• Short Prose

• Type: Short Story
• Length: 27 pages

Orientation games began the day I arrived at Yale from Baltimore. In my group we played heady, frustrating games for smart people. One game appeared to be charades reinterpreted by existentialists; another involved listening to rocks. Then a freshman counselor made everyone play Trust.

Drinking Coffee Elsewhere is a 2000 short story by American author Z Z Packer. - AsNotedIn

• Theme Group: American College Life

People

• Charles Mingus, When I reached my dorm, I found an old record player blocking my door and a Charles Mingus LP propped beside it.
• Frank O'Hara, "Plagiarist!" I yelled. She had just recited a Frank O'Hara poem as though she'd thought it up herself.
• Silvia Plath, Then when he makes fun of you, what? Come pound your head on my door reciting the 'Collected Poems of Sylvia Plath'? "
• The Whiffenpoofs, Outside in the winter air, students were singing carols in their groomed and tailored singing-group voices. The Whiffenpoofs were back in New Haven after a tour around the world, and I guess their return was a huge deal.

Places

• North Central Historic District, Baltimore, MD On Greenmount Avenue you could read schoolbooks - that was understandable. The government and your teachers forced you to read them.
• Yale Old Campus, New Haven, CT "You know," she said, as we walked through Old Campus, "you've got to stop eating ramen."
• Yale University, New Haven, CT Heidi and I signed on to work at the Saybrook Dining Hall as dishwashers.