PHILADELPHIA — She had no idea where she was.
Freshman Ilana Bernstein ventured out Wednesday afternoon, looking to find “yet another boring history recitation.” But what she found was more shocking and appalling to her than any TA could ever be: a Penn sporting event.
“It was honestly the most scarring thing I’ve seen at Penn,” Bernstein said. “Like ten times worse than my dorm in Gregory.”
At first, the freshman thought that she had simply walked into the rear entrance of David Rittenhouse Laboratories. However, Bernstein had mistaken the Tse Ping - Cheng Cheung Ling Sports Center for DRL. This was the student’s first foray to a Penn Athletics function.
“My roommate is on the women’s lacrosse team, actually, but I heard that they don’t win very much so I didn’t bother going to her games or, like, any other Penn things,” Bernstein said.
According to firsthand accounts, the freshman failed to look up from her phone screen for the duration of her walk across Shoemaker Green, apparently too busy texting her sorority pledge class GroupMe that she, “couldn’t even.”
Bernstein did not realize her error until looking up from her phone screen to find a large, idyllic, overwhelmingly pink portrait of the Tse Ping family.
“At first I just thought my History of Modern China TA put up a new poster in our classroom,” she said. “It wasn’t until I heard people cheering that I noticed that I was at sports.”
Bernstein first walked down the stairs to Rockwell Gymnasium in search of the source of a noise she heard, but upon finding the gymnastics team in the heat of a competition, she realized that wasn’t the source of the commotion.
When Bernstein walked into the gym, coach John Ceralde was just about as confused as the lost freshman.
“I was confused,” Ceralde said.
Next Bernstein continued on her journey to find DRL classroom 2C8. Instead, she found herself courtside at the Palestra.
Instead of basketball players, the Cathedral’s only occupants were the members of the Penn Band deep in rehearsal of that fight song that no one actually knows the words to. Exhausted by the ordeal, Bernstein decided to bag her recitation and finally learn which direction to put her arm during the chorus of “hurrah’s.”
At printing time, Bernstein had wandered onto Franklin Field during the middle of a pledging event.
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