September 27, 2011 · 3:11 pm

Spin the Wheel

Author: Lex Ruby Howe, C’07

Who doesn’t love a game show? It brings out our competitive spirit, our drive to win a pretty-shiny thing, and provides a chance to show off our innate skills.

Well, the Penn Traditions program recently capitalized on the average Penn person’s competitive side and unveiled the Penn Alumni Spinning Wheel! Inspired by Penn’s academic theme year “Year of Games,” Penn Traditions decided to go big or go home. We went big – the spinning wheel measures 5 feet in diameter and 10 feet tall – it is a behemoth of Penn games. And it rocks!

The spinning wheel’s maiden voyage was at Penn Park Field Day on Saturday, September 17. Thousands of Penn students, alumni, staff, and community friends flocked to the park for it’s opening, and the line at our spinning wheel attraction didn’t end. For two straight hours they all lined up and waited for their chance at fame and glory. Ok, maybe just a Penn Scarf or T-shirt, but the jubilation on the faces of the winners told it all.

Contestants, or aka, participants, in the Penn Alumni Wheel of Glory had to answer a challenging Penn trivia question – questions based on the history and traditions of our alma mater, which for some provided a large road block to that coveted prize. Many of the participants were freshman, who hadn’t yet seen the running of Penn Relays, or watched the sea of red as the juniors processed in their hats and canes on Hey Day. But with fans around them, and upperclassmen to help, most walked away with a prize and a smile!

Me at the Wheel with one of our newest members of the Class of 2015

Test your own Penn trivia knowledge with these questions below: would you be a winner??

1)      The Penn Coat of Arms includes the University’s motto quoted from Horace’s “Third Ode.”  What is the motto?

2)      How old was Ben Franklin when he died?

"Benjamin Franklin Drawing Electricity from the Sky" by Benjamin West (1738-1820).

3)     Prior to its name change in the late 18th century, what did the University of Pennsylvania used to be called?

4)      According to its creator, what does the crack in the button represent?

5)      What year did Hey Day start at Penn?

Hey Day, 1911 (then called “Class Day”)

Know these questions, and when you find our spinning wheel at Homecoming you too might walk away a winner!

Answers to Quizzo questions: 1) Leges Sine Moribus Vanae, or Laws without Morals are Meaningless. 2) Ben Franklin was 84 when he passed. 3) The Academy of Philadelphia. 4) The Schuylkill River. 5) It was started in 1916.

 

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September 26, 2011 · 6:00 am

Back To Penn Fashion: Paintbrush Edition

Author: Leigh Ann P.

You know you’ve been there.  You see a notable piece of fashion – be it adorable or abomination – and you long to capture it on film, but do you dare?  Before the unsuspecting fashion plate in question walks too far ahead of you, do you have time to root around in your over-sized tote looking for your cell phone that somehow always manages to find its way to the very bottom; past old, crumpled up Wawa receipts, empty water bottles and your glasses case containing the eyewear you never bother to fish out – otherwise you wouldn’t have taken the 12 bus instead of the 21 today?  And even if you do manage to grab it in time, will you be inconspicuous enough?  Or are you a klutz who can’t keep a secret?

Maybe you’re smooth and you think you can just walk up to someone and tell her, “Hey, we’d like to photograph you for the Penn Alumni blog’s back-to-school fashion post I’m working on.”  Newsflash: this is awkward and no one will believe that you work for that illustrious online publication – that Daily Intel-Slate-NY Times-Perez Hiltonesque amalgam of the Penn Alumni community.

Which is why we are bringing you Frankly Penn’s first-ever Back To Penn Fashion post illustrated entirely in paintbrush!

First up: Last week, we saw a Penn student sitting on a bench near Locust Walk, and she was wearing a pair of clunky-heeled Mary Janes.  Mary Janes and clunky heels had a good run in the ’90s, and frankly, we welcome them back with open arms.  So long, stilettos!  You won’t find yourself interlocked with a sidewalk grate in these puppies!  Added bonus: clunky heels will change the proportion of the line of your leg, and instantly remove most traces of cankles.  This student was also wearing socks, so we are pretty sure she was going for a full-on Anthropologie look (one of our fave stores – the flagship mansion is at 18th & Walnut, if you’re interested).


Our next Back to School fashion trend we’ve noticed this September is one that has, in fact, been a perennial favorite around college campuses all across this country for at least the last half-century.  Does that make it a trend?  Probably yes, in the great scheme of things.  We call it “I Don’t Care Chic,” and we can be sure it will be around as long as all-nighter cramming sessions exist.  The psychology behind this look is one of extraordinary complication and one never knows the true impetus.  Do you really not care?  Or do you just want to look like you don’t care?  Is “not caring” an activity that requires actual effort, and isn’t it ironic when you do put effort into “not caring” because isn’t “not caring” caring?  Or perhaps it’s a comfort thing.  Personally, we would love to come to work in sweat pants!  We are glad these students are enjoying this dress code-free time in their lives. 

We couldn’t write a blog post about early-fall fashion and leave out cargo shorts.  Mostly we wanted to see if we could successfully draw cargo shorts using paintbrush.  Lex Ruby Howe C’07 thinks the pockets look like little people.  We think they’re awesome.  What do you think?

The fashion trend making the biggest statement this season – and every season – on this campus are the Penn gear staples.  You can’t strut a brick on Locust Walk without spotting packs of students wearing their pride on their sleeves in their Penn sweatshirts, t-shirts, belts, ties, tote bags, hats, gym clothes, flip-flops, and more! 

Join the Penn fashion movement!  You can purchase all the Penn gear your red-and-blue-bleeding heart desires on the Penn Bookstore website.  Go Quakers!

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September 23, 2011 · 7:16 pm

Friday Rain

Author:  Sabrina Shyn, C’13

I’ve spent a lot of sunny days in my rainboots because weather.com was wrong about the forecast. Like yesterday, when it said it was going to rain but it was bright and shiny the entire day.

So even though today’s forecast called for rain again, I decided not to wear my rainboots this morning. And as soon as I left my dorm it started pouring, of course.

The shoes I decided to wear:

At least I didn’t choose flip flops.

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September 23, 2011 · 9:00 am

Survival Tactics for Student-hood: 101

Author:  Mari Meyer, GSE, C’12

They say that becoming a student again is no different than riding a bike—sure, it may take some oversized training wheels, an industrial strength helmet, perhaps a pair of skinned knees or two and a bruised ego here and there—but as a new student at the Graduate School of Education and the Graduate Assistant here at the Office of Alumni Relations, I can officially concur that student-hood, whether you once loved it or simply survived it, sticks to your bones and stays with you for life.

Me in my undergrad years, circa 2006

Little did I know that I'd be back for more education...

I have been noticing the remnants of my own student identity creeping up on me in these first few weeks of the school year.  Though I expected early on that I would inevitably return to my tortuous and deeply unhealthy on-again/off-again relationship with the caffeinated lifestyle—I never would have imagined that I so quickly would re-learn the primal, survival skills of the student in her natural habitat.

So many, many choices

Anthropologically speaking, the student must evolve and adapt to her environment, first and foremost based on physical need.  Like many other graduate students, I have found that my basic physical need revolves completely around: ( 1). shelter (though this is generally the least important as there are libraries to sleep in), (2). food (or some variance thereof) and (3). cold, hard cash—which for most of us has been generated by what will ultimately become our endless collection of student debt.  But that’s another conversation.

Where I spend much of my time

It wasn’t until a recent trip to the Fresh Grocer Salad Bar that I wholeheartedly understood my own behavior as a return to familiar student territory.  While my fellow patrons loaded their disposable containers with greens and meats and cheeses and dressings by the ladleful, I was strategically mapping out the efficiency and worth of my mid-day meal.  Which vegetables carry the highest count of vitamins and fiber?  What is the ratio of caloric content and filling fixings to their weight on a pay scale—the final determinant of the cost of my meal? Why waste my money on thickly sliced cucumber rounds when those heavy medallions would far outweigh three times their nutritional value in feather-light spinach leaves? And so it begins.  It’s not enough that I will accept—rather, seek out—as many opportunities to eat for free as possible (even four years out of undergrad, that is one habit that will never cease to improve my quality of life), I now have revitalized my innate instinct to analytically assess every morsel and meal in terms of its satiety versus monetary turnover.

I also forgot what garbage day was like around a college campus

It is no different, say, for those of us who have also returned to the art of the coin-operated Laundromat experience after living in a home with washer and dryer—in the apartment itself!  I fondly remember the days when Chicago, my hometown, switched from quarter-collecting parking meters to giant boxes accepting cash, coins, and plastic of any kind.  People were furious about the prices, but oh, how luxurious it felt to free myself of loose change, that dirty, clinking pocket confetti.  What a pleasure to never worry about where and how I would find quarters in exchange for a dollar bill, which I so rarely had in the first place.  And here I am, a graduate student in West Philly buying extra socks and underwear in a concerted effort to prolong the need to gather my most valuable coins by the roll and exchange them for clean clothes—after hours (what, it doesn’t take you this long?) of sorting, and stuffing and piling and folding and transferring back into dressers and onto hangers—just to wear and make dirty all over again. Who has the time (or quarters?!) for this arduous nonsense?

I neither defend nor encourage this behavior, yet I must admit to feeling a certain rush of adrenaline each time I swipe that highlighter across the page, a kind of innate thrill as I fill up one more free cup of coffee here in the Office of Alumni Relations (whose inhabitants do nothing but enable this jitter-inducing addiction), and an emphatic joyfulness when I’ve finished ALL of my homework and made it into bed prior to 1 AM.  Sure, my new roommates write their names on their food to distinguish it from one another’s—I mean, really, would we not know that the uncooked chicken breast cutlet in the half-sealed plastic bag wasn’t ours?—and sure, I just added the Student Loan distributors to my “Favorites” list on my phone.  But let’s be clear here, student-hood is a privilege and pleasure.  When else in life will my sole purpose and hardest job require me to simply learn more? I can only hope that, even in my most sleep-deprived moments of despair—with my overabundance of unwashed socks and my sad looking salad platter—I can find humor amidst the panic and gratitude for getting through it best I can.

Another reason to return to learning, etched in stone

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September 22, 2011 · 7:25 pm

Five Years at Penn

Author: Kelly Graf

This past Tuesday marked exactly five years since I began my career at Penn. Five years! Ok, so it’s not exactly a lifetime, but it has encompassed a lot of really amazing experiences. Because I try to keep things all about me, I decided to look through these five years and find one of the most exciting developments at Penn for every year that I have worked here. ***Please note that I do not take credit (at these not all) for these accomplishments, though the timing does seem coincidental.

  • 2007:     The Making History campaign was launched. A little over a year after I started at Penn, the University launched its biggest campaign in history with an ambitious goal of $3.5 billion. I celebrated the launch on College Green with thousands of Penn students, staff and faculty.
  • 2008:     The Perelman Center opens. The $302 million, 500,000-square-foot outpatient facility was truly magnificent to see built as I passed every day on my way home. Today, it serves as home to 12 clinical specialties whose staff will work together in multidisciplinary teams aided by state-of-the-art medical technology.

  • 2009:     Vincent Price named provost. After a bittersweet departure with former Provost Ron Daniels, the University community was thrilled when Vice Provost Price was formerly named as Daniels’ successor in serving as the University’s “chief academic officer.”
  • 2010: >George A. Weiss Pavilion completed.  With more than 8,000 square feet of workout space, the two-story fitness center offered an east campus alternative to the Pottruck Center.

  • 2011: Penn Park opens.  What was a huge parking lot full of postal vehicles is now an inviting, specious landscape full of sporting fields, green space and recreational activities. It is truly breathtaking to see the transformation that Penn has accomplished there.

I can’t wait to see what the next five years brings to Penn, thanks to gifts and support from our loyal friends and alumni.

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September 21, 2011 · 2:13 pm

Why I Am Here

Author: Jonathan Cousins, SEAS’14

Whenever I meet someone new, one of the first questions that come up is ‘Where do you go to school?’  Upon revealing that I go to Penn, I get a variety of responses, from the sadly common ‘Penn State?’ to ‘That’s a long way from California.’  But the question that sticks in my mind is this: ‘What made you choose Penn?’  Sometimes, when I am basking in the lack-of-humidity that is a California summer, I wonder the same thing myself.  There are times, mostly when the weather is poor, when I wonder why I didn’t choose the ocean views of UCSD.  But when I got back to campus, I remembered why.

One clear reason was sports.  When I got here I had no idea how much history there was in the Penn Athletics community.  But upon entering the oldest two-tiered football stadium in the country, and the Cathedral of College Basketball, I was sold.  And over the summer, I missed Penn sports.  There were times when I just wanted to walk into the Palestra, wait for the band and the basketball team, and watch a game.

But if it was the sports that brought me back, it was the school and community that kept me here.  When I got back early to be an OPA! (Orientation Peer Advisor) for incoming Mechanical Engineers, I got to see all my old friends again, and meet some new ones.  Instantly I fell back into a comfortable place socially – and I realized just how much I had missed my friends over the summer.  And when classes started I remembered that being a Mechanical Engineer at Penn is a lot of fun.  In one day last week I both cut metal and flew paper airplanes – and these were both part of classes!  Even in a more theoretical physics class, we took pictures of structures and got to talk about what makes them stand up and stay up.  I didn’t realize how many metal beams Franklin Field had until I went and took a picture of it.

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September 20, 2011 · 6:15 pm

Resurrect Dead

Author: Lisa Marie Patzer

I recently attended the Philadelphia premiere of Resurrect Dead: The Mystery of the Toynbee Tiles at the International House.  I knew very little about the film but was curious to learn more about the odd tiles I had seen scattered throughout the streets of Philadelphia. Here is one located at 43rd and Chester:

Resurrect Dead, a documentary film directed by Jon Foy, follows Justin Duerr a Philadelphia-based artist, on his journey to find the source of the Toynbee Tiles.  Hundreds of these cryptic messages have been found embedded in the streets of major cities across the U.S. and South American and Justin has taken a photo of nearly every one.  The tiles contain some variation on the following inscription:

TOYNBEE IDEA
IN KUBRICK’S 2001
RESURRECT DEAD
ON PLANET JUPITER

I would classify the film is a hybrid doc-fiction that attempts to de-code the meaning behind the tiles as well as uncover the identity of the creator.  I will resist including any “spoilers” here, but I will say I was impressed by the film and the audience support.  The attendance at the International House was so overwhelming they added a 5th screening to the program.  

Kendall Whitehouse with the Wharton School at UPenn has a great  photo album of a Q&A session with Jon Foy.

In order to promote the film, the producers of Resurrect Dead gave the audience stickers that look like the Toynbee Tiles.  I have seen several pasted in public places throughout the city.

This Philadelphia based film is receiving a lot of buzz, both locally and nationally.  It has moved on to Chicago, but I am sure it will be back.  For more information, see the official website.

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September 19, 2011 · 1:55 pm

Penn Traditions of the not-so-Distant Past

Before there were skimmers or Hey Day, Penn was home to a number of yearly contests and rituals pitting Freshman students against their Sophomore counterparts. The Push Ball Fight, an athletic event where the two opposing classes carried a six foot high ball around a field in an attempt to score goals, was quickly dismissed as “not very interesting to the spectators, nor to the participants.” With hundreds of participants shoving one another in a bid to move a giant sphere across a line and final scores ranging between upwards of 0 and 2 points (who among us can forget the excitement of the tie 0-0 Push Ball Fight of 1911), Push Ball came to an unceremonious end in 1913.

Proud Penn men preparing to push a ball, 1908.

Dating back to 1867, the rules to the Bowl Fight were relatively straightforward. The freshmen provided a student to serve as “bowl man” and the sophomores provided the bowl. If the elder class succeeded in placing the bowl man into their vessel, they were declared the winners. If the freshmen broke the bowl before this occurred, they were crowned the victors. As time went on the competition became more spirited and bloody, with the Provost himself attempting to intervene in 1873. Finally, in 1916, the fighting had become so fierce that a student was killed during the course of the battle. The Bowl Fight was quickly abolished, however the bowl (along with other awards such as the spade, cane, and spoon) is still awarded to a member of the senior class during Hey Day even today.

Scrambling for the Bowl, 1895.

Perhaps one of the stranger and longest enduring traditions was that of the Sophomore Cremation.  From 1877 to 1930, members of the Sophomore class would don black robes and process from the U.S. Mint in downtown Philadelphia westward to campus. The school band would play a funeral dirge, while the students clutched volumes of their most hated text books in their hands. Upon arriving at Penn, the books, along with effigies of less popular professors, were placed upon a burning funeral pyre and cremated. Afterwards attendees were given the chance to eulogize the incinerated tomes through poems and prose. Of course the freshmen, not wanting to be left out of the festivities, pelted the funeral goers with rotten eggs and other projectiles; an act that often led to escalating violence. Because of these transgressions and clashes with local law enforcement, the Sophomore Cremation was officially abolished in 1930.

Advertisement for the Sophomore Cremation, 1908

You can read more about these and other colorful student traditions from throughout the university’s history at the Penn Archives Website.

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September 16, 2011 · 2:53 pm

My Top Penn List: Ten to Penn

Author: Casey Ryan, C’95

I’m currently on vacation but I wanted to make sure that I still wrote a blog entry on schedule.  In honor of Penn Park’s opening this weekend, I wanted to pay homage to my follow bloggers, Jason and Leigh Ann, with my Top Penn List’s Ten to Penn.

10.

It’s a quiet morning, right outside my apartment door. It’s sunny and a wonderful day to walk to work, snapping pictures on my iPhone for a Ten to Penn blog post. It looks like Roosevelt’s and Wharton MBAs survived another night together.

9.

Walking a mere block west, I see Penn on the horizon. What I didn’t take a picture of was the upcoming traffic on 76 since the trek is limited to 10 pictures and I wanted to focus on pictures with a strong Penn theme. It’s traffic like that which makes me happy I can walk to work.

8.

The Cira Center juts out behind 30th street and the old United States Post Office-Main Branch, the Art Deco building on the National Register of Historic Places that Penn now owns as part of the Postal Lands purchase.

7.

The pièce de résistance of this entry, Penn Park. Originally the asphalt parking lot of the Postal Lands purchase, it is a vibrant, verdant open space for our Penn athletes, students and community to enjoy.

6.

World Café Live is the home of WXPN, member-supported radio from the University of Pennsylvania and two live venues for music. I have been lucky to see my classmate, Gabriel Mann, C’95, of the Rescues, John Forté, Heart, Tori Amos and Carly Simon at shows here.

5.

I love this bold announcement of Penn on the side of the train trestle. “Welcome to University City.”

4.

Here’s the back view of the Cathedral of Basketball, the Palestra. Beyond to the left, you can see some of Franklin Field poking through and to the right, there stands Irvine Auditorium.

3.

Here is the construction site of the Krishna P. Singh Center for Nanotechnology, which promises the future collaboration, exchange, and integration of knowledge in this emerging field.

2.

Known more for designing the Gateway Arch and choosing Jørn Utzon’s winning plans for the Sydney Opera House, Eero Saarinen is the mastermind behind the architecture of Hill College House. I thought that I would take a more pedestrian view of the building since I don’t view the main entrance along my walk to Sweeten.

1.

Finally, I am at campus, stepping onto Locust Walk (though technically it’s Woodland Walk here.) I’m ready to start the workday, and I check in on foursquare to see if I remain the Mayor of the University of Pennsylvania.

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September 15, 2011 · 3:30 pm

I Bike Philly

Author: Colin Hennessy

Philadelphia is a biker’s city. With more and more Center City streets making room for bike lanes, cyclists are able to traverse our city with increased ease and safety. Despite these advancements, what really excites me as a relatively new biker is the Schuylkill River Heritage Area Trail.

Each morning before work, well most mornings, my colleague and I meet and ride to the trail. Our morning routine includes a 10-mile journey to the Falls Bridge and back to the start of the trail near Spruce Street. The whole excursion takes about one hour (door-to-door). This bike friendly journey includes stunning scenery and views of the river. Long straight-aways provide many opportunities for sprinting, while one or two mild hills give that brief burning sensation in quad muscles. In addition, on the weekends we have extended our journey and ventured to Valley Forge.

The best news is the trail is minutes from Penn’s campus. All members of the Penn community are able to take full advantage of this trail. With the opening of Penn Park (today) the combined outdoor space in and around the Penn campus is extraordinary. Few urban schools can boast the amount of green space so easily accessible by their campus.

As late summer transforms to fall, I hope you will take full advantage of the moderate temperatures and lingering daylight that are made for long bike rides, riverside runs, or casual walks and talks. Philadelphia is a wonderfully accessible city and Penn is right at home here.

Make a plan to visit Penn Park and the Schuylkill River trail – before long your visits might become part of your daily routine, like mine.

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