Finals are over, professors are panicking about submitting grades, and seniors have been in an alcoholic coma for weeks in a futile attempt to avoid the swiftly-approaching reality of graduation — yep, it must be the end of the spring semester.

These four months have really flown by here at the Spin; we’ve had all sorts of escapades with almost an entirely new group of bloggers and myriad interesting events on campus and in Philly. I hope you’ve enjoyed reading the insanity.

Good luck living without us for a full summer; you can always read through the archives if you’re really jonesin’.

And in the next few months of valuable internships (read: brewing coffee without pay) and barrista-ing (read: brewing coffee for hourly dough), think hard about next semester — and your irrepressible, inescapable urge to be a Spin blogger.

It’s a great way to get your voice out there and hone your writing skills, and you’ll quickly find yourself in a great a community of smart, funny people with something to say. And yes, we bake brownies and have sleepovers on weekends*.

The application’s hanging out here (dailpennsylvanian.com/opinion); it’s due on August 10, 2008. If you have any questions, just email blogapp@dailypennsylvanian.com and I’ll get back to you ASAP.

Have a great summer!

– Lindsey Stull, Spin editor

*Pillow fights not guaranteed.

The Pennsylvania Democratic primary is tomorrow, so today marks the end of Eric’s week-long political takeover of the blog. That said, I’m suffering from a bad case of politics fatigue, and I’m itching to play with our new poll feature. I hope my bias doesn’t show through anywhere.

Please, dear readers, guide us in the right (topical) direction in these trying red, white and blue times.

If you have the urge, explain your reasoning more in the comments.

It’s that time of year again. Sometime between the relaxation of spring break and the all-consuming fun of finals, we get Mental Health Awareness Week, brought to you by Penn’s own Active Minds. (Full disclosure: I get regularly spammed by their listserv. I’m not really sure why.)

While they have actual events planned to help you learn to cope with stress, I thought I’d share a few tried-and-true methods from a nonprofessional with no real claims to mental stability.

1. Glare at someone. I recommend anyone serving food at Commons. As Philadelphia has apparently outlawed smiling in the service industry, you might as well take out your annoyance on someone who hates you anyway.

2. Exercise. Nontraditional options include running from muggers, improving your upper body strength by holding your door shut, or taking self-defense classes. Do it the Penn way.

3. Eat right. Food pyramid be damned. Stress eating doesn’t involve anything green. Hit up the brown and the red instead. Spring florals will disguise any unflattering side effects, and a chocolate eclair will make you forget all about whatever you’re supposed to be doing.

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Coming out of a haze of birthday celebrating, I glanced at the calendar, and apparently it’s almost April. Wait, what?

That means it’s spring! A time for reproduction! Or even just production.

I’m sure you know where this is going (and no, I’m not using the Spin like a certain part of craigslist): a call for guest blogs.

Whether you want to oppose something uberpublicly, feel an overwhelming urge to give everyone some useful advice, or just have remarkably random Penn factoids to share, the Spin might be your place to do it.

200-350 words, humor suggested, wit required, opinion infinitely preferred to none, pictures/YouTube/inventive media always appreciated. If you have an idea for a post or already wrote something out, shoot me an email me at stull@dailypennsylvanian.com and we’ll see what happens.

Because even if you have that paper due tomorrow, wouldn’t you rather write 300 words of entartaining wit than 2500 of that “academic value” crap?

At Penn, we value our technology. We use clickers to answer questions in class. We Facebook stalk. We even tackle tough technology-related bioethical issues.

So why can’t half our profs check their email without crashing the system?

In my almost-two years at Penn, I’ve taken four language courses in the Department of Romance Languages. I’ve also watched four professors waste class time - that could be better spent mispronouncing the names of primary colors - engaging in a futile battle with such overly complicated technologies as BlackBoard, Windows, and the touch-screen insanity that lurks in every Williams classroom.

Similarly, a professor from another department once accidentally clicked on an ad of questionable nature during a lecture, which resulted in general hilarity and a lot of blushing from both sides of the classroom. It was like watching porn with your mom on a big screen — wildly uncomfortable and really, really easily avoided.

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Breaking all self-imposed rules, promises, and general personal preferences, I did something awful a few weeks ago. Something self-righteous liberal College students with useless-but-fascinating majors should never have to do. Something I did for you, dear readers. Yes, both of you.

I, Wharton-mocking, anti-Event Planning 100, “Who-Needs-a-Job-When-You-Have-a-Soul” Lindsey Stull, attended management training. For six hours, I stared at PowerPoint presentations and role-played (er, not the fun way) and heard the seconds tick by on the clock behind my head. Worst of all, I was subjected to this in the Death Star, which just added insult to injury. (And yes, it has its own website.)

I stress-ate my way through two sandwiches, handful after handful of chips, and 18 mini candy bars. I then carefully folded the wrappers into perfect little rectangles, wrote out a to do list, saved it on my desktop as a “do me” list, and looked around for the bag of chocolate. I discovered that I cannot, in fact, levitate objects and mentally pull them toward me.

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My favorite thing about the first day of classes is getting utterly lost in a familiar place.

Just as some children are born without arms or legs or certain vital enzymes, so was I brought into this world with no sense of direction. You wouldn’t scold that poor child and ask him to grow a new limb or not turn bright red when sharing the room with a bottle of tequila, would you?

Telling me to learn my way around accomplishes about as much, with the added threat of annoyed, uncoordinated violence aimed in your direction.

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After a long, arduous selection process involving knocking on doors and lying about our motives, we finally have a new crop of bloggers for Spring 2008. Read about them here and keep checking back to get to know them over the rest of the semester; they’re a hilarious group of people from all over the place (the Deep South! England! the Linguistics Consortium!) who can’t wait to keep you giggling in class for a whole ‘nother five months.

Without further ado:

Vaughn Stewart is totally boss. A freshman hailing from Alabama, the state of blue skies and lynch mobs, he enjoys video games, earlobes, and Keith Olbermann. He consulted his Facebook to remind himself of his interests. He does not have a tattoo that says “THUG NASTY” on his chest. He thinks people talking on their blue tooths (blueteeth?) are actually trying to start a conversation with him. Occasionally, they are.

College sophomore Madeleine Kronovet is a newbie from New York. She studies history and anthropology when she’s not dancing her heart out. Look forward to constant witticisms and a unique perspective on random and varied Penn issues.

CGS Post-Bac and University employee Lauren Friedman works in linguistics but is pretty solidly monolingual. She supports the “singular they” theoretically but not in actual writing. Although she already spent four years going to college in the Philly area, another few can’t hurt. Her three great loves at Penn are tuition benefits, librarians, and — as of today — The Spin.

A rather irreverent blogger, Eric Sukumaran is a senior from London,
England majoring in Philosophy, Politics and Economics. He enjoys reading and playing rugby, is a huge lover of good food and drink and lives to have energetic discussions with his fellow man (also known as arguing). Oh, and he loves ice cream.

Dan Diamond (C’02) lives in DC where he plays with words for a living and plays ultimate frisbee for fun. As our resident alumni blogger, he looks forward to chastising undergraduates for their atonal “indie rock,” reminding them how much harder life was pre-Fresh Grocer, and generally being cranky for a semester.

After providing new and interesting perspectives on everything from porn to cancer in 2007, College senior Nick Barr still hasn’t found a school club he likes, so he’s back for a second round in 2008. Look forward to comical vulgarity and an increasingly cynical point of view as his thesis due date draws ever nearer.

A College sophomore, Jon Wroble is known to lie about four things: age, weight and ability to count. He hails from Chicago, which seems a lot nicer after living in Philly. If you really want to get on his good side, buy him a birthday gift — he was born on Christmas Eve, so he never gets anything good (if anything at all). He likes music and film, but hates musicals.

And then there’s me, Lindsey Stull, heretofore referred to in the third person for continuity’s sake and my own amusement. A sophomore from Oklahoma who lies regularly about both her age and her childhood home, Lindsey takes copious amounts of pleasure in hyperbole, biology and many kinds of music. She is excited to abandon last semester’s sex(y) blog (and unsexy picture) and give her skewed, sarcastic, hippie vegetarian opinion on all things Penn. She fills Ali Jackson’s shoes as Opinion Blog Editor this semester. Get excited.

We’re done for the semester, but don’t worry — spring’s coming! New classes, bunnies, blooming flowers, and, of course, a whole new crop of bloggers.

So if you’re funny and interesting, if you think the blog’s been great and want to contribute (or think it could use some work and want to help us make it better), if you’ll have too much free time next semester, if you want a platform from which to launch your plans of world domination — apply! The application is here, along with more information.

We’re looking for text bloggers as well as anyone into multimedia, so if you think you could rock the blog with photo, video, voice podcasts, or any other original media (webcomics? charcoal drawings? claymation?), throw your idea out there and we’ll see what we can do with it.

Applications are due January 4, so you can apply when you’re done suffering through finals and eating/sleeping (most of) your way through break.

Happy Holidays from the Spin!

This post almost turned into a tirade about the effects of abstinence education, but I’ll spare you all that rant.

Instead, since it’s my last post of the semester (and I refuse to write a single post about the “s word” next year), let’s actually talk about sex.

Being the DP “sex blogger” has given me new perspective. (And no, not the staring-at-the-ceiling kind.) Regardless of what the shout outs imply, I wasn’t surprised to read in the 34th Street sex issue that most Penn students have only had one or two partners by graduation. Maybe it’s that we party less than those who go to state schools, or just that many Penn students tend to overthink their lives, but I’ve certainly come across a lot of hang ups and assumptions that I didn’t expect to — some of them my own.

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