Dear Spring: It’s a Quarter Into 2016, I’m a Little Pale, and I Need You Now

That’s right, Boston got you again. After a few days of spring weather last week, I think we all expected that the little frost emoji on the weather forecast for Sunday was a joke. I guess the bipolar nature of New England weather can never be underestimated.

It all started with the slow descent to murkiness on Saturday, and by the wind storm on Sunday morning, we all knew that it was over. I hadn’t expected it to snow like it’s December this morning though.

Actually, after three years at a high school in Connecticut, I should be used to the phenomenon known as The-Warmth-That-Never-Comes, the perpetual overcast sky that prolongs from February to May, but I guess it’s clear that I didn’t come out of the dormitory often enough to really understand the struggle.

In fact, I had stored away all my winter clothes and shoes until this morning, when I realized that the temperature had dropped into the minuses (yes, I use Celsius). Slowly pulling open the curtains, and discovering the winter wonderland that had returned, I pulled out my boots from a box under my bed, nearly in tears.

This is exaggeration, of course. The weather isn’t too bad. And I’m sure that spring will come. Next year. But upon experiencing the sun for the first time since October last week, I’d realized that I’d been feeling under the weather. Soaking in the vitamin D and clear blue sky, I felt happiness and motivation to be kinder to others. I did all my readings, I went to the gym, I even introduced myself to a stranger in Annenberg—this was who my mom had raised me to be.

My epiphany has since then disappeared with the sunlight, and I am back to the cliché freshman year identity crisis. What is my next life goal? Have I always been this lazy? Should I go to class or drown in my miseries looking at jean shorts on online shopping sites?

As we wait for the spring that will never come until summer in June, take some vitamin D, guys. It probably doesn’t do anything, but I find that if you convince yourself that it does, it has a slight placebo effect.