College is a strange, and wonderful place, but I’m inclined to use emphasis on strange. There is just so much we do in college that is not acceptable in the real world, and it may take you some time to notice it. Upon graduation, there are just some things that always seemed normal that suddenly become really weird.
Peeing With A Friend
One of the most basic collegiate needs is accompaniment to the restroom. Restrooms are a place to bond, judge the other girls who’ve entered under fluorescent lighting, and discuss a gameplan for the evening regarding the boys you’re with. Going to the bathroom alone means you are friendless, but mostly it means you have a propensity to get lost upon leaving. Because the lines are insufferably long and you want to do everything in your power to hasten the process, coupled with the fact that you’re so drunk that three minutes of separation will undoubtedly result in losing your train of thought, it is standard procedure for 2-5 girls to enter the stall together at the same time. In fact, it’s much stranger for a girl to emerge from a bathroom stall by herself than it would be for her to emerge with an entourage. THE. STALL. If you’d never drunkenly seen a friend pee, she was hardly a friend at all. Think about how weird that is for a second. It’s not actually normal for your friends to watch you empty your bladder, and in your adult life, you realize this. Once you “cross over” to post-grad life, even your best friends might never see your vagina. Strange, I know.
Sharing a Twin-Sized Bed
When I was living in my off-campus college apartment, two of the four of us had twin-sized beds. I was one of them. I would say that ratio was pretty comparable to the student population. About half of the students had twins, and half had bigger beds. A twin bed is barely big enough for your average adult male, but sometimes that was the only bed you had to sleep in, and it was the last thing to stop you from having a sleepover with someone. Desperate times call for desperate measures, and if you and your boyfriend are both freshmen living in dorms, what are you to do? Sleep apart? This is out of the question, of course. I suppose that’s rational. Why, though, was it okay to have sleepovers with your friends in a twin-sized bed? I can recall many a night where a roommate or other sister and I fell asleep together in a twin, just because we were too lazy to get up and sleep somewhere else. We had couches. We had OTHER beds, but it was so not a big deal that moving ten feet wasn’t worth the effort. In my adult life, if a guy has something so small as a full, that is enough reason to end the relationship. I need my space in order to sleep comfortably, and I need to sleep comfortably. Having a twin bed, let alone sharing one, would make me feel like a peasant, and is something I never plan to do again.
Going Out In Public Looking Haggard
As a student, there is nothing wrong with essentially rolling out of bed, putting on a hat, a big t-shirt and some variation of athletic bottoms. In fact, an over-sized tee with norts is a staple in any sorority girl’s closet. If you’re going to class looking like hell, all it says is that you DGAF. If you’re running your errands on Main Street, or meeting up for lunch at Panera, and you didn’t put in a moment’s effort, that’s fine. You didn’t have time to care, and no one cared that you didn’t care. In fact, it was almost frowned upon to look too put together in class, and it was common to judge the shit out of anyone who never had a day where her day’s makeup was blatantly a result of the night before. Today, I judge the shit out of people who walk around looking haggard. Is it really so much effort to throw on a dress and a little mascara in the morning? If, for some reason, I am not put together when I leave the house, even if it’s just to run errands, I’m embarrassed, and I don’t understand how image-conscious, well-to-do sorority girls, like my former self, don’t share that embarrassment when it comes to their sorry excuses for ensembles. It’s no wonder boys don’t talk to you in class. When it was me and my friends, we blamed it on the notion that it “would have been weird,” when in reality, it’s because we looked like hobos in our morning classes Wednesday-Friday, whenever it rained, and on exam days.
Pregaming
Pregaming is one of the most important, and memorable parts of your college experience. I remember more pregames than I do nights out, which may or may not be because I was so drunk by the time I left them, but that’s not the point. It was absolutely expected to start your night by drinking two glasses of a crystal light beverage each mixed in a glass with 3-4 shots of Burnett’s vodka, which were used as a chaser to accompany the shots you were taking. Standing at an astounding 5’5” in heels, taking 7-10 shots before I left the house was not only mega-unhealthy, but should have probably resulted in hospitalization. What’s more insane is that it wasn’t just me. That is what everyone was expected to do. The thought of arriving at a bar without having gotten belligerently drunk beforehand was a foreign concept to me, as I’m sure it is to every (social) college student across the country. That just doesn’t happen post grad. There are pregames of sorts, but they generally consist of a few beers with friends, drinks at happy hour, or a glass or two of wine and/or cocktails with dinner. There is zero reason to sit in my apartment getting housed before I even leave, and it’s weird that it’s not weird. Sure, it’s resulted in the occasional awkward first drink at the bar, but I also remember what the insides of bars look like now. It’s not that you stop blacking out, you just don’t do it until you’re in public, you know, when it’s embarrassing.
Hanging Out In Someone’s Bedroom
If you’re living in a sorority house, you have just as many rights to the common areas as everyone else does. The same is true even if you’re living in off-campus housing with five other girls. When you invite a guest over, lounging in the living room can easily make your roommates feel uncomfortable in their home, but more importantly, it gives you no privacy. If you want to turn the music on and gossip about sorority politics, the new guy you’re obsessed with, or the heinous dress Gina wore to formal, the natural place to congregate is in your bedroom when you have someone over. It’s normal in your first few post-graduate months to feel inclined to take guests there, but think for one second about how strange that is. Bedrooms are a private place, for sleeping and screwing. Why would you bring your friends in there? Does your mother bring her friends to her room? Hell no! It’s WEIRD. It’s way smaller than the living room, it’s inappropriate to eat in there (and any good hostess provides food for her guests), there’s less seating, the TV isn’t that big, and it’s all-around just a strange place to be hanging out with a person you don’t secretly want to make out with.
Nice Move293
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Veronica Ruckh
Veronica (@VeronicaRuckh) is the Director of Total Sorority Move for Grandex, Inc. After having spent her undergraduate years drinking $4 double LITs on a patio and drunk texting away potential suitors, she managed to graduate with an impressive GPA and an unimpressive engagement ring -- so unimpressive, in fact, some might say it's not there at all. Veronica has since been fulfilling her duties as "America's big," a title she gave to herself with the help of her giant ego. She has recently switched from vodka to wine on weekdays. Email her at veronica@grandex.co
@VeronicaRuckh
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