I try to keep abreast of campus life through the YDN (Yale Daily News), the main student newspaper. It's a quality undergraduate publication, no question. But it's still an undergraduate publication, so sometimes it makes me want to throw things against the wall, because it is (a) minimally well-informed, and (b) absolutely consumed with examining and maintaining Yale's place within whatever hierarchy may be at work. The newspaper, like the university, is infused with a very peculiar mix of superiority (this is Yale), inferiority (kids wear t-shirts proclaiming "Harvard sucks!"), and Puritanical modesty (you'd never know that the chairs just sitting around in the library cost $1,000 apiece). This institution its its own thing, I tell you.

But that's a larger issue. Within the YDN, I often see evidence of some part of this institutional character, particularly the part that involves being completely divorced from other realities. Yesterday, I couldn't quite believe the opening of this opinion column recommending IUDs as birth control. On the whole, the article is fine, in a minimally well-informed way -- the author is trying to be informative about a birth control option that women should know about. But check out the first lines:

"You should probably take two Tylenol beforehand," my gynecologist advised me.

"What about codeine?" I asked.

"Well, codeine won’t make you feel less pain," she said. “It’ll just make you not care about the pain.”

Two hours before the appointment I gulped down three tablespoons of liquid codeine. Ultimately, I still cared about the pain.

From a literary standpoint, that's a great opener -- pulls the reader in (Why would you need Tylenol?), includes an apt and amusing observation, repeats a strong phrase with a meaningful difference ("care about the pain").

From a self-awareness standpoint, WHOA.

(1) Your doctor said "mild over-the-counter analgesic" and you jumped to "opiate-derived class-II narcotic." That's about you, lady, not about a drawbacks of IUDs.

(2) Where did you get the codeine? Because it doesn't sound like it was prescribed to you. If you're going to infer the existence of a functioning underground campus drug trade, or even describe the intentional off-label use of a controlled substance, you might want to make that a point of analysis in your writing.

God, I love this place sometimes. From wall-throwing ironic distance, sure. But we must take love where we can get it.