2020: years since Yale was invented, when God decided gothic architecture was the most beautiful of all forms of artistic expression and Connecticut the most preppy of all states

1099: days since the Class of 2017 regular admission results were released, marking the exact apex of my life and the point from which everything began to decline

372: times my parents have casually dropped the Y-bomb in conversation with people who never actually asked where I went to school while I try disappear into a puff of dust

48: the average number of minutes per day that I cry for various reasons, many related to Jane the Virgin

6: babies I could have had by now if I had been born in a different era where women were expected to have children rather than apply themselves to get a B.S. in chemistry

1) calendars 2) daycalc.appspot.com 3) me 4) my suitemate’s psych stats notes 5) my academic advisor

CR: Hey! How was your break?

Shalom! Thanks for asking. I had a really nice break. I spent one week at home, then went to Israel and explored my Jewish heritage, consuming a destructive number of chickpeas in the form of hummus along the way, and then I spent another week at home. You know, to unwind. And also to untag myself from all the pictures where my hair is really weird from not showering enough. I feel marginally superior to you because it is an unspoken rule on campus that everybody stays home watching Netflix during winter break. But not me! I was in the Holy Land.

D:  That sounds pretty nice.

What do you mean it sounds “pretty nice”? You sound just envious enough to make me feel uncomfortable, but not envious enough that I feel good about myself. Did I mention I rode a camel? Did I mention the hot Israeli soldiers?

F:  Well, we should get a meal sometime. See you around!

No, thank you. I will be dining at Slifka until graduation, seeking my future Jewish husband.

Ahh, The Game. A time when, like always, we come together as a university to celebrate what makes us special and valuable: the fact that we go to Yale. But what makes this day different from all the other days of the year? (Great question, Kevin. But you should have been more patient. I was about to explain anyways.) This day, unlike other days, we rejoice not only in the fact that we go to Yale, but also in the fact that we do not go to Harvard.

Phew. Thank God, right? Can you imagine being a Harvard student? Can you imagine taking (or dropping) the Harvard version of CS50? Can you imagine using your refillable Charlie card to take advantage of the wonderful public transportation system connecting all parts of the greater Boston area? I know I can’t. I like my universities like I like my men: very gothic and in The Nutmeg State.

Obviously the big question of the weekend is what will happen in The Game itself. And that’s totally up in the air. Harvard could win by a lot, or Harvard could win by a little, or Harvard could even win by a medium amount. Peter Salovey could streak on the field during halftime, or tell the author of this article that he’s admired her from afar ever since she dressed up as Sexy Peter Salovey for Halloween her freshman year.

But my question is this: why do we call The Game “Harvard-Yale” and not “Yale-Harvard”? I can’t be the only one to feel like it’s a bit like acknowledging our role as second best. It’s the semantic version of the entire Yale team walking onto the field and collectively started to work on an econ. problem set instead of playing football. It’s like saying “we know we’re going to lose, so let’s just make up an arbitrary score and then all go get an order of chun bing from Junzi before it gets too cold out there.”

But Yale-Harvard just sounds weird, right? Maybe it’s like in poetry where you have masculine and feminine endings depending on the stress of the last syllable. HAR-vard. YALE. So really, ending with Yale emphasizes how macho we are as a team, how committed to the supremacy of manliness our university is and always will be. For God, For Country, and For the Perpetuation of a Culture Dominated by Masculine Ideals. Dammit. That’s kind of misogynistic, albeit in a very poetic way.

Then there’s always the “first is the worst, second is the best, third is the one with the hairy chest” school of thought. So really, saying “Harvard-Yale” rather than “Yale-Harvard” is showing how much better we are as a school than they are, right? Ugh, I don’t care. I just want to get a cute profile picture out of this and go home to eat pie.

Coke vs. Pepsi. Star Wars vs. Star Trek. Me vs. my younger, more socially com-petent brother. I present before you these classic rivalries. But this week, there’s only one arbitrary division that matters: Harvard vs. Yale. That’s right, it’s The Game time. All year, students from these two prestigious universities have waited to see who would be victorious in this contest of skill and brute force. But the competition does not begin and end on Saturday. This antagonism knows no season.

Like any good Yale student, I love to hate Harvard. I bought the tee shirts. I made the signs. I rolled my eyes when this year’s U.S. News and World Report rankings came out. And this Saturday afternoon I will yell and scream insults aimed at Harvard students while dressed in an absurd amount of Yale blue. But there’s one thing that I have to admit deters me from committing to the level of antagonism that I feel is expected from me this weekend.

Yes, I hate Harvard, but not enough to kick a baby. Not even if he or she were wearing an itty-bitty Harvard hat.

I’m not one to speak out frequently on sensitive political matters like this, and I strongly believe that we each have the right to choose our own position after careful con-sideration of both sides. But after two-and-a-half years of contemplation, I feel fairly se-cure in my belief that it is morally wrong to kick a baby wearing an infant-sized crimson hat.

Now, before you doubt my commitment to the Lux and the Veritas, let me ex-plain. Let’s start by imagining a baby that wasn’t wearing a Harvard hat. You wouldn’t kick this baby. You would maybe even smile at it, or play a friendly game of peekaboo. Babies are cute and fragile, and parents usually dislike college students who insist on re-peatedly swinging their feet at their children.

So why should it be any different if the baby is wearing a cap with a tiny H on the front?

It’s hard to look at this issue as if it were black and white (or, should I say blue and crimson?). What if the baby were wearing a Harvard bowler hat? What if it were wearing a Harvard dunce cap? What if it were wearing several Harvard hats in the style of Bartholomew Cubbins? It is true that the type of hat is not insignificant. In these situa-tions, I ask you, my fellow Yalies, to be rational. A baby cannot help the kind of hat his or her parents impose upon him. Imagine a baby trying to place a hat upon his tiny head! It’s impossible, because his arms are too small.

I also acknowledge that there are different articles of clothing that a baby could wear in order to show his or her support of Harvard. A baby could wear a Harvard onesie, or a Harvard tee shirt. A baby could wear a pair of Harvard bloomers, or a Harvard muumuu, or a Harvard engraved Rolex. A baby even could have purchased a Harvard sari, even though the baby has never worn it because he or she is sensitive to the validity of concerns around cultural appropriation. In these instances, one is technically free to make the decision of whether or not to kick the baby based on context clues, like if the baby seems to be trying to provoke a response from you, or if the baby has a “kick me” sign on his or her back.

But I personally will not be kicking any babies this weekend, and I do not con-done the behavior, regardless of what form of Harvard regalia they are wearing. I know that not everyone agrees with me on this matter, but I hope that in writing this, I am start-ing a conversation amongst Yale students. If you cannot help feel rage when you see a baby wearing a Harvard hat, I would suggest releasing this anger in alternate ways. Feel free to glare at a toddler, or tell a middle schooler “you will never go through puberty.” But be smart and compassionate at Harvard-Yale this Saturday, and don’t kick any ba-bies, even if they allowed themselves to be born in a household that values that place we all hate.

If you absolutely must chose to kick a baby wearing a Harvard hat, make sure it’s just a light tap of the foot, and please, no cleats.

Credit: Facebook

Remember in eighth grade when we all begged our parents to let us get a Facebook just so we could post Photo Booth pictures that we edited with Picnik? My, how things have changed. I can’t tell you how many videos I’ve let auto-play (without sound) instead of studying for that class it’s too late to drop, or how many of my high school peers I’ve hate-stalked. Because most of the time, let’s be honest, Facebook is the vegan gardein chicken of social media: nobody understands the attraction, and we’re kind of embarrassed by how much we like it, but something keeps bringing us back for more, at least three times in any given half-hour period. But then, sometimes between the study break invites and the self-promotion, you’ll see something that makes you think, “Hey, that’s not a super cute picture of a bulldog puppy or an angry status about a sporting event.” You’ll see something like a community coming together in the face of sadness and despair and dumb racist lardballs to capitalize on what makes social media so powerful. You’ll see a full-fledged movement, not just a trending topic, and you will see that vegan gardein chicken has learned to fly.

D: Twitter

Remember when we all thought Twitter was dumb and that we’d never use a social media platform where you were limited to 140 characters? And now we’re (it’s not just me, right?) spending every waking moment trying to come up with the perfect tweet that will make the cute guy in bio section notice us more than that moderately cute intellectual with passable comprehension of the Krebs cycle? When that notification pops up on my phone, signaling that somebody out there found my musings on vegan gardein chicken at the very least relatable, everything seems worth it. Also, if we’re going to be all serious about it, there’s no better way to spread ideas in a readable way than tweeting (stories you care about in a style you want to read!)

And then you realize that there’s also no better way for the literal garbage people on the internet to meddle and creep and harass in places they are not welcome, like the fruit flies I’m constantly trying to murder in my suite’s bathroom. And much like those fruit flies, it’s really, really hard to get rid of these idiots. You usually just end up running back and forth, trying to catch them and squeeze their dumb little brains out, but mostly just looking like you’re trying to remember how to clap while running. And yes, we could make our settings private, but then how would we get those sweet, sweet retweets? At least these idiot lardballs are limited to 140 characters too.

Fail: Old white journalists posting literally anywhere on the internet

Let me guess. PC culture is ruining America. Millennials are coddled and lazy. And they use their phones too much. Also, something about Kim Kardashian? If anyone who’s taking CS50 wants to make an app that auto-generates content using these hot phrases so these Old White Journalists can retire nice and early and stop complaining about how much it sucks that our generation actually wants to make the world better, I would be willing to pay them in vegan gardein chicken.

Credit: Nalgene Water Bottles

I recently purchased a Nalgene water bottle and I can say with full conviction that my life is 100 percent better. I’m more hydrated, my skin is clearer, and suddenly, everyone thinks that I did FOOT instead of spending the last week before freshman year at home crying and eating stale cupcakes left over from my graduation party two months before. Before, when people would see the generic vessel I was using to tote my hydration, they would say, “Hey, that’s a white girl who clearly prefers to stay indoors, and therefore must not have attended a pre-orientation program.” Now everyone’s asking me what I said in my Hometown! Thanks Nalgene!

D: Those fancy Y sweaters

As the summer comes to a close and a fall breeze nips at the air, nothing says, “I went to the bookstore” quite like wearing those fancy Y sweaters. If you don’t own one, you’ve definitely mocked someone who does, but let’s all stop lying to ourselves. The weather in New Haven can get chilly, and what’s wrong with committing to a warm outer layer that coyly hints at your socio-economic status? Nothing, that’s what. Yeah, they’re expensive, and probably unnecessary, but I’ve eyed that yarn gauge from afar, and as soon as I get that consulting job (which will happen as soon as I finally figure out what consulting actually involves), I’m going to buy one for every day of the week.

Fail: Wearing free shirts from other schools

Congratulations Dartmouth Admits of 2019! And Cornell Admits of 2019! And Princeton Admits of 2019! We’re tickled pink (well, blue) that you chose our humble little school. And while I know it must be hard competing with 1,363 other genuine geniuses, let’s try to keep the non-Yale school apparel to a minimum. You can no longer get laid by dropping the “Y” word, because literally everyone here can, plus we’ve all had op-eds on published in the New York Times and had ensemble roles in both the on- and off-broadway productions of Newsies. But that doesn’t mean you need to prove yourself by showing you got into Harvard as well. Laundry day emergencies and swag with real sentimental value are acceptable (yes, I do believe you and your Stanford boyfriend will be together forever), but seriously: no one really cares that you got into all eight Ivies and Wesleyan and Amherst and Deep Springs and SUNY Purchase and Loyola Maryland and Sweet Briar (RIP). I mean this in the most loving way: invest in a fancy Y sweater and get over yourself.