 100-level classes. I came from a very small high school where I wasn’t academically challenged. The thought that there were 10,000 other students in my college classes, all thrashing like fish to get the A, was knowledge enough to intimidate me into Music 101. Four years later, I know that class numbers usually correspond with grades – the higher I went, the higher I scored. This might have something to do with class size, but I think it also correlates with specificity of topic. I rarely learned anything of value in an introduction-level class, whereas when I rubbed elbows with older students, I discovered more about the topic and how the professors want arguments presented. The bottom line is if a course catches your eye, ask around; if you’re lucky, you’ll be able to swim along with the upperclassmen.

I wish I’d not had core requirements. A few fabulous schools – Brown and Vassar, for example – do not require an academic curriculum. (This means you don’t have to take math, science, English or history if you don’t want to.) Most schools have these requirements, and University of Virginia is one of them. I took four semesters – that’s two years – of science and hated every second. I like to pretend I’m equally as graceful with English as I am clumsy with chemistry, and if you’re polarized too, core requirements are absolutely something to consider when you’re mailing applications. By being forced to take subjects I didn’t like and knew I wasn’t good at, I was attending classes that bored me and lowered my GPA. Talk about a one-two punch.

Still, there are many things I’m glad I did. I lived on-campus for two years. I made an effort to stay in close contact with my high school, summer and first year friends. I filled my schedule up with activities and organizations. I attended hundreds of University sporting events and utilized gym passes, student parking, discounts and that most crucial of all perks, free food. Ultimately, I’m glad I’m a fourth year.

Now excuse me, I have to take a nap.

This story was published in 2006 for FastWeb, an online education resource and scholarship search engine.

I am applying to journalism schools. One part of this pernicious process is taking the Graduate Record Exam. In an attempt to get GREady (Big laughs!), I’ve been diligently reviewing flashcards and steadily working math problem sets. The prep books say studiers should include learned material in daily life, so I’ve incorporated some rather outlandish words here which are, according to the GRE, quite germane.

My four college years add up to a positive experience. (Though if you multiplied them by a negative, they’d take the multiplying integer’s sign. College = -4x. Hah! Number jokes!) Undergraduate life has been happy, but there are aspects of college I wish someone would have addressed: here are my thoughts on how to choose a school that’s right for you and what to do if you find yourself in one that isn’t.

Everybody has low points – some would make my GRE math score look positively capacious. The first step in avoiding the doldrums is to apply to a variety of colleges for a variety of reasons. Give yourself options and space to breathe if you end up clutching rejection letters. When matriculation time comes, choose your school for the right rationale. Your priorities might lie in the social scene and that’s valid; sports and clubs have absolutely shaped my experience. Greek life, or its equally-prevalent path, Geek life, is another thing to keep in mind.

When it comes to academics, think broadly. If you know you want to major in business, see which schools offer interdisciplinary courses or cross-list classes. If you aren’t sure where your future lies, scope for a school curriculum with breadth and depth, so you can check out a variety of options. Don’t pigeonhole yourself before you even hang your posters.

Many students bristle at the idea of choosing a school based on its price tag, but I think of happiness on a spectrum: there are places where you will be absolutely unhappy, pretty unhappy, ok, fairly happy or blissfully halcyon. If you’re deciding between a school that costs $15,000 that will make you fairly happy and a school that costs $40,000 and will make you perfectly happy, take Aretha Franklin’s advice and think about it. Unlike student benefits and the copious freebies, debt extends past graduation. Nobody wants to go from pennies to penury.

If you’re unhappy a few semesters into the deal, try harder. Let me say that again, with emphasis. Try harder. It’s difficult to pinpoint the root (or square root) of the problem when you’re soaking in a sea of sadness, but make the effort to separate your school from your personal life. Your roommate bugs you – not a reason to transfer. Your parents are controlling and call you fifty times a day – not a reason to transfer. You don’t get along with anyone – not a reason to transfer. If it seems that no one likes you, you’re not looking hard enough for the right people or you should reexamine your own actions and motivations.

This week’s column seems like a downer and it is. But these are real problems that real students face, in both undergraduate and graduate studies. If you encounter tough times, making smart decisions and putting two and two together should get you out of it. (Thus, college + smart decisions = -4x +4.) And that’s no prevarication.

This story was published in 2006 for FastWeb, an online education resource and scholarship search engine.

It’s hot. Even though I’m a writer and I believe a good writer should be able to describe anything, there doesn’t seem to be an accurate way to record the feelings of a t-shirt sticking to the small of your back, slimy lines of sweat sliding down your neck, the grit of dirty feet from wearing sandals. It’s just hot — an unexpected July heat in the middle of April.
I’m sweating for other reasons too. I’m waiting to hear from graduate schools! Still. I am still waiting to hear from graduate schools! As a quasi-reasonable pseudo-adult, I’m trying to combat the feelings of bitterness and anxiety that only further elevate my temperature. It isn’t working. My worst fears frolic through my mind like girls around a Maypole. This negative thinking has done two things for me: I’ve become compulsive about straightening doormats, and I’ve started to examine some things that I regret from my college career. Here, for your benefit, is a Top 5 List of Things Never to do in College, some of which I’ve experienced, and some of which I haven’t.

1. NEVER lie to your professors
I consider myself a moral person. An upstanding citizen. A bastion of peace on Earth and good will to men. And I confess – there have been times when a teensy lie could have helped me out of a scrape. Things like saying I lost my homework when I actually hadn’t done it or saying my roommate locked me out of my dorm room so I couldn’t pick up my assignments. Blaming technology is a new favorite fib and the worst part is, it’s plausible. Most professors need a translator to understand anything with a keypad, but don’t be tempted to use this to your advantage. The points you’ll lose for turning in something late or of poor quality don’t compare to getting expelled or failing the class because you panicked and told a whopper.

2. NEVER pull an all-nighter
Never ever. Staying up all night severely affects your immune system, your ability to concentrate, your patience and your sense of perspective. Molehills loom large. You’ve got a coffee IV drip. That kid just sneezed and you are about to Beat. Him. Up. It’s hard to get the prescribed 8 hours a night during college, but procrastinating leads to exhaustion. Coping with life is hard enough without a syncopated heartbeat and bloodshot eyes. Avoid this at all costs.

3. NEVER go against your gut
The first days of classes are great because you don’t have any homework. But don’t waste that time – go to class and thoroughly suss out the professor or TA. If it feels too challenging in the beginning or you don’t get good vibes from the person in charge, bail pronto. There’s too little time in four years for a semester of awful education.

4. NEVER miss a payment on your rent/insurance/credit card
This is one of the hardest rules to follow because the effects of it won’t be felt for years to come. Going crazy with the plastic is so tempting when you’re surrounded by boutiques, bars and eateries. Restrain yourself and be accurate with your deadlines. Whenever I’m about to put off sending in a check, I remind myself to pay soon so it’ll pay off later. (Dorky yet effective.)

5. NEVER take things too lightly or too seriously
Be balanced in your decision making and remember that the rest of your life is stretching out ahead of you. Some things will stay with you and some things will go away. Use your wits to tell you which is which. It’s only college … but college only happens once.

This story was published July 16, 2006 in The Cavalier Daily, U.Va.’s student newspaper.

The opening lyrics on Nelly Furtado’s newest album, Loose are “What to say / what to say / what to say / what to say.”

This not only sets the lyrical tone for the CD, but also underscores the confusion and lack of inspiration in the record as a whole.

When considering how to describe the style on Furtado’s latest, I found myself dropping names faster than Dick Cheney, Karl Rove and Scooter Libby.

Furtado sounds alternately like Madonna, Fergie (of Black Eyed Peas) and Cyndi Lauper. The most obvious comparisons, however, are to Gwen Stefani and Gloria Estafan; their influences bred in Furtado a pouty-voiced little monster I’ve begun calling call Estefani. In almost every song, Furtado uses heavy vocal effects that give off a teched-up vibe. After you get used to the filters, echoes and strange feeling that you’ve heard this song before, Loose’s biggest flaw becomes clear — Furtado doesn’t have a voice of her own.

She’s trying to be too much with this album. From the smoky-eyed sex kitten photographs in the liner notes to the lyrics like “Move your body around like a nympho” and the CD’s aptly-titled single, “Promiscuous,” it’s obvious that Furtado wants America to appreciate her wild side. Yet, she’s also got a heavy hand with religious references, as in Loose’s tenth track, “In God’s Hands.” It is a piano ballad that would make Vanessa Carlton proud, and it comes on the heels of a previous song’s slowly-rapped cadence, “I see God in the trees / makes me fall on my knees… / It hurts so bad that I can’t dry my eyes / Cause they keep on refilling with the tears that I cry.”

It’s like she found a shoebox under the bed and rediscovered the worst of her teenage poetry. Her truly horrific lyric writing aside, Furtado’s been around the scene long enough to know that nothing good can come out of crafting an image that tries to be God girl and bad girl.

Out of the album’s 13 tracks, rapper/producer Timbaland had a hand in nine of them. He laid down some truly sweet beats, and the rhymes in “Promiscuous” have already become a staple of the summer club-going scene. Yet, for all his percussive worth, it would take more than some dope drumming to make this CD worthwhile. I ask of you: If a tree falls in the Timabaland, will fans hear it?

A new Furtado feature is her use of Spanish. “No Hay Igual” is a buzzy amalgamation of reggaeton, hip-hop and that quintessential Nelly nasality. It’s a nice touch, but not the saving grace she might have been hoping for. Things don’t get better if you just put them in another language. Clearly, she disagrees, because the next song features Latin sensation, Juanes. It almost grabs your ear, but falls short of being actually refreshing.

Folks, the good news is that Furtado still has a knack for melody. If you listen closely, in many songs there’s a little nugget of creativity that survived the processing to which she subjected the rest of her music. My favorite is the cool Simon and Garfunkel-inspired whistling and humming in the last track. Loose’s closing lyrics are “Flames to dust / lovers to friends / Why do all good things come to an end?”

The more pertinent question might be why didn’t this thing come to an end… 13 tracks ago?

This story was published November 10, 2005 in The Cavalier Daily, U.Va.’s student newspaper.

Yesterday I was having a heated discussion with my illustrious editor, also known as Captain McEvoy, and suddenly I realized some things. The first is that I am not trendy, not even in the indie rock sense of not being trendy. The second is that I don’t really care.

It all began with some little white earbuds. In recent weeks, many of my friends have purchased iPods. As I almost fell over after heaving my fat, studio headphones onto my head, Captain McEvoy casually mentioned the fact that I was probably the last person on earth not to own an iPod. [Captain Gisch's note: I don't own an iPod either.] All this was said in the gentle tones you’re meant to use when talking to a tantrum-prone three-year-old. Now, I don’t know whether it was the suggested similarities between me and a disobedient child or the iPod jibe, but it started me thinking.

Rogue Wave is a band that is decidedly indie. You can easily make comparisons between them and Death Cab for Cutie, The Decemberists and Elliott Smith. But they, like me, aren’t quite trendy enough for even the non-trendy. (I’ll bet that they use chunky headphones, too.)

Their newest release, Descended Like Vultures, is the quintessential indie CD. There’s a taste of blaring distortion, the soft waft of airy ambient noises and smart lyrics. Rogue Wave is on Sub Pop Records, where indie rock denizens congregate. Not to beat a dead, name-dropping horse, but Sub Pop is home to bands like The Shins, Sunny Day Real Estate, The Postal Service, Hot Hot Heat and Nirvana.

Still, to my knowledge, Rogue Wave hasn’t achieved the same success as other notable bands in their genre (although there can only be one indie band made famous by the Garden State soundtrack, right?).

It beats me why most people haven’t heard of Rogue Wave. Their songs provide perfect-for-the-facebook-profile-or-AIM-away-message lyrics. In fact, they’re great for any occasion. To the newly-dumped best friend, say “Love comes like a Kennedy curse.” For the friend who always bails on your road trip plans, say “Screw California/And friends that are never there.” Lastly, the perfect tidbit for the time you got lost and didn’t ask for directions: “I’m so sorry for what I’ve done/I went into it like a man.”

You might be wondering where the track-by-track, in-depth criticism is and why the hell there are so many dashes around. The answer is there’s too much good stuff for me to talk about, and it’s because I like them. Just pretend the page has freckles.

If you’re one of the earbud people and buy your music song-by-song, I would recommend “Medicine Ball,” a pounding, driving track, “Salesman at the Day of the Parade,” your typical acoustic anthem, “Temporary,” which could pass for a Simon and Garfunkel b-side and “Catform,” an electronically-minded melodic piece of genius. After spending some time with “Catform,” I got to the point where my fingers were actually tired from tapping. I am not lying. That would be an honor code violation.

Rogue Wave has an epic-ness to their albums. Even though little seventh-grade hipsters may not have heard of them, there is a timeless quality to their music that transcends everything else. Descended Like Vultures is lush, woozy, pensive, slick. It teases. It winks. It giggles.

I can only hope that someday Rogue Wave gets the fame and trendy status they deserve. Until then, you can bet that I’ll still be listening — with some oversized headphones.

This story was published November 30, 2006 in The Cavalier Daily, U.Va.’s student newspaper.

“Kissing can be awkward at times, especially at the start. But even if your lips are so experienced they could dock space shuttles for NASA, you might find some helpful reminders in the pages that follow.”

And so begins the third chapter of the fifth edition of The Guide to Getting It On! Printed by Goofy Foot Press and written by Paul Joannides, this book is a cross between a biology textbook, a romance novel and a dirty magazine. It’s not for the faint of heart. Or the faint of stomach. Or the faint of libido, for that matter.

For starters, it’s 854 pages long. (Perhaps if your partners are unwilling to thumb through the pages, you can just throw the thing at them.) The Guide tackles typical topics like how to increase your physical pleasure during sex, but there’s also a fair amount of history and attention to medical issues — chapter titles range from “Fun With Your Foreskin” to “Sex in the 1800s” to, my personal favorite, “Gnarly Sex Germs.”

Not only is it informative and practically a reference guide, but The Guide to Getting It On! is hysterical. (Bet you didn’t know the term “hysterical” stems from “hystera,” the ancient Greek word for “uterus.”) The pages are peppered with punch lines like, “For some people, you play with their breasts, and BOOM! their genitals are on fire. For others, you are better off reading them their constitutional rights than tweaking their titties.”

It’s funny but not in a bathroom-humor way. Many jokes center around embarrassing bedroom mishaps: “Trying to define sex is a lot like trying to insert a diaphragm: just when you think you’ve got it in, the thing turns ninja on you.” The one-liners are mitigated by the book’s heavy emphasis on health, which is highlighted by a chapter entitled “Sex When You Are Horny & Disabled.” ‘Nuff. Said.

This is not a book you should read in public. The diaphragms, er, diagrams range from medical to Mesozoical. The picture bisecting the penis is absolutely revolting, while the depiction of tyrannosaurus rex sex is just plain weird. Although it changes the notion of getting tail.

Sure, there’s lots of talk about how to get the most pleasure from sex. That’s one purpose of the Guide. On the other hand, a lot of attention is paid to issues like body image and sex in the view of society. Sex is treated both tenderly and brutally. There’s talk of romance, but there are also abrupt statements like, “If all you plan on doing is making out, be sure to put your gum in a safe place where you can find it later. It will help take the edge off until you can go home and masturbate.”

Mince words they do not. But neither do they mince facts. One chapter discusses whether swallowing semen affects blood sugar levels — a concern for diabetics. The longest chapter is about sex in the 1800s, and it is here that the book stretches towards its highest goal: an anthropology-like study of sex in American society. This chapter discusses the role of prostitutes in shaping the American nation, the historical prevalence of pornography and soldier-to-soldier oral sex during the Civil War.

There’s even a list of gritty romance novels of the day: “Scenes in a Nunnery,” “The Lady in Flesh Coloured Tights” and “The Wanton Widow.” The Guide further links sex and books (cliterature, anyone?) by analyzing a passage in Oliver Twist. Apparently little Oliver spent the majority of the book talking about masturbation, and all those 10th grade English classes just didn’t realize it. What were we thinking?

The Guide’s biggest flaw is that Joannides recites percentages and facts but fails to cite his sources. Some of his sociological conclusions are a bit of a stretch, especially when he relies heavily on personal anecdotes to discuss nationwide issues. If Joannides were to make this book a TV series, it would be called “Sex and the Psyche,” and that wouldn’t be a good thing.

Some advice is useful: Antihistamines will not only dry up your nose but also your … fluids. (Cold medicine equals cold bed.) Unfortunately, some advice is little more than a self-serving joke, like, “Unicorns need to be extra-careful when it comes to oral sex.” That’s just corny.

The Guide to Getting It On! is a layman’s guide to becoming a, well, laid-man. But, it’s also a compilation; it has instructions and techniques for increasing physical pleasure, and it’s a useful amalgam for anyone who wants to increase their general awareness of sexual topics. Everyone should read it. Just not in public.