Whiskey Shots and Sorority Squats

           

            After staying up for 34-hours straight, popping enough adderall to kill a small rhinoceros and walking out of your last final like you just walked away from the — it’s over.

            No more finals. No more waking up in cold sweats thinking you forgot to turn in a paper. No more battling for the final socket in the library with a geed with a ridiculous sense of entitlement.

            With finals over and a week before graduation, a glorious thing begins to happen on college campuses across the nation. Seniors disregard their last remaining few fucks, and everyone has only one thing on their mind – to drink gratuitous amounts of alcohol before summer.

            Welcome to glory week, snuggled comfortably between finals and graduation, when no one has a single responsibility and shit starts to get cray. And by cray I mean day drinking, followed by power-nap, followed by happy hour, followed by last call, followed by after party and quite possibly a shack. Every. Single. Day.

            What’s that? Cinco de Mayo and the Kentucky Derby also happened to fall on one of those days? Minus 200 points for your liver, plus 500 points for your life. Don’t forget to throw in a celebration shot or nine for the one-year anniversary of the death of Osama.

            A typical non-holiday weekday (though many could argue everyday is a holiday and should come with lots of drinks) during glory week always begins the same, wake up around noon with a pounding death hangover. Though it seems there is a brick lodged in your head and a hammer trying to break it from the outside, once you get the text saying “Pool?” you rally like a champ.

            You don sunglasses and drag yourself out of bed and to the nearby pool. Beers are open, beer pong is being played and debauchery is about to begin. After about four or five hours of drinking games, you’ll leave sunburned, drunk and ready to head over to the frat house for the after pool party. Add another two hours before you decide you should probably shower instead of hitting the bars smelling like warm beer and chlorine.

            The shower fades into a one-hour coma, and you are woken by a text asking, “Where are you? We’re leaving for happy hour in 30 and you haven’t shot gunned with us yet.” Frantic to start drinking again, you throw on a cute dress (or lovely 6-inch inseam khaki shorts if you’re a guy) get your life in order, and head over just in time to walk or ride to the bars with everyone.

            With happy hour comes pitchers and raucous games of quarters or chandeliers. There might be one or two groups of geeds who glare jealously, but they forgot that 90% of the bar is Greek, and they feel out of place with their ponytails and board shorts. Whatevs, this free beer is way better than your lack of a bid.

            When you start crossing the line from tipsy to business drunk, happy hour ends and bar crawling begins. You start next door, but wait, it’s so crowded you can’t move, it’s 115 degrees and it smells like B.O. Better save that one for after midnight. You end up finding somewhere modestly crowded with friends, and even more drinks start pouring. After your second or third bar, business drunk becomes pretty stinking sdfhdrunk, so you head to the bar you want to end your night out at. Drink more there and become “shey arew you stiwll out? Letx rage” drunk. When someone tells you about a frat after party, you think it would be a really responsible idea to go there and get drink even more.

            So you do. You’ll only remember bits and pieces of this part, if you remember it at all. You wander around aimlessly, taking shots. You take two sips of a beer, put it down and forget it ever existed. At this point, there’s no denying the fact that you’re wasted. Either time to get a responsible friend to find you a ride home or wake up in a loft. This can go one of two ways: you could be pleasantly surprised in the morning if you wake up in your bed or if you wake up next to someone really attractive. Or you wake up with a sense of dread compounded by your hangover that you slept over with sasquatch, even if it was only on his sofa. He will never stop texting you after that night.

            Regardless of what happens, there is only one guarantee during glory week. You’ll pretty much do the same thing again the next night. And the next night. And the next night…

           After learning a semester’s worth of information in 72 hours, living off of Starbucks and cookie dough for two weeks and watching your roommate tweak out from using too much Adderall, finals are finally freaking over. You’d jump for joy if you leg muscles hadn’t completely atrophied from spending all of your waking moments sitting in the library. With the fall semester out of the way, it’s time for the great collegiate migration home for the holidays. If you’re a freshman, you’re probably ecstatic to go back home; you get to hang out with all your old high school friends, see your parents and have most of your laundry done for you. If you’re older and wiser, however, you might enjoy being home for a whole 3 days before you start to go insane and wish you were back at school.

            Why already so anxious to go back?

            Because there’s nothing awesome in your hometown, unless you’re lucky enough to live somewhere interesting like New York or Atlanta. For most of us, there are only a handful of decent bars in town, and a lot of them are filled with 30 and 40 year olds creeping around. When the 20-somethings try to go to these bars of middle-aged desperation, shit gets creepy real fast. Like you-order-one-drink-and-there’s-a-group-of-balding-men-slowly-beginning-to-surround-you-and-your-girlfriends fast. There’s always at least one good place where students go to meet up when they’re home on breaks, but after a few visits to this watering hole, you’ll get tired of reliving your senior prank and get the urge to punch the community college kids in the face when they start talking about how hard their classes were this past semester.

            Aside from the lack of places to get shwastey, another annoyance is lurking at home, your parents. While it’s always nice to see them, it’s always nicer to see them in small doses. When you’re home for a long weekend everything’s nice and dandy; a dinner out, laundry done and snuggle time with your dog. But it’s the Holiday break, and you’re going to be staying put for about 3 weeks. When all the fawning and doting over you is over after the first day or two of being home, your parents focus quickly shifts to areas that make you wish they’d mind they’re own damn business. New questions will start popping up like “What are your grades like this semester?” “Why isn’t your GPA as high as so-and so’s?”, “What are you planning on doing with your life?”, and “How much do you drink at college? I’m so worried that since I saw a picture of you drinking a beer of Facebook that you’ve become a raging alcoholic.” Not fun. But this is what you’re parents are going to sound like for a solid 65-75% of the rest of your break, so brace yourself the onslaught of painfully obvious questions.

            It’s not all bad though; you get presents (if you’re unlucky enough to have a Christmas birthday like me, Christmas presents and then a bunch of re-gifted ugliness for your birthday), you get to go to a ton of tacky Christmas sweater parties, you have time to catch up on all the stuff you didn’t have time for during fall and best of all you get to black out on New Year’s. New Year’s is also a special chance for you to get a short reprieve from our hometowns if you want to make the trek to another town for a bigger, more-drunk celebration. But once 2012 begins, it’ll be time to pack up the cars and make the pilgrimage back to school for Spring. You’ll have a ton of clean clothes, some new cool swag and most prominently, a massive desire to rage your face off the second you unpack.

            So Happy Holidays and happy raging all my frat-tastic friends, and take comfort in the fact that even if you’re break isn’t as awesome as you though it would be, at least you aren’t a geed!

                    You never start off your night of raging hoping that you’ll end up passing out or covered in split beer. But when you go out hard, crazy things seem to happen to you the drunker you get. These happenings are directly related to how drunk you are at the time: you’ll start of slightly sober with a small stain on your shirt and end up doing keg stands in a dress and making out with a fug 25-year-old at a bar because he bought you another drink. There’s a very specific order that these little mistakes start turning into epic fails, so here’s a guide to my five stages of wasted.

Stage One: Victory stains

            You’re not that drunk yet. You’ve played a round in beer pong and flip cup, and have another drink in hand. When challenged to chug or take a shot, you oblige to help improve your standings on this drunken journey, only to spill some of the precious alcohol on yourself. It’s not a big stain, but definitely noticeable. This is the victory stain, as in the first stain on your way to becoming victoriously drunk. You’ll shrug it off and tell yourself that you need to get much more drunk if you’re sober spilling on yourself.

Stage Two: Dancing and challenges

            You’ve got a few more drinks in your and you’re starting to relax a little more. Well okay, a lot more. You hear a song you like and start dancing in the middle of your friends even though most of them are talking about something completely unrelated. Some of them will join in, or not, but you’re jamming out. Once the song or dance ends, there’s a good chance you’ll tell yourself, “Well that was fun, but I clearly need to get more drunk.” This is when you sketch over to where shots are being made and take an uncalled-for amount after raising your shot glass from everything from “’murica!” to “being a winner”. If you see a funnel or a shotgun getting ready to happen, you push everyone out of your way to join in. This is the stage where you commit to getting wasted, and what a better way to commit than drinking a whiffleball bat full of beer and then trying and failing to hit the beer can lobbed at you.

Stage Three: Pictures

            We all know what happens, a large group of sorority girls reach a certain level of drunk, and someone yells “OMG! We should take some pictures!” Everyone squeals in agreement and line up while those with cameras pile them onto any guy unlucky enough to be picked out as the designated picture taker. He’ll take a round of pictures with everyone’s camera and give them back, only for the girls to scream in horror about “how fat my face is” and “I look like I’m being punched in the uterus” or any other crazy insult they can think of before piling the cameras back on the poor photographer. This will probably happen about 5 times before everyone’s at least tepidly satisfied with one of the pictures.

Stage Four: Brown out

            When you wake up in the morning, you’ll only remember a few things from this period. You may remember all the important stuff, or completely forget that you sucked your TA’s face all night at the crappiest bar in town. The parts you don’t remember are typically the most embarrassing, like when you thought everyone would think it would be cool for you to climb on top of the bar and start singing “Wagon Wheel” at the top of your lungs, or when you tried to give a stray cat some of your drink at a house party because “he looked lonely.” You won’t do anything too shameful to where you can’t show your face around greek row, but people will definitely ask “Was that you trying to climb the tree in front of Jackson’s house to see if you could see your sorority from across campus?” Yes, yes it was.

Stage Five: Blackthefuckout

            You’ve made it to the final stage of wasted; the blackout. You won’t remember the night, but that’s probably a good thing. The next day people will ask in a super obvious way “How are YOU feeling today?” to which you will reply by swallowing the vomit rising to your mouth and replying, “ just a little rough”. Some people think that being blackout excuses them from all of their crazy happenings the night before. While it definitely does for the hilarious things you end up doing that night, if you pull a huge dick-move then you might have to do some damage control. There’s a good chance you A.) passed out at the bar B.) woke up with someone random in bed next to you C.) have texts on your phone from random numbers saying “HAY SHAWTY, I had so much fun witcho last niiiight. We should chillz sometime” D.) wake up to find multiple pictures on facebook of you doing highly illegal activities. Regardless of what actually happened, people will recount their versions of your epic drunkscape so you can begin to piece it together once you get over the feeling of being hit by the dry-heaving bus.

The semester is drawing to a close for the holidays. This should be time for studying for finals, going Christmas shopping and baking some srattastic holiday cookies. But as many of you know, it almost always ends up being a time when you feel the need to drink copious amounts of alcohol to forget about studying, to warm yourself up in the cold winter air, and to basically get your raging quota filled for the fall semester. Coincidentally, from homecoming until the car ride back home, the rates of sorority girls being sent to their standards skyrockets. Given the amount of tacky sweater parties and holiday socials, this is hardly surprising. It’s the time of year when we’re on our worst behavior, and there are a few key mistakes girls make that ends up with them trying to recall what happened and lying about their epic drunk moments in a feeble effort to get out of social probation. Here’s a list of the top 5 biggies.

5.) You were way too drunk

This is the sort of the godfather of reasons for going to standards; it’s the cause of the vast majority of incidents of general debauchery that result in a hot date with your Chapter Adviser and the rest of the gang. From vomiting to blackout wandering off at an out of town function where no one knows where you went expect for your blackout self, alcohol is always the culprit.

4.) You hooked up far too passionately at a social event

Feelin’ frisky, are we? Well this one is pretty common for the same few reasons, boys shove drinks down your throats in the thinly veiled attempt of getting action, and after said drinks, girls getting down on the dance floor may drunkenly forget that exec is staring at you playing tonsil hockey. They won’t say anything at this stage, but we all know boys get handsy when dancing and gratuitous amounts of alcohol are involved, and once they see the hands they’re look could tell you how “bad you’re making the chapter look”. Whatever, you think, it’s just because they aren’t getting any, and then you will keep snogging your frat man.

3.) You blackout sketched out and no one could find you

Let’s say you go on a road trip for an end of the year football game or go out of town on a date function. This clearly means lots and lots of raging will be happening before and during the bus ride there. And if there’s alcohol being served at your destination? Well, there’s a good chance you won’t remember a solid portion of the night. In your brown to blackout stage, you are very easily tempted or persuaded to leave the venue and check out where ever you happen to be. Luckily, being wasted also completely makes you forget the concept of time, so there’s a good chance you could sketch off for an hour or two, and when you stumble back everyone is on the bus waiting for your drunk ass. You get the stink-eye for about 5 minutes from a standards board member and proceed to pass out under her watchful eye. Success, and an upcoming surprise summons to standards.

2.) You got kicked out of the bar/venue

Nice job champ. Thrown out by a bouncer or taken away in cuffs by a police officer in front of your whole chapter. Ouch. This may be the most publicly embarrassing of a standards summons. This almost always happens for blatant underage drinking, and you better hope that it’s the bouncer that sees you. There are horror stories of 20-year-olds getting led out in handcuffs at the begining of a social, while all her sisters are still in line to get in and watch her make the worst walk of shame of her life.

1.) You threw up in front of an exec member

This is the final step on the standards train; vomming. If you made it to this point, you’ve probably successfully completed the rest of the reasons on this list. Congrats! Now it’s important to note that I’m not talking about vomming really fast in the bathroom and then doing an epic rally so no one notices your gone. Believe me, if you can do that then standards and exec have no reason to be anything but impressed by your raging abilities. I’m talking about the barely conscious, semi-grumbling, half-asleep girl who hasn’t left her bathroom stall in 10 minutes. Yeah, that kind of vomming. After a few minutes in there, another sister is bound to notice your love affair with the toilet bowl and try to start helping. You’ll feebly try to wave her off, but she stays. You try to say something like “I’m okay, I just need to get this out really fast,” but instead say something along the lines of “Shmiiin eeget outttuh ruhrl ssstttttttt” before trailing off and retiring your head to its resting position. If this is a younger sister, she’ll likely be concerned about your state of excessive drunk and ask a member of exec what to do. Boom. Standards meeting. With an exec witness, there’s no getting out of this one, or lying about how drunk you actually were. Eeek. The standards meeting will probably be worse than your 2-day hangover.

Slowly your eyes ease open to see an unfamiliar room gently wobbling in your post-drunk vision. You sit up and try to ignore the pounding in your head while investigating your surroundings, and that’s when you see him, half naked and laying next to you. Suddenly you realize—you’re a shacker.

            It’s one of the oldest collegiate phenomena, going hand-in-hand with blacking out, going to socials and smooth-talking frat daddies. It also shows a glaring double standard: the girls are thought of as skanky, while the guys look like the Gods of getting action. Despite these seemingly unfair observations, shacking is typically the sign of a good night that ended in a black out and getting some. Women can find comfort in the fact that the geeds who are judging them have probably never seen a girl naked. So let’s backtrack the night to see how the shacker ended up in a fraternity man’s loft.

            The shackers night always starts the same, by swearing “I’m not going to get that drunk, and I’m not going to shack.” This is a dirty whore of a lie, because once she unites with her sisters, mob mentality takes over and their only goal is to get as drunk as possible, while taking pictures every minute along the way.

            When they reach their pregame venue, mission drinking begins. The ladies, armed with their superb alcohol detecting senses, congregate in a room where the alcohol is flows like money into a frat star’s trust fund. It’ll start with mixed shots that taste like candy and end in straight pulls of tequila.

            And then he swoops in.

            Sensing the absurd drunkenness of the girl in question, he turns on the charm and gives her another drink. He’s probably drunk as hell too, but let’s be real, frat daddies are always on the prowl for sex.

            They’ll talk and flirt and play a few rounds of beer pong until blackout has been achieved. After this point, neither person will be able to tell you what happened. But it probably involved them walking into to a crowded bar, getting something way too strong, complaining about how crowded it was and ending in the frat master asking the lady if she’d like to go back to his place to “chill…or watch a movie or something?” This fail of a pick-up line is really an invitation for the lady to be his slam piece for the night. As unsmooth as the line is, it sounds more romantic than the Notebook to a blackout sororstitute.

            Night fades into morning, and across college campuses all over the country, girls sit up half-naked, realize they made the mistake of shacking and think the same thing: oh shit, not again. Despite the feeling that someone hit them in the head with a brick and the constant threat of vomiting, the shacker makes every effort to remain completely silent while collecting her clothes and belongings. There’s a 50-50 chance that she’ll know or even recognize the man laying next to her, and it would be beyond uncomfortable if he woke up and awkwardly offered breakfast. So silently she leaves the room she shared with her man meat for the night and creeps through the house, praying to God that no brothers see her with raccoon makeup, an old frat tee shirt obviously lent (or stolen) from her one-night lover or wearing dirty heels at 10 a.m.

            Once the shacker exits the house, she trudges through campus as she begins the dreaded walk of shame. She looks rough, and feels rougher. She might text a friend to pick her up, or just act like she’s on the phone to avoid the judging stares of the geeds on campus, who clearly haven’t been laid in the past few years.

            After their long journey, they finally make it home. They’ll take a scalding hot shower in an effort to wash off their feelings of whoreishness and the stale sweat from the night before. But no matter how hot the shower, and no matter how many times they swear it won’t happen any more, it will definitely happen again. It’s a vicious circle of swearing off shacking, drinking copious amounts and then shacking again. But, hey, at least you’ll have a fun story, and even if you don’t remember it you probably had a fun night out.

           This has gotten ridiculous. Seriously, we’re considering baseball and soccer real sports. I mean, come on, lightly jogging for 3 hours just to end the game with a 0-0 score is disappointing at best. While I’m more than happy to cheer my face off for the USA in the World Cup game today for the sake of drunken national pride, let’s face it, we all miss football season. A LOT.

            It’s the only time of year when drinking before 10 a.m. is acceptable and even encouraged, the only time when standing in 130-degree weather in metal stands that reflect the sun perfectly into your pupils is extremely enjoyable, and the one time of the year that brings us the most ‘murican sport there is: football. It dominates all other sports in terms of acceptable drunkenness and rowdiness, team spirit, young athletics (come on soccer, if you were serious you’d be a kicker for the real football) and uniting entire communities for the purpose of pride. Ridiculous pride. Like geeds painting themselves, the fratty wearing school-colored bowties and sundresses, and fans of all ages and groups screaming until they are hoarse and eventually celebrate until their livers send them letters of resignation.

            Sheer sport glory.

            So what is one of these sloppy Saturdays actually like to experience? Those who have lived through a college football season will tell you that it’s like Christmas every Saturday. And they couldn’t be more right if you celebrate Christmas by drinking uncalled for amounts of alcohol while screaming in the streets and harassing fans of other religions (but instead of harassing religions, football fans harass the likes of Lane Kiffin, Nick Saben, and other soulless men of the sort). But in a nutshell, here’s an itinerary of sorts for a typical college game day.

           

            Most games start in the early afternoon, between noon and 3 p.m. If the Football Gods are smiling down on you, you might have a night game that starts at 8 or so. Since you’ll probably want to be at the stadium at kick-off, you’re probably going to start pregaming at 10 or 11 a.m. I know this might seem early to some, but to those people I say suck it up; it’s game day.

            In Greek life, each sorority is paired up with a fraternity for a game day barbecue. The guys come and pick us up from our house, and take us to theirs. When you walk in the bass shakes the walls, and you’re directed upstairs where you’re invited to take mixed shots or fill your old friend, the red solo cup, up with some Natty. For the next few hours, everyone in that establishment enters into a drunken stupor after playing drinking games, taking shots and eventually satisfying the drunk-munchies with delicious barbecue out back.

            As the time approaches for football, some of the more sober people in attendance start ushering people to the door, where the stumbled trek to the stadium begins for those who have tickets. The men, dressed in the shortest of fratty shorts with collared shirts and game day bowties, the ladies, adorned in their favorite team colored sundresses and pearls, clutch each other for balance and wobble down the sidewalk to the stadium.

            Once you’re in you stand in the student section, because anyone who sits down clearly doesn’t love your team and is therefore committing treason. And then you hear it…the first notes to your fight song. Everyone starts to loose their shit. People are screaming until they are purple, the team runs out, and you feel like you might die from sheer excitement.

            The game wears on and your voice wears itself out. Hopefully your team won so you can celebrate for the rest of the night instead of brooding. If you were winners, the rest of your day and night will fade into a victorious drinking fest. The next morning you’re going to feel rough, not going to lie, but it will be totally worth it because you drank your team to victory. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is worth the headache/stomachache/body ache.

          

          How many recounts of a collegiate bro-night-out have you seen chronicled in the movies or blogs? A lot, and they are all glorious. How about a collegiate girls-night-out stories? Probably not, and if you’ve heard of one, it was probably on the Disney Channel.

            It’s not really surprising why this is the case: guys do incredibly stupid things when they’re drunk that sometimes turn out to be epic. Girls, not so much. We’re not dumb enough to see what it would be like to play “Harry Potter” with Roman Candles on the 4^th of July, we’re not dumb enough to chug an entire handle of whiskey so we can spend the next morning throwing up and praying for mercy, and we certainly aren’t dumb enough to walk through the Taco Bell drive-thru at 4 a.m. and pitch a fit when they won’t serve us.

            So to educate the male population, here is a typical night out with the girls in college:

            The posse enters the party with one objective; find the alcohol at all costs. Squeezing through the throngs of girls and guys screaming conversations in each other’s ears over the blasting music, a cluster is spotted. The almighty keg.

            But it seems to be surrounded by an impenetrable fortress of guys and girls, their cups thrust out in the hopes that some of the precious Natty will flow into their red vessels of optimism. Best wait for the line to die down, so what to do in the mean time?

            Well, there will always be one or two “I don’t drink beer” girls. While I disagree with their preferences on the basis that alcohol is alcohol, these girls will convince the group to sketch off to a random room where shots are being concocted.

            Everyone follows the non-beer drinkers through the dimly lit hallway. The muffled music vibrates the walls, and someone spies an open door and tries to squeeze everyone inside. The problem is 900 other girls had the exact same idea and everyone is crammed into the room tighter than your butt is crammed into your Spanx.

            So the pack ventures outwards and finds a virtually empty room, only occupied by two guys awkwardly looking at the doorway. Seeing that there’s alcohol, the pack moves in, smiles and asks “shots?” What this really means is, “OH MY GOD I’ve been at this party for 15 minutes, there’s no air, it’s 110-degrees, and I haven’t had a drink yet because of the ridiculous amounts of people. POURMEADAMNSHOTNOW!”

            In the much more private room, the shots keep pouring, and the female voices increase in volume and rise in pitch into drunken crescendos. But, tragically, after about 6 mixed shots…it happens.

            Pictures.

            The lives of the girls, and the guy unlucky enough to be asked to be the camera man, are put on hold while picture after picture is taken and retaken, because “Ew, look at my face in that one, I look like a man,” and “OMG my thigh looks huge, no way I can use that as a prof pic. Ughh so agro.” Every combination of girls is photographed: big-little, whole group, whole-group reverse, other-girl-who-was-taking-a-shot-while-we-were-taking-the-last-picture-needs-to-get-in-this-group-pic shot, whole-group-taking-shots shot, big-little-taking-shots shot, group-sorority-hand-sign shot, the list goes on. Forever.

            After they’ve all aged 5 years, the photo-shoot is finally over, and the group decides to venture back downstairs, only after sketchily leaving the two guys left in the room staring awkwardly at the new emptiness.

            Back down stairs and a little tipsy, there’s finally room by the keg! Cups are now brimming with liquid joy, and things are looking up. Slowly, the pack begins to grow more distant and amorphous in shape as some girls branch off to play beer pong, others begin to talk to their guy friends and one or two desperately try to find a mixed drink. Some will leave later than others because they found a particularly good-looking man to flirt with. Others may leave sooner to pursue other promising options they heard through whispered voices in the crowd. But by night’s end one thing is for sure: all the girls involved got drunk, and didn’t do anything blatantly idiotic in the process. And that, my friends, is the most epic thing of all: being able to drink uncalled for amounts without making a fool out of yourself.

            Well done ladies, well done.

           It seems responsible enough; foregoing a relaxing summer vacation to be the eager student you are and take summer classes on campus. What a role model of motivation, determination and sacrifice you must be.

            You might be quite content to let everyone believe this, but let’s be real. Summer semester is a sly excuse to not go home for summer to stay at school, drink gratuitous amounts, take absurd road trips on the weekends and basically have the best summer ever. It catches up to you sometimes while sitting in class at 1:30 hung-over as all hell, but still, summer at school sure beats being home all summer.

            Let’s go ahead and imagine if you did go home for a moment. You’d be at your parents house, probably working or having your parents nag you to get a job, and spending most nights at home watching T.V, considering most places in Florida close by 10 p.m. (unless you live in Miami or something, but that’s basically it’s own state).

            Think about this, you’re parents have had a whole year to miss you. This means they missed seeing you, nagging you, getting you to pitch in around the house and missed making you teach them how to use Facebook. We all love our parents to death, there’s no denying that. But the 4-hour Facebook lessons, frantic phone calls at night about your safety and hours spent complaining that you don’t spend enough time at home is a bit much after 3 straight months.

            How about summer school? Well you’ll probably have a job here, too, and it will actually be easier to find here then back at home. College towns are famously “recession-proof”, because students are on campus year-round, anxious for people to serve them tacos, harass them with flyers, take their phone calls and to rip them off for textbooks. You can dress up as the Statue of Flippin Liberty, wave to people in the 100-degree heat and get $10 and hour. God Bless ‘Murica.

            Also, you can have many more adventures at school than at home. You can take spontaneous weekend trips; drink until your heart is content (or you pass out…whatever comes first) or be a champ and do both at the same time. Between the beach, Ginnie Springs and my personal favorite Bob’s River Place, those in G-vegas have the options to have many an epic weekend. Or you can just stay in Gainesville and drink, especially Sunday Funday if you’re in the mood to experience death by tequila shots and fishbowls.

            Regardless if you’re at home or living it up at school, we can all basically agree that we can’t wait for fall and football season to start because let’s face it: baseball is a weak substitute for a real sport.

            You’ve finally made it. You’re out of high school with the highest of expectations, and an overwhelming excitement to follow in the footsteps of John Belushi and Van Wilder.

            No more curfew, no more parents nagging at you to do your laundry or clean your room and no more waking up at the crack of dawn only to be “tardy” to class.

            Before you all go off and start living it up, there are a few things you should know that will help you not look like a lost freshman, and lessons that most of the much-wiser-and-extremely-attractive upperclassmen had to learn the hard way.

            First, don’t be the drunkest person at the party. Maybe you drank a little in high school, took a few shots and played a round or two of beer pong. Now you’re eager to show everyone just what a drinking champ you are.

            Bad move.

            If you drink everything in sight within the first five minutes of arriving to try to show off, you’ll probably end up vomiting, creepily hitting on much more sober people, crying and or with a public urination citation by 11 p.m. Just take it slow and trust me, you’ll end up getting plenty drunk without making a fool of yourself.

            On the note of alcohol, you’re probably wondering where you can buy some with your friend’s horribly expired i.d. There are a few places to go in every college town, but I’ll leave you to find out where they are from other upperclassmen.

            Even if they tell you “it’s expired” or “clearly this isn’t you, you are white and this I.D. has a black person on it”, you’ll just end up getting your i.d. back and trying again at a sketchier-looking liquor store. If not, you’ll just walk away with a handle of liquid adrenaline and will be the President of alcohol at all freshman parties.

            This is also probably the first time you’ve had to do your own laundry. Everyone’s ruined a pile of clothes when they absent-mindedly threw a red shirt in with their whites.

            Just make sure you separate lights, darks and whites, and make sure not to let your nice clothes run in the dryer for too long. And if you’re just too lazy to drag your laundry hamper all the way down stairs, it’s perfectly okay to wear your bathing suits as underwear.           

            It’s also important to realize now that wearing laynards is never okay. Ever. It’s like a medal of shame worn by freshman.

           A few weeks ago, I was eating with some friends, one of which brought a few freshmen. One of the boys was wearing a laynard, and he was “laynard boy” for the rest of the night, and didn’t get to drink any of our pitcher. Don’t be the “laynard boy”, unless you like spending your nights defending your horrible fashion decision.

            Also, it’s a good idea to familiarize your self with your school’s Football. If you can’t talk Gator Football, or if you’re idiot enough to wear another team’s jersey, many students may consider this an act of treason, or think you’re an idiot, neither of which is good for you.

            And finally, for the love of God, don’t wear an entire outfit only consisting of Gator gear you just bought at the bookstore. Just don’t, unless you like people pointing and laughing at you, the oblivious-overenthusiastic freshman.

                 They’re a mystery to the outside world. You see them everywhere: in your classes, giving campus tours and swarming midtown on a Monday night. Their Sperry shoes, Polo shirts and those things your dad used to keep his sunglasses around his neck culminate to create this breed of college men.

                  Indeed, since the birth of the college campus, there has been the bro. They are often described as drinking gratuitous amounts of alcohol, engaging in promiscuous activities and constantly in pursuit of female attention.

                  But who are they really? I set out to find out this past Friday, by staying with a group of bros from the time they woke up, until the time they fell asleep…or passed out.

                  What followed was almost 20-hours of drunken debauchery, complete with disrobing in public, day drinking, the shortest-of-short khaki shorts and bruises that were a mystery the next morning. I have tried, to the best of my ability, to describe the day hour-by-hour. However, no names or student groups are mentioned by name, and this account, by no means, reflects everyone that looks like a bro.

                  But the group of guys I did follow bro-ed out all day. This was their story:

 

10:50 a.m.- Hammering on the doors begins, each brother is awoken with soothing screams, and an uplifting message: “WAKE UP PUSSES WE’RE GOING TO THE BASEBALL GAME”

11:13 a.m.- Arrive at Kay Brother’s BBQ for $.50 drafts and what can only be described as a breakfast for champions. Bros pound about two pints each to start the day.

11:45 a.m. (2^nd inning)- Start walking to the baseball game, but get distracted by the smell of stale beer and thrill of day drinking radiating from Salty Dog Saloon. Six pitchers are bought and split among the group.

1:50 p.m.- Leave Salty and meet up with a brother that had just gotten out of class. The guys and their newest attendant, still wearing his backpack, swing into Gator City and buy three more pitchers.

2:05 p.m.- Leave Gator City and finally start heading to the baseball game. Last bro joins the group fresh off of giving a campus tour to incoming freshman.

2:30 p.m.- Everyone finally makes it to their seats at the game.

2:45 p.m.- The first shirt comes off.

2:48 p.m.- All bro’s are now shirtless, screaming, “SUNS OUT, GUNS OUT,” to a group of concerned-looking parents and their children.

3:17 p.m.- The game ends and everyone heads back to Salty. Between eight and 12 pitchers were purchased, depending on how drunk the person is you ask.

5:48 p.m.- Go to Cantina, meet up with some girls.

6:15 p.m.- Waitress dares a bro to chug drink. Seeing as his masculinity was being challenged in the presence of females, he quickly complies and orders another pitcher.

6:52 p.m.- Arrive back at house.

8:50 p.m.- Bros visiting from out of town arrive, reunion shotguns commence in the hallway.

10:07 p.m.- After getting dinner and taking a quick “frat-nap”, music begins blasting and drinking recommences.

10:25 p.m.- First girls arrive.

10:36 p.m.- The drunkest of the brothers begin dancing in a manner that can only be described as YouTube worthy.

11:08 p.m.- A backstreet boys song comes on. Everything in the room abruptly stops and everyone leans against each other, swaying and belting their hearts out more than any 8-year-old girl could in 1998.

11:11 p.m.- Backstreet-Bonanza ends. Games of beer pong, civil war and flip-cup recommence, but bros make significantly less eye contact with each other after releasing their inner 13-year-old girls.

11:47 p.m.- The much bigger goggle of Greeks leaves the house and makes their way to Swamp.

12:05 a.m.- After squeezing through the flood of people, a vacant table is spotted. Thirty people share a table meant for 14.

12:16 a.m.- Pitchers arrive, and drunken shenanigans continue.

1:37 a.m.- Leave midtown and head back to the house. A few of the men are having profound “broments” as they support each other’s weight and stumble down the sidewalk. Two people trip and fall when one looses their footing on the edge of the sidewalk, one is bleeding a little bit from the elbow.

2:56 a.m.- First bro is noticed passed out on a couch

4:17 a.m.- Last group of girls, excluding girls dating bros, leaves.

4:35 a.m.- I leave, but at least five bros are still up, completely wasted, milling around the house.

4:53 a.m.- Last recorded drunk text is sent from a bro.

 

**Note: Four of the bros reported waking up in their same clothes the next morning.