In traipsing around campus today, I’m feeling a little disoriented. My advising center is in a different building, the chicken Caesar wraps at the Student Center are in rectangular containers and I almost tripped over the gaping void that was Curtis Hall.
Can’t say I’m not enjoying that spatial expansion. I can now see the Bagel Hut from the fourth floor of Tuttleman. Mmmmm. Lox bagels.
So, I can’t help but be somewhat sappily nostalgic and reflective about the past four years. What a wild ride. That’s how I’d like to remember it, anyway, and really it’s all about me so I’ll do what I want. I even used my original head shot this week. It just screams, “Hi! I’m 19 (and a few pounds thinner)!”
To say the least, it has been tumultuous – nowhere as much as on these pages (and subsequently in my e-mail box). When I took this responsibility, as my egotistical mind likes to refer to it, I was a freshman thinking I’d explode in print with mind-bogglingly fresh, never-before-dreamed-of topics.
I would uproot the previous knowledge of all things sex and relationships.
I was ready to shock and amaze, move mountains, fill valleys and enlighten all those formerly pimply kids who slept through junior high health class. For instance, I bet you didn’t know ‘bogglingly’ was in the dictionary. Word fabrication is exactly the kind of power unique to a sex columnist. Fantastamundoarama.
Somewhere along the way, I lost sight of my extremist goal. With only 13 columns remaining in my career at The Temple News, I feel increasingly panicked that I’ve pruned into a frigid, painfully ho-hum representative of well-informed vaginas everywhere.
Granted, a lot of my column pitches get the censor veto. Like that time I suggested we do a first-time-ever live The Temple News podcast of a Prince Albert piercing. That didn’t go over well. You know me: anything to get more naked pictures on the Internet in the name of journalistic research. Kidding.
It is my intent … no … my sworn pledge that I will deliver to you, the loyal reader, only the most insane, rarely-talked-about material for the duration of the semester.
The ideas are brewing as we speak. Here are some of the topics you can look forward to in the coming weeks.
I will go undercover in the city as a publicly deviant pregnant woman, smoking cigarettes, engaging in potentially dangerous acts and surveying the dating scene to gauge social conscience.
I will visit tattoo parlors and interview artists about sexually oriented piercings and tattoos. Hopefully, I’ll be able to follow someone one-on-one in this kind of experience. Still no hope for the podcast.
I will interview a gynecologist about his or her everyday work life – how they chose their profession, insight on discussing ‘women’ problems and how long it took to be comfortable staring down vaginas of all shapes and sizes.
As someone with a strong tendency to be single on Valentine’s Day, I’ll hit Philly’s sex shops to help you put together a swingin’ singles party, complete with penis-shaped silverware, a menu packed with aphrodisiacs and useful party favor ideas for your ‘grab’ bags.
In order to best serve you, I want to enlist your help. I’m very aware that the majority of the material I cover is laced with my hegemonic experience.
This leaves out countless categories that deserve a voice. If you feel something needs coverage, e-mail an idea to me. Heaven forbid I get even-tempered, constructive criticism.
I’m going to brace instead for the influx of bestiality suggestions.
That gets more original every time.
Nadia Stadnycki can be reached at nadias@temple.edu.
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