Rachel TepperI don’t know what you’re all complaining about: it’s not that cold.
It’s getting to be that time of the year – winter. A time when days get shorter, days and nights get colder, and professors pile on the end-of-the-semester final projects and papers to prevent us from even thinking about finals until classes end. I have to agree, days getting shorter is incredibly depressing (especially after sleeping in until 2 p.m. after a night of heavy drinking and only having about two hours of daylight). And the end-of-the-semester workload is annoying bordering on painful.
But really, people, it’s not that cold.
The problem with going to school in a place like St. Louis is how centrally located it is. St. Louis is pretty much in the dead center of the country – which means that if Wash. U. students come evenly distributed from all over the country, half should come from south of here and half from north of here. Now this isn’t exact, since more people come from places like Missouri and Illinois and New York, but for approximation’s sake we’ll say it’s close to half and half.
This clearly makes for a diverse array of climate experience among Wash. U. students. I can understand if people coming from places like California or Texas or Alabama think it’s cold here. That’s fair. It’s warm where they come from.
But the other 50 percent come from places that are further north and, theoretically, colder than it is here. I understand that on the coasts the climate is more temperate and so it probably doesn’t get as cold as it does here, but come on. You can’t tell me you’ve never experienced 30-degree weather before. It seems like as soon as it drops below 50 degrees, everyone whips out the heavy duty North Face ski jackets and the hats and mittens and starts whining about how cold it is.
In my opinion, everyone here should be glad that St. Louis summers last as long as they do. Officially, the first day of fall is Sept. 21. We had summer-like weather until well into November. Winter is an inevitable season that comes every year, and this year it came later than normal. Rather than whining that now it’s cold (it’s December..that’s what happens in December), enjoy the fact that you got two extra months of summer. I went to my home in Minnesota in October for fall break and it was in the 40-50 range while it was in the 70s here. When I went home for Thanksgiving, it snowed. Last winter break, about 75 percent of the time I was home the temperature before wind chill was below zero. Believe me, it could be worse.
And in a way, the cold weather is a good thing. It’s the last week of classes, and finals are approaching: we shouldn’t be playing outside, anyway. We should be doing work and studying. Granted, it’s not a very pleasant thought. But think about how much worse it would be to be stuck doing work if it was nice outside. I know that I, for one, would be far less productive.
And just think: in two weeks we’ll all be home or someplace far more exotic than here anyway. If you’re walking to the library this weekend and freezing your ass off, just think: at least you don’t have to go to Minnesota.
Anna is a sophomore in Arts & Sciences.