As freshmen year comes to an end, I have begun looking back at the shit-show that constituted our pledge class’s first year of college. To say we have made some mistakes would be an understatement. Somehow, we were able to fulfill nearly every freshman stereotype and turn every situation into a drunken shit-show. As we get ready to enter our sophomore year, we are saying goodbye to all of the freshmen shenanigans, shacks, and calls to standards. We must mentally preparing ourselves to occasionally use the word “no” when a top-tier fraternity boy asks us to shack, since our shacker closets are already over-flowing with basketball shorts, party tanks, and over-sized t-shirts. We’ll turn over a new leaf, but first, let’s look back at the top five worst decisions we made freshman year.
Dating the Freshman Geed
We all did it, or at least contemplated doing it. Coming from high school, we did not fully grasp the concept of “GDI.” Some of us may have seen their cargo shorts and flat bill hats as familiar. We didn’t understand the disdain they received from the rest of the Greek community. And honestly…the fact that they lived just steps away, down the dorm hallway, was convenient. Maybe we felt bad for them, but mostly, we were just clueless. We didn’t realize that dating the geed would mean tripping over long-boards on your way out of the dorm during a mid-shack fire drill. We didn’t know it would mean a whole lot of “I don’t actually know of anything going on tonight.” And we certainly didn’t know what an embarrassing date they’d make at our formal. Slowly, each and everyone of us caught on, thankfully and any pity for the dreaded GDI was replaced by repulsion. You live and you learn.
Dating the Sophomore Geed
“He has his own apartment. He’s so mature.” That was how we justified it to ourselves. Surely things will be different with him than the freshman geed. How wrong we were. We overlooked his striped v-necks and hate for all decent music. We told ourselves it was comforting that he stayed in to study during homecoming week, and somehow just ignored the fact that he didn’t have a pledge to give us rides home. But he proved to be even worse than the freshman in the long run. He’s had time at this school, and has developed a hatred for fraternity men, for our kind, much like they’ve developed a hatred from him. At our date party he complained about all the “frat boys,” forced us to go home early for a house “party” that contained exactly 1.3 kegs, and that’s when we realized it. He is different than we are, and we can’t justify it any further. The appeal of sleeping in a big bed just isn’t worth the absolute nuisance that is this relationship, and we decided it would be much wiser to just sleep in the extra-long twin in our dorm room, or better yet, find a fraternity bed to inhabit.
The Blackout weekend…or month…or semester
Most freshmen test the waters when it comes to alcohol their first semester. After coming from high school parties where drinking four beers in one night was pushing it, a reasonable person would start slow and build their tolerance in the first few months. The majority of our pledge class did not actually understand this concept, let alone practice it. As it would appear, the majority of our standards board is now on academic probation, due in part to the fact that we were such a rowdy bunch and took up a significant amount of their time. We covered all the bases from taking shots on top of campus buildings to falsely accusing a fraternity of serving “roofie juice” to some other things I think it’s best we don’t recount. The bottom line is we raged sufficiently hard and managed to black out the entire last month of school. Sorry for partying. But actually. Sorry. That was a little uncool of us.
Class? Uh…Maybe tomorrow.
The whole lot of us stared down at our feet as the older girls stood before us, hands on hips, waiting for our response to the news that our class had officially fallen below the Greek community grade point average on campus. I saw Erica, covering her eyes…pretending to cover tears and disappointment, when realistically she was just doing her best to fight off her hangover. Half of me found it very hard to pay attention to anything, knowing that Wine Wednesday was waiting for us as soon as we were released. The other half was pretty embarrassed. Classes are only going to get harder, and it occurred to me that perhaps the constant hangovers and six-day weekends were getting in the way of the real reason we’re all here. That pesky little thing called our education. This isn’t high school. We actually do have to do our work to do well, and somehow that notion had escaped us. So, I move that we all make it our personal goal to raise our GPAs and hopefully be in the lead next semester. We can just blame this whole thing on being stupid freshmen. Right? Right.
Freshman Slut
It happens to the best of us…or the worst. We’re not proud of it, we’re not happy about our choices, and we don’t plan on making them again, but they happened. The shacks, the random hook-ups following the undetermined amount of shots, and even the “I-thought-he-really-liked-me-and-it-was-going-somewhere” nights. They all come together like one really big mess to make up what is known as the “freshman slut.” We constantly found ourselves giving every guy the benefit of the doubt, thinking he was the exception…or rather, that we were. Top-tier, fratty, smooth-talking juniors know exactly what they’re doing. He told you he cared, and you believed him. Why wouldn’t you? In high school having sex with someone was serious…even to the guys. And here…well, it’s not. So they spoon-fed us lines and we believed that he really was sweet and trust-worthy and we EVEN believed that we should just do the deed before he got it from someone else. The fact that those thoughts even crossed our minds should have sent us running, but of course we didn’t. Instead we did a walk of shame, found out he was banging another girl, and ignored his “I need my clothes back” text as we sat crying over Fro-yo with our Bigs whom we should have been listening to about him the whole time. Big knows best.
Clearly, there is a reason that freshman year only comes once. It is not meant to be repeated, nor are the mistakes we made. We’ll have a summer off to repent or something and come back ready to start a new year full of good decisions…or at least better bad decisions.
Nice Move208
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