There is a time in every girl’s sorority experience when she starts to feel like a washed-up babysitter surrounded by too many youths. Your 22nd birthday might as well be an invitation to the local bingo club complete with early bird dinner specials and a bottle of Opium. A wave of denial will inevitably crash over your life the day you realize that the new members in your chapter were born 3+ years after you were. This harsh realization came to me during a rush party when I tried to make conversation with a PNM and inserted a “Friends” reference. She replied with a stupidly blank stare saying she had never seen an episode of “Friends.” I tried to recover quickly – because recruitment – but you can bet I was slipping a few (five) extra shots into my vodka sodas that night. When did we get so old?
This must be a feeling that has been around for a while, as a wise upperclassmen in my chapter had a brilliant idea to do something about it. Seniors-only happy hours.
1. With the risk of sounding obvious, there are no underclassmen around.
There’s just something so great about spending time around people who make you feel like you don’t have to pretend to be someone you’re not. These girls have experienced your chapter exactly the same way you have. They remember who didn’t know how to handle their liquor at the first pledge party and always remind the group who asked all of the ridiculous questions the night before initiation. You’ve all come a long way since you were strangers in your bid day pictures years ago.
2. Three words: no new friends.
Unless you’ve pissed off everyone you’ve met in college, by senior year, you have found the people you truly want to spend your time with. You know that after you get your diploma, you will spend the better half of, well, forever making small talk with people you might never care about. Embrace the rare feeling of knowing and actually wanting to be around every person in the room.
3. It’s less planning and more partying.
A senior happy hour can be planned weeks in advance or hours before you want to get your drink on. Without having to worry about filling out forms and making sure your event doesn’t interfere with a “dry day” (is there a wet blanket award for whoever invented those?), there is much more room to just chill out and leave time for what really matters – cheap drinks with your girls.
4. New possibilities.
Remember all of those things you wanted to do together that you just couldn’t get approved by advisors or standards? “We do not want to be associated with that” and “We can’t use dues to pay for those” do not apply to unofficial events. If you really want to plan something that costs extra money, this is the perfect way to make it happen. We spent one of our happy hours downtown at a baseball game and had everyone pay $20 for cheap seats and a school bus to get us there. We knocked out a lot of doubles and by the end of the night, we were just trying to make it home.
5. You’re gonna miss this.
If you haven’t been blessed enough to experience this feeling daily already, your eighth semester will show you just how soon you have to G-word. If you even need to be reminded of what I have to say, consider yourself a terrible senior and think about reevaluating your entire life. Here it goes. You WILL NOT remember spending time pretending that highlighting your notes actually makes a difference in the library. You WILL remember (pieces) of laughing your ass off with the best people you know. Don’t waste a second of this time doing anything other than surrounding yourself with people you won’t live nearby forever. Make it count until last call, because closing time is starting to have a whole new meaning..
Nice Move263
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