“Dear Mom and Dad: College is hell.” At seventeen, having been dumped at a large university where I knew no one, I thought I was entitled to adapt the “war is hell” metaphor. Although I knew that taking exams was a far cry from getting shot at, I did see my dorm room as a kind of bunker, outsiders as enemies, and much of what was happening to me as grenades launched with, as the army says, “extreme prejudice.”
Read More