Ask Aparna

It's Friday, you just walked out of Ec Lecture, desperately trying to avoid the person you hooked up with last weekend. Do you make eye contact? Do you just smile and nod? And how did they get that duplex in Pfoho with such a high lottery number anyway?

You're a Harvard student, you're busy, and you don't have time to deal with these problems.

So send them to me.

As the Crimson's latest columnist, my job is to address your concerns. Every other column is going to be about the questions you ask, so let me use this time to tell you a little bit about who will be listening.

My faults and virtues are fairly common. As overheard in any Harvard introduction, here are the basics: I am a sophomore in Pforzheimer House concentrating in History and Literature. I'm much maligned for my flagrant California accent--which sounds, like, completely normal to me.

Like many of you, I frequently give my roommate advice that I either have difficulty in following or that seems to backfire in my own life. I worked extensively this summer with a support network for battered women--so I do have experience in dealing with difficult relationships-but this column isn't about the clinical counseling answers you can get for free, along with a strong dose of aspirin, at UHS.

Unlike the good doctors, I'm not always going to be shooting off my mouth, and the advice I give will be practical.

Send your major traumas, minor traumas, and your occasional dilemma my way by accessing the forum section of The Crimson's Web page, www.thecrimson.harvard.edu/forum and choosing Ask Aparna, or feel free to procrastinate further and e-mail me at sridhar@fas.harvard.edu.

Whether your roommate wants to buy a TV and you don't want him to, or you want your roommate to buy you a TV, or you want your roommate to stop hooking up in front of your TV while you're trying to watch the Simpsons, I'll try to answer your queries through the wire.

That means dealing with the people in your lives, whether you love them, love them and they drive you nuts, hate them, or jut want them to go away. But I'd also like to talk about mundane problems like what to do about that strange kid who always initiates conversation with you on the shuttle back to the Quad.

I'll take controversial and sensitive issues seriously and resort to professionals or peer counselors only when out of my depth, (and don't worry, I'll be sure to let you know the difference between my opinions and those of the pros.) Perhaps because I've been blessed with an ability to laugh at myself in embarrassing situations, I will be less likely to laugh at you.

Nah.

Think about it: if I pull a ( insert student politician's name here) droning on and on about what the hell the dining staff was thinking when they printed out nutrition information for this year, why read? You might as well get that extra 10 minutes of sleep.

Just see me as a resource especially for you, even better than your faithful laptop, and hopefully more reliable (I promise to come through for you and print at least every other week).

Let's say you are wondering how you were placed in a room with someone who goes to bed at 9 p.m. every night while you party till five. I'm willing to be your emissary to the University Housing Office, trying to de-mystify the process.

If you're curious what constitutes a "party" and why your proctor got upset when 70 people just happened to show up at your room last Saturday, raising the temperature approximately 40 degrees and rendering it impossible for any of you to move, send me a note. I'll have a chat with both the Freshman Dean's Office and House offices about the fine line between get-together and unacceptable bacchanalian frenzy.

And I'll get back to you every other Friday. But to get an answer, you have to keep up.

Send messages for Aparna Sridhar '01 to www. thecrimson.harvard.edu/forum (the Ask Aparna folder). Or by e-mail at sridhar@fas.harvard.edu.