For the past nine months, we at UTB have been lucky to have our columnist Carlin grace this blog with her wit and wisdom. She graduated with the rest of the class of ’09, but we convinced her to bid adieu with one last post. From now on, you can visit Carlin at her new personal blog.

When I was in elementary school, we were asked each semester in my nine years of attendance to fill out a five page self evaluation. I was asked, beginning at the age of five, what was my favorite class? What was the best thing I’d learned? What kind of a friend was I? What kind of a student? What were my strengths? My weaknesses?

I would fill these out pretty meticulously, with the knowledge that not only would my teachers be seeing them, but eventually my parents would too, so what I was really evaluating was the person I wanted them to see me as. Not that I was lying, exactly. But I wanted to be seen as a leader, as creative. A wonderful friend, and wonderfully liked. Smart. Good at everything I put my mind to. When transcripts were added into the equation, I wanted to be seen as engaged; involved in every club, every advanced class, and eventually, rewarded with the perfect boyfriend and wardrobe (I got him, and dumped him two months later for being too boring. The legacy of my wardrobe, however, continues).

Though I haven’t been asked to fill out one of these evaluations in about eight years, I’ve recently found myself thinking about the way we present ourselves, in contrast to the way we actually view ourselves when we strip away the Greek affiliations, social cliques, Facebook, and general Penn-isms. I carried these aspirations of self-preservation with me through college, and added in the edgy flavor of sexual deviant and potty mouth with a rockin’ closet. Read the rest of this entry »

Where would UTB be without Carlin?  This week, our campus coquette makes a list and checks it, um, 13 times.

At the beginning of this semester, I admitted to my ritualistic behavior of listing (and editing) my sex life. I now find myself, in the week that will culminate in Fling, making yet another list with a friend of equal sexual credentials. Facebook open and BBM conversations up for review, we each crafted the Final Countdown of lists: who would/should/could you hook up with before you graduate? Clearly, I am a fan of all things circular this term. Call me sentimental.

This list, as was that of “Sex, a History,” is multi-tiered. It is important to note that regardless of the classification, the overall tone is that of carpe diem: this is meant to be fun, and there should be no repercussions. Like, why the fuck not? Seize the day, man. I see two types of hook ups involved in said evaluation: there’s the obvious and simplistic “I’d Make Out With You” class of Pennsters. Meet up at Smoke’s (or Blarney, if it gets too crowded/ugly), and end up on the couch while watching a movie -– the bra stays on, maybe if you’re feeling it, you’ll rest your hand on a thigh. Then there’s the “One Night in Paris” list -– night cam optional. Finally, there’s the month-long fuckathon. Not sure how often that happens, but call me? Read the rest of this entry »

We have a sneaking suspicion that most of you didn’t heed our advice and head down to Love Park a few weekends ago to hook up in the shadow of City Hall. For those of you who stayed warm on campus, check out the final product, brought to you by gophila.com.

In the likely event that you’re reserving all brain function for midterms, papers and spring break plans, we’ve broken down a few highlights after the jump so you get the most out of your viewing experience:

Read the rest of this entry »

Penn kids are very smart. Which means they are inherently socially inept, especially when it comes to dealing with members of the opposite sex. But fear not — I’m looking out for you, so on this Valentine’s Day you can pull off some fairly normal human interaction. Or at least fake it really really well.

First off: do you have a date? If so, you’re more than halfway there. If you buy someone dinner they’re obligated to put out and vice versa. But if its the first time you’re touching a living thing since that Bio dissection you did last semester, you’re going to need a little guidance. The “base system” from the days of yore still applies, albeit with some additional nuances. The folks over at xkcd were kind enough to diagram it for y’all. Read the rest of this entry »

LOVE Park will live up to its name this Sunday when all the city’s make-out sluts come together for a giant orgy of Seven Minutes in (Urban) Heaven.  Philly’s tourism department will be filming some kind of Valentine-themed commercial.  Love + city seemed to work for New York (“I <3 NY”), so why not apply the same concept to Philly?  Here’s the scoop:

This commercial is for a new push of the campaign with a special Valentine’s Day twist. The filming takes place in LOVE Park and starts on one couple meeting at the Park. They immediately start kissing each other. The camera moves and we see another couple meeting and kissing . The camera continues to move and we see another kissing couple and another until we see a ridiculous number of couples all meeting and kissing at LOVE Park, as if everyone in Center City just stopped what they were doing and started making-out with each other.

More details are here.  But since Penn has its own LOVE statue and we are lazy, we’re planning to just chill on College Green and make out with whoever walks by, even if it’s a squirrel.

The other night, in a break from the frigidity and classic girl-on-girl rush flirt, two of my housemates brought out lists of everyone they’d ever hooked up with–or at least those they could remember. Agreeing to skip over my own slutty whimsies of middle school (at camp one summer as an act of rebellion for being my improv partner’s beard, I got it on with every straight guy in the spin-the-flashlight circle), since I still had braces, not to mention the ghosts of high school boyfriends’ past, we concluded that our respective lists should focus on the college years, summers included.

I didn’t want to admit it at the time, but I make and edit my own list fairly regularly. Sometimes it’s every sexual encounter ever. Other times, I’ll exclude the ones I don’t think should have counted, because it was a sympathy 4-seconds with tongue in a parking lot. The most important edit though, is the group of people who definitely counted, but you wouldn’t want a soul to find out. I unfortunately have a generous pocketful of those, due to the insecure but sexually charged mid-adolescence most of us had. Read the rest of this entry »

*Trumpet sounds* UTB continues our celebration of winter break with the return of our intermittent book club!  Today’s selection is College Girl by Patricia Weitz.

As bona fide college students, we simply can’t ignore a novel that heralds itself as “a sharply observed portrait of campus life and all the many pressures–economic, academic, social–that are funneled into its culture.” A college-centric novel promises to be either really juicy or really lame, Tom Wolfe’s I am Charlotte Simmons being the gold standard for lameness. Wolfe’s book (which, ooooh, was partially based on research completed at Penn’s very own St. A’s) fell flat because each page couldn’t help but reveal how scandalized Wolfe was by “kids these days,” with their sex and drugs and loose morals (all of which provided the author with an excuse to seriously overuse the word “insouciant”). While the main character of Weitz’s book is, regrettably, a tad reminiscent of Charlotte Simmons, College Girl proves itself to be unsentimental, thought-provoking, and really compelling. Read the rest of this entry »

Since Thursday, I have spent approximately 32 hours in Van Pelt. My breaks were for meals, sleeping, and meetings. Literally. As I read through my text books, made flashcards, wrote two papers, and prepared for presentations that should take me through the Monday after Thanksgiving, I acquired two tics: the instinctive looking up expectantly as I catch any tall boy in my peripheral vision, and–the more embarrassing one–impulsively texting boys from home in anticipation of a weekend of gluttony.

It started innocently with the love of my life from middle school. We have, for years, been in limbo with one another; one single, the other seeing someone, then it switches. Not since my bat mitzvah have I slow-danced with someone and really meant it. This text was an investment, on all accounts, since he’s in his first year at Goldman, and I am due to move to New York come June. Of course, being an investment big shot himself means he’ll be home for 20 hours. That led me to the high school friend with benefits. Read the rest of this entry »

If you’ve picked up your copy of the DP Thursday, you probably read about the single greatest thing to hit the Internet since Scrabulous: inSPOT.org. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, now you can remove all of the discomfort and unpleasantries from having to tell a former partner that your last encounter was a bit more lasting than either of you probably would have liked.

There are some unfortunate limits on the Web site. Perhaps the most important, you’re going to have to know your former companion’s name and e-mail address. Might I suggest that for a minimal extra fee, inSPOT takes down what few details you can recall of your one-time bed buddy and tries to find said partner a la Law and Order? After all, this is an important pubic public health crisis. If inSPOT is really trying to help you manage your one night stands, it’s not fair of them to hold out. Read the rest of this entry »

So considering that Halloween is this week, you’d think I would dedicate today’s post to inappropriate costumes. Wrong again, reader! That was my intention, but today I eavesdropped on a conversation so heinous that I decided to bypass the whole “Halloween” theme altogether, in the name of a much-needed review of common decency. 

So, to paint a mental picture, I was sitting in Houston eating and studying for my Criminology midterm, when my mind began to wander (not all of us are as efficient studiers as we would like to be). Anyway, my mind wandered on over to the table next to me, where two upperclassmen guys were having a conversation about their weekends.

Sounds harmless, no? It could have been, but instead what ensued was one of the more offensive conversations I’ve overheard in a long time. Parenthetically, for those of you who are upset at my blatant admittance to eavesdropping, I would chastise myself for a breach of etiquette had this guy not insisted on screaming so that half of Houston heard, voluntarily or no. 

In a period of about five minutes, he managed to drop such conversational gems as, “I dunno, I hooked up with some random bitches,” “no, I didn’t ask her name it’s not like she was there to cuddle,” and “it’s like, why do ugly bitches even talk to me? I’m not gonna go there.” Read the rest of this entry »

If only he read UTB first...

With parents’ weekend fast approaching, I know a lot of people are nervous about meeting their significant other’s folks. I have major sympathy for those of you who are stuck in the awkward position of wanting to avoid this happenstance at all costs, but consider your partner’s position too! Even I have been on the other side of the spectrum–I had a boyfriend once who refused to be introduced to my parents for the entire sixth months we were dating. Ouch. I should mention that, when I did finally force them to get together, nobody came out happy or satisfied. The whole horribly awkward encounter could have been avoided had I only respected my ex’s–and my parent’s–wishes. Please feel free learn from my mistake. Read the rest of this entry »

Me-yow!

When I was in high school, I dated a younger guy off and on for a couple of years. For the most part, driving him everywhere and calling his mom for permission to go to the movies didn’t get to me, until one day when we were fooling around watching TV. Suddenly, on came the Pokemon theme song. Now, I would not be caught dead watching that show–even to this day, I much prefer quality old school Nicktoons to any anime bullshit (Sorry, D)–so to say it was alarming when my boyfriend squealed with excitement, “oh my god I looooove Pokemon. You’re my Pikachu!,” would be an understatement. When we officially broke up and I hooked up with my first college guy (a senior with a record deal) three days later, I concluded that never again would I rob the cradle. Until now. Read the rest of this entry »

For those of you who don’t spend 100% of your internet time on facebook and reading celebrity gossip, political and shopping blogs like me (and I’m kickass), I would like to inform you that the recent Ivy-Graduates-in-San-Fransisco-Constituency, also known as “Team Google” have created a new feature to prevent you from writing drunk emails.

Mail Goggles, as they are called, note a frequency in typos and interrupt your rant to an ex with math equations. If you are competent enough to solve said problems, you may continue your well-wishing of the syph and herpes.

Now, this idea could work if your emails looks like this: djklfasdlkfjaklghah. While this may be beneficial to some, I have to ask: how many of you actually drunk email? Read the rest of this entry »

CollegeOTR tipped us off to Trojan’s sexual health report card, a glorified survey on campus resources masquerading as some sort of racy report rather than what it is, a press release that they hope will get picked up on blogs like this one.  Mission accomplished!  Penn ranks 21, behind Columbia, Cornell and Brown, but ahead of Harvard and Yale.  We’re not sure what the implications of this are–can we expect to get more severe STD’s when we hook up with Yalies?  Will this harm Penn’s permanent sexual transcript?

View the full report here.

Our intrepid etiquette columnist intones: there’s a time and place for P.D.A.  But when! And where?  Read on for a moral compass beyond W.W.J.D.

This weekend, at an unnamed fraternity party, I saw yet another drunken hook-up. This time, however, I noticed two minor deviations from the norm: One, instead of being freshmen, these people appeared to be older (see attached picture). Upperclassmen recklessly engaging in minor sexual deviance at a frat party? Weird. Shouldn’t these two have been at Smoke’s or, even better, in private?

Don't let this be you!

And, two: Instead of standing in a dark corner or on the side of the room, this couple decided to engage openly in their acts of barely restrained passion between the exit of said frat and the bar. This was a relatively well-lit area, and they were surrounded by the 21+ (or the card-carrying majority) who were trying to get their beer. Read the rest of this entry »