The fluctuations of this year’s fall weather have emphatically befuddled Longwood students who have adjusted their morning schedules to employ defrost buttons, scrape windshields and bundle up for the chilly walk to class.
Winter is upon us. As one of the final warm fronts of the season hits Farmville this November, senior Tim Mace, mathematics and physics major, reflects upon what he describes as “the in between state” of Fall.
“A certain quality in the air” strikes Mace about this time of year; a smokey wood smell perfumes the “crisp” air that accompanies him on the walks he looks forward to on fall afternoons. Mace takes on the ups and downs of the fall weather in stride, not letting the confused expectations of warm versus cold affect his daily demeanor. He embraces dark, drizzly days, particularly enjoying the majesty of a rainstorm.
The fall weather follows Mace into vivid dreams colored by falling leaves, his mind’s invention of reality. Oddly, he relents; these dreams often reflect a “theme of loneliness,” which seems to be correlated to the season. Not in the science of dream interpretation himself, he shrugs off the association as a mystery and is relieved to have his mood unaffected by the degrees Fahrenheit. In fact, Mace seems eager for the coming of the winter, and nobly offers to “take up the torch” for those Longwood students less enticed by the frigid wind chill.
The Tim Mace prediction for this winter is “a cold with no reward,” featuring freezing temperatures and a sad lack of snow. One of Mace’s roommates and close friends, senior John McCullough, declined to speculate on the weather, but did not appear thrilled for the onslaught of the harsh cold.
Mace’s other roommate, junior Jimmy Mello, cites fall as his favorite season. While he would not describe himself as a particularly “festive person” he enjoys the colors that accompany these short days.
The Longwood academic calendar, laden with school holidays, makes for an odd season of “sprints,” as Mello refers to them, sprinting from one break to the next. The outcome of this “sprint/break/ sprint/break” lifestyle has mixed outcomes for Mello’s academic performance. With a characteristic “maybe” he hesitantly predicts a “really snowy winter.”
It remains to be seen which of Longwood’s premature groundhogs over in Lancer Park will accurately predict the weather for Farmville’s oncoming winter, but it is sure to be a cold one, so embrace these last few beautiful days of fall before you have to trade your cardigan in for a parka.
