This semester (not to mention the last few years) has flown by! I am adding to the legions of people reminiscing and unfortunately also having a public forum to express their leaving-the-nest issues.

I would like to start by thanking you, the readers of my posts for this semester. I value your comments deeply, even the intolerably rude ones, and I am grateful for your attention. Next, I’d like to thank Ashwin, the editorial page editor here at The DP for advice, being a sounding board for ideas and for generally letting me bug him. Finally, my undying thanks to Lindsey Stull, opinion blog editor, for suggesting this gig in the first place and for showing such remarkable patience with me over the semester (you’ll never really know quite how much).

Back to you guys. To the rising sophomores: man up already and start exploring this city. Philadelphia has a lot to offer (seriously) and you all (sophomores and others alike) would do well to start exploring and discovering. Whether it’s food (brunch=Rx or Ants Pants), or clubs (jazz around here, more conventional downtown), or art (First Fridays and antiques row are a lot of fun), Philadelphia has much to offer you. On top of studying like crazy, make sure you take the opportunity to fill up on such experiences. As great as New York is, don’t count Philly out — it has a lot New York does not.

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Being Ivy League and elitist an’ all, we have to stand out from our Ivy sister schools. On the outside, we too have old-fashioned buildings, a rather stuffy disposition (in comparison with others such as your stereotypical state school) and, well, we can come across as rather intimidating. The same can be said for Harvard, Yale, even those Ivy League idiots in New Jersey.

So what can we do to set ourselves apart?

Invite our prospective freshmen down at exactly the same time as this university descends into a weekend-long drinking binge. With bouncy castles (moon bounces in American).

It’s the ideal way to bridge that gap between college-style adulthood and those last vestiges of childhood. It also underlines that unlike our sister Ivy universities, we can work hard and have a lot of fun (by the way — read this bollocks article in the Daily Princetonian — it’s about working and playing hard at Princeton. A quick perusal shows this guy has no idea. I especially like the bit about DJ Bob.)

Dear freshmen, we at the University of Pennsylvania have the unique ability to get dangerously wasted and then release our remarkably destructive inner children.

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When I was in elementary school, I was enrolled in DARE — the mandatory drug awareness program where cops would come to class and warn students of the dangers of illegal substances. DARE left me absolutely terrified of drug use, though comically ill-informed: in my final essay, for instance, I wrote that I would never take a sniff of marijuana. (I still haven’t.)

Now, more than a decade removed from my anti-drug “education,” I still remember DARE’s main arguments against substance abuse: it would leave you friendless, physically weak and unsuccessful in all life’s endeavors. And given today’s celebrity climate — with more and more stars falling in and out of rehab — I think we’ve all learned that same lesson.

Or have we? I don’t think it would come as a surprise to say that drugs have a new face in America, and it’s not as scary as it used to be. What might be surprising, however, is that Penn and other universities are helping market the drug makeover — including our esteemed professors.

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If you believe in abstinence until marriage, I think you’re scared and repressed.

Honestly, you abstainers, why knock something you haven’t tried? Sex is wonderful.

I see it this way: if I’m going to sit for hours in the library and study for midterms, spend an hour on the elliptical because I sat for hours, and eat food in the dining halls because my parents wanted me to have a meal plan, I should at least allot myself thirty minutes of intimacy.

If the prudes and fanatics prefer not to masturbate or orgasm, that’s on them. Not only are they missing out, but they’re fighting a losing battle. Biology is hard to beat. We are programmed to want sex. And honestly, I’m tired of religion denying people their basic, biological rights.

Still, I understand their pleas of “The media is so evil. We’re rebelling against society’s horrible standards. We believe a woman is worth more than her sexuality.”

Yeah, I agree, but the facts are clear - pledges of abstinence are empty promises.

Sex abstainers are six times as likely to engage in oral sex (head = STDs) than sex enjoyers, and they are less likely to use a condom when they finally have sex (on average just 18 months later than non-pledgers.) Oh, and rates of sexual transmitted diseases are equal in abstainers and enjoyers alike.

(Plus, didn’t Jamie-Lynn Spears shun premarital sex?)

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So it has been brought to my attention that, in fact, we are a bunch of nerds. And, as usual, I blame Princeton.

For it was they who hosted a team from Middlebury playing Quidditch. Oh yes, Quidditch. I don’t care if we hosted them first, I still blame them, mainly to avoid despairing at our own sheer idiocy. Thankfully Ivygate blames them, too.

For those of you not cool enough to know, Quidditch is the game of the wizarding world, as described in the Harry Potter novels.

The game involves flying around on broomsticks with three different kinds of balls - one type (the Quaffle) to throw through hoops, one type (the Bludger) that renders you unconscious and the Golden Snitch, a tiny little ball that whizzes around, the capture of which ends the game and earns you 150 points (usually winning you the match). The rules are important for what comes next.

In the Middlebury version, the Snitch is played by a “hyperactive college student” in a yellow jersey, sporting a sock from his behind in the hope someone grabs it and ends the game. I think he’s also asking for feel-up, but that’s just me talking. I mean, kid, what the hell is wrong with you? You are not a Snitch, you’re an idiot hoping no one catches the sock flapping invitingly in the region of your arse.

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When I first applied to this university, I was promised that Penn would give me an “experience like no other.” Unlike students at Yale, for example, I won’t have to sit through lectures from Tony Blair. Unlike those at Harvard, Princeton and even Brown, I won’t have to pay less for my education. And perhaps best of all, I won’t have that nagging responsibility to cheer for a basketball team come late March like Cornell does did this year.

So far, so good: up until now, my life at Penn has been unquestionably unique, an experience like no other indeed. That is, until earlier this morning — when I saw the front page of the DP touting this unfortunate headline: “OK Go announced as third Fling band.” Suddenly I felt gypped, swindled, even betrayed. Let me explain.

This April, you see, will not be OK Go’s first appearance at Spring Fling. Just six short years ago, they played their first Fling gig in eerily similar fashion to next month’s concert: they were the show’s opening act; they played at Franklin Field; and their accompanying lineup was almost identical.

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Pardon my language… but today sucks. Tomorrow, too.

For the first time in four years — and only the third time in a decade — Penn missed the men’s NCAA basketball tournament.

Did I just lose your sympathy?

Look. Maybe you’re blasé about Penn athletics or sports-illiterate. But, with our basketball slide likely to continue, let me explain why a winning team benefits the school.

(And if the cost is our ethical standards? Meh.)

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For admissions officers, application review season (currently underway) is the most fun time of the year. But according to a recent DP article, some of this year’s admissions essays look as if they’ve been plagiarized or even written by counselors and parents — and that’s not “authentic.”

First of all, it astonishes me that people still want to attend this university — what with its killer hawks, rampant anarchists and sofa-less male bathrooms. But on the other hand, I sympathize with this brand new batch of Penn hopefuls, and I want to help them and future generations with the intimidating task of writing a college essay.

In that light, I’ve gathered some of the best tips from EssayEdge.com — The NY Times’ top-rated college essay site — and reinterpreted them below without all the academic jargon. If I can help just one Harvard reject make it into Penn, my job is complete.

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The Daily Pennsylvanian recently reported that Harvard University proposes to enforce women’s only gym hours (about six hours a week) up in Cambridge. In the words of my namesake and hero, Eric Cartman, that is total and utter “bullcrap!“.

Exactly why is it that women get this treatment? For those of you following Islamic law, as stated in the article, I can understand. My solution would be a separate room within the gym, rather than banning all men from the gym. That’s how they do it in predominantly Muslim countries, anyway.

But what about the rest of you??? Would you like to dress even less appropriately? Can you not stand the idea of a penis being within five hundred yards of an elliptical machine? Do you think we men care if you look your best when working out? If you do not like us staring (which we shouldn’t), then I suggest a pair of sweatpants and not skin-tight, arse-hugging, lycra, look-at-me short-shorts.

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“You can lead me to college, but you can’t make me think,” proclaims a shirt reportedly popular at Duke.

How true — and how sad.

In a recent class of mine, one student would ask “will this be on the test?” all throughout the semester, nearly every time something especially complicated was discussed. If the answer was no, she fell silent. Only if the answer was yes did she feel like it was worth following up: “Could you explain that again?”

Grade-obsessed students like this one will surely graduate, but they’ll leave with an expensive piece of paper and some nice numbers, not an education.

In a society where competition is rewarded and “intellectual elitist” is a scathing slur, it’s no wonder that some treat college like a tollbooth: choose a lane, pick up your diploma, and drive off. E-Z Pass is available for everyone, of course.

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