Former Penn Student Jade Vixen

Because of some sad news (you know, a love triangle resulting in a murder-suicide and a kidnapping), the Philadelphia Inquirer and New York Post have reintroduced us to a former Penn student that Career Services has probably tried to forget.

Meet Edythe Maa, A.K.A. Jade Vixen, a top New York City dominatrix.

Maa is a former Penn engineering Ph.D. candidate. I’ll leave you to find out all of the salacious details of the tragic love triangle by clicking the above links on your own time, but this got me thinking about some other inspirational post-Penn career paths.

As someone desperately in need of direction in this crazy, crazy world of ours, I hope some of these Penn grads can serve as inspiration:

1) Kevin Allen: Contestant in the second season of The Apprentice. Maybe, dude, maaaaybe if you’d been on season one you could be my idol. Plus, you get points off for the whole Wharton deal. But your website certainly is fancy.

(more…)

Van Pelt: my Bug-A-Boo

Van Pelt, you are my bitch lover.

You spit in my face and yet I spend most nights in your pleasantly warm arms. I take naps on your couch but your food tastes like shit.

We were so much closer when we started hanging out last fall. You were new, exciting. You still smelled good.

Now, I’m starting to see your age. You haven’t had a good cleaning since the sixties. You have stains everywhere. You smell like Qdoba.

Perhaps in my wide-eyed freshman glee I idealized you too much, Van Pelt. Or perhaps you took advantage of my youthful innocence and forced me into something before I was ready.

Still, you were the beacon of academia, representing everything that was right with my liberal arts education. Yet, once I discovered Fisher Fine Arts Library, I started to stray. I cheated, sometimes spending two nights a week with The Other Place. You need some gothification.

Van Pelt, you shame the good name of Melvil Dewey. Wireless has been a joke all year. “PAGE LOAD ERROR” is all you ever tell me. Why aren’t we talking anymore? Who is this new partner, “Air PennNet-Guest”? I thought I was your only guest.

(more…)

Big Amy doin' big thangs

I’ve got some bad news.

Despite what was probably the advice of her advisors in College Hall, President Gutmann has hit one out of the ballpark.

This is bad news because, well, we all enjoy giving Big Amy a hard time. (Though is it really called a “hard time” when it’s deserved?) You see, I’d love to take this moment to criticize, demean, mock, etc. But I can’t. Not this time.

Why, you ask?

Because Big Amy did it! She stopped the world economic crisis!

Okay, so she hasn’t stopped the crisis, per se. But between jet-setting to Dubai and writing letters to crazies, she has done something really great for Penn. Last week, President Gutmann and her husband Michael Doyle made a $100,000 gift to undergraduate education at Penn. Most of the gift will be directed to the Center for Undergraduate Research and Fellowships. The remainder of the gift will support the Seniors for The Penn Fund program. (More on the gift is here and here.)

And in addition to a monetary donation, we are also the beneficiaries of another kind of donation: a donation to the mind. The press release writer attributed this advice to President Gutmann: “Participating in the discovery of new knowledge is always rewarding and often life-transforming. I want more Penn students, regardless of their future career plans, to experience the thrill that Michael and I have had in our academic research.”

(more…)

I need a babysitter.

Not for my kid. No, my kid is doing fine.

I need a babysitter for me. And I need one, well, I needed one just yesterday morning.

And so I’m here to openly give a new business idea to an (overly) ambitious Penn student: Penn Oversleeping Prevention Services (POPS).

You see, oversleeping is a major problem on our campus. We work hard. We play hard. And so we sleep a bit too hard sometimes.

For me in particular, oversleeping is a major problem. In the midst of a rough damn-near zero hours of sleep week, I missed my… 1:30 pm class. That’s right. I woke up at the classy hour of 4:30 pm. In the process I missed an oral presentation (whups…), office hours, and the deadline for the very blog you are reading now.

True, all of this could have been avoided with better time management, but that’s not going to happen for any of us. And there are probably other ways I could work on not oversleeping so severely and detrimentally. But, as they say, a lifestyle is a terrible thing to waste.

(more…)

The new treasurer of Grafton County, N.H.

Walking around campus, it’s pretty obvious that some of our classmates have already started their presidential campaigns. At Dartmouth, somebody’s already won their first election.

No, not for UA or SAC rep.

Vanessa Sievers, a Dartmouth junior, has just won the race for treasurer of Grafton County, New Hampshire, the county which includes Dartmouth. Sievers, lambasted as a “teenybopper” by her opponent, won by less than 1.5%. (And even cooler, she made the national news!)

The outgoing Republican incumbent treasurer is the kind of lady who likes to rant about “brainwashed college kids,” but is Sievers really qualified to invest and oversee Grafton County’s $18 million in assets?

She has been an active member of the Dartmouth College Democrats (She’s got sooooo many hits on the campus newspaper’s website.). And she has managed her family’s finances. And, of course, she is a geography major. So maybe this is change we can believe in.

Yet, then again, maybe people at Dartmouth are unhappy about this. In my mind, a college student has no business representing the townspeople and should not have run for this position.

Despite what I see as resume-padding and over-achieving, Sievers has a point that we could perhaps learn from: “I’ve always believed that being involved in local government is part of your responsibility as a citizen and is a way to get involved in your community.” Of course, she could have volunteered at a soup kitchen instead of running for treasurer.

(more…)

Not so, Sean Hannity! Not so!

Always had an inkling that nothing your professors said had an effect on you?

You’re right!

At least according to recent research conducted by, well, professors who try to have an effect on their students.

My favorite news source not ending in “-vanian,” The New York Times, recently published an easy-to-read summary of recent research. The research takes on conventional wisdom by demonstrating that professors’ godless, socialist viewpoints don’t translate to students. Quoting the article: “Three sets of researchers recently concluded that professors have virtually no impact on the political views and ideology of their students.”

Still, I can’t help but think that the article (Read it! Seriously!) is pointing out the obvious.

Of course our professors’ political (”liberal”) agendas don’t really affect us. Who’s got time to absorb the vast liberal conspiracy when you’re sitting in a 200-person lecture with your head nodding and your blood-shot eyes struggling to stay open? College students barely show up to class enough to absorb a professor’s view on the topic at hand, let alone something completely unrelated.

Do conservatives really believe that our professors stand in front of the lecture hall or seminar table and talk about raising taxes, killing babies, and losing wars?

(more…)

He looks so nice.

Goodbye, Provost Daniels.

Congratulations on your selection as Johns Hopkins’ 14th president. This is a very big day for you.

I wish I could say I’d miss you, but I never really knew you. And I wish I could say you seemed like a chill dude, but I’m pretty sure the only time I ever saw you was at my Convocation. I don’t remember what you said; on that day you were overshadowed by President Gutmann’s epic “You only have 43 months until graduation!” speech.

But I can say this, Provost Daniels: You were never scary, or mean, or purposefully unhelpful.

Of course, I also had no idea what you looked like until I googled you ten minutes ago. And I’m not really sure what you do, though that may be in part my fault. I’ll just go ahead and take President Gutmann’s word that you are “a gifted academic leader, a noted scholar, and an energetic collaborator with a passion for excellence.” Oh well.

A search committee is forming as we speak for a new faceless head academic officer at Penn.

(more…)

Too much, PennDems, too damn much

… So, please, PennDems, never again ask me if I know where my polling place is — no joke — ten times between my house and my class in the former Logan Hall. It is 10:30 in the morning. I am tired. Thank you for Baracking the Vote, really, but kindly shut up and never again put such an unnecessarily ridiculous number of people into your Election Day effort.

A quick summary of where I was asked if I had voted already (at 10:30!) or if I knew my polling place: 40th and Locust (two people), by Commons (three people), the top of the bridge (one person), by Huntsman (four people), and, of course, the Compass (94,000 people screaming bloody murder).

Worse even than the absurd number of times I was accosted on Locust Walk on Election Day is what your awful awful canvassers did to posters all around campus at 12 a.m. on Election Day. You sneakily covered every one up. Every fucking one.

Let me repeat: YOU COVERED UP ALL THE POSTERS THAT STUDENT GROUPS SO PAINSTAKINGLY PUT UP EARLIER IN THE WEEK!!!

(more…)

Hey you!

Congratulations!! Winning the Series was really awesome. Yeah, oh, what’s that? You rioted on Broad Street? Yeah? NIIIICE!

You totally threw champagne bottles on Pattison Ave? You and and some random dudes were smoking cigars ’til four? Sweet! You ran up and down the city with all the other Philadelphians throwing trashcans and dancing on taxicabs? Holler! Got arrested? Me too!

That’s all really cool. Except it’s also kind of sad.

Why? Because unfortunately, many Penn students’ involvement in the post-game riots marked the height of their respect, interest, and involvement in the city. It’s true, many Penn students and groups do a lot of utterly amazing work in Philly. And it’s also true, a lot of Penn students and groups love throwing downtown parties. Our community service track record in Philly is pretty good. Our social track record in Philly is even better.

What’s awful, though, and the problem I’m talking about, is our collective attitude towards the city in which we live.

(more…)

Voting is sexy...and civic!

“Vote or Die.”

I wholly agree, sir.

“Rock the vote.”

I think I will.

“Get the fuck out and vote.”

Okay!

Whether you’ve elected to Barack the Vote or Drill Baby Drill is up to you. But if I find out you just couldn’t make it to your polling place or the line was too long or you got arrested for intimidating other voters, I think less of you.

The second most unsettling political expression I’ve heard this semester is “Don’t Vote.” (The first? A serious statement that “Obama is a Muslim,” said on Locust Walk.) And while I’m not happy that I heard it here on The Spin, this nasty little “Don’t vote if unless you ‘get it’” argument is alive and well all over the country.

(more…)