As I’m sure you all know, last Friday was Fall Break, the most misleadingly named day off from school I’ve ever encountered. Don’t get me wrong; I love Fall Break. Whether I’ve stayed on campus or sojourned otherwise, I’ve always had a great time on my day off in October. There’s always been something missing, though.

It is human nature to have expectations. We all have expectations about pretty much everything that happens or is likely to happen to us every day. There is nothing wrong with that. The only time this becomes a problem is when we let our expectations cloud our perceptions of events.

Welcome back, everyone! I hope you had a good summer. I know I certainly did. I was in Germany, studying the language. I was a student of a program affiliated with, but not run by, Washington University.

I recently wrote an article about things I simply did not understand. I was not attacking anyone or anything; I was merely questioning whether the way I considered certain things in this world was accurate. Imagine my surprise, then, when a friend pointed me to an article in this very paper, viciously attacking my confusion. I was indeed surprised. I was not helped.

They brought tomatoes back the other day. This fruit’s return made me realize that I never really understood why it was taken away in the first place. That made me think that there are really a lot of things that go on that I don’t understand. Here are some of them. Let’s start with the tomatoes. Someone somewhere was upset because the tomato vendors Bon Appétit was buying from were not Fair Trade certified.

The Winter Olympics are boring. Like, really boring. We’re talking paint drying levels of excitement for most of it, folks. The main problem with the Winter Olympic Games is the sports themselves. So few of them involve any direct, head-to-head competition. That is what makes a sport exciting. When I am watching athletes show off their prowess, I want to see struggle.

Never at any point in time (except during some of the commercials and most of The Who’s set) did I have any idea what was going on. I do not think I was alone. Every time something non-straightforward happened, someone in the room asked what that call was, or why it was made, or why the coaches and players were acting the way they acted.

The other night, my suitemate made the claim that the movie “The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen,” directed by Stephen Norrington, is better than Quentin Tarantino’s “Inglourious Basterds.”

Recently, I have been finding friends of mine complaining to me that they are not enjoying things that they do. This boggles my mind.
Why would you ever do anything that is not fun? That is what I ask them. The answers are invariably some form of either “I don’t know” or “because I have to.” Neither of those is a sufficient reason to do something unenjoyable.

You may remember that I was boycotting Bear Lair. At first, it was easy. I switched from getting a biscuit in the morning to getting a scone or croissant at the DUC Café.