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As we come to the end of another glorious season of Brown Athletics, it’s important to take a second to sit back and think about all the wonderful moments we’ve spent watching Brown teams succeed on and off the field this year. Let’s dash through season recaps for every one of our 37 varsity sports:

Baseball: A 7-33 finish, including 3-17 in Ivy League play, marks a successful and unprecedented effort by the baseball team to win even fewer games than last year’s nine. They did push #2 LSU to the wire in a narrow 4-3 walk-off loss, though, so that’s something.

Basketball (Men’s): A 7-7 Ivy League record was a big improvement on last year and good for a tie for third. Memorable wins included a comeback over rival Providence and eliminating Princeton from league title contention with a beatdown in the season finale. Sean McGonagill ’14 was named first-team All-Ivy; Cedric Kuakumensah ’16 was name Ivy League Defensive Player of the Year. Show the fuck up to their games next year, please.

Basketball (Women’s): 3-11 Ivy and 9-19 overall records were nothing to write home about, but women’s basketball alum Lindsey Gottlieb ’99 coached Cal to the Women’s Final Four, which is pretty damn cool.

Crew (Men’s): Hard to figure out, since apparently men’s rowing isn’t an NCAA sport but is still varsity (?). I don’t know. Anyway, Brown has had another great season, losing only to No. 1 Washington and Ivy rival Harvard. (I think. Crew results are really hard to understand.) The year will conclude with Ivy and National championships in late May/early June.

Crew (Women’s): The NCAA sponsors women’s rowing, so this one is easier to figure out. Brown is ranked 12th and fresh off an Eastern Sprints victory heading into Ivy and National championships in late May/early June. Sounds promising.

Cross Country (Men’s): A bunch of Brown students ran distances that would kill you or me, but didn’t qualify for nationals after finishing 11th at Northeast Regionals.

Cross Country (Women’s): A bunch of Brown students ran distances that would kill you or me, and finished 8th at Northeast Regionals. Standout Margaret Connelly ’14 placed 7th to qualify for Nationals, where she finished 130th out of 253 runners.

Equestrian: The team placed third at Ivies and sent three riders to Nationals. Honestly, the results of this shit are totally indecipherable, but I can report with some certainty that no one from Brown won the national championship. Still, it sounds like they did pretty well.

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Then + Now

As seniors, we hear a lot about the “bucket list:” The SciLi challenge, 5 a.m. Louis, WaterFire, etc. Throughout this year, my friends and I kept putting various parts of the list off until later. But then, all of a sudden, it was May and I started to feel anxious about not having enough time to complete the list in my limited days left on the Hill.

At first, the realization caused an uneasy feeling—something reminiscent of the FOMO (fear of missing out) you feel during your first semester freshman year when you’re sick or busy and you miss a frat party that all your friends are talking about the next morning in the Ratty. I never went to Sex Power God. I never snuck onto the roof of any Brown buildings. I never took Mande. Does that mean I haven’t made the most of my college years? As an eager freshman, I told myself I would do all these random “must do before you graduate” things one day.

This quarter-life crisis caused me to wonder what it really means to make the most of your college experience. Obviously, this answer is going to be different for each person. But, I do know that it actually doesn’t have anything to do with an arbitrary list of activities. [Read more →]

Leaving college for the first time is weird.  There’s not a campus-wide End of the Year Assembly or a shared rejoicing in the hallways. You probably won’t run into your classmates in your neighborhood come June, either. Well, maybe you will, considering half of this campus is from “just outside of Boston,” New York City, or Southern California (51st thing I learned freshman year?).

As the rest of your due dates and exams begin to approach, you find it hard to keep track of the days and times when your friends are leaving, when their parents are taking you to brunch, and when you’ll see them next. It’s a weird feeling, especially after spending months hanging out, going out, and studying together. These are things we’ve all just gotten used to. [Read more →]

Sweet mother of all that is groovy and chill.

If you thought the naked donut runners were the panacea to all finals-related woes, wait until you hear Daft Punk’s new album which is NOW STREAMING FOR FREE. To access it, you have to open iTunes, go to Daft Punk’s artist page, and click the play button next to “Listen Now” on the left side (pictured above). Random Access Memories beautifully showcases Daft Punk’s inimitable synthy essence. Every song is funky as hell (and basically sex incarnate). While you shouldn’t really expect anything of the likes of “One More Time,” your fondest freshman dorm-party jam, you will be pleasantly surprised by how refreshingly sophisticated this album is as a whole. It is a shining star in today’s EDM scene. And don’t even get me started on the collabs. Julian Casablancas is featured in “Instant Crush” and boy, did it get hot in here quickly. Also, Pharrell Williams makes “Get Lucky” the perfect dance party jam for those lonely paper-writing nights in your dorm/SciLi stacks.

P.S. Wait until you hear the ending track. Screw Kabob and Curry in the Blue Room because this is what real happiness feels like.

P.P.S. Oh, and if you’re one of those who thinks Daft Punk is totes overrated and Skrillex is, like, definitely better… you better check yourself before you wreck yourself.

Image via.

Clyde Lawrence ’15, the soulful musician behind “Wake Up” and a filthy cover of “Toxic” (really though), is at it again. This time, he’s debuting his soon-to-be-viral music video—take notes, BuzzFeed et al.—titled “Welcome Back Emma” right here on BlogDH.

Without giving too much away, it seems like a certain sophomore was really, really, really looking forward to a certain British actress’s return to Providence this January. The guy put together a super romantic dinner in the basement of Olney House (!!) and even feels a little bad that we made Emma cut her hair. We particularly like the idea of renaming the Thomas J. Watson Jr. Institute for International Studies after a Watson with a little more… name recognition. Maybe someone who has a bit more “magic” to her.

Clyde also has a new album out titled Homesick. You can check it out on Spotify or on his YouTube channel. “Emma,” you should check him out too.

The libraries don’t get that censored rectangle tonight.

Since you most definitely need to treat yo’self (see after the jump) after completing that final paper, I suggest stopping by Wickenden’s most recent addition, Dolce Gelateria. If you think the Lanni family’s (John, Deborah, Brittan, and Nicole) shop is scooping your average ice cream and gelato, I bet these mind-blowing flavas – apple crisp, coffee kahlua brownie, snickas with Snickers, ginger, and frozen pudding – proved you wrong. As if those weren’t enough, your options also include white chocolate with cranberry, basil sorbet, cinnamon, and peach bellini. And if I haven’t convinced you yet, the Lanni family’s homemade waffle cone recipe puts the Ratty/V-dub to shame.  Basically, this gelato and ice cream joint is sure to be a sweet success, so ch-ch-check it out at 270 Wickenden or on their Facebook page.

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Then + Now… yeah, I’m one of those “same face in every picture” people

When I first got to Brown in September 2009, I was lacking all kinds of life experience. Never been kissed. Never been drunk. Never gotten anything less than a B+ in a class (screw you too, AP Euro). I can say with confidence that none of those statements apply to me anymore (screw you too, Math 35). Milestones aside, though, it’s kind of astonishing to look back and see just how far I’ve come. At the start of my freshman year, I may as well have been thirteen years old for my lack of maturity. Now, well, I probably don’t always fit my parents’ definition of how a 22-year-old should act, but I’m pretty sure I at least match Taylor Swift’s.

The thought of graduating and entering the “real world” is terrifying. I’m one of the lucky ones with a cushion under me, what with my moving back home and going to grad school and all, and it’s still scary. I’m not going to have to deal with broken appliances in some crappy apartment and I’m not futilely searching for jobs, yet I’m still fighting the urge to look at May 26^th like the Mayans were off by five months and the world as I know it will end. [Read more →]

I’ve been webmaster for BlogDailyHerald since midway through my freshman year. In all that time I’ve written a grand total of zero posts, preferring instead to focus on behind the scenes technology work. Now, as a soon-to-graduate senior, I’m lucky enough to have a kick-ass successor who has taken on all of my Blog related responsibilities and somehow still finds time to write fantastic posts. But through a combination of peer pressure and procrastination I’ve been given one last job to do: write my first and only post for Blog.

In keeping with my love of the Internet and all things technological, I’m going to leave the eloquent, well-written posts for the other seniors to write. This post chronicles my time at Brown in the best way I know how: with animated GIFs and photos of cats.

Freshman Year

Meeting people in Keeney (Unit 3!) for the first time:

Writing my first essays in college:
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Last week, I went to the MGMT concert at Lupo’s. The delay in relaying my concert knowledge is of course due to my several nights of deep contemplation about the concert. It really has nothing to do with the fact that we’re in reading period/finals week. At all. But seriously, these lessons are going to be deep, so pay attention.

MGMT is a band worth contemplating—I am willing to go on the record stating that if I were going to Penny Lane any living, actually-of-our-era band, it would be them. I am shamelessly in love with Andrew VanWynGarden. I think everyone our age should have spent a little time watching interviews with him. I remember going to my first MGMT concert when I was 16 and thinking it was totally plausible that Andrew might pull me up on stage and kiss me. At 19, I recognize the delusion of that thought—of course he wouldn’t have made out with a 16-year-old. Going into Wednesday night, I felt like it was much more likely this time around!

Obviously, my first lesson is that:

1) Third time is (will be) the charm. Meaning next time, Andrew and I will end up together. It was a bit ambitious to assume such a momentous occasion in my life would happen at Lupo’s. Lupo’s is sort of tacky. [Read more →]