About ten minutes into their set, guitarist Tom DeLonge shouted into his mike, “We are fucking awesome. We rock!” and oh, how absolutely true that is. Blink 182’s reunion tour stop at the amphitheater at Jones Beach on Aug 9 verifiably rocked. So much so that I’m convinced that the power of Mark, Tom and Travis playing on the same stage pushed the muggy, downpour of weather that was expected away until precisely after everyone from the venue had cleared out into their cars. So instead of a monsoon, we got clear skies, two full hours of the Blink classics and a glorious evening of feeling like we were in middle school again, minus the whole being awkward part.

To be frank, we’re surprised we made it to Slope Day,

But now that it’s here we’ve got much to say.

This semester’s been quite the wild ride,

As we embark on a hiatus, we step out with pride.

Budget cuts have been an ominous dark cloud,

Colleges’ funding were limited, from contract to endowed.

We watched as the Physical Sciences Library got the ax,

But what about the Lab of Ornithology? We had to ask.

As the billion dollar endowment continued to shrink,

The trustees sold $250 million in bonds, with just a nod and a wink.

Staff and faculty fret over the thought of their job security,

Questions loomed over Milstein Hall, its funding clouded in obscurity.

With the first direct election of Pres and Vice of the S.A.,

As the semester rolls to a close with bands booking their last shows at The Nines, a capella groups begging you to come to their spring performances and Slope Day just a week away from filling the East Hill with one final musical celebration, I’ve already started to switch the gears on my music agenda to focus on summer.

As summer fast approaches, students’ thoughts turn from prelims and papers to the three months of freedom ahead. For some, these months will be filled with more hard work — pre-professional internships, grueling summer courses, long hours at a job — while for others they represent an oasis of laziness and tranquility.

Embarking on my potentially final freedom summer (if you will) of life, unless I become a teacher, (which seems unlikely considering the criminal record I plan to accrue), I have begun to reflect upon the parallel time of my life. This post-college summer may or may not mirror the summer of 2005, right after I was finally unshackled from the emotional and physical fetters of boarding school and let loose with my middle school homeslices in NorCal, where the possibilities seemed endless and life seemed like it was really getting into gear …

It was all the simple things back then: Just me, my friends and a giant cup.

Last Saturday I squeezed ten mostly unrelated friends into my tiny studio apartment. They drank my drinks, they annoyingly touched my things, the usual. But as they sat on my bed, my desk, my counter and a rogue table which usually holds up several tons of not-quite-dirty clothes from the abyss of the floor, they complained about the lack of ergonomically correct devices they referred to as “chairs.”

Every summer my parents sent us to summer camp in Bumfuck, CA, in the central valley. No man’s land, if you will, where a crisp 104 degrees is just how the malaria-carrying insects like it. I would write home every day in the stationery they gave me to plead with them to bring me home. When that didn’t work, they certainly regretted giving me my grandparents’ addresses. My nearly-90 year old grandfather barged into their living room one Saturday in early July demanding to know why they sent me to a place where they made me eat spiders.

To the Editor:

Re: “How Much is a Summer Worth?,” Opinion, Feb. 25

The article “How Much is a Summer Worth” really hit the nail on the head. Unpaid internships are just a form of exploiting college students for free labor. In addition, they favor students who do not need to work for money and whose parents are willing to subsidize their expenses for a summer. This is an unfair issue that is not brought up nearly enough. Anyone who works deserves at least the minimum wage and that applies to college students as well.

Laurenn Berger ’09

This article was originally published online on Jul. 8.

NEWPORT, R.I. – The Newport Folk Festival – having endured Dylan’s controversial ’65 burst of electricity, financial turmoil and an addiction to corporate sponsorship – has come a long way from its folksy, populist incarnation of 1959. But at this 50-year benchmark, Newport’s architects have struck gold in grafting the Festival’s roots to anachronistic, serene Fleet Foxes and progressive-folk-rock showmen The Decemberists. Seeger’s even leading a sing-along at age 90, for Pete’s sake.