It makes me sad that “Carpe Diem” is a cliché thing to get tattooed onto your body, because I can’t think of another phrase, Latin or otherwise, that so singularly encapsulates what I wish my philosophy on life could be. Unfortunately I’m more of a “think about seizing the day but then be too lazy and too easily content with the status quo to enact any change” type of person. But I still really identify with the phrase and wish I could put it on my arms or face or butt without friends, lovers, or employers (respectively) thinking I’m basic. While we’re always at risk of losing our carpe diem, February is notoriously the hardest month to carpe diem in (largely because we are not willing to take our hands out of our gloves even to touch the diem), so it’s very important to find time in these trying days to carpe. Especially with spring break’s arrival bearing the looming reality of our lack of summer plans, the diems are elusive to carpe, and instead we spend our time carpeing anxiety and Googling “what are some internships I can do.” Maybe in between feeling anxious because you don’t know how fellowships work, take a quick moment to look outside at the falling snow, eat some Skittles, press your hands against the window, and feel the frigid diem on your palm.
D: Dying alone
Fear of “dying alone” is misguided. First of all, to be clear, when people talk about “dying alone” they really mean “dying without a romantic partner,” which isn’t alone at all: you probably have friends, maybe a kid or two, or at the very least a mailman who would notice the accumulation of AARP letters in your mailbox and would call to collect your partially decomposed corpse from the floor of your den. Furthermore, love does not have to be eternal to be meaningful. Expecting it to be so is dumb: more than 50 percent of marriages end in divorce, and the ones that don’t usually end in mutual-loathing. I recommend sticking with it (“it” being your partner) while the magic lasts, ending the relationship when it’s done, maybe finding a new person, and then slutting it up in your post-retirement years when you don’t have to worry about pesky STIs or pregnancy scares. Regardless, death is fundamentally solitary: everyone approaches the cold, unflinching hands of the reaper equally isolated, so don’t really worry too much if your Freshman Screw ended with you and your date getting into an argument about the Second Amendment mid-handjob.
Fail: Internships
I wish someone had warned me after graduating high school that the summer before college is the last free time you ever have in your entire life before you start feeling guilty about not crossing items off your to-do list. Summer went from being the best season to being an absolute garbage season, where you spend beautiful warm days in an office drawing faces on coffee cups because knowing what you want to spend the rest of your life doing is really, really hard. Now, whenever I hear the word summer, my pulse quickens and my breath feels shallow and I start to shake. I will never forgive internships for ruining the concept of summer, which, without the scourge of internships, is the greatest thing this cold universe has to offer. As far as internships go, the best you can hope for is finding an office with decent proximity to quality nectarines and whose fluorescent lights aren’t too unflattering for your Snapchats.