The Repeating Friday
“Every day felt like a Friday!” Camila Martinez, senior English major, said about past Groundhog Week, a quite apt description regarding this holiday. With no classes and few commitments, the days blurred together until every day of the week was like the weekend.
Martinez remembers snowball fights on the mall while laughing at the Texans who were afraid of half an inch of snow. Being from Chicago, Martinez had fun alongside the Midwesterners in teasing the southern Texans who don’t know how to handle a bit of cold and ice.
One of her favorite memories, however, was when she and her friends would cozy into Gorman on weeknights or into dorm rooms. Here they would watch movies together, as well as share videos of their own families until late into the night, providing a bit of homey respite from the anxieties of student life.
The “Ice Week”
“In the past two years of my own Groundhog Weeks, a phrase has been coined that has no intrinsic meaning except to other UD students. “The Ice Week” or “The Snow Week,” someone says, and your mind immediately turns to canceled classes and mud on everything (really, how does it even get on your elbow?).
While this year’s rain brought its own collection of muddied shenanigans, this final Groundhog Week of my college career has somehow succeeded in being a new experience. For two years now the “Ice Week” has hit during Groundhog Week, freezing the entire campus under a sheet of vengeful black ice in time for the festivities.
No classes, no waking up early, just an icy wonderland of confusion for a week and general cries of lamentation that the Cap Bar was still closed.
I distinctly remember seeing a different group of students doing a polar plunge in the pool each time I stepped out my condo door, and it took me longer to get to any building on campus than the time I spent there. Mornings were spent catching up on reading, afternoons were spent surfing down a sleet covered Clark Hill and evenings were spent sliding around to different friends’ apartments. Hog House was packed as students eagerly sought the warmth of the fire and each other’s company.
Those “Ice Weeks” are but distant memories now, but I think I speak for many a UD undergraduate when I say my still muddied shoes bring all those delightful memories back into focus.
There and Back Again
Anthony Jones, UD graduate of 2023, returned this year for his first Groundhog as an alumnus of UD. It was like returning home again, although everything is different now from the way it was a year ago. Jones seemed to run into friends everywhere, people he didn’t realize were even coming into town, so it felt a bit like a class reunion for him.
Jones was refreshed walking down the Mall, going back to the Cap Bar and attending the rugby game, all in his newly donned quarter-zip instead of a sweatshirt. He gloried in his newfound access to the alumni tent on the night of Groundhog, which apparently has faster food lines.
Much has changed since Jones’s time as a student—including moving back home to St. Louis and getting a full-time job— but some of his favorite parts of this weekend were the things that stayed the same.
Squishing around in the mud, Jones and his reunited friends sang “Stacy’s Mom” and the National Anthem until they closed the park down.