University Poems - Poems about University

I’m finally going to get on that platform on the 18th of next month, for a first-time, one-time performance. The once, seemingly impossible will come fully true, which seems like a lot narratively. It’ll be like leaving home—but we’re crashing out. Moving on to other plot points, big topics and intense missions. We’re all caustically optimistic. Although there’s a cellular-level pull to...

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I have rituals for the first day of class like a superstitious athlete they get me into a good frame of mind where I feel like a juggernaut who has total agency and I don’t need to seek validation It’s a moment in time I have all my books—stacked on my desk they look serious—very nuts and bolts I’ve beaten the syllabuses to...

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( A university-life vignette) It’s Saturday morning. Lisa, Leong and I were in the common area, lazing about. “This is what happened to us (Lisa and I) last night.” I said, beginning to explain last night's trauma to Leong. “We were at the event and it was dead and empty—there was just another couple there. It...

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(a university-life vignette) It’s Saturday morning at about 9am. I’m in the chemistry lab, a sterile looking room with 12 workstations that are like multi level kitchen islands with sinks and various lab gear. It’s the most fluorescently lit environment on earth and everything looks to be either white, stainless steel or glass. I’m one of the...

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There’s a lot of heat when all eight of us suitemates are together. I might have mentioned it somewhere. We’re like surround sound, or eight car alarms going off together, it’s jabberwocky by an established team. It can get frantic and frightening for the uninitiated or inhibited. Some of us are pretty boy-crazy and there’s a mix-in of twinkling girl-crazy too. We’re basey, bugzee, spaceheads...

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There’s an old joke, “Procrastinate now, because the sooner you fall behind, the longer you’ll have to catch up.” Ha ha. While a lot of students around here, even the good ones, are procrastinators, I’m a diagnosed pre-crastinator. I obsess over syllabuses and start things immediately. I've got rough drafts of things due three months from now. I’m a planner....

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I’m standing in the common room, turning in circles. I’ve so many things to do, all at once, I can’t figure out which way to jump. A time management problem, I suppose, maybe I should have taken that 1 credit ‘project management’ class I sloughed off. We live and we learn. Leong was sitting, leg crossed on...

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In a quiet town where shadows blend, A boy named Dustin learned to mend, Born to a mother, young and alone, With dreams in her heart, but a heavy stone. No father’s hand to guide his way, But a grandfather’s love would light the day, With wisdom deep as...

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It’s hard to meet someone serious at college. Everyone’s busy, self-centeredly grinding away at their dreams. So much so that people tell you to not even try (especially as a freshman). I was mostly at ease with myself—as a freshman. I had an excellent skincare routine—it was downright luxuriant, and it kept me going, through that romantically lonely year. But we...

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I turn off U.S. 30 at an exit for Ames and see Jack Trice Stadium expanded. Memories stir of football games the jubilation and sorrow found on the field more than forty years ago where campus heroes were made. Three blocks away from campus The Towers dormitories still reach into the sky, my fraternity in their shadows is now a bed and breakfast. Brothers there always said the biggest lessons are learned...

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Life at 21, do you remember it? Things rush at you, hit you, from all directions. Any small decision can turn into a major plot beat. What are our lives anyway but the sum of our decisions? Opportunities contract and expand around us, like breathing— and what fills those lungs are our test scores and faculty opinion. College is a land...

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(a disastrous morning Sonnet) I am the very model of a girl who’s late for morning meal, my charger failed, the printer jammed, the morning’s start has been surreal I lost a scrunchy and a shoe, I had to use some dry shampoo my Keurig had no k-cups too, so I’m feeling like a total shrew! Our pre-dawn jog went...

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My room, the suite, seemed too small. I felt like I’d been in my room forever. I’d developed a scratchy sense of stuckness and a fresh, itchy awareness of dust particles floating in the stifling, still air that made me want to stop breathing in so much. But I didn’t, categorically, have the energy to get up and focusing seemed like a...

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Vibe-check, it’s Friday. Yay! A delightfully cool Friday at that! I’d like to thank the democratic party (which I’ve heard controls the weather now). Has the heat finally surrendered to the inevitable freshness of fall? Can we please proceed directly to a cruel winter? “What are we doing tonight?” I asked Lisa as she sat on the...

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Peter (my bf) is coming to town - tonight. I’m breathy with excitement. My energy is so sick. “Someone scrape her off the walls,” Leong remarked, as I bounded out of my room this morning. Lisa winced, holding her hand up, as if to block the sun, “You never smile in the morning.” “And she’s...

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