WEEKEND

WEEKEND // FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 15, 2013

The

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INNER PEACE

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IN THE SOIL

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IN OUR LIVES

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FIND YOUR ZEN

GET DOWN TO EARTH

EXPLORE THE ORDINARY

Hannah Schwarz explores Yale’s meditation scene.

Jennifer Gersten treks to the West Campus Urban Farm.

Stephanie Addenbrooke reviews her night in New York City.

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YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 15, 2013 · yaledailynews.com

MEDANSKY

WEEKEND VIEWS

MERRY CHRISTMAS, AND A HAPPY JEW YEAR // BY MARISSA MEDANSKY romantic traditions of the Yuletide season.

Up until arriving at Yale, Christmas was not something I understood.

I grew up in a household proud of its cultural heritage. Out of a sense of tradition, if not obligation, my family refused to adopt even the most secular manifestations of holiday traditions that were not our own. We were the practitioners of sturdy Jewish winters that gave the Festival of Lights warm and modest acknowledgment; on December 25 itself, there was Chinese food and a movie.

Because of this, most things Christmas were foreign to me. I did not see the movie “Elf” until years after its release. That itself seems like a minor data point, but it’s highly emblematic of a childhood in which my parents saw even the most secular iterations of Christmas as corrosive to my nascent sense of selfhood as a Jew. It really did seem like every other 10-year-old in America had seen that movie.

By college I was Kevin Bacon in “Footloose,” ready to break free.

“Let’s dance!” It was overwhelming how much Christmas I had missed. I’d missed “Home Alone” and National Lampoon, an animated Grinch and a live-action Grinch. I’d missed dozens and dozens of classic holiday albums: The Beach Boys,

Every year, Chicago’s Museum of Science and Industry hosts a holiday-themed exhibition called “Christmas Around the World.” The tradition began in 1942, when it was then meant to commemorate the efforts of the Allied powers. Today, the exhibit features over 50 unique Christmas trees in a single hall, each one decorated to represent the holiday traditions of a particular ethnic community in the city. In the center of the main rotunda, a 45-foottall tree stands as something of a singular attraction, but its presence is hubristic and somewhat out of place.

The whole thing is meant to be interpreted as a celebration of multiculturalism.

As a child, I viewed the Christmas exhibition as particularly larger than life. To me, it was almost exotic. The blinking processional of Christmas trees was certainly more captivating than the lunar rover in the museum’s Henry Crown Space Center, or even the blinking miniature sprites that light up the Colleen Moore Fairy Castle. But that was natural, I guess — in that place of all places I was an outsider: a tiny Jewish girl from the suburbs juxtaposed against a 45-foot tree. This holiday business was new to me. In fact, “Christmas Around the World” was perhaps my first real exposure to the diverse and rightly

Elvis, The Beatles. The Trans-Siberian Orchestra! The Mormon Tabernacle Choir! And that was only the canon: the Directed Studies of Christmas culture. I soon learned there were niche Christmases to satisfy any possible interest, hobby, pastime or pursuit. Jeff Foxworthy hosts a Redneck Christmas special. There are Christmas albums for Republicans and Democrats, Trekkies and Star Wars fans. Harold and Kumar have a holiday movie, as does (excuse me) Sasha Grey.

The culture of Christmas is not cohesive, and I mean that in the most complimentary and envious way. You have no idea how vast the Christmas industrial complex is until you step outside the shtetl of the greater Chicagoland area. What is most miraculous about the holiday is that it encapsulates a hodgepodge of traditions and entertains each one without invalidating the rest.

“Christmas Around the World” opened just yesterday, Nov. 14. I say

that’s not early enough. After all, it is the most wonderful time of the year.

Contact MARISSA MEDANSKY at marissa.medansky@yale.edu .

KAINIC

// ANNELISA LEINBACH

Solve for XX // BY JENNA KAINIC

MARATHE

In Mr. Rumack’s seventh grade algebra class, we sat at tables that were too close, knees and elbows spilling over into the backs of each other’s chairs. Along with teaching math, Mr. Rumack directed all of our middle school’s theater productions. He had a quacking duck toy that he used to get our attention, and a rubber duck-patterned tie that he wore every Wednesday. Mr. Rumack pulled me aside one day while the rest of the class worked in groups, speaking in a stage whisper so that I could hear him over the chatter. “I don’t know what you think about math,” he told me, “But if you like it, I want you to know that I hope you pursue it. You’re good enough to do anything you want to do in math.”

At the time, there were only four girls in my accelerated math class of 20 students, but I never noticed this imbalance. I didn’t know, as I know now, that women are underrepresented in math and in the sciences. I didn’t know that

teachers like him had a reason to try to get girls like me excited about math. Though I suspect that my gender motivated him to encourage me that day — he didn’t, after all, similarly encourage any of the boys in our class — I am grateful that he didn’t make that fact obvious to me.

At the time, my ignorance was a luxury — had I been more sensitive to the gender discrepancy in class, I might have felt less secure in my position in it. As important as it is for us to discuss the gender divide in math, we must be cautious with how we choose to address it. Sometimes, hyperawareness reinforces the very realities it seeks to combat.

Organizations and companies that aim to make math more appealing to girls often do so by playing on gender stereotypes. The website of L’Oréal’s “For Girls in Science” campaign is dotted with photos of various makeup products, framed by pink and purple banners. Science-themed toys marketed toward girls

often more closely resemble the accessories for a Bratz doll than anything found on a lab table. These products suggest to young women that they can’t do the same kind of science that boys can. Marketing to the (socially constructed) tastes of tween girls relies on an assumption that the only way to get girls involved in science is to make the tools of science aesthetically appealing to them — and that, by extension, the only thing girls are ultimately motivated by is the physically beautiful.

The summer before my senior year in high school, I attended a math camp at Stanford. Every morning, we walked to lectures underneath red Spanish arches.

In the afternoons, we sat at picnic tables and worked on problem sets in groups.

“I didn’t think you’d be this good at math,” a boy told me once, after I had proposed a proof. His palms reached out toward me in what he thought was kindness, as he added, “Girls aren’t

usually good at math.”

While commentary on my interests is usually tied to my gender in a more subtle way — “It’s so great that you’re a girl in math!” — even encouragement that isn’t blatantly offensive can be damaging.

Such words suggest that my gender somehow makes my academic interests more significant.

They remind me that I am not the face of mathematics — and that no one who looks like me ever has been. I didn’t worry about being a woman in math until I realized that it was unusual to be a woman in math. I recall those words as I walk into math class, concerned that perhaps I should not have chosen to wear polka-dotted tights that day.

I don’t want my being a woman in math to mean anything, but it does, simply because I am part of a certain kind of inheritance.

My gender and choice of major will matter as long as women are underrepresented in the field, as long as anyone could still

believe that, “Girls aren’t usually good at math.” I worry that I have some responsibility to be the proof that women can be remarkable at math — to be remarkable in a way that I fear I am not.

The crucial truth of the matter, though, is that I shouldn’t have to be extraordinary at math to justify my pursuit of it. This, perhaps, is the problem perpetuated by much of the discussion of the gender gap: that girls should think they are held to some different standard. When we treat girls differently from boys, even when we do so to encourage them, we run the risk of making them believe that they have different capabilities. Girls can do math without being “girls in math.” Math — in its unshifting rules and patterns — isn’t gendered. Its truth is beyond humans, unmoved by the boundaries that confine us.

Contact JENNA KAINIC at jenna.kainic@yale.edu .

Resume Revelations // BY PAYAL MARATHE

If it’s true that stress is seasonal, I’d have to say mine peaks around this time every year. The temperature is dropping, it gets dark by 5 p.m. and I’m trudging, unmotivated, through these exam-packed weeks between fall break and Thanksgiving.

(Shout out to all those professors who insist on sneaking in an extra midterm.) Still, the real reason I’ve been especially anxious since early November is not the weather or the workload, but the onslaught of information sessions about fellowships, summer opportunities and — it scares me to write this — career choices.

Constant reminders of the looming, expectant future have even been infiltrating my social life. Scrolling down my News Feed last week, Facebook suggested that I attend the “Google Information Session,” an event that promised to discuss “business, cool things, or doing something that matters.” So a few nights later, I found myself in a packed classroom in WLH. I wasn’t surprised by the large number of students who had shown up — some even dressed in full business attire — because, well, it’s Google. But looking

F R I D AY NOVEMBER 15

around the room at people sitting on desks, standing shoulder-to-shoulder and overflowing out the door, I couldn’t help but feel tremendously intimidated. A representative from Google stood at the front of the room, rattling off attributes that the company expects in its applicants: creativity, a keen business sense, initiative. To keep things light, she asked a few trivia questions. Addresssing one respondent dressed in a suit and tie, she asked whether he’d ever been involved in a startup.

I WAS NOW THE GIRL WITH A GIANT CHALK STAIN ON THE BACK OF HER SWEATSHIRT. “Actually, I’ve started three,” he replied, without missing a beat.

Facebook had claimed that “dress

code [was] completely casual,” but Mr. Three Startups wasn’t the only one dressed as if this were the most important business meeting of his career. After being pushed up against a chalkboard by another suit trying to make his way to the front of the room, I realized that while I may have better manners, the suits likely have better resumes — and are probably way more qualified for a summer position at Google. Really, it seemed like everyone in the room, everyone at Yale for that matter, was more qualified than me. There were business owners in the crowd, and I was now the girl with a giant chalk stain on the back of her sweatshirt.

It’s not just Google that’s intimidating, either. At Yale, every opportunity draws a ton of interested students, and every student probably has a killer resume. When I sat down to update mine, I’ll admit I had a minor panic attack on common room futon.

What new, cool thing had I done since the summer? How could I convey the significance of my summer internship

spent reporting on patterns of rainfall in New Jersey? Why did my life appear so unexciting and unimpressive on paper?

With my cursor hovering over my current GPA, I reached for my suitemate’s Hershey’s milk chocolates. My stress-eating only fueled my worried thoughts. Everyone at Yale is a good writer. Everyone manages an on-campus job in addition to their five or six credits and long list of extracurricular activities. Everyone was valedictorian in high school. Everyone has a good relationship with a professor who might be able to get them a paid internship. I paused to throw out the pile of wrappers that had accumulated beside my laptop. Taking a breath, I realized something: maybe everyone sort of misses their glory days in high school, when life was just less competitive. Maybe everyone is a little intimidated by everybody else.

I wasn’t naïve when I arrived at Yale.

I knew I’d be surrounded by incredibly smart, incredibly talented peers — big

“THE ANIMALS’ LONGING GAZE”: A SPECIAL GRADUATE SEMINAR

Contact PAYAL MARATHE at payal.marathe@yale.edu .

WEEKEND RECOMMENDS:

Whitney Humanities Center, Room 208 // 10 a.m.

We’ve heard that the “Bear Stare” might be even more oppressive than the male gaze.

fish.

This makes competition inevitable, especially when people start applying for spring break trips, thinking about summer opportunities and planning for fellowships. A competitive atmosphere isn’t always bad. It’s probably what motivates me to go to a Google information session in the first place.

But what competition shouldn’t do is make anyone feel small. We all got into Yale, and there are plenty of people out there who are impressed by that simple fact in itself.

Of course we can’t rely on Yale’s prestige alone to get us a job — Mr. Three Startups certainly isn’t banking on that. But we all have potential, because Yale encourages it in each of us. Perhaps my seasonal stress causes a distorted self-perception. I don’t always have chalk on my sweatshirt, so maybe I should stop pilfering my suitemate’s chocolate stash.

Space heaters

Warm bodies make warm hearts.

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 15, 2013 · yaledailynews.com

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WEEKEND COVER

THE FREEDOM OF THE HUMANITIES DEGREE // BY RISHABH BHANDARI AND ADRIAN RODRIGUES Annie Wang ’13, when reached over the phone, was breathless and effusive in praising her colleagues and her work as an analyst at the consulting firm, IMS Group. This time two years ago, however, Wang was in a very different place, admitting she didn’t “really know anything about consulting,” let alone her future place of employment.

When Wang entered Yale as a freshman, she, like many other Yalies, thought she had every facet of her future mapped out.

“I was going to go to medical school and then be a doctor,” she recalled, adding that even in high school, she had considered medicine as her inevitable career. Halfway through college, however, it dawned upon her that any interest she may have had in organic chemistry or the pre-med track had completely dissolved. Abandoning the largely predetermined academic track that she had made as an ambitious freshman, Wang became a history of science and medicine major. Although she was still interested in health care, she wasn’t sure what exactly she wanted to do or how she could work in the industry after graduation.

In her junior year, she decided, on a whim, to apply to a number of consulting firms and investment banks.

Wang explained that despite not knowing that much about finance and consulting, she applied because

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“everyone at Yale always talks about how they’re such great places to work.” Although she did not extensively prepare for the interviews — “I struggled in my first interviews because I wasn’t very familiar with the idea of case studies” — Wang received offers from a number of firms before ultimately settling on the IMS Consulting Group, in part because the firm specialized in health care and pharmaceutical consulting.

“I sort of kinda stumbled into consulting,” she said. *** When Brandon Fu heard this story over the phone, there was a long silence punctuated only by a wistful sigh.

“That’s incredible,” he finally murmured in disbelief. After regathering his composure, Fu, a senior at the University of California, Santa Barbara, explained his surprise.

“Everyone wants to work for one of those companies [a finance or consulting firm] but almost no one makes it,” he said, adding that students hopeful of joining an established investment bank or consultancy in New York or Chicago must begin preparing their applications from the day they step on campus as a freshman.

“It’s kinda like getting into Yale from high school,” he said, stating that a student at UCSB who wants to

Percentage of students who go onto graduate or professional study

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work at Goldman Sachs must have a perfect resume, with no room for sophomore slumps or the like. Fu said that firms often dismiss schools such as UCSB as “party schools”and expect more outside the classroom from “non-Ivy or elite” applicants like himself.

“Firms think that pulling a 4.0 is so easy at UCSB that I must also have had the time to do something amazing outside the classroom,” he complained, asserting that his classes are often as challenging as those of his friends who go to more prestigious schools such as UC Berkeley and Stanford.

Yet Fu knew his dream of reaching a job at Goldman Sachs or McKinsey & Company was unlikely even before he matriculated at UCSB. Rejected by several of his top choice colleges, including USC and Columbia University, as a high school senior, Fu vowed to do everything he could at UCSB to remain a competitive applicant for a career in consulting or banking. In order to begin crafting “the perfect financial profile,” Fu double-majored in economics and accounting, majors he described as boring, but “employable.” Although Fu was an avid baseball player in high school and wanted to join a social fraternity at UCSB, he knew that he wouldn’t have the time in college for either pursuit. Rather he joined Alpha Kappa Psi (AKPsi), a business fraternity at UCSB which, according to the fraternity’s website, seeks to improve the professional success of its members “by operating the fraternity along the lines of a ‘corporation.’”

Upon reflecting on his fraternity’s creed — something that is starkly different to the creeds of brotherhood and friendship upon which any of Yale’s six fraternities are founded — Fu noted in a matter-of-fact voice that his college experience isn’t completely dissimilar to working for a corporation. Beyond his double major and his business fraternity, where he is the Vice President of Alumni Relations and Membership, Fu juggles two local internships with an investment bank, and a logistics and supply corporation.

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“I go to school just like you go to work. You sort of just hang in there and get by, waiting for the next promotion or, in my case, an exit opportunity.”

Despite four years of preparation and relevant job experience, Fu wasn’t able to crack into the consulting or investment banking industries. Although he’s happy with the offers he has received from accounting firms in California, he speculated that had he gone to a school with a bigger brand name like Yale, he would have been more successful in finding a finance job on the East Coast.

“I hoped banks would see that while I may not have gone to a school like Yale or Stanford, I did everything I could to prepare myself for a career in finance and that I’d do very well in that job,” Fu said, adding that the competitiveness of the process means he’s competing with equally dedicated students who are building the same financial resumes but at more illustrious schools.

Like Fu, Kirsten Schnackenberg ’15, a former staff reporter for the News, entered college knowing that she wanted to work in either finance or consulting. And like Fu, Schnackenberg thought her career aspirations would require her to major not only in history — a subject that she loved studying — but also in economics.

But unlike Fu, Schnackenberg went to Yale.

After working at JPMorgan the summer between her sophomore and junior years, Schnackenberg recalled that although she did meet fellow interns who did not come from a “target school” — one of the elite universities that top finance and consulting firms regularly visit and encourage students to apply — they were often different from the students who did come from schools such as Yale and its Ivy League peers.

Schnackenberg said that students who come from large state schools such as Ohio State tended to be finance majors near the top of their class, with resumes and extracurriculars tailored specifically toward finance and consulting. The majority of Ivy League students, on the other hand, majored in the humanities and pursued extracurriculars that they were passionate rather than prioritize the perceived “ideal” traits for a finance interview.

Stefano Malfitano ’14, an economics and math, and humanities double-major, said that nearly every student he met at Goldman Sachs as

an intern last summer was either an economics major or a STEM major.

Malfitano said that while these disciplines are not relevant to investment banking per se, prestigious firms receive so many applications that their Human Resources departments resort to convenient measures for filtering prospective applicants.

“They automatically take out a number of applicants based on cutoffs such as GPA or major,” he said, adding that most firms’ HR departments think that majors such as English or history are not sufficiently rigorous. “There is a belief that graduating with very high grades from a state school with a degree in English is not very difficult,” he said.

Malfitano said that these automatic cutoffs do not apply to schools such as Yale partly because Wall Street knows Yale so well. The strength of the liberal arts education at Yale is so well-known, said Malfitano, that students with degrees in English or American studies are considered in a way that they wouldn’t at a less prestigious school.

Undergraduate Career Services Director Jeanine Dames said that Yale’s extensive alumni base on Wall Street “acts as an incredible internal advocate” for current undergraduates. She added that many firms on Wall Street often ask their own Yale graduates to interview and recommend which current Yalies their firm should hire. As a result, while no one at Citigroup may be familiar with the strength of Ohio State’s AfricanAmerican Studies Program, everyone there is confident that any Yale graduate, regardless of what he or she majors in, is intellectually prepared for the job.

All eight students and alumni interviewed by the News who have worked in finance and consulting and have majored in the humanities said that their majors were never considered a hindrance in the job hunt.

Schnackenberg said that if anything, her degree in history was advantageous during the interview process, as she was able to speak of how a liberal arts education helped her think critically and creatively.

Additionally, and perhaps more importantly, it allowed her to differentiate herself from the many economics majors both at Yale and across the broader applicant pool.

Ethan Karetsky ’14, who will find himself at Bain next fall, echoed this sentiment. An American studies major. Karetsky said his major was SEE HUMANITIES PAGE 3

All Majors

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Humanities

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1970

1980

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VERITAS FORUM: “WHAT MAKES US HUMAN?”

WEEKEND RECOMMENDS:

SSS // 7 p.m.

Followed by “What Makes Us Dancers?”

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Walgreen’s

“I can’t afford a therapist so I walk through every aisle of Walgreen’s instead.”

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YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 15, 2013 · yaledailynews.com

WEEKEND ARTS

TREAT YOURSELF // BY JANE BALKOSKI

// BRIANNA LOO

In “Love Ireland: Foodies,” Regina Levin layers magazine cutouts over a picture of Irish cliffs. The glossy produce and skinny models are bright against grey and mossy bluffs. Levin’s work is artful and jarring: When set against a dull backdrop, the pears seem too juicy, the watermelons too pink, the women too thin. Stare at the collage and remember why you hate magazines — the manicured hands and glossy lips are only plastic. Our aesthetic ideals are only plastic. And what a brutal thought to have in such a lovely cupcake shop.

But “Visual Treats: Syntax,” the newest exhibit in Katalina’s Cupcakes — the pastry shop up the street from Timothy Dwight — is rarely that rough. The Syntax Artists, eight local women working in mixed media, have created an engaging, thoughtful display. Forty-four pieces decorate the shop’s walls and shelves, ranging from slight to substantial, dark to vibrant, pencil to encaustic. Order a coffee, pick up a flyer — a list of artists, titles, media, and prices — and then peruse the offerings.

By the cream and sugar, you’ll find another collage by Levin, “Untitled.”

With buttons and bits of scratch paper, the work has a subtle charm, a balanced composition that’ll make you linger and stare as you stir your coffee. Despite their different styles, the Syntax Artists all claim the same mission: to “combine a variety of media in unexpected ways” and to “educate the viewing public about the extraordinary possibilities offered by mixed media art.”

Further along the wall, discover these possibilities: Jan McLean’s acrylic faux encaustic, Kelly Taylor’s mixed media, Karen Larocque’s watercolors. Wander around, pick a favorite piece, perhaps number 34, “Soul Finder.” (Anne Doris-Eisner traces an oak leaf over a crimson and gold medallion.)

Finish your coffee.

But the thoughtful “Love Ireland: Foodies” is at the back of the shop, hidden in shadow. A massive refrigerator hides Diane Ward’s bright collage, “Playing with Karen.”

The lighting is bad, and walls are either crammed with art or empty. Some works are askew on their hooks, and pairings seem random. Why hang Kelly Taylor’s “Leaflet Serenades” next to Doris-Eisner’s “Soul Finder”? The busy “Leaflet Serenades” distracts, detracts from “Soul Finder”’s quiet grace. Taylor’s “Tree Alchemy,” along with a few other pieces, hangs behind the cupcake counter, far from other works. The cluster looks forlorn, an artistic island lost in a blank, yellow sea. In brief, “Visual Treats: Syntax” isn’t quite balanced. This isn’t thoughtful curatorial work.

And the art, too, looks for balance, toes the line between “pretty” and “kitschy.” With swirling pastels and fragments of cursive, McLean’s “Wordscapes #1” and “Reflections #1” are cute but trite. This is inoffensive art and the formula’s simple — combine pink and purple, hint at a sunset, pick an evocative title. (If you’re feeling brave, sketch a few music notes or draw a few flowers.) Taylor’s two “Leaflet Serenades” strike a similar chord. The colors are garish, the images stale. And Gretchen Wohlgemuth’s “Remembrance of Snow” would make a nice

The Man Beyond the Melody

screen saver, bright and easy on the eyes.

Much of “Visual Treats: Syntax” looks like intricate scrapbooking, and while the artists find inspiration in the natural world, their work is often bland.

Despite this prevailing Etsy aesthetic, some pieces, such as “Love Ireland: Foodies,” are thoughtful and complex. They’re not dull romantic images; they’re not just trees and leaves and beaches. Instead, they suggest an elaborate artistic vision.

In her three “Undulations,” Doris-Eisner captures wood grain, drawing whorls and eddies as perplexing and perfect as fractals. She does all this in black acrylic, with not a hint of green or brown. And in “Aspens,” Jean Swanson transcends the average woodsy landscape. With strips of black and brown paper, she creates a textured, vivid piece. These quiet works, plain collages and simple paintings, are most compelling. They do not try too hard.

While the display is far from perfect, and the pieces sometimes trite, “Visual Treats: Syntax” grapples with many themes in many media. And the exhibit is extensive, giving viewers a chance to explore each artist’s technique. The possibilities on display aren’t quite as extraordinary as the Syntax Artists claim. But while you tour around, grab a chocolate cupcake — it’ll make the art feel less vanilla.

Contact JANE BALKOSKI at jane.balkoski@yale.edu .

// AKASH SALAM

// BY DANA SCHNEIDER In the years between 1809 and 1813, some of Europe’s most pre-eminent composers were born: Mendelssohn, Chopin, Schumann, Liszt, Wagner and Verdi. Over the past four years, each composer’s bicentenary has been honored by the Gilmore Music Library.

“Verdi and his Singers” marks the culmination of this series.

Giuseppe Verdi is one of the greatest opera composers of the 19th century.

The Italian Romantic is best known for his operas: “Nabucco,” “Rigoletto,” “La Traviata,” “Aida,” “Otello” and “Flastaff,” among countless others.

Popular culture has immortalized Verdi’s work into cliché musical phrases that almost everyone can hum, but which no one knows by name. “La donna è mobile” from Rigoletto has appeared in a commercial for Axe body spray and “Libiamo ne’ lieti calici” is in a Doritos ad. Most people know that elephants and horses come on stage in the “Grand March” from “Aida,” but few cn place the details of the plot.

This exhibit, however, moves beyond what is immediately recognizable about the composer. Much of it is devoted to the relationship between Verdi and French Baritone Victor Maurel, for whom the title role in “Falstaff” and that of Iago in “Otello” were created. As was the fashion in the late 19th century, Verdi gave Maurel an exhibited “autograph manuscript”— a handwritten musical quotation from a well-known passage of “Otello.”

The exhibit reminds us that compos-

F R I D AY NOVEMBER 15

ers are as equally colorful as the artists they work with. Included is a letter from Verdi addressed to Maurel, advising the actor to stop reading too much into Falstaff and stressing that there was enough meaning already on the page — he argues that the music “will come, as it were, of its own accord.” Apparently this was not a good enough explanation for Maurel, and, in a later letter, Verdi more explicitly attempts to dampen Maurel’s affectations. Archivist Richard Boursy was apt to include a draft of Maurel’s reply, in which he argues for a scientific approach to music, beyond “emptier personal formulas.”

IN FORGETTING THE HISTORY BEHIND THESE WORKS OF ART, WE LOSE THEIR VERY ESSENCE. Another distinctive highlight was a caricature of Verdi drawn by celebrated tenor Enrico Caruso that depicts the composer’s angular nose in profile. In addition to being a best-selling recording artist in the early days of the phonograph, Caruso drew thousands of these caricatures, many of which are owned by Yale.

Also included in “Verdi and his Singers” is Robert Shaw’s annotated score of Verdi’s Requiem and photographs of Verdi and his second wife, the singer Giusep-

MACKLEMORE AND RYAN LEWIS Madison Square Garden // 7:30 p.m.

Relive what you cannot remember.

pina Streppi.

Perhaps the most striking part of this exhibit is that it reminds us of a time when opera was at the height of entertainment. During the 19th century, vocal and piano arrangements of Verdi’s operas were performed in thousands of private parlors across the United States and Europe. Even those who might have never have seen his opera in person almost certainly had access to his music via published arrangements or personal manuscripts. One such handwritten copyist’s manuscript of the Duet from “Rigoletto” is displayed in this exhibit.

In forgetting the history behind these works of art, we lose their very essence.

Verdi reluctantly wrote the libretto of “Nabucco,” his third opera, after the death his two children and wife. But out of this opera came the chorus of the Hebrew slaves, “Va pensiero,” a piece that has remained so popular as an anthem of hope that in 2009 it was proposed to replace Italy’s national anthem. Though some might brush opera off as a vestige of a fading age, Verdi’s music is anything but antiquarian.

All Yale students can log into the Naxos Music Library and access countless recordings by Verdi, from “Va Pensiero” to “Già nella note densa.” And, for those who want a break from Bass, what’s a better study break than climbing up the stairs to Sterling for a quick visit to see the handwriting of the master himself?

Contact DANA SCHNEIDER at dana.schneider@yale.edu .

WEEKEND RECOMMENDS: Reza in ‘Shahs of Sunset’

Sometimes gold diggers (male or female) arrive at a party with their “shovels in tow.”

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 15, 2013 · yaledailynews.com

PAGE B5

WEEKEND FEATURE

STA TES O F MIND

C AH S // BY HANN

Z AR W H

// R

W h e n Eli Benioff ’17 returned to campus this fall, he knew he could cope. He was returning from a whirlwind of events — leaving second semester freshman year, being committed to a psychiatric facility, then taking sophomore year off to recover. He knew his second take would have to be different.

Freshman year, his mechanisms for coping with stress were decidedly unproductive. He frequently played video games, smoked marijuana, watched Netflix and binge ate. He did his work, but his habits took a toll on his body.

Sitting in one of the few comfortable chairs in Bass Café and speaking more audibly than expected, Benioff isn’t someone you would immediately peg as a meditator. He speaks without slowing down, as if his thoughts are on a treadmill whose speed you can’t decrease.

It could have happened anytime, he said, but it turned out to be his first year at Yale. “I had been doing the same things during high school, and then I hit my breaking point around freshman year. In the process of doing my work, I wreaked havoc upon my physical well-being,” he said.

When he arrived home, his psychiatrist urged him to try meditation. “I started mindfulness [a form of meditation] in July 2012 because my psychiatrist said, ‘You need to do this. You’ve been resisting working on yourself for too long.’” Sixteen months later, mindfulness meditation is what keeps him centered.

To those who don’t participate in the mindfulness or meditation communities, the distinction between the two is often unclear. Perhaps their differences are best explained with the image of a pyramid. At the top lies meditation. A rung below sit its various forms, of which mindfulness is one. But mindfulness by itself exists as well — a sort of corollary to the pyramid. It is possible, then, to practice mindfulness without doing mindfulness meditation.

According to Hedy Kober, a Yale professor of psychiatry and psychology who researches the effects of mindfulness on addiction and addiction, mindfulness has two primary components: increasing attention to the present moment and cultivating an accepting, instead of reactive, attitude.

Benioff tries to practice mindfulness at least once every day. To him, that doesn’t necessarily mean sitting down cross-legged, eyes closed, and assuming the traditional meditation pose. “Sometimes I’ll meditate look-

F R I D AY NOVEMBER 15

ing through my dorm room window out at Payne Whitney; sometimes I do it on my shorter runs, when I run through Salovey’s backyard,” he said matter-of-factly. “I tried meditating in the shower today.”

Those daily moments, even when snatched in the midst of other activities, help him not only deal with stress, but also be more compassionate, both to himself and others.

“At home, there are fewer people and things to annoy me,” he said, recalling his year of recuperation. At Yale, though, people and stressors abound. And that’s where lovingkindness meditation plays a role, he said.

The essence of loving kindness meditation is the extension of compassion and love to others and, ultimately, yourself. You begin by extending those feelings to someone about whom you have decidedly positive emotions — “Like your cat,” Benioff offered. Then you move on to someone with whom you have a neutral relationship, “like the cashier at Starbucks.” Third, you transition to someone with whom you have a difficult relationship.

And last, you arrive at yourself. For Benioff, “That’s always the hardest part.”

PUTTING SCIENCE TO PRACTICE

Reuben Hendler ’14 talks like someone who meditates. Sitting in Woodland Coffee & Tea, a sparse, Zen-like space adjacent to the upscale Union League Café, he spoke about the benefits of mindfulness practice at a tempered, metronomic pace.

Hendler can tell the difference between his meditating self and his non-meditating self. Meditation helps him to behave in accordance with his values, he said, noting that people often lose control over their emotions and say or do things that don’t reflect who they are. In addition to improving relationships with others, meditation has helped him develop an accepting relationship with himself. “It’s incredibly therapeutic on a personal level,” he said.

Mindfulness meditation dates back to Buddhism’s beginnings. The idea is to empty your mind and simply be aware of your surroundings and accepting of yourself. But it wasn’t until the ’80s, when University of Massachusetts Medical School pro-

“ALMOST, MAINE”

fessor Jon Kabat-Zinn began studying the effects of mindfulness meditation, that the notion of using the practice as a behavioral health treatment technique entered the medical community’s literature.

Kabat-Zinn had studied and taught mindfulness, but he was only able to make it “legitimate” within the medical community when he transitioned from just training people to studying the effects of their practice, said Judson Brewer, a Yale professor of psychiatry who researches the effects of mindfulness on addiction and cognitive control. From the larger sphere of mindfulness, KabatZinn created a specific technique, Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR), which is increasingly emerging as a treatment for stress and chronic illness.

Intractable chronic pain, depression, anxiety, alcohol dependence, cocaine dependence and smoking addiction — according to Brewer, mindfulness has been shown to help alleviate all of the above. The impact extends to cognition and performance, too. “There’s a paper that just came out that shows that it improves your GRE scores,” he said.

As mindfulness has extended from the religious and spiritual spheres to the realm of clinical research, it has also gained a following in the secular world. At Yale, a secular mindfulness community is just beginning to grow.

When Reuben Hendler ’14 founded YMindful in spring 2012, it was the first group of its kind established in the University’s history.

YMindful arose amidst a handful of other meditation and mindfulness offerings. New Haven Insight, the Yale Stress Center and Indigo Blue — a center for Buddhist life with which Yale broke ties with last year — were all avenues to practice, but Hendler wanted something specific that the campus had yet to provide. While Indigo Blue offered a space for “coming and going without hindrance,” Hendler was looking for both the support of a group and the discipline that would come from meeting with others at a set time every week.

Every Saturday from 2 to 3 p.m. in Jonathan Edwards College, YMindful gathers to simply be. The group rotates session leaders, and every leader chooses which practices to

English Market Building, 839 Chapel St. // 8 p.m.

A play about love in the time of cold weather.

bring into those 60 minutes.

Loving kindness, body scans and simple breathing exercises are often employed.

To Benioff, the therapeutic aspect of mindfulness comes largely with abandoning expectations. He explained that when people are first exposed to meditation, they arrive with a set of assumptions about “what should be happening inside [their] head,” but the act of setting up expectations is diametrically opposed to the essence of meditation.

“There is no ‘should,’” he said. “It’s just sit down and empty your mind.”

But in the process of emptying their minds, those who practice mindfulness are, consciously or not, doing something much more active with their brains. According to Sara Lazar, a psychiatry professor at Massachusetts General Hospital, the data show that in addition to having an impact on mood and cognition, meditation changes the actual structure of the brain. And it does it in an extremely visible way.

In a study conducted at the University of Massachusetts Center for Mindfulness, participants completed eight weeks of Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction. Researchers used magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to take a snapshot of participants’ brains two weeks before treatment began and two weeks after it ended.

The results showed something fascinating: gray matter in the hippocampus — the part of the brain where learning, memory, self-awareness, and compassion take place — had increased for those participants who had undergone MBSR. Furthermore, gray matter had decreased in their amygdalas, the brain region that sparks anxiety and stress. The body of research is still growing, but so far, the results have been promising.

‘ABOVE WATER’

Every Saturday, on the lawn of the Jonathan Edwards College courtyard, a group of students sits quietly outside for an hour. Around them the metronome of moving feet, students hurriedly walking past on their way to dorm rooms and dining halls, continues. The students sit quietly. Two people stop to have a conversation in the middle of the courtyard. The students sit quietly.

When the members of YMindful gather to meditate, each of them falls

EU

N BE

HE

ND

LE

R

i n t o t h e i r own world.

But even on their own, they are together.

Christina Bradley ’16, who has been participating in YMindful sessions for the past few weeks, said being in a group allows you to understand aspects of your own practice of which you were not previously aware.

And perhaps most importantly, “You don’t feel alone when you’re doing it.”

Benioff agreed with Bradley’s sentiment. Each session begins with everyone in the circle introducing themselves. You may already know all the people there, he explained, but that doesn’t matter — it’s about setting the tone.

To him, that tone is all about togetherness.

Describing the YMindful community that convenes every week, Benioff spoke as if he were repeating loving-kindness mantras to himself: “We’re here together. We came here together to meditate. We’re going to get to know each other a little bit.”

Although mindfulness practice has been met with skepticism in the past, its health benefits have become harder to question. Kober cited the field’s gold standard randomized control trials as indication that there is little reason to doubt the positive impact of mindfulness on stress, depression and anxiety.

While Benioff has immersed himself in mindfulness on campus, there are many who know little about its existence. And even for some of those who are aware, time may be seen as an obstacle.

Spencer Klavan ’14 had heard about YMindful from Hendler a while before he began attending sessions.

“I didn’t have the gumption or the bandwidth to commit to regular practice,” he said, noting that many students balk at the idea of a daily practice of any magnitude. Sometimes, “it takes a little kicking in the pants.”

But Klavan added that mindfulness is extremely portable, and doesn’t need to occupy clock-time the way some people expect it to. It doesn’t require sitting down for a designated time — you can just stop, take a moment and register your experience, he said.

And when you do that, slowly, you start to become aware that reality is conditional on perspective.

In a soft tone, Klavan presented an analogy: “It’s the difference between living under water and havi ng no idea what water is, and being able to surface and take a look at t he whole thing.”

Contact HANNAH SCHWARZ at hannah.schwarz@yale.edu .

WEEKEND RECOMMENDS: Donating to relief efforts in the Philippines.

No snark here — help if you can.

PAGE B6

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 15, 2013 · yaledailynews.com

PAGE B7

WEEKEND GRATITUDE

A PASSIVE AGGRESSIVE THANKSGIVING With Thanksgiving comes many a wonderful thing. That feeling of euphoria, that general recognition of the #highbless state Facebook newsfeed, as every one of your 2,172 friends attempts to outdo one another on their levels of #bless. “Soooo thankful

To My Beloved Bar H

this year, y’all!!” one might say. “OMG, how did I get the coolest family eva?! #blessed,” proclaims another.

// BY ALLIE KRAUSE

of your life, your mom’s (or the Yale Club’s — hay, New Yorkers) roast turkey. But with it comes the inevitable assault of your

Here in the WKND lounge, we decided that something needed to be done. And what better way to put an alternative spin on Thanksgiving than to release all of our pent-up passive aggression, to inform you darling WKNDers what we’re really thankful for? Keep reading, and see what it means to be truly #blessed this holiday season.

Please Stop the Music, Actually // BY STEPHANIE ADDENBROOKE Dear our good friend, the organ player, This Thanksgiving, I, along with all of my suitemates, just want to thank you from the bottom of our hearts for educating us so finely in your art and in your skill. I have always appreciated organ music, and I get to do so at two in the morning.

What more could I have ever wanted?

I can deprive myself of sleep just to hear the sounds that Battell Chapel can never just keep to itself.

And, on that note…

Dear suite upstairs, On the days that I’m lacking in my organ experience, you make sure that I can always hear some form of music. The music that you play has been so insightful — I never expected my musical knowledge to expand in the way that it has, and for that, I am truly thankful. The ambience of

Toads swells down into our suite so that I can never tell the difference between a Monday and a Saturday night, which is just perfect when I’m trying to plow through “The Iliad” or a psychology paper.

And what’s more is that you both have perfect timing. Irrespective of when I choose to fall asleep, the music is always there to act as a somewhat distorted lullaby. I thought I had escaped being sung to sleep when I turned five, but apparently my childhood has come back to haunt me.

I know that Andrew Lloyd Webber wrote all about the “music of the night,” but this is one phantom I could live without. This Thanksgiving, spare us a little of your holiday kindness and give us the one thing we’ve been hoping all year for — a good nights’ sleep.

As a Brit, I’m not usually one to celebrate the awfully American holiday that is Thanksgiving. But in spite of myself, this November I have been reflecting on what I am thankful for. This year has been one to remember.

I have great friends, a good life — indeed, I am grateful for many a thing. And of course, there is my gender-neutral suite. Last April, deciding to take advantage of my upcoming status as a junior, I chose to live with four male friends in the Rosenfeld Hall suite fondly nicknamed “Bar H.” And what an absolute delight it has been.

Can you imagine anything more splendid than a large beerpong table right in the centre of your once-spacious pad? Sometimes, if I’m fortunate enough, there are two. Or even better, the

melodious sound of ping pong balls landing in Solo cups one after the other as my considerate suitemates engage in endless rounds of water pong at 3 a.m. on a Tuesday night when I’m in bed and have early-morning class the next day!

Of course, one can’t forget the wonderful décor that accompanies such a living situation. I myself am of the school of making a room as homelike as possible, so I relish in the decorations chosen by my creative suitemates. The walls are bedecked with countless rows of Pabst Blue Ribbon and Keystone Light boxes, proclaiming a variety of insightful messages like “Never fear a 7 a.m.

Walk of Pride.” They just ooze klassiness (yes, with a “k”).

But my absolute favourite part of living with these magnifi-

cent gentlemen is the wonderful surprise I receive every Sunday morning. On awaking much in the manner of a Disney princess (think woodland creatures that sing as they dress me), I step out from my boudoir to experience the scene of carnage that follows a Saturday night spent “chugging dranks” and fist pumping the air to the newest 2 Chainz album. As I make my way to the toilette, my slippers stick satisfyingly to the floor and the invigorating scent of stale beer reminds me of the beautiful day ahead. That combined with a slew of Solo cups and empty bottles strewn around the room all remind me of how truly blessed I am. So this year, Bar H, my thanks goes to you.

Contact ALLIE KRAUSE at alexandra.krause@yale.edu .

Allie Krause

Red, White and What? // BY DJENAB CONDE

Technology should make it easier for friends to stay in touch, but instead there’re a million ways for me to get stood up. When we make an appointment on the interweb, I plan my day around our Skype catch-up. I’ll look forward to it, tell my friends about you and how cool you are … but then you cancel on me via Facebook message!

Eight minutes after our scheduled rendezvous time! You couldn’t even tweet at me so I get a notification and my “@” goes all pretty and blue?! Or post on my wall so everyone can see how terrible you are?! So EXCUUUUSE me if I don’t want to try to find another meeting time … for the fifth time! I haven’t even been stood up by a guy. Maybe that’s because no one asks me on dates? #awks I mean really, what’s wrong with going on a date? I would even offer to split the bill, if that’s what’s

worrying you. Keep in mind, I fully expect you to dissuade me and pay the entire bill, but it’s the thought that counts, right? Before, I thought it was just Yale men who have a distaste for dates, but here at St. Andrews (where I’m studying abroad for the semester), I have discovered that is not true. Here, money would be an important factor (no arepas for $5.50?) — it seems that St Andrews is the most expensive city in the U.K., outside of London. It’s not even a city; it’s a little town, because it only has two Chinese restaurants and one Thai restaurant, and a bowl of ramen goes for $18!! (#wtf?!?!?) So this year, I give thanks for Amurrica.

Can’t wait for my to-go orders at Thai Taste when I return in the spring.

Contact DJENAB CONDE at djenab.conde@yale.edu .

!"#$%&'()$*#

Contact STEPHANIE ADDENBROOKE at stephanie.addenbrooke@yale.edu .

!"#$%&'(#)*++#',-../#

An Ode to JE, et al.

You Go, Yale Dining. You Go.

// BY ANDREW KOENIG

I’m thankful for the fact that Yale recently acquired the hugest heap of money I’ve ever heard of, and that, in spite of that, I can still smell the stench of garbage coming into my bathroom from the dumpsters behind it, because they’re all overstuffed and JE won’t buy new ones.

Grateful that now I only inhale through my mouth when showering. That, when the dumpster smell isn’t there, a mysterious cloud of body odor lingers in my entryway as if to compensate.

Since sophomore year began, I’ve had the pleasure of hearing every piece of drama in the lives of my college’s dining hall workers, who all happen to take their cigarette break in front of my bedroom window, and who happen to engage in insane screaming matches with one another. (“WHY DO YOU COOK SO BADLY?” “I WANT MY BABY!” among others.)

I live so close to Harkness Tower that every time I begin to have nostalgic feelings about a certain slant of light that hits it on winter afternoons, I rediscover the eternal unpleasantness of being rudely awakened from naps by the sounds of the

// BY PAYAL MARATHE

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday, I’ll admit not because of the inevitable family arguments or because the football team I’m rooting for always loses, but because I love good food. As soon as I finish the last of my Halloween candy every year, I start dreaming of moist turkey, mashed potatoes and pumpkin pie. With Thanksgiving only a couple weeks away, I’ve been thinking about food quite a lot lately. And this year, I’d like to give thanks for Yale Dining.

I’m thankful for dinner meat that is reliably either greasy or dry. Keeps things interesting — you never know which piece you’re going to get. I’m grateful for items like gnocchi stuffed with potatoes, because who doesn’t want carbs wrapped in carbs? Then there are magic bars. It’s so wonderful that we never have to agonize over choosing a dessert, because magic bars are seven desserts in one. On the days I really want to eat healthy, there are vegetables. Sometimes it’s

squash; sometimes it’s zucchini. But it always comes in a soup of oil. The best part is that even after consuming twice the recommended amount of daily calories at dinner, I’m hungry enough for a late-night buttery snack. Thank you, Yale Dining, for ending dinner at 7:30.

Let’s not forget to acknowledge the variety. I never knew quinoa could be prepared in so many different ways. And for those of us who miss lunch, Yale Dining is gracious enough to offer us a swipe at Durfee’s, where we have our pick among overpriced Naked Juice, overpriced Chobani and overpriced Triscuits. It’s nice to sometimes stress about losing weight and saving money instead of worrying about the paper I can’t write because the eggs in Commons gave me food poisoning.

But in all honesty, I really am thankful for chicken tenders.

Amen.

Contact PAYAL MARATHE at payal.marathe@yale.edu .

Payal Marathe

S AT U R D AY NOVEMBER 16

45TH ANNUAL CELEBRATION OF AMERICAN CRAFTS

Creative Arts Workshop Hilles Gallery // all day Sorority girls unite! #ppl

same exact songs (Theme from “Up,” “Suite Archaïque”), playing over. And over. And over.

I’m thankful for daylight savings, which is brilliantly scheduled during the winter, when there’s already a shortage of light. Seriously, who needs natural light past five o’clock? That’s not depressing or anything. More than that, I’m thankful for JE’s unwillingness to accept the absence of sunlight, i.e. its refusal to provide halfway-decent artificial lighting in our libraries and dining hall. There’s nothing like sitting in the corner of the dining hall with friends who look like they’re glowering in the semidarkness and eating food that’s acquired a sad, brownish hue.

Or maybe that’s just the color of the food and the way people look when the going gets rough and the sophomore slump sets in. Thankful for not knowing which — for ambiguities, their rich interpretive possibilities, for sometimes seeing the slant of light or just hearing the same damn bells.

Contact ANDREW KOENIG at andrew.koenig@yale.edu .

!"#$%&'()%"*+ // ANNELISA LEINBACH

WEEKEND RECOMMENDS: Wagon Wheel (Old Crow Medicine Show only)

For those moments when north country winters keep getting you down.

S AT U R D AY NOVEMBER 16

YALE MEN’S HOCKEY VS. SACRED HEART

WEEKEND RECOMMENDS:

The Whale // 7:00 p.m.

We’re quasi-legit at the sport.

Taking it all in

Don’t it always seem to go, that you don’t know what you got ‘til it’s gone?

PAGE B6

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 15, 2013 · yaledailynews.com

PAGE B7

WEEKEND GRATITUDE

A PASSIVE AGGRESSIVE THANKSGIVING With Thanksgiving comes many a wonderful thing. That feeling of euphoria, that general recognition of the #highbless state Facebook newsfeed, as every one of your 2,172 friends attempts to outdo one another on their levels of #bless. “Soooo thankful

To My Beloved Bar H

this year, y’all!!” one might say. “OMG, how did I get the coolest family eva?! #blessed,” proclaims another.

// BY ALLIE KRAUSE

of your life, your mom’s (or the Yale Club’s — hay, New Yorkers) roast turkey. But with it comes the inevitable assault of your

Here in the WKND lounge, we decided that something needed to be done. And what better way to put an alternative spin on Thanksgiving than to release all of our pent-up passive aggression, to inform you darling WKNDers what we’re really thankful for? Keep reading, and see what it means to be truly #blessed this holiday season.

Please Stop the Music, Actually // BY STEPHANIE ADDENBROOKE Dear our good friend, the organ player, This Thanksgiving, I, along with all of my suitemates, just want to thank you from the bottom of our hearts for educating us so finely in your art and in your skill. I have always appreciated organ music, and I get to do so at two in the morning.

What more could I have ever wanted?

I can deprive myself of sleep just to hear the sounds that Battell Chapel can never just keep to itself.

And, on that note…

Dear suite upstairs, On the days that I’m lacking in my organ experience, you make sure that I can always hear some form of music. The music that you play has been so insightful — I never expected my musical knowledge to expand in the way that it has, and for that, I am truly thankful. The ambience of

Toads swells down into our suite so that I can never tell the difference between a Monday and a Saturday night, which is just perfect when I’m trying to plow through “The Iliad” or a psychology paper.

And what’s more is that you both have perfect timing. Irrespective of when I choose to fall asleep, the music is always there to act as a somewhat distorted lullaby. I thought I had escaped being sung to sleep when I turned five, but apparently my childhood has come back to haunt me.

I know that Andrew Lloyd Webber wrote all about the “music of the night,” but this is one phantom I could live without. This Thanksgiving, spare us a little of your holiday kindness and give us the one thing we’ve been hoping all year for — a good nights’ sleep.

As a Brit, I’m not usually one to celebrate the awfully American holiday that is Thanksgiving. But in spite of myself, this November I have been reflecting on what I am thankful for. This year has been one to remember.

I have great friends, a good life — indeed, I am grateful for many a thing. And of course, there is my gender-neutral suite. Last April, deciding to take advantage of my upcoming status as a junior, I chose to live with four male friends in the Rosenfeld Hall suite fondly nicknamed “Bar H.” And what an absolute delight it has been.

Can you imagine anything more splendid than a large beerpong table right in the centre of your once-spacious pad? Sometimes, if I’m fortunate enough, there are two. Or even better, the

melodious sound of ping pong balls landing in Solo cups one after the other as my considerate suitemates engage in endless rounds of water pong at 3 a.m. on a Tuesday night when I’m in bed and have early-morning class the next day!

Of course, one can’t forget the wonderful décor that accompanies such a living situation. I myself am of the school of making a room as homelike as possible, so I relish in the decorations chosen by my creative suitemates. The walls are bedecked with countless rows of Pabst Blue Ribbon and Keystone Light boxes, proclaiming a variety of insightful messages like “Never fear a 7 a.m.

Walk of Pride.” They just ooze klassiness (yes, with a “k”).

But my absolute favourite part of living with these magnifi-

cent gentlemen is the wonderful surprise I receive every Sunday morning. On awaking much in the manner of a Disney princess (think woodland creatures that sing as they dress me), I step out from my boudoir to experience the scene of carnage that follows a Saturday night spent “chugging dranks” and fist pumping the air to the newest 2 Chainz album. As I make my way to the toilette, my slippers stick satisfyingly to the floor and the invigorating scent of stale beer reminds me of the beautiful day ahead. That combined with a slew of Solo cups and empty bottles strewn around the room all remind me of how truly blessed I am. So this year, Bar H, my thanks goes to you.

Contact ALLIE KRAUSE at alexandra.krause@yale.edu .

Allie Krause

Red, White and What? // BY DJENAB CONDE

Technology should make it easier for friends to stay in touch, but instead there’re a million ways for me to get stood up. When we make an appointment on the interweb, I plan my day around our Skype catch-up. I’ll look forward to it, tell my friends about you and how cool you are … but then you cancel on me via Facebook message!

Eight minutes after our scheduled rendezvous time! You couldn’t even tweet at me so I get a notification and my “@” goes all pretty and blue?! Or post on my wall so everyone can see how terrible you are?! So EXCUUUUSE me if I don’t want to try to find another meeting time … for the fifth time! I haven’t even been stood up by a guy. Maybe that’s because no one asks me on dates? #awks I mean really, what’s wrong with going on a date? I would even offer to split the bill, if that’s what’s

worrying you. Keep in mind, I fully expect you to dissuade me and pay the entire bill, but it’s the thought that counts, right? Before, I thought it was just Yale men who have a distaste for dates, but here at St. Andrews (where I’m studying abroad for the semester), I have discovered that is not true. Here, money would be an important factor (no arepas for $5.50?) — it seems that St Andrews is the most expensive city in the U.K., outside of London. It’s not even a city; it’s a little town, because it only has two Chinese restaurants and one Thai restaurant, and a bowl of ramen goes for $18!! (#wtf?!?!?) So this year, I give thanks for Amurrica.

Can’t wait for my to-go orders at Thai Taste when I return in the spring.

Contact DJENAB CONDE at djenab.conde@yale.edu .

!"#$%&'()$*#

Contact STEPHANIE ADDENBROOKE at stephanie.addenbrooke@yale.edu .

!"#$%&'(#)*++#',-../#

An Ode to JE, et al.

You Go, Yale Dining. You Go.

// BY ANDREW KOENIG

I’m thankful for the fact that Yale recently acquired the hugest heap of money I’ve ever heard of, and that, in spite of that, I can still smell the stench of garbage coming into my bathroom from the dumpsters behind it, because they’re all overstuffed and JE won’t buy new ones.

Grateful that now I only inhale through my mouth when showering. That, when the dumpster smell isn’t there, a mysterious cloud of body odor lingers in my entryway as if to compensate.

Since sophomore year began, I’ve had the pleasure of hearing every piece of drama in the lives of my college’s dining hall workers, who all happen to take their cigarette break in front of my bedroom window, and who happen to engage in insane screaming matches with one another. (“WHY DO YOU COOK SO BADLY?” “I WANT MY BABY!” among others.)

I live so close to Harkness Tower that every time I begin to have nostalgic feelings about a certain slant of light that hits it on winter afternoons, I rediscover the eternal unpleasantness of being rudely awakened from naps by the sounds of the

// BY PAYAL MARATHE

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday, I’ll admit not because of the inevitable family arguments or because the football team I’m rooting for always loses, but because I love good food. As soon as I finish the last of my Halloween candy every year, I start dreaming of moist turkey, mashed potatoes and pumpkin pie. With Thanksgiving only a couple weeks away, I’ve been thinking about food quite a lot lately. And this year, I’d like to give thanks for Yale Dining.

I’m thankful for dinner meat that is reliably either greasy or dry. Keeps things interesting — you never know which piece you’re going to get. I’m grateful for items like gnocchi stuffed with potatoes, because who doesn’t want carbs wrapped in carbs? Then there are magic bars. It’s so wonderful that we never have to agonize over choosing a dessert, because magic bars are seven desserts in one. On the days I really want to eat healthy, there are vegetables. Sometimes it’s

squash; sometimes it’s zucchini. But it always comes in a soup of oil. The best part is that even after consuming twice the recommended amount of daily calories at dinner, I’m hungry enough for a late-night buttery snack. Thank you, Yale Dining, for ending dinner at 7:30.

Let’s not forget to acknowledge the variety. I never knew quinoa could be prepared in so many different ways. And for those of us who miss lunch, Yale Dining is gracious enough to offer us a swipe at Durfee’s, where we have our pick among overpriced Naked Juice, overpriced Chobani and overpriced Triscuits. It’s nice to sometimes stress about losing weight and saving money instead of worrying about the paper I can’t write because the eggs in Commons gave me food poisoning.

But in all honesty, I really am thankful for chicken tenders.

Amen.

Contact PAYAL MARATHE at payal.marathe@yale.edu .

Payal Marathe

S AT U R D AY NOVEMBER 16

45TH ANNUAL CELEBRATION OF AMERICAN CRAFTS

Creative Arts Workshop Hilles Gallery // all day Sorority girls unite! #ppl

same exact songs (Theme from “Up,” “Suite Archaïque”), playing over. And over. And over.

I’m thankful for daylight savings, which is brilliantly scheduled during the winter, when there’s already a shortage of light. Seriously, who needs natural light past five o’clock? That’s not depressing or anything. More than that, I’m thankful for JE’s unwillingness to accept the absence of sunlight, i.e. its refusal to provide halfway-decent artificial lighting in our libraries and dining hall. There’s nothing like sitting in the corner of the dining hall with friends who look like they’re glowering in the semidarkness and eating food that’s acquired a sad, brownish hue.

Or maybe that’s just the color of the food and the way people look when the going gets rough and the sophomore slump sets in. Thankful for not knowing which — for ambiguities, their rich interpretive possibilities, for sometimes seeing the slant of light or just hearing the same damn bells.

Contact ANDREW KOENIG at andrew.koenig@yale.edu .

!"#$%&'()%"*+ // ANNELISA LEINBACH

WEEKEND RECOMMENDS: Wagon Wheel (Old Crow Medicine Show only)

For those moments when north country winters keep getting you down.

S AT U R D AY NOVEMBER 16

YALE MEN’S HOCKEY VS. SACRED HEART

WEEKEND RECOMMENDS:

The Whale // 7:00 p.m.

We’re quasi-legit at the sport.

Taking it all in

Don’t it always seem to go, that you don’t know what you got ‘til it’s gone?

PAGE B8

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 15, 2013 · yaledailynews.com

WEEKEND COVER

THE PRESSURE TO PROFESSIONALIZE Where will your liberal arts degree take you?

Government Finance Academia

CONSULTING

Music Journalism HUMANITIES FROM PAGE 3 simply what he wanted to study, not what he wanted to do. “People are much more than their major,” he added. Karetsky said Bain values people who think differently and admitted that no one asked about his major during his interviews.

“It didn’t seem important to them,” Karetsky said.

It’s an attitude that pervades nearly all corners of the Yale undergraduate experience, but one that is virtually foreign to college students outside of Yale’s brass gates.

For Reilley Keane, a senior studying electrical engineering at Villanova University, college was the opportunity not so much for the holistic experience Yalies seem to experience by default, but rather a means to an ultimate end: employment.

“Do I wish that I pursued something I loved? Of course, but I’m finding the job market tough enough now as an engineering major,” he said, adding that he couldn’t imagine cracking the consulting market as a liberal arts major from Villanova. *** While Yale students and professors continue to laud the value of the humanities, Harvard seems to be shifting its tone. A Nov. 8 editorial in the Crimson encapsulates this new chord, with the Crimson staff praising the perceived decline of humanities across American colleges. “We’re not especially sorry to see the English majors go,” proclaimed the editorial staff. It’s an attitude that might not bode well for the future quality of the Crimson, but the staffers’ sentiment is not unfounded, with national trends indicating a deepening decline in appreciation of the liberal arts.

The Crimson article reflects a student body losing faith in the career value of a liberal arts education, instead placing greater emphasis on the pragmatic skills gleaned from non-humanities disciplines. And Harvard is not alone in the pool of elite universities with this mentality: As reflected in a recent New Yorker article, Stanford is among the most recent string of upper-echelon universities aggressively attempting to “professionalize” its undergraduate experience.

Along with providing selected student start-ups university endowment funding and offering three times as many entrepreneurship classes as Yale, Stanford recently changed its logo to something more aesthetically compatible with the iPhone. The old logo was designed for print and stationery, said one Stanford administrator; the new

S AT U R D AY NOVEMBER 16

mark is more appropriate for a digital world.

Stanford history professor David Campbell ’80 said the influences of Silicon Valley undoubtedly permeate student life in Palo Alto. When Cardinals look at the school newspaper and see another Stanford student who just reached billionaire status from another technological endeavor, a culture of hopeful followers is not far behind.

Education

’88. And despite a decline in the number of humanities majors at Yale, professors like Schirmeister are unconcerned that many of their students choose fields outside of their majors’ direct relevance, such as academia. Beverly Gage ’94, the director of undergraduate studies, echoed this lack of concern, noting that the purpose of the History Department is not merely to produce hundreds of historians.

I GO TO SCHOOL JUST LIKE YOU GO TO WORK...WAITING FOR THE NEXT EXIT OPPORTUNITY. BRANDON FU

“We’re in Silicon Valley so we’re surrounded by the ideology against which our students should push back,” Stanford history professor Denise Gigante ’87 said. She continued, adding that the culture in today’s tech environment has caused students to fear a separation between market value and life value.

“It’s the same ideology that tells them they need to be afraid,” she said.

Back in New Haven, Andrew Craig ’14 isn’t too worried. With a strong interest in music and performance, Craig entered Yale believing he wanted to study theater, but soon switched and remains committed to the film studies major. Because of these changing interests, Craig said he placed a heavy premium on the freedom that Yale’s education affords. While Craig does not know what life postgraduation will look like, he derives the success of his Yale education from the privilege offered by a liberal arts degree.

“I definitely think having that liberty is an enormous privilege,” Craig said. “And not everyone is able to access that privilege. It’s huge. It’s an enormous blessing.

There are people all over the state — all over the country — who don’t have that.”

Many other Yale professors and students interviewed remain similarly unfazed by the thought that their humanities degrees would not be applicable in the job market. Professors and students alike asserted that the skills learned while pursuing a classics, history, english or humanities degree are highly transferable, no matter the prospective field.

The ability to think critically, ask good questions and problem solve are highly applicable in the consulting world, said english professor Pamela Schirmeister ’80 GRD

ICELANDIC LANGUAGE DAY

Everywhere, obviously // all day Tell someone you elska them!

In fact, at least for now, Schirmeister seemed to prefer that her students not pursue careers directly associated with the liberal arts degree and instead experiment in the world of Wall Street. Ultimately, it’s “so much the better if they then go into the financial services industry,” she said. “Perhaps if more of them did, that industry wouldn’t be in the trouble it is.” *** But others at Yale remain unconvinced, expressing a deep concern at the lack of continuity between the undergraduate and post-graduate levels in the humanities. English professor David Bromwich ’73 GRD ’77 admitted that fewer of the best undergraduates who major in literature chose to go into graduate study.

Instead, the bleak job market has caused a harmful change in focus.

“Education is good in itself. If it has meant anything to you, it won’t support a theory of life that says we must pass from being penniless and thoughtful at 20 to being dull and prosperous at 40,” he said.

“Are there really people who think, ‘When I was in college, I loved Tolstoy, Joyce, and Woolf, but now that I’m working for McKinsey I only have time for Twitter?’”

Nathaniel Zelinsky ’13 earned a history major and is now pursuing a higher degree at Cambridge University. Zelinsky said while he began as an economics major, he slid away from the department and found history to be his calling. Zelinsky laughed as he described the feeling of joy when ruffling through old papers, adding that a historian occupies a position of power.

However, his tone shifted when he began speaking of Wall Street careers and on-campus recruiting. Zelinsky lamented that a lack of “pastoral guidance” from the University allows students to fall back

into old patterns of pre-established routes to success.

Gage echoed Zelinsky’s remarks, saying she would like to see a wider range of professions actively recruiting on campus. While she said a history degree teaches students to think broadly and ask questions, she admitted some history majors go into consulting because that is who is on campus.

Zelinsky claimed that so many humanities majors pursue careers in consulting and finance because these paths allow them to ignore fundamentally difficult questions like: “What is the purpose of my education?” or “What is my obligation to society?”

“A lot of my classmates in finance are not really doing anything useful for American society,” he said. “[For those] who go into finance and banking, it’s utterly and completely wasting the $500,000 it took to educate them.”

Like Zelinsky, Matthew Shafer ’13 is pursuing a graduate degree from Cambridge University. He is a Gates Cambridge Scholar working towards a master’s degree in political thought and intellectual history. In an email to the News, Shafer emphasized his love for writing, teaching and conducting research.

He said his passion for history was also a consequence of its ability to positively impact the world.

Still, Shafer criticized the increasingly inevitable link between High Street and Wall Street. While he conceded that many students go into the financial sector for legitimate reasons, Shafer found the influences of the banking, consulting and business sectors to be detrimental.

“The fact that there’s basically a direct pipeline from America’s most prestigious universities to America’s most powerful corporations should make us re-examine many of our assumptions about whether or not elite education is, by itself, an automatically good thing for society,” Shafer said. *** “What do you love about college?”

It’s a simple question, but one that can trigger nearly every Yale student into a stream of gushing recollections. For the math major, it might be an introductory philosophy class he took Credit/D/Fail.

For a history major, it might be the international relations conference that nearly fell through last minute.

But when both Keane and Fu were asked this question, a flurry of awkward gaps and start-stop sentences ensued. For both of them, college was not an end in itself, as Yalies are

so wont to view their undergraduate years, but rather a four-year audition for lofty, prestigious and wellpaying jobs.

“I entered college committing to a rigorous major I didn’t like,” said Keane, adding that the challenges and numerous requirements of the major prevented him from taking classes in religious studies or theology, the one subject that he had always secretly wanted to study.

Other than his fraternity — something he admits was only a time commitment during his freshman year — Keane mostly hangs out with other engineering students. It is with those students that he tackles problem sets, goes out on weekends and discusses the ongoing job hunt.

Keane can’t remember the last time he discussed philosophy or history with friends, but if he had to guess, it would probably have been in high school.

As professor Charles Hill explained when he hears these stories, the strength of the undergraduate experience at Yale lies in its steadfast commitment to the liberal arts and the humanities. Hill said that Yale’s commitment is an increasingly rare one as more and more of Yale’s peers are changing directions.

“Everyone, especially Stanford, is becoming more vocational, more focused on training than educating,” said Hill, who is also a senior fellow at the Hoover Institute at Stanford, adding that “Stanford has become Stanford Tech” because its students are increasingly forsaking a liberal arts education for a narrower and more scientific curriculum.

As more universities shift towards professionalizing their curricula and undercutting the humanities, Hill said that more students and the media are adopting a misguided view that the humanities are a luxury that can be trimmed during economically difficult years.

Hill believes that students armed with a strong understanding of the humanities are, in fact, better equipped to succeed in whatever career they pursue because the humanities trains students to embrace uncertainty.

But it’s an intellectual foundation that students like Keane and Fu said they only wish they could enjoy.

“Do I wish that I had the Yale experience of a liberal arts education? I can’t really say, it seems too surreal to imagine,” said Fu. Contact RISHABH BHANDARI at rishabh.bhandari@yale.edu .

ADRIAN RODRIGUES at adrian.rodrigues@yale.edu .

WEEKEND RECOMMENDS: Getting dressed up

It’ll do wonders for your mood. Trust, y’all.

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 15, 2013 · yaledailynews.com

PAGE B9

WEEKEND FEATURE

THE LEARNING FARM // BY JENNIFER GERSTEN

It’s a drizzly Sunday afternoon, but school’s still in session at the West Campus Urban Farm.

While leading an impromptu tour of the quarter-acre territory, student farm manager Corinne Almquist NUR ’16 is the schoolmarm taking attendance: mint, cilantro, Chinese cabbage, a shy sprawling of marigolds atop a lattice to her left, a whole lot of garlic, all present.

She runs her fingers through the spiky chives like she’s ruffling the fur of a wet pooch — the class pet, maybe, left out in the rain.

There’s slumping bok choy at the rear, and straight-backed dinosaur kale, riddled with acne-like pustules, at the front, the class know-it-all with its hand-like leaves raised high. All this classroom really needs is a bell.

This is a strange sort of school, though, because everyone is in bed. The majority of the crops call home a wooden, rectangular enclosure, a “bed,” raised about six inches off the ground, filled with soil and seed. These raised beds, 72 in total, along with over 50 barrel planters, allow the farm to exist in what was formerly an infertile gravel lot — it’s called an “urban farm,” Almquist shouts over the wind, because it was created from scratch in an area not conducive to planting things.

If you wanted to grow bok choy in the middle of Times Square, this is how you would do it.

Almquist, with hair so rhubarb-red it just might sprout if you planted a strand, knows the West Campus Urban Farm from fence to fence. The farm is small, one fourth the size of the Yale Farm on Edwards St., but getting to know it is still a feat — not so much for Almquist, though, who before starting at the Yale School of Nursing won a fellowship to harvest food in Vermont. When manager Justin Freitag founded the farm in Spring 2013, in partnership with the West Campus administration and Yale Sustainable Food Project, Almquist returned to her roots and became a volunteer. Now she’s the

student farm manager, helping volunteers when she’s not planting herself. Over the season, she’s found good company in the folks on West Campus who like to plant things during their spare time.

But, for a growing community of researchers, professors and graduate students, farm time is class time, not recess.

Freiberg calls the West Campus Urban Farm a “layered learning environment.” It’s not just a communal space, but also an extension of the West Campus classroom, where students and researchers can engage firsthand with the concepts they’re studying and collaborate on new projects. The parallel on Yale’s main campus is the Yale Farm, a plot off Prospect St. where Yale undergrads tend soil of their own.

This Farm and the Yale Farm are not in opposition, Freitag says, but complementary, each providing space for a different type of learning. At West Campus this means the Farm doubles as a laboratory. Although it has yet to reach its first birthday, a lot of research unique to the space has been done — and a lot of learning is to come.

“Working at the farm has the potential to get people to think very differently about what

they’re studying,” Freiberg says.

“Of course it’s gratifying to get your hands in the dirt. But it’s also a chance to bring research ideas into a totally different context.” *** One of the projects Freiberg is most excited about is only just starting to sprout. Cecilia Jevitt, a longtime gardener and professor of nursing and midwifery at the Yale School of Nursing (YSN), has started to hold her classes among the crops.

Jevitt is new to Yale, and she came to YSN at the right time: This October, the School moved from a dark, landlocked building at the edge of campus to a newly renovated space at 400 West Campus Dr. She found Freiberg and the Farm, and a light bulb went off.

The ancient practice of midwifery has come a long way since its shout-out in the Old Testament. Today, most students, like those at the Yale School of Nursing, train to be nurse-midwives: nurses who specialize in providing family-centered primary health care to women, particularly mothers and mothers-tobe.

Much of nursing and midwifery requires an understanding of nutrition. The YSN, according to Jevitt, has the only midwifery program in the country with a farm that’s just a few blocks away. Prior to Yale, Jevitt was teaching the subject straight out of a textbook, she says, but she has turned the Farm into a learning adjunct where her students can make connections between the crops before them and the hard facts they learn in lecture.

“Imagine 16 students sitting around on picnic tables out in the fresh farm air learning, instead of sitting in class looking at a Power Point,” she says. “Getting to hold and see what they grow — it’s a more complete education than most midwives receive.”

On a recent October afternoon at the Farm, she taught a lesson on fiber and glycemic indices, using real vegetables. Americans in general, she feels, have become disconnected from food production and growth cycles.

In her classes on nutritional science, held at the Farm, she plans to demonstrate for her students what she learned growing up.

Watching her father tend his own vegetables in the heart of Chicago she realized that when you learn about food, you learn about life.

She won’t just use the Farm for growing food, but herbs, too. As part of the “core competency” requirements, each prospective nurse receives some training in complementary therapies — the use of certain non-drug-based therapies, like massages, as an adjunct to standard medications. Herbs are a notable example of complementary therapies, and Jevitt will have her students grow lavender, garlic and other crops at the Farm that have been effective in relieving birthing pain and stress.

Although they might give what they grow to patients, that’s not the idea. For Jevitt, the Farm’s real value lies in the process of growing itself. She says the nurses at Yale who use the Farm

to

grow their own food are gaining an enriched understanding of what they’re studying in school.

T h a t u n d e r standing, she adds, will make for better nurses who can more efficiently impart what they have learned to their patients.

“Just holding and seeing [vegetables] can facilitate the learning process,” she says. “[Now] they’ll look at an

// ANNELISA LEINBACH

S AT U R D AY NOVEMBER 16

orange carrot and say ‘beta carotene.’ They can pull it out of the ground, wrench it off and eat it.

Few people have that opportunity.” *** Jevitt and her students will be in good scholarly company soon. Interdisciplinary learning and collaboration are pervasive throughout the academic environments on West Campus, and scientists from numerous fields of study — the Center for Molecular Discovery, the Nanobiology Institute, and the Center for Genome Analysis, to name a few – are eager to see how they can connect their projects to the Farm.

THIS FARM AND THE YALE FARM ARE NOT IN OPPOSITION ... BUT COMPLEMENTARY. Freiberg says that undergraduates, too, have discovered the space. In the coming weeks, the members of the Yale Bee Space will bring beehives to the Farm to expand their studies of hive technology and bee behavior.

He hopes that he’ll soon be able to pilot a nutrition science program for grade school students, who will take trips to the farm to study the flora firsthand.

With the help of West Campus administrators, he says, the farm has become “a huge collaboration” between the students, faculty and staff on the campus who are using it as a laboratory — a collaboration he hopes will ripen in the seasons ahead.

In the meantime, volunteers are doing much of the learning.

On volunteer days, which Freiberg announces via his weekly email newsletter, the farm manager, often Corinne, guides the volunteers through a number of different tasks, teaching them the techniques necessary to maintain an urban farm of this size. Because large machines like those on the Yale Farm don’t fit in the Farm’s small space, the volunteers use hand-scale tools, which are easier to hold and use.

When they come, they can jump right in, Freiberg says. No matter someone’s level of expertise with farming, they can feel like they’ve contributed.

“As more and more people grow up away from farms, farms are increasingly out of their comfort zones,” Freiberg says. “Here, we’re doing it on an approachable scale, with people who are willing to work with you. You’re not just sticking a seed in the ground, you’re learning the facts.”

Right now, Freiberg and the volunteers are focused on their winter crops. Before the seeding could begin, however, there was grunt work to be done: The more vulnerable crops need to be covered by “low tunnels” — clear, ribbed plastic domes that extend over the beds like astronauts’ visors. Freiberg asked his volunteers for help in that week’s community newsletter, anticipating that a handful would reply. Instead, attendance spiked; in two weeks, the tunnels were finished. Like Almquist, many of the volunteers intend to

THE NEW HAVEN GHOST WALK

Contact JENNIFER GERSTEN at jennifer.gersten@yale.edu .

WEEKEND RECOMMENDS:

Meet at 1070 Chapel // 7:30 p.m.

Because this is a thing that happens.

keep showing up throughout the colder months, both to grow and to harvest.

Some of what’s growing at the farm is the result of crowdsourcing, he says, but it’s up to the climate to decide what stays and what goes. This week, he invited the panlist to “share in the harvest of some Sylvetta arugula, salad greens, Swiss chard, sweet salad turnips, and winter parsley and surprisingly hardy cilantro.” He’s not sure if the cilantro’s going to survive the winter chill, but so far he says it’s looking pretty good. The volunteers will find out when he does if it’s going to keep.

Growing cilantro in this weather is an experiment, and there are more experiments on the way. “People are coming here with an open mind and an open mouth,” Freiberg says. He adds that more changes and innovations will come as people continue to use the Farm for research and as part of further partnerships.

But change has already begun to take place in the minds of the volunteers. The Farm may be small, but it’s home to remarkable diversity: 40 species are currently poking their heads out of the soil. They’re an example, Freiberg says, of the incredible biodiversity on the earth at large that volunteers at the Farm have the opportunity to realize – together.

“We’re bringing people here, and they’re inevitably connected to each other,” Freiberg says. “Everybody has some common ground, literally, and they’re starting to dig further into answering some of the big questions.” *** On her first day at the farm, eighth grader Sarah Viele says she has some of those questions answered already. She’s crouched beside the Chinese cabbage, parting the stalks in search of unwanted weeds; Her mother, bobbing like a buoy among waves of kale, keeps watch nearby.

Straightening, Sarah fills me in on her plans. They include studying agriscience, going to culinary school and opening a business that delivers nutritious, pre-prepared meals to the elderly. She’s worked on a farm before, and she hopes to show people that farming “is really not that hard.”

“Why am I doing this? Because it’s healthier,” she declares. “If you expect to live for a hundred years eating processed foods, you’re just not going to live for a hundred years. People need to eat healthy, and know where their food comes from.” And, she adds, spending time with Mom is not too bad.

Sarah seems eager to finish talking to me. As I tuck my notebook away and turn to leave, I see her valiantly hoisting a watering can above the tall leaves of dinosaur kale with both hands; in her unsteady grip, the can rocks back and forth like a little planet knocked off its axis. It’s probably too heavy for her, but she seems to have it under control. At the West Campus Urban Farm, there’s work to be done, and someone — many someones — to do it.

“The Holiday”

The increasingly cold days are rough, but Jude Law will leave you feeling hopeful.

PAGE B10

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 15, 2013 · yaledailynews.com

WEEKEND COLUMNS

SPORTS MOVIES THAT PUT POINTS ON THE BOARD // BY MICHAEL LOMAX

With The Game just around the corner, Yale football faces an all-toofamiliar problem: We’ve won just once in the last twelve years, and that was in 2006 — when I was a freshman in high school. But if popular Hollywood has taught us anything, it’s that, on any given day, anyone anywhere is capable of pulling out a win.

Comebacks, upsets, victories, glory — these are the tropes upon which America’s greatest sports films are based, and in a way, these are the very elements of life that we should hopefully espouse. We want to succeed; we want to overcome; we want to win.

With the right amount of skill, will and determination, we can turn those desires into realities.

That’s the thing about sports movies: If you’ve seen one, you’ve about seen them all. This doesn’t mean we enjoy underdog stories any less. I’m just saying there’s a general predictability hovering over the whole concept, though that predictability is probably necessary, to be fair. After all, a film chronicling Michael Jordan’s one-man massacre of the NBA during the 1995-’96 season probably wouldn’t produce any feel-good message. And neither would any movie covering the abysmally bad 0-16 Detroit Lions or the 9-73 Philadelphia 76ers.

The ultimate inspirational heartwarmer comes when an unproven team defies its doubters and wins the big game. Just see “Hoosiers,” “Major League,” “Miracle” (C’mon, it’s in the

MICHAEL LOMAX CINEMA TO THE MAX damn name!), or even “Rudy,” if you don’t believe me. They all follow this trajectory while representing the four major American sports: basketball, baseball, hockey and football, respectively. (I’m not including the embarrassment that is MLS.) But after a while, you have to inject some new elements to continue making compelling sports films.

Racial prejudice usually does the trick.

“Brian’s Song” is a good, and early, film that looks at the color divide in post-Civil Rights American sports.

“Glory Road” is a more popular and recent take on the issue in the world of college basketball. But “Remember the Titans” is most people’s favorite, if only for Ryan Gosling’s awkward postMickey Mouse Club/pre-”Notebook” performance and Denzel Washington’s general gravitas.

Another good recipe is to depict a sport that nobody really follows, as in “Chariots of Fire” (track) or “Breaking Away” (cycling), even if the general effect is the same. And of course, kids movies are always great. “The Sandlot,” “The Bad News Bears” (not the remake), and every other Disney Channel Original Movie are all just as

good, maybe more so because the presence of little children makes the message all the more endearing. (“Brink” was directly responsible for most of my Rollerblading-related accidents as a child.)

But the best sports movies seem to be the ones that don’t necessarily end in a victory on the scoreboard. “The Replacements” is a tremendously underrated Keanu Reeves movie in which everyone gets fired at the end.

“The Longest Yard” is set entirely in prison. “Raging Bull” is a terribly depressing film about the repeated pitfalls of an extremely talented boxer.

These are definitely not feel-good movies, but they are still very good.

Sports movies are never supposed to bore us. We usually watch them because we love sports, or at least the potential for human drama that comes out through them. And when the elements come together in just the right way, whether or not our protagonists walk away with the W, we are sometimes left breathless. If you need proof, check out “Rocky.”

The drama, the tension and the story need to be there, and if they are, you’ve got something amazing on your hands. That’s what makes sports movies great, and that’s why we all keep turning out for them, time after time.

They teach us, above everything else, that there’s always hope.

Even for Yale football.

Contact MICHAEL LOMAX at michael.lomax@yale.edu .

A Different Kind of Face Time // BY REBECCA LEVINKSY

Dear Rebecca, Help! I’m addicted to my phone!

Can you help me detach from my devices?

Sincerely, Plugged-In Paul *** Dear Plugged-In, I’m so glad you asked me about this.

Your question is particularly timely, because we all know that next weekend at The Game no one’s phone will get reception in the tailgate area. So let me help you prepare yourself for a phoneless Saturday next week. And, if it goes well, I highly recommend that you make time away from your phone part of your routine.

What would it be like to go without technology one day a week? Well, I can’t exactly answer that for you, but I can share my experiences.

For the past three years, I have spent at least 25 hours a week unplugged — and when I say “unplug,” I mean from everything. Before sundown on Friday, I turn all my lights off and hide my computer, phone and iPad in my desk drawer. I do all this so that I can observe Shabbat, but also because I need a break from obsessively checking my phone. So if you think that keeping Shabbat might make going technology-free easy for you, you might want to go talk to your Rabbi. You’ll get the same results.

So, why should you go technologyfree?

It can feel liberating, like how traveling used to feel before every cafe and hotel had free Wi-Fi. Or it can be terrifying, like that one time during Shabbat when I returned home at 3 a.m. and realized that I was locked out of my room with no way to call Yale Security, or that other time (on a Monday) when I lost all my friends and my phone died right before Macklemore went on at Spring Fling.

I can guarantee that any crisis you can think of has happened to me when I had no phone. And I’ve survived. So the question is, how can you? And why should you?

S U N D AY NOVEMBER 17

REBECCA LEVINSKY ASK REBECCA The thing about going technologyfree is that you only need to go as far as you’re comfortable. You don’t want to be more stressed out because you don’t have your phone. And in order not to think about that stress, try to be more in the moment. Connect with those who matter to you in person and not just through a screen.

Don’t leave your phone at home and go out with a new group of friends who won’t keep an eye on you in your handicapped state. If you plan on having a particularly fun night out without your phone, I recommend bringing along a slip of paper with contact info for an emergency contact who is not your mom. I’ve only done this a couple times, but that security blanket was a great comfort. (Thanks for that one time, Sarah.)

Prepare for your unplug in advance.

Pretend it’s 1998, and make plans with friends ahead of time. Remind them you won’t have a phone, but embrace the fact that one of you will likely be early or late, causing the other to panic and worry that your plans have fallen through. But this is part of the fun.

When you both show up because you trust each other to follow through, it is the best thing ever. And since you’re the only one going technology-free, you’ll even get to feel superior when your friends check their phones while you’re together.

But if that feels isolating, remember that you’re not alone. We all know people without Facebook and even some without smartphones. Somehow, they exist, even at Yale, where days are measured by emails, iMessages and Facebook likes sent and received. I would even venture to say that people who are less plugged-

in are often happier. They might be a little out of touch, but they are that way by choice, which means that they don’t dwell on what they’re missing.

Even if you’re not yet convinced, I really think you should experiment with time away from your phone. It doesn’t have to be a Saturday, but choose one day of the week that works for you. A friend of mine is planning on starting to observe “Wireless Wednesdays” so that he can take advantage of his class-free afternoon and buckle down in the library. I don’t know if this will last for the whole day; I bet he’ll turn his phone on in time for Woads. And that’s okay. He doesn’t have to align himself with some rabbinic mandate, but for those few hours he’ll experience a freedom similar to the kind that makes Shabbat so meaningful to me.

Oh, and prepare for the excitement of turning your phone back on. Be prepared for some confused friends and, hopefully, many snapchats and texts.

But stick with it, even if these texts remind you of all the fun you missed while your phone was off. If you’re lucky, you’ll eventually reach the point I’m at, when you have very few texts once you turn your phone back on because everyone knows. I think this means my friends know I’m better than them because I don’t need technology. But they probably just didn’t want to talk anyway.

Sincerely, Rebecca Unplugged Contact REBECCA LEVINSKY at rebecca.levinsky@yale.edu .

Have more questions?

Email WKNDadvice@ gmail.com or submit them anonymously on the Yale Daily News website.

//

Sympathy for the Devil // BY SOPHIA NGUYEN AND GRAYSON CLARY

GC: It’s hard to do TV horror; maybe there’s something about its rhythms of terror and catharsis that doesn’t mesh with hourlong serialized programming.

The most well-known examples are long gone but enduringly buzzy, and even these can be tough going. When my sister and I tried to dive into the iconic and fetishistic “Twin Peaks,” the first pair of episodes was so emotionally exhausting that it turned back our best faith efforts.

Should’ve checked it out on Hulu before getting her the DVDs for Christmas.

Shouldn’t have watched it at night.

Still, this last year saw the genesis of two striking and notably well-received entries in the genre: “Hannibal” and “Sleepy Hollow.” They’re not alone on the scene, with “American Horror Story” and “The Walking Dead” — the first fairly successful and the second triumphantly so — standing ready to welcome new company. I’m not going to dwell on those, partly on the grounds that I don’t watch them and partly on the grounds that they air on FX and AMC, respectively. Cable doesn’t count. One additional elision: Tumblr spills enough ink on “Supernatural,” and the show doesn’t need any more attention here.

Without caveating too extensively the narrative and aesthetic gulfs that separate “Hannibal” and “Sleepy Hollow,” I think they speak to some neat emergent properties of successful network horror. One element is the near fan-fictional spirit of adaptation that gives these shows so much of their energy; another is the triumph of design. The loving abuse of recognizable cultural artifacts overlaps nicely with the cycle of anticipation and subversion that horror requires (well, all narrative requires it, but horror more intensively so.) This dynamic is a clever way of effecting continuity between the uncanny and the unremarkable, the insinuation of dread into the familiar. “Hannibal” is more successful on this front (it’s easy not to notice that Mads Mikkelsen’s homicidal habits aren’t confirmed until midseason) but the same energy is at work in “Sleepy Hollow.” Consider how it imagines a redcoat as a demon in last week’s episode.

SHOULD’VE CHECKED IT OUT ON HULU BEFORE GETTING HER THE DVDS FOR CHRISTMAS. SHOULDN’T HAVE WATCHED IT AT NIGHT. SN: You hit upon a shared quality of “Hannibal” and “Sleepy Hollow” that’s worth underscoring: They were both notably well received. That is, no one anticipated their success. “Hannibal,” at least, could have been conceived of as a network remix of Showtime’s “Dexter.” The premise, which comes out of an already familiar franchise, isn’t difficult to process. (It also helps that it was originally written as a 13-episode midseason replacement, the novella of the televsion medium.) At face value, “Sleepy Hollow” is a mess: Its convoluted plot involves a time-traveling Revolutionary War soldier, the spirit of his witch wife, a police detective haunted by her past and her evil twin sister — that’s just for starters.

Throw in an undead colleague, the Free

16TH ANNUAL PALEO-KNOWLEDGE BOWL

S. NGUYEN AND G. CLARY SPLIT SCREEN Masons and pacts with the devil, and what you have is tonal confusion, to say the least. Commentators have noticed that “Sleepy Hollow” was written by a relative newcomer to the business, and it shows.

Yet “Sleepy Hollow” is undeniably descended from that totemic classic, “The X-Files,” which ran for nine seasons and nearly a decade, despite — and perhaps because of its devil-may-care attitude towards coherence. Ichabod Crane and Lieutenant Abbie Mills are the next coming of Mulder and Scully. “Sleepy Hollow” and “The X-Files” share a similar sensibility: a totally endearing combination of goofiness and absolute commitment to their premises. No winking allowed. What results is an hour of television filled with genuine laughs and genuine scares. To me, the weirdest thing about “Sleepy Hollow” is that it seems to belong to a gentler age of television, when networks gave seemingly misbegotten genre dramas time to grow.

GC: Part of the lesson here might be the unsung valor and experimental spirit of the midseason replacement and the limited order. In my ongoing effort to revive interest in NBC’s short-lived “The Cape,” I’ll note that “Hannibal” emerged out of the same space as that show and the same space as the likewise ill-fated “Awake” (NB: the Cape’s nemesis, Chess, also guest starred recently on “Sleepy Hollow.” Suggestive, no?)

These were hugely daring shows, mostly in style, though in the case of “Awake” also in narrative. And they came out of the same network that’s constantly pilloried for stifling creativity in its comedies (even as it keeps alive the only comedies critics seem to enjoy watching).

Yes, “The Cape” and “Awake” were cancelled; of course they would get cancelled. Both were profoundly flawed. We ought to emphasize the fact that these novelties saw the light of day at all, and I’m happy to hang my hat on the possibly silly suggestion that they cleared the way for “Hannibal” and “Sleepy Hollow.”

SN: A mystery goes along with that lesson. It’s one for the insiders to illuminate or for the cultural historians to figure out years down the line: how these shows came to look so damn good, given their limitations. In “Hannibal’s” case, our shock at the gore — you can show bodies this way on network TV? — is part and parcel of our enjoyment of its glossy production design. For “Sleepy Hollow,” the beauty lies in each episode’s Big Bad, the imagined monsters that would make Guillermo del Toro jealous. The horror of these moments is inextricable from their weird and utterly unexpected beauty. I don’t know whether these shows have a lot more funding than we realize or whether nowadays they can do more with less, but the result is gorgeous, and terrifying. Their success goes against the conventional wisdom that network TV lacks the practical and imaginative resources to surprise us the way that cable can.

Contact SOPHIA NGUYEN and GRAYSON CLARY at sophia.nguyen@yale.edu and grayson.clary@yale.edu .

WEEKEND RECOMMENDS:

The Peabody Museum // 2:30 p.m.

Elementary school students “work in teams to answer some very difficult questions about paleontology, especially dinosaurs.”

JASON LIU

Dido

The queen of Carthage or the singer — both are appreciated.

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 15, 2013 · yaledailynews.com

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WEEKEND THEATER

‘ORDINARY’ BEAUTY // BY STEPHANIE ADDENBROOKE

“Crave”-ing Understanding // BY EMMA PLATOFF

In the words of A, “I keep trying to understand but I don’t.”

Sarah Kane’s “Crave” is truly mysterious. The script itself includes only four characters of unspecified genders, identified only by initials — A, B, C and M — and this difficult casting is just the tip of the play’s idiosyncratic iceberg. Essentially plotless, Kane’s play requires a talented cast and production team if it is to make any sense at all.

Kane gives no stage directions beyond occasional interrupting lines of dialogue, and the vagueness of the piece itself makes the work of the director, Hansol Jung, even more impressive. In Jung’s interpretation, the character of M is a tortured writer struggling to create, and A, B and C, clad in white, are the voices in her head. They begin offstage in their respective areas — B on one side of the room, hidden behind a black curtain; A far down the same wall, behind a paper screen; and C, occasionally emerging from a large trashcan à la Oscar the Grouch — and slowly emerge into the scene. Their developing physical presence echoes their growing prevalence in the writer’s head. At first, their recorded voices are only heard projected over a speaker, but ultimately, as the actors themselves come into the scene, their characters become realer to M, and begin to physically interact with her and each other. By the play’s end, their physical presence is as real as M’s is — they engage in hairpulling, paper-throwing and even an onstage kiss.

As is true in any cabaret, the audience is ever present in this action. When I was shown to my seat, the usher warned me to keep my legs out of the aisle, but

S U N D AY NOVEMBER 17

despite my attempts at noninterference, about halfway through the production, character C clung to my arm as she moaned, “No one can hate me more than I hate myself.” In a similar instance, everyone roared with laughter as character A directed his line, “There’re worse things than being fat and 50” to a balding member of the audience.

Throughout the production, the juxtaposition of well-dressed adults dining on lamb tagine and tortured drama students — who yelled out lines like “Rape me,” and “Satan, my lord, I am yours” — added even more to the metaliterary elements of the production.

Beyond just its venue, the show’s staging is impressive.

When characters begin to discuss maggots, for example, images of crawling white larvae are projected on the walls. When character C declares, “No records,” M begins to feed pages through shredders, and the resulting confetti is dropped on audience members at three separate locations in the theater. M throws a paper airplane as she discusses a vision she has had of an inevitable plane crash. An alarm sound blares periodically. With these technological and creative staging instructions, Jung uses Kane’s lack of specific instructions to her advantage.

The four actors — Helen Jaksch DRA ’15 (M), Taylor Barfield ’16 (A), David Clauson ’16 (B) and Ashley Chang ’16 (C) — also impressed in their challenging roles. The sole four cast members were fully dedicated to their respective identities, and took often outlandish actions in order to fulfill their director’s vision.

At one point, Chang takes a nap-

There is risk in attempting to put everyday life on the stage. Make it too realistic, and quite frankly, there’d be nothing to watch. Take one step too far, and you’ve transported your audience into another mindset. Lily Shoretz ’16, in her direction of “Ordinary Days,” somehow gets the balance just right.

It’s life, but with all the charm of a New York fairy tale.

“Ordinary Days,” a one-act play by Adam Gwon, is almost entirely sung.

The inspiring lyrics and multifarious melodies are juxtaposed with day-today routine, making the mundane seem rather exceptional. Each of the four characters is easy to connect with — no one character dominates, nor does one slip into the background. For 90 minutes, these are the only four people worth noting in the city of New York.

The honesty of the story is reflected in its minimalistic set, placing focus on the characters and their relationships with each other, as opposed to the city. The empty frames present a striking symbolism, echoing the idea of a life waiting to be filled. The characters, who cross paths at the The Metropolitan Museum of Art, yearn for the freedom that art represents. Despite the Nick Chapel Theater’s small size, the production manages to capture the ample diversity of New York’s urban geography.

Skyler Ross ’16, also the producer of the show, plays Warren — a fresh-faced character who captivates the audience with his optimistic naiveté and charming awkwardness. Ross plays him with such sensitivity and honesty that his sheer presence on stage will warm your heart. Ari Fernandez ’15 plays Warren’s stark opposite: Deb, a cynical grad student. It is clear that she has been disappointed by the bright lights of the big city, and the narrative arc of her character shows the harsh reality that life isn’t always what we want it to be postgraduation. Yet, Fernandez’s humorous portrayal ensures that the audience does not linger on her scornfulness.

Her sarcasm is perfectly timed to make Deb funny, and the ease with which she sings her quick lines is particularly impressive. Deb and Warren’s chance encounter forms the story of an unlikely pair who transforms each other’s perspectives for the better. It’s a cliché, but it doesn’t make you cringe — you learn to believe again in the power of friendship, however unlikely the cause may be.

But “Ordinary Days” is not solely the story of Warren and Deb. In an unrelated plane, Jason and Claire (Zach-

ary Elkind ’17 and Zina Ellis ’15) play a couple in midst of moving into a more mature stage in their relationship. This shift occurs with no small amount of awkwardness, as Jason and Claire grapple with their different approaches to the change. And, while I find it hard to believe that they are madly in love, maybe that it is the point. Their relationship is not a Hollywood romance that we would fervently idolize. It is practical, tender and considerate.

Elkind, like much of the cast, comes into his stride in the second half of the play, when Jason’s songs turn to emotive ballads. His rendition of “Hundred Story City” demonstrates his ability to portray intricate and subtle emotions in a way that is truly moving, as opposed to exaggerated. And while each of the cast put on incredible performances, Ellis steals the show with “I’ll Be Here.”

While she is flawless throughout, this song elevates her performance to an entirely different level of professionalism. I was at a loss for words and full of awe as she reached her final note, crooning, “but I’m ready to start.” I barely noticed that I was looking at her through tear-filled eyes.

Without a doubt though, the most powerful moments of the play occur when the paths of all four characters collide, if only for a second. The play’s visually enchanting climax shows that the acts of a stranger do have the power to inform your decisions and change the way you view things. It does not matter if you are in the largest city in the world, or if you are just four people — we are all somehow interconnected.

“Ordinary Days” encapsulates the endless possibilities of life without romanticizing the impossible dreams of our childhoods. The play teaches us to consider reality as an option, to hold on to our relationships and not lose sight of what makes life worth living. It conveys the tension between what we think we’re expected to do, and what our real desires are. “Ordinary Days” fills its audience with hope that there is beauty amid the concrete, and it challenges each of us to see life in its multicolored splendor. Hold out for the second half — the musical themes become less repetitive and the honest and inspiring characters will make you smile, in spite of your urge to cry. The songs may stick in your head for weeks, but the play’s insight into the ordinary will remain with you for much longer.

Contact STEPHANIE ADDENBROOKE at stephanie.addenbrooke@yale.edu .

// KAMARIA GREENFIELD

Face to face with conceptual theater. kin off an audience member’s table to mime wiping her bowels. Clauson slowly emerges from a paper screen as if from a womb. And Barfield, even in his extended monologues, managed to keep the audience engaged and amused.

Despite the dedication and talent of the cast and crew, “Crave”, at least to me, remains incomprehensible. Kane expects a lot from her audience, inserting occasional phrases in Spanish, Serbo-Croatian and German, and multiple allusions to T.S. Eliot, Shakespeare, the Bible and Camus. Though it touches on many rousing topics — rape, incest, suicide, adultery — these never rise to the level of themes, and so “Crave” ultimately feels aimless. The work is at times funny and at times poignant, but often random — as in the moment when all four characters inexplicably recite a series of nine digits. It often feels like the characters, instead of interacting with each other, are having conversations with themselves or perhaps unseen companions. One section consists only of seemingly patternless exclamations of “Yes” and “No,” ultimately evolving into what Kane describes in the script as “short one syllable screams.” But hey — as M, a writer herself, informs the audience, “If this makes no sense then you understand perfectly.”

Contact EMMA PLATOFF at emma.platoff@yale.edu . // WA LIU

RITENOW

WEEKEND RECOMMENDS:

Woolsey Hall // 8:00 p.m.

The “Rite of Spring” premiered 100 years ago. RiteNow WEEKEND wants to celebrate.

Tomfoolery

Shenanigans, high-jinks, hoopla, and lunacy are also acceptable.

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YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 15, 2013 · yaledailynews.com

WEEKEND BACKSTAGE

KATE MANNING’S NOTORIOUS LIFE // BY SARA JONES

“

IT’S SELF-DISCIPLINE PUNCTUATED BY BURSTS OF INSPIRATION – USUALLY 2 IN THE MORNING.

Q. What inspired you to make the switch from documentary television to writing books?

A. I always wanted to write novels, but I had to make a living. Television was great training. You have to hold your viewer’s interest, because if they change the channel your work isn’t going to be seen.

You learn to tell the story. You learn that not blathering on is important. I really learned how to hang fiction on the bones of fact, and I think a lot of my fiction still has this “ripped from the headlines” quality.

Q. Were you an English major?

A. I was. I transferred here [to Yale] actually, my junior year, from Middlebury College. I studied with some really fabulous teachers — Tisch, Ted Tally, a bunch of others.

Q. You mentioned a fascination with the richness of the English language. Do you have a favorite word?

A. I have lists of words, notebooks full of words. Toad-stabber, costermonger … old-fashioned words. We know what they mean but we don’t hear them. You don’t want to overuse them, though. You’ll anger your reader and make them want to throw the book across the room.

Q. Literary idols? Favorite works?

A. So many. I usually have one, two, three books near me when I’m writing. For this book [My Notorious Life], a lot of Irish writers — Edna O’Brien, Sebastian Barry.

Peter Carey’s “True History of the Kelly Gang” — the narrator has a really strong voice. Roddy Doyle’s “The Woman Who Walked into Doors.” I think there’s something about Irish mothers, and the way they just impart this incredibly lyrical voice.

Q. You’ve taught creative writing. What’s one thing you always tell your students?

A. People always ask if you can teach writing. You can teach some things about it, but a lot of it is hard work — editing, changing, fixing. And read like a writer.

It’s not like reading for information, or to

“

I

n a room populated by plush velvet armchairs and aspiring literati of all ages, Kate Manning YC ’79 spoke about novel writing, the inspiration behind her most recent book My Notorious Life (released this year) and her love of the English language. With platinum blonde hair and a ready smile, Manning isn’t exactly the poster child for brooding historical fiction. But with a passion for nineteenth-century slang and a penchant for off-thecuff aphorisms about writing, the novelist and former documentary television producer certainly knows her stuff. She does a killer Irish accent, too—during her talk at the Rose Alumni House, she read the first chapter of My Notorious Life in the voice she described “hearing in her head” as she was writing the book, a lyrical mix of imported brogue and domestic Manhattan dialect. After the talk, WEEKEND sat down to get the scoop on career changes, favorite words and writing nineteenth-century tales with twenty-first century relevance.

study for an exam. If you are reading like a writer, you’re reading to figure out, “How does she do that?” You can read for pleasure, but read [a sentence] again and say, “Why did I like that? How is he making me feel this? How is this writer accomplishing this?” Learn from the writers that you love and then write like yourself.

Q. Could you describe your writing process?

A. Sit down. As soon as my kids go out the door, I sit down and work. I treat it like a job. Some days are very good; some days are very bad. Sometimes you feel like you’re just smearing the paint around, like you’ve just absolutely ruined it. It’s self-discipline punctuated by bursts of inspiration — usually at 2 in the morning.

Q. What’s your next project?

A. I feel like I was just your age. I don’t feel middle-aged, even though I’ve been called mom forever and ever. I have a lot of things I still want to do … but I feel like I can’t talk about it now. If I talk about it I won’t have a need to write it … I can’t talk about it until it’s cooked. It’s kind of like being six weeks pregnant — you don’t want to tell anybody in case you have a miscarriage. Also, I think it sounds kind of lame if you try to condense into a few sentences a story that takes several hundred pages to tell. I’m trying not to be lame.

Q. Any advice for aspiring writers?

A. Write like yourself, and write all the time. Find a reader — someone who knows about writing and will help you edit and learn. Beyond that, have lots of experiences, find stuff out, travel around, open your eyes. Just stick with it. And if you can do something else — do that. And if you can’t do something else … then you’re a writer (and God help you). I think that I always wanted to write a novel. But no one is asking you to write, to paint — you’re doing it because you have to. The trick is to find the self-discipline to do it, to take yourself seriously enough to do it.

Sometimes you write fiction to figure out what’s going on.

Contact SARA JONES at sara.jones@yale.edu .