I miss being a freshman. It was ten months jam packed with an eye-awakening liberation that I had dreamt about since the moment my parents slapped me with a curfew. I basically spent the first two semesters of college shotgunning Busch, befriending people my mother would have hated, and making love to a man named Jimmy John. But the best part? The fraternity parties. Being a freshmen at a school with a booming Greek scene is basically like having every day be your birthday, and by that I mean that there were parties every. single. night. So even if you were too busy studying or being passed out to make it to Sig Ep’s Risky Business, you would rally for Skyy Delt the next day. Shit was a blast. I’d give anything to go back.
So why the fuck do I keep seeing freshmen at the bars?
Why aren’t these girls making friends with the fraternities when they’re new to the scene? They’re still sifting through their gen eds, basically re-learning shit they studied in the seventh grade. They’re meeting boys that their parents will have to know about. They’re living in a dorm, which is essentially just a non-stop party (when you try to forget about the excessive amount of estrogen). And they’re newly introduced to Greek life, which automatically inducts them into a community that is fifty times better than whatever crap town they’ll end up pushing a pencil in when they graduate.
So why is the modern day freshmen ditching the fifty boys next door to slap a pound of makeup on her face, head downtown, and pray that the bouncer won’t reject her shitty fake? Why are girls suddenly too good to kick it in a basement with bagged wine? Is it because of the new social media addiction that has teenagers sacrificing the integrity of the occasion to take the perfect Instagram picture?
Honestly, I don’t care. But I’m here to offer three reasons why you ladies really need to cut the shit.
First and foremost, you don’t know how to drink. I’m sure some of you more troubled gals do, but you can’t deny that a lot of you don’t. I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but it’s really, really obvious that you’re underage when you spend fifteen minutes trying to get a 360 degree Snapchat selfie video of the room. I’m not trying to sound like a stickler, and I promise that even we weathered upperclassmen get hamsauced and do weird shit on a regular basis. We just don’t act like a pair of 14-year-old girls who broke into their parents’ liquor cabinet for the first time while doing so.
Second, I come from a place of genuine concern when I tell you that you’re missing out. Not to sound like your mother. But you really are. We all paid our dues and spent that first year enduring sticky basement floors to find our future best friends in the weirdest of circumstances. Now it’s your turn. You need to find the people that you’re going to want to hang out with when you’re old enough to drink for an entire day without blacking out. You need to meet the kids who will be by your side as you push through the next four years of schoolwork which, unfortunately, will only get harder from here on out. You need to at least give the crazy incestuous web that is the Greek Community a shot. You’ll never know what you could get out of it if you’re busy trying to rope in older guys downtown.
Lastly, as cheesy as this may sound, these bars are a rite of passage. Just like everything else on campus, these establishments have traditions and a history. They might not have functioning toilets or central air, but they’re special to us. Such sacred experiences are spoiled when we drunkenly run into the kids we used to babysit. Try to put yourself in our position, and you might understand why that 22-year-old mean mugged you when you cut her in line for the bar last Saturday night.
So next time you’re considering ditching a night in the neighborhood with your friends to hit up a bar, don’t. Save yourself the thousands of dollars worth of legal bills that will follow your inevitable MIP, and bask in the fact that you’re young enough to obtain unlimited alcohol from pretty much any fraternity without turning heads. Freshman year could be the best year of your life… as long as you do your time at the frats and stay the eff out of our bars. .
Nice Move342
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Lucky Jo
Lucky Jo is a former and current TSM writer who likes her men how she likes her coffee: way too hot and unforgivably bitter. She graduated from the University of Missouri in 2016, proving that C's do in fact get degrees. She now spends her days working for a social media marketing agency, hiking with her dachshund, and trying to bring back the scrunchie. Hate mail and goat memes can be sent to lucyjmulvihill@gmail.com.
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