Yale Daily News

I love Yale. I might have forgotten to mention that. Two years of public opinion sharing (or perhaps laundry-airing) has given some the impression that I emerge biweekly from the deepest steam tunnels, pen in hand, a bitter girl prone to hyperbole and out to get Yale. I'll admit to the exaggerating, but it's time to clear up this Yale-hating business. It's just that I was kind of busy, and then I had a problem set due, and the next thing I knew it was 2002 and I hadn't once said that I love Yale. I meant to, I really did, but it's much more fun to complain than to compose love sonnets for Eli and company.

Yale and I go way back -- my mom serenaded me as a child with her high school fight song, "Bulldog Bulldog," which I didn't realize was stolen from Yale, and not the other way around, until sometime last week. We believe in destiny: on my way to Bulldog Days in 1998 I stayed at a hotel that was hosting a Mack Truck convention and plastered with their logo -- a bulldog. Seriously, I love Yale, so much so that I knitted my Cabbage Patch Kid a Yale sweater and I plan to one day own a house exclusively with Yale-brand locks in the doors.

While I'm making a scene, I'll answer some questions that no one ever asked. I originally called my column "Far From Home" because I liked the alliteration -- and because it represents the way I saw issues at Yale and away. I resist playing the part of the corn-growing cow-tipper, but I can't seem to shake this Midwestern sensibility business, and it shows. I don't get too liberal or conservative. At the negligible risk of shattering any illusions, I choose something that makes me grumpy, think "this-is-so-stupid-why-doesn't-anyone-get-it?" and stretch it out to 700 words.

Thanks to the people who made this place home: friends, roommates and the staff of the Pierson dining hall. Thanks to the people back home: my aunt (who worries that I'm making the administration mad), my brother (who forgets the News' Web site address every time), my dog (who wears a Yale leash without embarrassment), and most of all my parents, for diverting their new kitchen fund to New Haven, providing cell phone therapy, and giving out an infinite supply of freedom and support.



Sarah Merriman is a senior in Pierson College.