My Fashion Confession: True Confession Sunday Part 2

This is not a post about clothes, so if you're here for outfits, I'll be back with more of that on Monday. I haven't done a True Confession Sunday post in a few weeks, so I hope you don't mind if I take a brief detour from clothes to tell you another not so secret secret about myself.

In my last True Confession Sunday I talked about my semester abroad at University College Cork in Ireland. It was an amazing six months, but college is four years and my semester abroad isn't really indicative of my college experience as a whole. In the past I have made subtle allusions to where I went to college by mentioning my residential college, and saying that I spent four years in New Haven, but I have never formally stated on this blog that I graduated from Yale.

Harvard Yale Game circa 2006. Pierson is the name of my residential college in case anyone is curious :)

When you are admitted to Yale College (the undergraduate arm of the university) you are randomly placed into one of twelve residential colleges. The only exception to this rule is when a student's parent or other relative went to Yale. If you are a legacy, you have the option of being in your relative's residential college or being randomly placed into one of the other eleven colleges. I was in Pierson College, which is, I can assure you, the best college at Yale. If anyone tries to tell you any different, kindly remind them how wrong it is to lie.

L-Dub on Old Campus. Ignore those trash bags. I took these pictures early one morning while the trash was being collected ;)

Freshmen from ten out of twelve of the colleges are housed on Old Campus while freshmen from Silliman and Timothy Dwight are housed in their residential college all four years at Yale. Pierson freshman are housed in Lanman Wright hall on Old Campus. Most people call it L-Dub for short. More pictures of Old Campus are below.

The High Street Gate on Old Campus

Old Campus. Battel Chapel is straight ahead through those trees.

More of Old Campus. Phelps Gate is hiding behind that tree.

A clearer shot of Phelps Gate. It's one of the first landmarks you learn as a freshman and you march through that gate at Commencement.

The High Street Gate again.

After you have survived freshman year on Old Campus you are rewarded with the opportunity to move into your residential college. L-Dub was kind of gross when I lived there (fingers crossed that they will renovate soon if they haven't already.) Pierson, on the other hand, is gorgeous. The year before I started at Yale, Pierson had been renovated so when I moved to my residential college everything was all shiny and new like it had been waiting for my class to get there.

The Pierson clock tower.

All of the residential colleges at Yale have their own style and charm, but I fell in love with Pierson during the three years that I lived there. Red brick and green shutters with white trim? It still sounds like home to me. Each residential college has its own dining hall, library, and recreational facilities and I never thought to take pictures of that kind of thing, but I did take pictures of the Pierson courtyard and two of my bedrooms for my family.

Pierson Courtyard

As a sophomore I had a single in a suite of four girls. Here is my single:

My bedroom as a sophomore.

And here is a photo of the common room:

The common room in my sophomore suite

There were two more bedrooms in our suite (another single and a double) but taking pictures of other people's bedrooms is kind of creepy so I never took pictures of them.

I didn't take pictures of my room junior year, but as a senior I lived in this stand alone senior single:

My senior single.

My senior single from another angle.

More of my senior single.

Residential colleges aren't just where you live. Each college is headed by a Master who is responsible for the social life of the college and a Dean who is the academic advisor of the college's students. It sounds all scary and official, but both the Master and the Dean of my residential college were great people who really cared about the students in Pierson.

Pierson hosted a ton of great events as well. Mory's is kind of a Yale tradition. It almost closed its doors for good during my last couple of years of college because it has a very old Yale feel that doesn't appeal as much to Yale students of today. To become a member at Mory's you have to have a current member act as your sponsor, and you have to apply and pay dues. That process makes it feel very exclusive, but it's also a lot of trouble that most Yale students don't really want to go through these days. Pierson hosted one or two dinners at Mory's during my time at Yale and I always felt like that was enough of a Mory's experience for me. One Mory's tradition that is kind of awesome are the toasting sessions that usually come at the end of a meal. This is me during our freshman dinner at Mory's:

If you ever hear someone refer to Cups at Mory's, that silver thing I'm holding is what they are talking about. Someone once told me that those cups hold 2200 grams of alcohol. I have no idea if that's true, but they bring them out full to the brim and the first person toasts to something awesome, takes a drink, and passes it to the next person. You keep toasting and passing the Cup around the group until the Cup is almost empty and eventually someone will announce that they are going to finish the cup. That is when the fun starts. If a person says they are going to finish the Cup, they have to get every last drop of alcohol out of that cup or else. I have no idea what actually happens if you don't get all of the alcohol out of the cup because there are a million rumors and little concrete information about which of them are true, but I was once told that a person who does not get all the alcohol out of the cup will be kicked out of Mory's and never allowed to return. I'm guessing that one is just a rumor, but that's part of the fun of Mory's (and Yale)--you can never quite be sure which traditions to take seriously and when the things you've heard are actually true.

As the person finishing the Cup starts to drink the last of the alcohol the group (usually tipsy at best by this time) pounds on the tables and sings the Mory's song. The lyrics (borrowed from Wikipedia) are below. You use the name of the person finishing the Cup and at the end of the song the person turns the Cup upside down on a cloth napkin, someone taps the bottom of the cup (and I seem to remember the empty Cup ending up on top of someone's head at some point) and if there is moisture on the napkin, there will be consequences. I never finished a Cup at Mory's, but toasting sessions are loud, raucous, and way more fun than I ever thought they would be.

It's [Name],
It's [Name],
It's [Name] that makes the world go 'round,
It's [Na-ame], It's [Na-me],
It's [Name] that makes the world go 'round,
It's [Na-ame], It's [Na-me],
It's [Name] that makes the world go 'round,
It's [Name] that makes the world go 'ro-ou-ound,

Sing Hallelujah! Sing Hallelujah!
Put a nickel on the drum,
Save another drunken bum
Sing Hallelujah! Sing Hallelujah!
Put a nickel on the drum and you'll be saved.

I was h-a-p-p-y to be f-r-double-e
f-r-double-e to be s-a-v-e-d
s-a-v-e-d from the bonds of s-i-n
Glory glory Hallelujah hip hooray amen.

Sing Hallelujah! Sing Hallelujah!
Put a nickel on the drum,
Save another drunken bum
Sing Hallelujah! Sing Hallelujah!
Put a nickel on the drum and you'll be saved.

I was lying in the gutter,
I was covered up in beer,
Pretzels in my moustache,
I thought the end was near,
Then along came [Name]!
And saved me from my curse,
Glory glory Hallelujah sing another verse!

Sing Hallelujah! Sing Hallelujah!
Put a nickel on the drum,
Save another drunken bum
Sing Hallelujah! Sing Hallelujah!
Put a nickel on the drum and you'll be sa-aa-aved.

Pierson held Pierson Day every year. I'm pretty sure it was always on the birthday of Abraham Pierson, one of the the dead old white guys who helped found and fund Yale in the beginning. Pierson Day included a picnic in the courtyard, lots of silliness and shenanigans like decking out the statue of Abraham Pierson in Pierson gear, and of course there was always jello wrestling. No I am not kidding. Photographic evidence is below.

Me with one of my sophomore year suite mates.

Abraham Pierson is all about Pierson Day.

The guy on the bike? That's Dean Fabbri, the Dean of Pierson College!

The jello wrestling always began with Master G vs. Dean Fabbri. We had a very cool Master and Dean.

Part of what made my college experience so great was, of course, the people I met. Here is a picture of me and some friends at my birthday diner in the Pierson dining hall:

My 20th birthday dinner in the Pierson Dining Hall.

And just in case you aren't sick of hearing about Pierson, here is a photo of me and some Pierson students at an Intramural football game when I was a freshman. I didn't really play IMs after my freshman year, but it was definitely a great way to meet people. There was actually an IM tournament every year with each residential college vying for the Tyng Cup. I'm not really athletic so I decided to move on to other activities after a while.

Before an IM football game when I was a freshman.

One of my favorite Pierson events was the senior trip to Italy. This particular tradition is new. It started during my freshman year and fortunately Master G and Dean Fabbri decided to take a group when I was a senior. I won't bore you with a long drawn out explanation of everything we did, but it was an amazing ten day trip through Tuscany, Umbria, and Rome. Here are a few of my favorite pictures from the trip:

Group shot in Rome on the last night of the trip.

Good food, good wine, good people.

A day in Lucca, Italy.

I think this might have been in the Vatican...

The evening sky in Rome.

One of the many cathedrals we toured.

I took this on a day trip, but I don't remember what city...

The view at one of the vineyards we visited.

More pretty scenery

I know it seems like I spent all of my time cooped up in Pierson, but I did branch out to other parts of Yale. During my sophomore year I auditioned for and was tapped by Steppin' Out, Yale's step team. Here's a picture a friend took at my first performance:

There was always a ton of stuff to get involved with on campus, and I learned and grew so much as a student. I graduated in 2009 and now that I have taken a couple of years off to work I am really happy to be moving on to law school. I hope that my professional school experience will be as rich and varied as my Yale career :)