Primal Scream
On the Sunday of finals week each semester, students open their windows at midnight and scream as loudly as possible. The tradition helps students release their pent up stress and anxiety about exams. Similar traditions exist at UCLA, Stanford University, Harvard University, Cornell University, the University of Pennsylvania, Vassar College and presumably other institutes of higher learning as well.
Read more about this topic: Columbia University Traditions
Famous quotes containing the words primal and/or scream:
“For poetry was all written before time was, and whenever we are so finely organized that we can penetrate into that region where the air is music, we hear those primal warblings, and attempt to write them down, but we lose ever and anon a word, a verse, and substitute something of our own, and thus miswrite the poem.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“They mustn’t know my despair, I can’t let them see the wounds which they have caused, I couldn’t bear their sympathy and their kind-hearted jokes, it would only make me want to scream all the more. If I talk, everyone thinks I’m showing off; when I’m silent they think I’m ridiculous; rude if I answer, sly if I get a good idea, lazy if I’m tired, selfish if I eat a mouthful more than I should, stupid, cowardly, crafty, etc. etc.”
—Anne Frank (1929–1945)