Macklemore & Ryan Lewis and P-Day 2013!

Hey y'all!

The crowd between the opener and
Macklemore & Ryan Lewis on 4/25 at SMC.

It's about that time of the semester. Finals are looming, students are getting stressed, and the weather's getting nice. So what do the students of Saint Michael's do? Rock out to Macklemore & Ryan Lewis and blow off some steam at P-Day.

Saint Mike's, like many colleges and universities, has a concert on campus in the spring semester, and this year we were lucky to have Macklemore come to play. Although we've had some big names in the past, this concert was BIG, and sold out not long after tickets opened up to the public.

Normally the concert is quite a bit earlier in the semester, but this year it was held on Thursday, April 25. It's also uncommon that we have the concert on a week-night, but the school allowed it because it was such a rare opportunity. Needless to say classes were a challenge on Friday morning, but we made it through, and it was worth the performance!

Then, this past Saturday we had P-Day; which, if not better than the spring concert, comes in at a close second for best day of the year on campus.

As I understand it, P-Day used to be called Preparation Day, which began as a day for students to take some time to relax and get ready for finals. Nowadays, P-Day is a day-long celebration, most of which takes place on the field adjacent to the 300's townhouses. First is the annual trike race, which is an informal relay between 4-person teams of students that takes place on the rotunda between Alliot and Joyce halls. For the race, students dress up in themed costumes and makeup, and participants are bombarded with candy, shaving cream, and flour as they race around the mini-track. This usually happens in the late morning, and is a cornerstone to the day's celebrations.

Lounging on the lawn.

But the biggest part of P-Day happens on the 300's field, like I mentioned earlier (pictured right). All afternoon, the huge Chew-Chew tent is set up full of local food vendors, along with a stage for music and large inflatables. From approximately 1-5pm, students and guests are invited to engorge themselves on delicious cuisine from the area, play merrily on large, bouncy slides and obstacle courses, and lie under the sun listening to bands that frequent the Turtle Underground, as their music plays across a warm Vermont spring field.

Later in the evening is usually some entertainment followed by a late-night breakfast in Alliot. This year, the entertainment was a sword-swallower, which I missed because of an extended afternoon nap. The breakfast, normally called the "midnight breakfast", ran from 9.30-11pm this year, and here one can find all the typical breakfast fixings to satisfy one's midnight P-Day cravings.

P-Day is a gem, my friends, and a much-needed day of celebration to break the tension between a stressful semester and one's quickly-approaching finals. So as I finish the rest of the semester, I'd just like to thank everyone from Saint Mike's and the local community who helped pull this day together. It means a lot to the students, and is a very appreciated feature of our spring semester.

That's it for now; time to return to the books for a little while longer before the beginning of my last week of sophomore year.

Thanks for reading!