Freaks of the Beat (Jeff Hammond/DP)

I ate fried Oreo cookies for the first, and most likely the last, time. I saw the Mask & Wig club in the flesh (literally). I stroked a camel, sat on a pony and held a lamb — in a frat house. I ate lots of hotdogs. I watched lesbians lip-sync the Backstreet Boys. I forgot about my econ project and the four finals lingering on the horizon. I had bubble-tea. I saw the Penn Softball team beat Cornell for the first time in, well, a long time.

Life was good. The clouds were overhead but no water fell from the sky. I flung from Thursday through Sunday. But now the heavens have opened and it seems a week’s worth of pent up precipitation is being plunged upon us by a vengeful god, cleansing us of our fling sins. My econ project is still due and now way behind schedule and my head aches with the blurred memories of my one and only Fling. Life ain’t so good no more.

I don’t know what I expected. I met and bettered my fling dreams. I was given a license to fling, — I took full advantage. Beer and burgers? Yes please and double helpings of everything. The event was well organized, the live acts were pretty good for the most part (and if they weren’t then at least they were naked), and the fried Oreos actually tasted pretty good (although $5 for a heart attack seems a little pricey.)

It seems the Penn campus awoke en masse this morning satisfied, dehydrated and reaching for the aspirin. So I guess congratulations are in order to the guys and gals over at SPEC.

But now I have my econ to get back to, and the weather outside is a pretty accurate reflection of my mood. This is our collective comedown, as we say goodbye to Fling and hello to finals.

It was the best of times. It is the worst of times.

Where’s my stapler?

Oh well, I’m just gonna hate my job for two years,” one of my friends said a few days ago.

For many graduating seniors, this Fling weekend won’t be entirely festive–it will be bittersweet (and no, I’m not talking about that gin and tonic you’re sipping as you read this). Sure, many alumni return for the weekend’s celebrations, but it’s just not the same.

“This transition may be even more radical than senior in high school to freshman in college,” said Peggy Curchack, senior associate director of career services.

These are the future consultants, paralegals, editorial assistants and research assistants of America — the students who are uncertain what they ultimately want to do with their lives. They take on temporary positions and enter the work force with the glum realization that their day-to-day routine will be nothing but dreary and tedious.

One moment, “you’re at the top of your game,” but following graduation, “you’re treated as if none of that mattered,” Curchack said. “They don’t know you — you are newcomers in that environment.”

Students have invested so much time and energy in their educations, everything learned at shouldn’t Penn go to waste upon graduation. Penn students want to cultivate their hard-earned skills — not squander them.

So many entry-level positions entail only mindless duties, with yearly salaries of little more than $30K, a barely livable sum in any decent-sized city. For the next year or two, my friend’s duties will likely include a pretty intimate relationship with a copy machine. I don’t think you need a degree from the University of Pennsylvania to collate pages and load toner. In fact, looking at the ultra-reliability of these machines, the average auto-mechanic would probably be better-suited for such a job than a Penn History major.

Yet do not despair. “The dues-paying isn’t equal across all industries and some make efforts to use young talent productively and others may be somewhat less generous in offering exciting opportunities at the beginning,” Curchack said.

Peggy’s advice for moving past the copy machine — take the “same kind of initiative you took at Penn,” and “go out of your way to be part of the organization.”

“Do your homework before accepting a job so you find an opportunity that’s the most interesting,” Curchack said. “Be as active as you can to make yourself valuable.”

So everyone who’s worrying about the new year to come, take a moment to breathe. And for now, let’s have a fun senior Fling weekend and enjoy our chances to ignore the real world just one last time.

Where all the cool (read: Drexel) kids go (Toby Hicks/DP)

It’s gonna be bigger than Live Aid. Al Gore just announced that this summer, there will be seven simultaneous “Live Earth” concerts around the globe raising awareness about climate change.

The lineup for the London show is star-studded: Beastie Boys, Madonna and Penn’s own John Legend. But more important, Paolo Nutini will be on stage as well. The Scottish rocker is exploding, and his Live Earth performance will undoubtedly secure his stardom.

Just two months ago, he was here, at Penn. Well, not exactly here, but just off campus, at World Cafe Live.

The concert venue/restaurant/radio station is already one of the most popular places for college students in Philadelphia to see shows and hang out. Kids from St. Joseph’s drive in, and Temple students are regular visitors. Yet despite being only a few blocks from Penn’s doorstep, you won’t find many Penn students there.

The question is why.

World Cafe brings in amazing talent, on an amazingly regular basis. Edwin McCain will be playing there on Wednesday. Ozomatli will be visiting later this month. And one of America’s best rising acts, Josh Ritter, rocked the house earlier this semester.

And cost definitely isn’t the limiting factor. Tickets to Edwin McCain run only $20, and he’s one of the more expensive acts. More over, WCL offers “Free at Noon” concerts every Friday. Seriously, it’s completely free, and live broadcast on WXPN radio.

There may be no such thing as a free lunch at World Cafe (if a free concert isn’t good enough for you), but there is such thing as a free dinner. All during happy hour, World Cafe Live offers completely free appetizers, every weekday from 5:30 to 6:30. And not simply chips and dip. On my visit, they had samosas and spring rolls among the offerings.

Not to mention $2 Magic Hat. Magic Hat! For two freaking dollars!

So why isn’t it sticking with Penn students? Well, it may bring back bitter memories, for one. World Cafe Live was the site of one of the most infamous incidents involving Penn students and police in recent memory, back in 2005.

WCL is also located in a kind of no-man’s land, stuck in a former industrial wasteland far east of where most students live, but far west of the twinkling lights of Center City. However, that’s going to change — and soon. Penn now owns the Postal Lands, 20+ acres of real estate that surrounds World Cafe in three directions. As Penn develops the land, World Cafe Live will surely become much more ingrained in Penn’s psyche, according to WCL spokeswoman and Penn grad Laura Wilson.

Until then, Wilson and her colleagues are hoping “An increased awareness on-campus of all the shows we have here” will draw more Penn students in. But don’t think they’re desperate. Unlike WCL’s first few years, the venue is now thriving, without the help of vast numbers of Penn students.

And the blame falls squarely on students, who are missing out on free food and amazing music just beyond their doorstep. It’s time Quakers start taking advantage, because until they do, Drexel and St. Joe’s students will continue to enjoy what you’re missing.

Let the airplane soaaaaar!

Globalization is an oft scorned phenomenon. Claims abound that the ‘flattening’ of the world only benefits the rich, leaving the majority of the world, the average consumer, counting the costs. Recently though the EU has scored double points, placing the benefits of globalization not just in the pockets of European but also of Americans. It’s a lesson that the rest of the world, including Washington, could learn from.

I wrote a few weeks ago about new legislation being forced through by the EU to ‘open the skies’ for new competition in transatlantic travel. UK-US flight paths , formerly held exclusively by four airlines, but one of the most profitable routes in global air travel, the has recently been blown wide open. As a result air fares are set to plummet. Just today, RyanAir (which flies all across Europe for fares as low as €0.99) announced they aim to fly from London to Rhode Island, New York and Baltimore for as little as €7 ($14) . Get that? $14! Your flight to Europe could soon be cheaper than your cab ride to Philadelphia International! Suddenly the formerly mighty four aren’t sitting so comfortably. But this is great for us as consumers — this is globalization.

The EU has also been after the airwaves, by attacking European cell-phone networks for their outrageously high ‘roaming’ fees. A call to the UK from Spain could cost up to €1 ($2) a minute, while the charge to the network provider is negligible. Seeing this absurdity, the EU moved to enforce changes and yesterday voted overwhelmingly in favour of reduced costs, cutting charges by up to 80 percent and setting a cap on all European call costs. This is the way EU should work; this is the whole point of the ‘laissez-faire’ European Union. This is globalization doing its job.

The US and others around the world could and should learn from this. Washington shrugged off new opportunities by refusing to open up Dulles and Reagan National Airports to new European carriers, fearing the competition would damage domestic airlines but ignoring the huge benefits it would bring to US consumers. Soon though, because of this new agreement, Penn students will all have cheap and easy access to Europe. And British students (me) will be able to use their phones anywhere on the continent with little extra charge, another victory for globalization.

So here, today, I take my hat off to you, European Union. Because of you, I can get a job anywhere in Europe without any of the diplomatic hassles present elsewhere in the world. I can fly to France for next to nothing without worrying about visas or immigration checks, and I will soon be able to make cheap phone calls while there. Not to mention my €7 flights to New York.

On Monday, a man walked into a suburban Detroit office building and shot three people. The disgruntled former employee killed one of his targets. The media revealed that he has bi-polar disorder. The situation is a tragic case of innocent victims and people out of control.

The tragedy literally struck close to home — according to the href="http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/10/us/10revenge.html" target="_blank"> New York Times, the shooting occurred minutes from my house in suburban Detroit. But it didn’t really hit home until I received an e-mail from my mother. The shooter was a former teacher at my middle school.

I remember Mr. LaCalamita, even though I never had him as a teacher. He performed my middle school interview and taught the whole 6th grade class sex-ed.

In an e-mail sent out to the whole school, the school’s president, Father Leon Olszamowski, conveyed a deep sense of surprise and sorrow.

“Anthony LaCalamita was, as the media say, a very well-educated young man. He had studied for the priesthood, left the seminary, and was recently married when he came to us. He helped to establish our campus ministry program here . . . and taught religion and accounting classes. He also coached . . . football during his tenure at the school.”

A high school friend immediately started a facebook group, where people reminisced about Mr. LaCalamita and posted condolences for the victims.

Although I never had a strong connection with Mr. LaCalamita, it scares me to think of someone who once taught me sex-ed going on a murder rampage. It’s a small word, but I never thought I could have a connection with a murderer.

But I do have a connection. And I’m not sure how to react. The 6 degrees of separation are bound to feel a bit smaller every now and then. But now, at the intersection of the normal and the unthinkable, I can only stand, astounded.

I suffer from a bit of an inferiority complex.

No, not because I still haul around CDs for my tunes or because I hail from Maryland, the 9th smallest state. Its just that I feel like a rogue Biology major among my peers — a taboo amidst the sea Penn pre-meds. I’ll admit it — all the talk of the MCATs, mock interviews, and favored Kaplan instructors still intimidates me.

Last Saturday I had the fortune of kicking back at home, marveling at April snow, and watching hours of Law & Order while my fellow bio majors braved hours of a much less entertaining sort — they took the MCAT. The “holy grail” of the pre-med life, this was the test pre-meds had heard about years in advance, studied for months in advance, and panicked from days in advance. But alas, the path to becoming a Grey or McSteamy certainly isn’t the only one available to science types.

Medical school reigns in the hearts and dreams of a good chunk of Penn undergraduates–
29 percent of all graduate school-bound seniors attend medical school, tying only with law school in popularity. This 2006 Career Services Exit Survey also revealed that only 10 percent of graduates who pursued advanced degrees enrolled in natural science, math, and computer science programs, while 5 percent attended alternative medical/health programs.

Data from Career Services’ pre-medical survey shows that Biology majors comprised the largest proportion of budding doctors. 78 Biology majors applied to medical school in 2006. Across all majors in the College, 272 applied and 184 were admitted.

These are impressive figures- 272 reasons to make this Biology major feel as out of place as Don Imus, well, darn near everywhere. What’s a non pre-med to do, besides basking in the comparative sanity of not taking 5 hour full-length practice tests? The answer, according to Penn Biology Professor Dr. Greg Guild, is limitless.

“With science, you can be a lot more creative,” he said. Guild currently advises 40 majors, and having served at Penn for 27 years, he has accumulated many insights. “I remember one advisee, who after being accepted into medical school, realized it’s not what he wanted to do. He wanted to be an architect and declined the admission.”

Certainly, it is socially acceptable to hop on the pre-med train, but Guild points to the multitude of
alternative career options that interest many other students — graduate school, law school, a combination of both, or fields that even Kaplan can’t exploit.

When I look around, the one-up-manship of pre-lecture conversations and post-exam freak-outs creates a false illusion. Not all science grads should pursue the white coat, and, indeed this Leidy Lab devotee won’t be confined by my peers’ medical plans. That is, until ER’s sweeps return in May, and then all bets are off.

Beta Gamma Eta

It’s 3 pm on Friday afternoon. Modest Mouse blares from speakers out into the street and four guys are well into their first game of beer pong. It sounds like the typical routine of one of Penn’s many fraternities, but it’s actually how my housemates and I start off most weekends.

I didn’t expect to be a part of frat culture. Not at UCSB where I spent freshman year or at Penn when I transferred. So, even after moving into a house with seven of my best friends I didn’t foresee any changes in my general dismissal view of frat life.

Seven months later, after seeing an invitation to “The men of BGH” (an abbreviation for the Bright Green House where my friends and I live) atop an Alpha Phi Crush Party ad in the DP, it looks like I might have ended up a frat boy after all. More than a few observers have made the comparison to my house and a frat and now that we’re simply known by three letters they might be right.

After all we end up drinking more nights out of the week than not. Our common room is usually sporting some mysterious odor or another. We spend most of our time exclusively hanging out with each other.

Then again we all entered into this ‘fraternity’ willingly. There were no paddles or brands when we pledged. And really we’re probably no different than most groups of friends on campus from Hillel, to the Daily Pennsylvanian or Penn Masalla.

I guess what does surprise me is that I’ve learned to live with the frat label. When the accusations of being “fratty” were first leveled at me I balked. “No way,” I said, “I could never be.” But I concede finally that there’s more to being fratty than shotgunning beers, popping your collar and blasting Fall Out Boy at all hours. It’s about having your friend’s back if he needs a wingman at Smokes or being there to congratulate him when he gets into law school. And if that’s the case than I think we’d all like to be fratty when it’s most important.

Like a bridge over troubled waters, (www.phillywater.org)

I promised to examine Philadelphia’s edgy artist community in Northern Liberties in this post but it just wasn’t meant to happen. The artists skipped town and recent news about Pennsylvania’s water quality was so disturbing, I decided to take a break from my favorite neighborhood.

While Northern Liberties residents are concerned about sewage water backing up into their homes, local activists are also worried about the water after it’s been treated at one of Philly’s water plants. They claim that the treated water may have too many pollutants in it, which could have serious health consequences for both aquatic life and recreational users of Philly’s rivers.

Fortunately for the Sierra Club, the federal government seems to agree that Philly’s water is a problem.

A recent federal report entitled Toxic Pollution Health uses information accumulated in the Toxic Release Inventory — which collects information about local and state emissions of toxic chemicals into the air and water — to determine which cities are most detrimental to the environment.

For Pennsylvania, the report should function as a much-needed wake-up call.

Pennsylvania ranked 12th in the nation for air and water releases of developmental toxins, emitting 2,809,879 pounds of toxins. Of the 100 counties in the nation with the highest air and water releases of developmental toxins, nearby Chester County ranked 20th worst (797,278 pounds) and Lancaster County ranked 37th worst (425,852 pounds).

These figures should not be taken lightly, especially by Philadelphia’s Department of Environmental Protection and the Philadelphia Water Department.

What’s even more troubling is the EPA wants to relax its reporting requirements for companies, a decision that would allow companies to report less about the toxins they emit. This means that in the future, the reports like the one I just described won’t be able to tell us the harms these companies may cause to our health.

“Our best guess is this is some effort to give companies a little less spotlight on their toxic emissions,” said Sean Moulton, a spokesman for OMB Watch, a non-profit organization that monitors the Office of Budget Management’s activities.

If implemented, the proposals would cut states’ toxics databases in half, so it’s no wonder 23 state governments have already protested to the EPA. Those comments are in addition to those from 60 members of Congress, 200 public interest organizations, and over 120,000 average American citizens.

What makes this proposal so dangerous is the shortsightedness with which the EPA acted.

“We know they cut a lot of corners in their research,” Moulton said. “They haven’t released any models or statistics to see potential health effects of exposure to these toxins, so we know they haven’t done proper analysis.”

Luckily, the DEP has protested these changes. We can only hope that the EPA listens to their constituents and rethinks this disastrous decision. For Pennsylvania, it’s a clear signal that now’s the time to start thinking about the environment.

Reach a little further, Timmy! (www.eldridgepark.us)

“I’m so excited for you!” exclaims a junior friend. Well, that makes one of us. After 22 years of being told what to do and where to be, after 17+ years of identifying myself as “student,” I find that any stirrings of excitement are promptly quashed by one dominating emotion — terror — as I think of graduation. It is the product of years’ worth of accumulated anxiety about that nebulous thing called my future.

We’ve got well-stocked resumes, plus an Ivy League name to back us up. Sounds perfect — I can’t figure out why I’m so anxious. New York Times columnist Judith Warner has an answer, and it has to do with the fact that we are a group of relatively high achievers here at Penn. Warner herself, as a Harvard alum and author of a New York Times bestseller, knows a thing or two about overachievers. She writes in piece entitled “Looking beyond the Brass Ring,” “A lot of success early in life can be a real liability–if you buy into it. Brass rings keep getting suspended higher and higher as you grow older.” At this point, we can’t settle for anything short of saving the world.

The article unleashed a storm of response. Commenter #103 responded to the column by saying, “…we reach a point when there’s no life syllabus to follow anymore. Without structure to measure expectations and achievement, we super-achievers get very, very nervous.” She says of her underachieving adult friends, “They are afraid of who they could be, because it may not be as good as what they were told they were 10 years ago–in high school–when life was hectic, but the goal was simple: to get into a good college.”

The problem with “brass rings,” says Warner, is that “they have a way of turning to dust in your hands.” The solution, then, isn’t to stop reaching for rings — while we don’t need to save the world, the truth is, a lot of us have our hearts set on it. But if we’re going to reach for rings, they gotta be the real deal. And the beauty of it all is that the world needs saving in more ways than one. So take your pick–whether it’s silver, gold, or platinum, you won’t go wrong.

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Well, if we did our job, you may notice that things look a little different today. In an effort to continue pushing full speed ahead into the blogosphere, we at The Daily Pennsylvanian have just completed the first major overhaul of the DP’s blogs since their introduction more than a year ago.

Our blogs have come a long way in only a year. Four blogs are now frequently updated, becoming the DP’s major source of original online-only content. But as the blogs have grown, so too has the demand for additional features, creating the need for today’s overhaul. Some of the changes are internal, making the site easier to manage and post to. But many, many more of the changes are external, seeking to improve your experience and expand the interactive capabilities of the blogs.

For starters, there has been a subtle reshaping of the blog site’s design, as can be seen in the photos above. The blog logo has been merged with the rest of the page, and a number of new features have been added to the site’s sidebar. First and foremost, we have added an “About this blog” box to every DP blog. These boxes will help convey the purpose and aim of each blog, which wasn’t always clear with the old design. Contact information has also been added, where appropriate, to allow you to communicate better with blog editors.

Other new boxes have been added as well. Some blogs now feature a “Recent comments” box, a common feature on many modern blogs. This will allow runnings conversations, even on old posts, to remain near the top of the page. It will also allow frequent commenters an easier way to view comments. A similar “Recent posts” box has also been added to allow users to quickly see the most five most recent posts on their current blog, without having to scroll down the page.

Another common feature of many modern blogs is a “blogroll,” or list of links, to other blogs and Web sites around the Internet. StreetEats‘ links will help hungry blog readers find the best dining guides in Philly and the best recipes on the Internet. If you can’t find the sports news you’re looking for on The Buzz (which is doubtful), you are sure to find it on of the sites it links to.

Last of the major changes, we have made it easier for you to find an author’s old stories. Now, when you click on a headcut, you will be taken to the story author’s bio page, which contains his e-mail address, brief bio and every blog post written by that author.

It’s all a work in progress, to be sure. But we’ve been working long and hard on these changes, and we hope they improve your experience on the DP’s blogs and keep you coming back. Keep in mind, there is just not one, but four great blogs to keep up with: The Buzz, The Spin, Emmy Watches and Street Eats. Most important, please let us know of any suggestions you have for additional ways to improve the blogs, as well as any buys you run into. Simply leave a comment on this post or send an e-mail.