Column: It's cold, I'm tired

Let me forewarn you by saying this: The column you see before you is going to appear as though it's been written by a child suffering from an extreme case of ADD. It's cold, I'm tired and two lethal exams are looming before me.

Why in the world is it negative zero degrees outside? I'm a Georgia Peach unaccustomed to these icy winters. I thought I was dying today as I carefully stepped around West Campus in my three-inch boots and the freezing wind whipped at my delicate skin. It didn't help that I had next to nothing on, but hey, I looked cute. Doesn't looking good take precedence over health? I think so.

Someone please grant me the right to issue arrests entirely based on idiocy. I have warrants out for approximately 30 Duke students and counting, all for the same offense: wearing flip flops in 30 degree weather. All I can say is: why? You know who I'm talking about; those clueless individuals who proudly shuffle around tightly wound up from head to waist, ensuring that their torsos and faces are protected from the cold, but leave their feet and legs to be ravaged by the wind. These perpetrators foolishly walk directly into mud puddles causing pant legs (the less moronic ones actually do wear pants and not shorts), toes, and all to be soaking wet. "Damn, man, my feet are wet!" You think?

Just the other day I saw a cluster of Duke students nearly trampling each other to purchase a women's basketball poster. Oh, my mistake, those posters are free! I must have mistaken them for the pricey men's posters. One would think that since the women actually made it to the Final Four, their posters could go for at least a buck.

School sucks. It's amazing that professors expect students to perform such ridiculous feats as attend class while being enrolled in college. I myself am a supporter of social learning. College, as I see it, should be a place in which individuals can learn how to interact with peers of every socioeconomic background, every race, every culture and all the other good words that make us warm inside because they sound so "diverse."

In this utopia, anyone and everyone can acquire knowledge, immersing oneself in an endless sea of intellectual endeavors, but because grades are so superficial they would not exist. Craving, yearning, drooling to get that ever-elusive A (or even A-) students stoop to all sorts of unspeakable lows. Am I too benevolent in assuming that the majority of Duke students actually take time out of their overwhelmingly hectic lives to acknowledge some sort of significant worldly occurrence via the news? This week, a University of Arizona nursing student shot three of his professors dead, and then shot himself. His motive: He was barred from taking a midterm. The pressure to excel in contemporaneous society is so invasive it's almost maddening.

Thought you were going to get through an entire column of mine without one mention of race, didn't you? (Come on, you know me better than that). As I walk around this campus from day to day, the fact that I am one of a small number of black students on this campus instills in me a somewhat overwhelming responsibility. Being in a majority grants one the right to be unconscious/oblivious to all that is not mainstream.

For one to state, whether implicitly or explicitly that I should stop talking about race, I am essentially being asked to disregard all that I am and all that I see. Reality forces me to see through the eyes of a black woman, because (surprise!) the face you see grinning back at you is that of a black woman (I know it's not the most flattering of pictures but hey I'm not photogenic). Because I speak passionately about the things that interest me, I am touted a "black columnist."