Last week, the campus was buzzing. But it wasn’t the Tucson shootings, Tunisia’s revolution, Ricky Gervais’s lack of decorum, or the independence of South Sudan that was grabbing the attention. The question that seemed to be on everyone’s lips last Wednesday evening was whether Wash. U. would be shut down after the “Blizzard”/“Snowstorm”/“Ragnarok” that was supposed to happen. When the news dropped that Mizzou, SLU and Webster had closed, fingers were crossed in tremendous anticipation. I’m sure that the most religious among us were lighting candles and reciting psalms, hoping that the waist high snow would force the University into cancelling lessons.

And so, on Thursday morning, the atmosphere was one of crushing and bitter disappointment. The so-called blizzard turned out to be a drizzle, the snow was hardly ankle deep, and there was no chance of classes being cancelled. Speaking with my friends, most of them told me that they had prayed the school would be shut down or that their teachers would be unable to attend morning classes. Even I was feeling slightly downhearted at the sight of the unencumbered paths to school.

This is when you realize that deep down, despite supposedly being “mature” college students, we still have middle school reflexes. You can feel the light buzz, the tremor of excitement whenever a teacher is late for class and the the chances of skipping a class increase. This is despite knowing that every missed class will be accounted for, despite the fact that we choose and can drop our classes, despite supposedly enjoying what we do.

Why do we still act like kids, hoping that the teacher is out sick? Is it because playing truant is still a romantic notion? Does the snow speak to the Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn hidden inside each of us? I’d like to think that the lush white snow makes it hard to focus, when all those childhood memories of snowmen, snowball fights and snow angels come flooding back. That it’s some part of our childhood innocence that makes us look longingly outside the window, watching the snowflakes tumble onto weary branches.

Unfortunately, the answer is more likely to be that deep down, we’d rather procrastinate and do nothing today, even though we know that the rest of the semester will be slightly more hellish. Meanwhile, the only snowball fights that were taking place were on the Internet on some stupid flash minigame.