I got the FEVER…
Jessica Scicchitano, beat blogger
Fever: an abnormal condition of the body, characterized in undue rise in temperature, quickening of the pulse, and disturbance of various body functions.
Over the past few weeks, I’d imagine I wasn’t the only one to have suffered this ailment. While stuck home, waking up in my damp clothes and feeling slightly delirious, I began to think about what a fever represents outside of shaking and the ability to sleep for hours (and hours and hours…)
On dictionary.com fever is also defined as “intense nervous excitement.” I also went as far as to download Peggy Lee’s “Fever,” characterized by the line:
“they give you fever when you kiss them, fever if you live you learn, fever till your sizzlin’, but what a lovely way to burn.”
School has the ability to strip, or more appropriately burn, our senses to the bottom as we become a shell of our creative selves. I found myself puttering around my house with the desire to display “fever” in my relationships, my artistic endeavors, exhibiting a craving to create that nervousness that we lose touch with while buried in assignments and tests.
Generally we think of the term “fever” as negative, but as Peggy Lee murmurs, it can be quite the opposite. I find an intense comfort in the idea of being raw, heightened, and warm with passion. It reminds me that I am an entity outside of the everyday hustle and bustle of obligatory life.
I refuse to allow that “fever” to leave me. There comes a point where we must put aside our work to focus on our most secretive and personal notions, before we grow cold — just in time for winter.
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Jessica Scicchitano is three semesters away from reaching bachelor degree-dom and free-dom. She majors in English and textual studies and spends her spare time enveloped in food, fashion, and writing. She also just finished an internship at the Post Standard newspaper. On campus, you will most likely find her eating sushi, reading intensely, or soaking up each moment of the sun left until winter break. You can email her at jjscicch@syr.edu.
Source: Fever definition from dictionary.com
