Column: URI in the spring

Everybody has a favorite everything, whether it’s a favorite color, a favorite team, a favorite band, a favorite season, the lists of favorites can go on and on. Undoubtedly, my favorite season is fall, but I’m figuring out that I have a favorite season, specifically here at URI: spring.

After months of cold weather, dead nature and a non-inhabited quad, everything suddenly changes the second a beautiful day comes out of nowhere. Last week we were blessed with days that hit the high-60s, and the second that warm weather rolled around, this campus felt alive again. And I mean, it really felt alive.

I was leaving Washburn Hall last Thursday afternoon and when I walked out on to the Quadrangle it felt like an actual college. Students were everywhere: laying down, playing Frisbee, doing homework, laughing, talking and just being happy.

The Quad came alive with the sounds of everybody. All those people had been cooped up for months, waiting for the day they could go write a paper while sitting in the grass or for when they could toss the football with their friends. Finally, those days came.

Somehow, this beautiful weather pulls something out of each of us. Everyone I talked to over the course of the nice days last week said that all they wanted to do was to be outside or to go to the beach, which is one of the most Rhode Island things I’ve ever heard. I’m from here and I just love how when it hits 60 degrees, it’s beach weather.

But I agreed with everyone. I wanted to sit on the quad and bask in the sunlight and the activity that was buzzing around. I wanted to throw the football with my friends. I wanted to go walk the beach. I wanted to sit out on the balcony with my roommate and do homework and just chill. I’ve started checking things off of that list, believe me.

Springtime on a college campus is something unexplainable. The feeling that I got walking out of class and seeing everyone out and about was something unreal. It made me feel like I was actually at college because besides the papers, tests and classes, college is about being with friends, soaking up every good day and making the best out of any free time one may have.

With the good weather coming, people come out of their winter shells and are just, in my opinion, genuinely happier. And that can be seen, 100 percent, when you walk to the center of the Quad on a day when the weather is nice.

This can be seen at almost every other campus, too. I cannot tell you how many Snapchat stories I saw of people laying in the sun, partying during the day and being happier because the weather is better. Yes, I was one of the people posting about the weather, but it just goes to show how excited everybody gets when they can take off the winter jackets and are able to be outside for more than a few minutes.

I admit, we did not have as rough as a winter as last year, and I am very thankful for that, but the results of the coming spring are the exact same whether we got four feet of snow or two inches. People are just happier. And with happier people comes a place that just feels like it’s supposed to.  

So now I have two favorite seasons. And I think many people will agree with me when I say this campus is so much happier, so much better and so much more alive when the weather is nice and everyone is out enjoying it together.

It does make it harder to actually want to go to class, but that is just an internal battle we will all have to face in the upcoming weeks. Stay strong, friends, take on your responsibilities and enjoy the weather. It’s a win-win.