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Looking for some bubbly drinks to brighten your spring? Try these recipes to find your new favorite fizzy cocktail (or mocktail)! Made for you by Triton Publications. As spring rolled around, I was experimenting with bright fun flavors for fizzy drinks, spirited and non-alcoholic. All these drinks take inspiration from fun bright spring fruits and drinks that you can enjoy on a hot Eckerd day.

It was the end of my sophomore year at Eckerd College when I knew I needed a break from living on campus. The financial and mental toll, mixed with bad experiences, became too much. So, I turned down the housing application and moved back in with my family 15 miles away. What seemed like a wonderful opportunity turned into a rude awakening.

There is a moment before it lifts — a trembling at the rim, a held breath, a world inside a world. Light bends around it like it cannot help itself, the way attention bends toward anything beautiful and fragile at once. I am saying goodbye to everything. Not loudly. The way a hand opens slowly in water, releasing what it carried without watching it go. There is color here, still — violet and gold catching the afternoon, the thin skin of it holding more than it should.

I have been assured, particularly during Imagining Justice, the fabled senior gen-ed course, that community is important. There is an insistence that Eckerd is a community, that communities are all around us. I believe these assessments are correct, which is precisely my issue—I do not feel that community. I do not see strangers on campus and acknowledge them as countrymen, kin or anything adjacent.

Pop music—“popular music,” the music you hear on the radio, in the grocery store, the upbeat earworms that get stuck in your head even if you find them annoying (“Mystical Magical,” I’m looking at you). The genre originates from the 1950s, influenced by rock ‘n’ roll. Today, it’s the most listened to genre globally and combines techniques and sounds from many other styles, largely rock, R&B and country.

Living in traditional dorms and using communal bathrooms poses a challenge for Eckerd students to maintain routines, hygiene habits and general clean mindsets, especially over their first year. Some Eckerd students shared their experiences and what habits they have adapted to stay squeaky clean both physically and mentally. Lucy Rauch, a sophomore majoring in psychology, lived in the Gamma her freshman year. She said it was difficult to squeeze her bedtime routine into a dorm space.

It is a truth universally acknowledged that dating in a small school can be challenging and, if you break up, very awkward. But can this same small college environment actually help love bloom and flourish, lowering that chance of an uncomfortable breakup? At Eckerd, love does not exist in isolation. It unfolds at the beach and develops at bonfires. Friendships are kindled in class and hands are subsequently held at parties. Relationships, however, can also be tumultuous.

SANIBEL ISLAND — Driving nine hours to look for snails is like drawing legs on a snake, planting M&M’s in the ground, defenestrating a piano. These are things I thought while I drove a total of nine hours to look for snails. I also thought that I must have driven over a snail accidentally at some point, and I felt some grief over that. What’s the average amount of time one has to drive before they’re destined to run over a snail? Surely it’s less than nine hours.

“Keep Eckerd Weird”, students say, but what really makes Eckerd weird? The people, the place, the language? Dip your toes into Eckerd’s weird terms and phrases to speak like a local Eckerdian. Dirt Lot: The ninth ring of Hell, where unlucky sinners and bad-doers park their cars after looping the Nu lot for 15 minutes. Commonly causes ant infestations and anonymous side swipes. If required to park in the Dirt Lot, beware.