Kindergarten life permeates college

During the spring semester when high school seniors are trying to decide which college to accept, I get a lot of phone calls and e-mails about Penn.

When my younger friends ask me what college is like, I usually lie. I tell them it is intellectually stimulating, productive and exciting, and it is -- to an extent. The real truth, which I dutifully hide from these starry-eyed youngsters, is that coming to college is more like returning to kindergarten than anything else.

Sure, I take classes and drink coffee and carry important-looking books. But the truth is, almost everything I do for school is simply an obstacle to the five-year-old lifestyle that I've grown accustomed to.

First of all, there's the issue of diet.

I have heard tour guides tell prospective students the dining halls are great, the variety of foods offered can accommodate any dietary restrictions and the meals are healthy and palatable to boot.

If you ask me, the real gem of the dining halls is the cereal. Cereal, the same dietary staple of the average kindergartner, becomes my default meal -- morning, noon or night. The more unrefined sugar the better.

Then, the question of entertainment arises.

Pointless television shows are a must. Animal Planet, Family Guy and anything on TBS are usually my fallbacks. If nobody comes to remind me of my commitments or appointments, it is likely that I will sit for hours watching absolutely nothing on television without realizing it.

If you are asking yourself how the weekend always seems to go from Friday night to Sunday morning without any recollection of a Saturday, this is probably your answer.

In elementary school, most kids go through a phase when they refuse to wear anything but sweatpants. This is the state that I have been living in for the past two years. Which is good, because I never know when I might want to take a nap.

The Penn bookstore has cashed in on this obsession with comfort by creating the ubiquitous Penn sweatpants. If you don't know what I'm talking about, walk into any college house and wait five minutes.

Although the Penn administration tries to hide it when addressing pre-frosh visitors, the student life organizers have caught onto this lifestyle choice by offering holiday activities in Houston Hall.

My belief in the importance of a five-year-old mindset is always reaffirmed at the various "fests."

Recently, I watched College seniors decorate gingerbread houses made out of graham crackers and frosting.

They devoted a focus to this that I would expect to be reserved for final architecture models or senior theses.For a whole day, cookie decorating, hot chocolate and holiday-card craft stations filled Houston Hall as part of the Winter Fest.

I haven't seen that much enthusiasm since parents' night at my elementary school.

As a result of my curiosity regarding the similarities between kindergarten and college, I looked up the National Curriculum Standards for Kindergarten and found that my suppositions were not ungrounded.

Kindergarten provides young children with an entirely new concept on the format of education and teaches them a new method of thinking.

College has the same effect on incoming students.

One of the general goals of a kindergarten education is "to cultivate an enriched emotion and the growing ability to think through developing interest and curiosity in things surrounding them."

This definition could just as easily be applied to the freedom that new college students discover in the lifestyle and educational changes that they experience at Penn.

Of course, there are some distinct differences between kindergartners and college students: alcohol use, sexual promiscuity and late bedtimes, to name a few. I guess you could count a great mixed drink as something of an arts and crafts activity, but we've certainly gotten over this whole cooties fixation.

Now we are simply kindergartners on an elevated plane.

Maybe this whole "acting like a child" thing is just my last hurrah before entering the dreaded Real World. In another two years I'll have to wear a suit and be responsible and act mature.

After that, I'll just have to bide my time until retirement, when I can slip back into those sweats.

Anna Hartley is a sophomore comparative literature and French major from Palo Alto, Calif. Penn's Annatomy appears on Tuesdays.

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