TooMuchTooSoon

So this person is a pretty big component of my college experience, and I figured I’d give her a nice formal introduction. Our friendship started, like most people’s in college, through facebook. She lived a floor above me and creeped on me somehow and we were facebook friends.

We had talked a few times on facebook, and then eventually one day I ventured up to her room and we finally ‘met’ each other. We hung out a few times, got to become friends, the whole shabang. This is only the beginning of the story.

I would love to continue the story in this post, but it’s too good to do that. I just want to give her a proper introduction.

This girl is pretty… amazing? She’s the most sarcastic, smart assed person I know, which is one of the reasons we get along so well. She’s from the same state as our college, so she’s got the whole ‘home grown’ thing working for her, loves the state and her town. Most of all though, she loves being a pain in my ass.

I’m not gonna lie, I love being a pain in her ass too, and that comes into play a lot. If you ever find someone that is like that, be their friend. It’s so much fun to bicker back and forth with someone, and know deep down you don’t really mean most of it. Try it some time…

Anyway, that’s about all I can really write tonight, because I’m tired as hell and have a lot of tests and whatnot this week. But, it’s about time this girl gets introduced…

And so it begins…

Now, let me give you a little forewarning. I have never been in a long-distance relationship. The longest distance I had was a 25 minute drive, and that doesn’t constitute a long-distance relationship. However, my roommate (Wheaton) and several friends of mine, (CS and Quincy - whom will later be introduced) had and still have long distance relationships. While I can’t speak for all of those in long-distance relationships, I can give my view of them from a third party source.

Of my three friends with long-distance relationships, I’m really good friends with one girlfriend (Wheaton’s), pretty good friends with CS’s girlfriend, and just friends with Quincy’s. So there’s a wide range of connections I have with them, and can speak pretty confidently on some of these topics.

Long Distance Relationships suck. I didn’t need to tell anyone that, but it had to be said. Anyway… here’s my point oh two (a phrase coined by my friend which is just another way to say my 2 cents).

As hard as it is to be in one of these, they can work. All three of my friends love their girlfriends more than anything, and they make it work. All it takes is the willpower and the devotion to one person. If you know you’re not in love, don’t even consider a long-distance relationship. It’s just not worth it. The shit they go through, the length of time they go without seeing their girls, and the amount of temptation that lies within our school is so amazing, it’s simply amazing. Nonetheless, they don’t give into the temptation, they talk to their girls every day, see them as often as they can, and deal with it.

I’ve seen a lot of other people do shitty with this, but these guys are troopers. You can be too. If you’re having doubts, I have a few questions for you to ask yourself, and a few pointers. Here they are…

1) How much do you really love your partner?
2) How devoted are you to making things work?
3) How trusting are you?
4) How easily do you give into sexual temptation and desire?

Ask yourself these, and also ask your friends. Maybe they, like me, have a good view of your long-distance relationship, and can give you a good idea of what the deal is.

Just… don’t be a garbage dick…

These are the worst, no? You have a late night of either partying, studying, just hanging around. You don’t really do anything, or you go crazy and get hammered drunk, get hopped up and make some bad decisions. Either way, late nights happen a lot more often than we plan on. We could have a specific time set out for us to go to sleep… “I’m going to bed at 10:30 tonight”… and then 11:45 rolls around as you just start a movie you put in, leading you to stay up past the hour of 2:00. We lose track of time a lot, but it really doesn’t matter in the long run. 

I once heard somewhere that we spend 2/3 of our life sleeping. If that’s the case, late nights are better for us, it helps us live longer. We get more out of our lives. Now, don’t get me wrong, I enjoy a nice nap (even though I can rarely take them), and I LOVE a good nights’ sleep, but everyone has one of those memories of going to sleep early, and then missing out on some AMAZING thing that happened, and you would have been there if you had just stayed awake and taken that late night. 

College is notorious for late nights. You hang out with your friends, watch some movies, talk about your lives, connect. Or just be dumb and sit around doing nothing but making fun of people. And of course everyone’s favorite, getting hammered and partying the night away. That leads right into the early morning. So you’ve spent a whole not putting away shots, downing beers, and being a champ among mortals of partying. Then you have to wake up for work at 7:30, class at 8:00, or some other stupid thing you knew you shouldn’t have signed up for, but you did anyway because the girl that was also signing up was cute, but then she wasn’t even there anyway because SHE was up late partying too, but you went just to see her. Amongst my rambling, there was a point. Don’t be afraid to have those late nights, even when you have to wake up early.

I also heard somewhere that you should sleep in hour and a half rotations. The body’s sleep cycle lasts an hour and a half. So, be sure to sleep for either 1 and 1/2, 3, 4 1/2, 6, 7 1/2, or 9 hours. Now, if you have a late night/early morning ahead of you, chances are you wont be getting 9 hours of sleep. But shoot for a nice round hour and a half number. It works, I’m telling you. Also, be sure to set two alarms. This morning I had to work at 8:00, and my alarm was set for 7:30. Just in case, though, I set my phone alarm for 7:45. Sure enough, I wake up to the sound of a ringtone on my phone, and I have 15 minutes to get ready, get all my shit together, and get to work. I’m sure glad I remembered that backup alarm. 

This is college. When you get out into the working world, you wont have time for a life, so you will naturally go to sleep early. Live it up. You only go to college once (as long as you complete it that one time), so be sure to stay up late, wake up on time for your early morning obligation, and set two alarms. 

Also, be sure to remember to put on pants during your early morning scurry… 

Hopefully one of the things everyone experiences is a late night dorm life in college. Hanging out with all of your friends, sitting around watching a movie or a tv show. Go get some late night snacks. It’s just so much fun.

Where we lived freshman year, there was a 24 hour convenient-store esque place right next to our hall, including a Subway, meaning we had some late night visits over there. One of the best late night snacks is frozen burritos cooked in the microwave, because I’m pretty sure that’s all we ate.

When you know you’re not going to go to sleep until late, don’t just sit around and do nothing but creep on facebook or some stupid shit like that. Hang out with your friends, go get some junk food, do something stupid together.

One of the funniest things we did was have wheel-chair wednesdays. Someone had found a wheel-chair somewhere, and on Wednesdays, we’d take turns riding it around campus, at night of course. We’d go down the big hill on the street we lived on. We’d take it all over the place, and it was just silly.

Above all other things, the shit we talked about, memories we made, and times we shared were some of the best memories I have. If all else fails, have some fun with your life. Nothing works better to bring people that had never known each other together than a few long nights of absolutely nothing.

The things you talk about when you have… nothing else to talk about. It’s funny how much you can learn from people. So make sure you do it, live life, don’t be afraid of being tired in the morning for class, you’ll have plenty of time to sleep when you’re in the real world working…

Or when you’re dead…

Awkward moments are one of the greatest things to witness in life, but not necessarily one of the best to be involved in (unless you like that sort of thing). When you are submerged in an awkward moment, you feel like you should do anything in your power to punch all of the awkward participants in the face and yell. Or something of the sort.

There are also a few different types of awkward motions you can do, and I’m sure mostly everyone has heard them. You have the awkward turtle, awkward turkey, awkward basically any animal you can think of, probably. One of my favorite things, though, is the ‘it’s hot in here’ awkward motion.

If you aren’t aware of this, when something is really awkward all you do is put a finger in the collar of your shirt, and pull it out a little, as if it’s so awkward that it’s really hot.

The only reason I bring this up is because of a pretty funny story from Freshman year. The really short annoying kid was ‘drunk’ one night, and was chasing around one of the hot girls on our floor. Now, this was funny in itself, because he actually thought he had a chance with girls. So anyway, he was chasing this girl around the floor… and it was really awkward.

Up to this point in the year, my roommate (Wheaton) and I had been doing the awkward ‘it’s hot in here’ thing, and it had been pretty funny. So anyway, on this specific occasion, my roommate went out into the hall to watch this, and after they ran by, he did the awkward ‘it’s hot in here’, but it was so awkward, he put both hands on his collar and just ripped his shirt off.

There was no alcohol involved in this, and it’s not necessarily the funniest story in the world. However, it was really funny at the time, so I guess it’s one of those “you had to be there” stories. Or, as my friends would say, it was a ‘Mike Story’. I will explain those tomorrow.

If I hadn’t mentioned it before… my name is Mike…

So, you’re lying to yourself if you think all college experiences don’t revolve around alcohol at least once in the course of 4 years. Now, there are some exceptions to the rule, people do remain alcohol-free, and I respect that… but that’s not where this story is going.

Some of the best stories I have or have heard revolve around a night of debauchery, and some of my best life lessons have come from booze (not in a bad way though… well, technically in a bad way, but anyway…). Most people have experienced ‘that night’ where they get a little too carried away with their boozin and happen to, well, to put it simply, they happen to puke everywhere. It happens, its a way of life. Don’t be embarassed if you have. If you haven’t and you think you’re going to get away scott free, you’re running away from the problem while it is sprinting towards you… and it’s faster than Usain Bolt. It’s coming.

I thought I was going to be cleared forever, I never puked in High School, always managed my alcohol responsibly and carefully. That is until the second week of my Freshman year (go figure). It was Labor Day weekend, and my roommate (Wheaton for those of you keeping track) had gone home to see his girlfriend/football team. One night, probably Friday, the gang from first floor (Chatham, CS, DumbKid, Owasso, her psycho boyfriend, and a few others) gathered into one of our rooms. We all had our own poisins, mine happened to be some cheap vodka, probably McCormik or something nasty like that.

Now, I had had about 4 or 5 shots of that right off the bat, within the first 10 minutes or so, so I was off to a good start. Chatham and Dumbkid had a bottle of Bicardi Gran Melon, and I really didn’t like the plain rubbing-alcohol taste of my vodka, so I switched some for some. Dumbkid gave me about 5 shots for 5 shots, and I drank that up nicely.

So, for those keeping count, that’s about 10 shots in roughly 20 minutes, maybe 25. Anyway, time had crept on and we were about to head outside to our outdoor Rec Field, which was right near our dorm. I had had another 2 shots before this (that makes 12 in about 35), and as we were leaving Chatham has a bottle of gatorade mixed with their Gran Melon. There were about 2-3 shots mixed in, and he wasn’t going to drink it, so I downed it just before we left.

All of this totals to approximately 14-15 shots of either plain or gran melon vodka in about 45-50 minutes. Now, my time may be skewed because I was so drunk, but we’ll say under an hour. We proceed out to the field, stumblin and bumblin, and I start the drunk dials. I would digress and talk about drunk dialing, but I think that’s another good talking point, so I will save that one.

After drunk dialing my roommate, and some of my friends from back home, I ventured out to the middle of the field where everyone else was. Once I got out there, I was there for no more than 2 minutes when I had to make a B line (or an I line as it should be more properly called, thank you DC) to the side where a railing was.

As soon as I get to that railing, I lean over it and puke all in the grass/dirt. I don’t know the amount of time I was there, but my friends confirm it was about an hour or so. I pinned it at about 20 minutes. At one point the short annoying kid with little man syndrome came next to me and was crying about something. I asked him like I was interested, and as he started to tell me, I started puking again, thus erasing my memory of anything he had said.

Eventually, Owasso and her boyfriend walked me back to our dorm, gave me some ibuprofen and a bottle of water, and I was away in dreamland. Woke up the next morning feeling absolutely fine, and that was the end of my first puking experience.

It only takes one to realize how much you hate doing it, but I did experience the feeling three times more in my existence, and we will eventually get to those. The most important piece of information I took away from this experience was how much puking can affect your taste for alcohol. After that night, I can barely even stand the sight of anything artificially watermelon flavored, let alone the smell or, god forbid, the taste. This has happened several times with other alcohols in the next 2 years of my existence. At this point in my life, I can’t really even stand the smell of liquor. Luckily I still love beer.

Point of the story… everyone pukes from drinking eventually. You can’t escape it. Accept it. It makes you a better person (don’t quote me on that). It’s socially acceptable in the college world. As long as you don’t do it on someone (purposely) or in someones car (as, purposely). Shit happens, and friends will get over it.

Just don’t get drunk and make out with their girlfriend…

The main priority of college is to get an education (for most people). You pay way too much money, but get so much out of the experience that it isn’t even funny. Aside from all of the goofing around, debauchery and everything that goes with it, college is a learning experience both in the educational and life sense.

While most of my posts are about the latter form of learning experiences, this one is slightly about the former, educational learning experiences. We all have a few classes we LOVED taking in college, as well as a few professors who ‘changed our lives’. In the process of transcribing the information from powerpoint to notebook, interpreting teacher speak into poor college kid vernacular and trying to fight off the hangover/lack of sleep from the night before in each class, we actually tend to learn something, no?

Most college students retain what they want to, like things that impact their lives. Who remembers linear equations and the biological workings of a frog? In the end, the only thing we really learn (besides how much alcohol our livers can hold) is what we care about. And in this sense, we must attend class to learn these things.

But, this leads me to my main point, cutting class. We all do it, well, most of us. Now I’m not saying I cut more classes than I go to, but I am not a perfect little angel that has a consecutive class streak that rivals Cal Ripken Jr.’s streak. In my first semester in school, my sister moved to a big city in the state to work, and I helped her move. Two of her best friends from college (one being her roommate) were there also, and they somehow got onto the topic of skipping classes.

Her roommate shared her experience from her graduation day. Her father asked her, “Now Beth, how many classes did you skip in your 4 years?” And she replied, “Honestly Dad, I can count them on one hand.”

WHAT!?!?!?!? I could barely count the number of classes I had skipped in not even my first full semester on two hands. I’m not a bad student by any means, but only skipping less than 5 classes your entire college career, that’s insane. My sister wasn’t much worse, nor was her other friend. I’m pretty sure up to this point (now my 5th semester in college) I’ve skipped twice as much as all of them combined.

Skipping class isn’t a crime, it’s not a sin, it’s a way of life. We shouldn’t be expected to attend every single class for 15 straight weeks, should we? Nevermind 4 or 5 or 6 different classes for that long of a time. This is college, a time when we’re supposed to get all of our stupid shit out of the way. If we skipped out on so many days of work, we’d be fired. But this is college, and skipping classes isn’t a huge deal.

If you’re reading this, and you don’t skip many classes, if you’ve even skipped any at all, re-evaluate your life, and maybe try to live a little. Teachers don’t really care, even if they say they do. Have a friend sign you in if they do attendance sheets. And if it’s a big lecture hall, screw that. NO ONE will know you’re gone.

Just make sure you don’t skip out on the day of a quiz or test… it’s happened, trust me…

Bad luck is one of those things that you can never avoid. Everyone experiences bad luck, some worse than others, and it sucks hardcore. Tonight I experienced some bad luck, and it just got me thinking about bad luck in general.

In my life I’ve had some bad luck on several occasions. In 8th grade, I stayed with a good friend while my parents were away. We were playing video games one Friday night, and he asked me what the most pain I ever endured was. I had answered his question with a story from my childhood, thinking nothing of it. The very next day, I broke my ankle while playing basketball (it’s actually a long, funny, stupid story, but I’ll spare you). That same friend asked me a similar question in our Senior year of high school. He asked if I had ever been in a car accident, and I had not. The VERY next day he and I were driving back from the mall, and sure enough I got into an accident, my first one ever.

Maybe some people are more cursed than others (like my friend, clearly), but we all catch that bad-luck-bug at one point or another. To some, bad luck is a sign from god that you are doing something wrong. Others view it as things happening for a reason. I’m not here to preach beliefs (maybe I’ll save that for another day), but bad luck is just straight up bad luck. Plenty of people have good luck all the time (see: Lottery Winners), and they don’t complain about it when they do. Why should we complain when we have bad luck. As far as I’m concerned, bad luck only builds up your character. If you can succumb all of the bad luck you are given, you can take the good luck with grace.

My bad luck today involved a school project. I had to load some video onto a computer, and it would not work at all. The lab with the computes closed at 9, and it’s due tomorrow at 1:00. The lab opens at 9:00 tomorrow morning. I don’t have a lot of time, and it’s just bad luck that it wouldn’t load. There are a lot of reasons why it wont load, none of which I have concretely answered or explored yet, but I am working on it. In a class where your professor gives negative grades, you can’t afford to NOT have video. Anyway… that’s where the bad luck ideas stemmed from.

The way I look at it (this is a good phrase for a post like this), this bad luck will make me realize that not everything should be taken for granted. Like I said before, bad luck happens to us all, but it by no means kills us (unless the bad luck you experience involves death, in which case, I’m sorry).

And you know what they say about that which doesn’t kill us…

So, today is saturday, and every big campus in the country is thriving with college football madness. I too go to one of those schools that experience college football at its highest capacity, and I love it. It amazes me (no surprise there) that Saturday’s bring out the best in people during college football. Even on “dry-campuses”, they are more wet than a bottle of water floating in a pool in the rain. People walk around carrying cases of beer, 3 beers in each hand, and handles of any kind of liquor you can think of. It’s also strange seeing these same people walk by tons of cop cars with no repercussions. Oh college football.

There’s something about being in a packed stadium, most people wearing the same color, screaming their heads off, all boozed up and excited. That’s just one of the best things about college, especially if your team is good. If you haven’t been to a college game in one of those huge stadiums, you should get on that before this season ends. It’s a must.

Anyway, College football was one of the first experiences I had in college, and it was amazing. Everyone on the floor would pile into our room (alright, it was like 5 or 6 people) and we would blast the fight song, dance around, and pound booze. What’s even better is that no one cared. Yeah we can’t drink in the Res Halls, but no one really cared. So we would get shitty before the game, dance around, enjoy life, then head over to the game and cheer on the squad.

Another awesome part of college football may be post-game naps. After you spend 3 or 4 hours cheering on your team, especially in extreme hot/cold, you are just so tired and want to crash, and you do. There’s nothing better than getting a big win on a Saturday, crash after the game, and then wake up a few hours later and start drinking again. There’s almost nothing better. That’s why the second semester of every college year sucks, because there’s no tailgating, no football, no nothing.

Enjoy college football while you can. Don’t go to a school with a shitty football team. Yeah, basketball is fun to watch, but football is so much better. It makes the college experience so much better. Being in a stadium with upwards of 60,000 fans, screaming as loud as you can, being hammered. It’s great.

This Saturday was another great college football day for my school. And I didn’t get to take a nap this time, but in the end it doesn’t really matter. The fact that I have a big team to cheer on, and a lot of friends and peers to watch the game with, all drunk, makes college that much better.

Freshman year in college is one of the most eye-opening, personally revealing, most insane time in ones life. Despite what background you came from, what you had or had not done in high school, or what your views were on life, Freshman year is the first real opportunity you have to do whatever you want. People say that all the time, but you never really know until you experience it for yourself.  

Today’s post is an intro to freshman year. The “best” time of your life, but also the most rewarding, grueling, and memorable times as well. Even if you don’t go crazy and get drunk every night, have crazy amounts of sex, or do insane amounts of drugs, you still get that great experience. Now, not every great freshman experience contains all three of those, but most of them involve one of those three (especially the first two) in some form or another. I’m not saying mine involved all three of those, but I’m not saying it didn’t either. I’m not going into grave detail right now, but this is just a little preview.

My freshman year, I lived on a very exciting floor. We didn’t talk to or hang out with anyone from any other floor, for the most part. There were about 10 or so guys that always hung out together, and then pretty much 3 or 4 girls that hung out with us. That was the main group that partook in the nonsense of the world. The rest of our floor was just as fun, and there are plenty of stories behind all of them, but they come in waves. The main core group of people was definitely an odd gathering of people. We had a huge smelly kid from the Chicagoland area, a really short annoying kid with shortman syndrome from the Chicagoland area, a really annoying kid that wore Jorts from St. Louis, a pretty normal kid from New York, and a really annoying jewish kid from St. Louis. That is besides the rest of the guys that were already introduced. If you can’t tell from the brief descriptions I gave of all of them, the personalities of all of these people mixed [wonderfully].

Most of these kids were really weird, and what would a freshman college experience be without really weird kids. I feel like it takes people that are unbearably annoying, strange, or so off-keel with what you always think that makes you realize how good your life is. That may seem a little harsh, cocky, or self-centered, but you didn’t know these kids. I was glad to have a normal life. Looking back on it now, 2 years later, I only talk to 4 of those guys from freshman year, 2 that are still in my fraternity, the one that dropped out of school but was in my fraternity, and Dumbkid. I think I chose the right route with the whole friendship thing, because I could never see myself holding a conversation longer than 30 minutes with any of those other kids. Which leads me to another point…

How is it that we as humans can be so considerate, nice, and fake on the outside when we’re with someone, but then just trash them when they’re not around. Even when we shoot down the fact that people can’t say things to other’s faces. We are hypocrites in our own right, just because we do the very thing we all “hate”. Whatever, I say screw that. If you don’t want to tell someone how much you dislike them, but don’t want to burn a bridge, or be mean, who cares. That’s life. People get over it, get on with it, and forget it. No big deal.

Anyway, for the other girls on our floor freshman year (besides Owasso), they were strange in their own right. The other 2 main girls were roommates. One was from a school that had a Pretzel as their mascot, and her mother was INSANE. The other girl was from Flowermound Texas, and was weird for a while, then normal, then weird, then normal. It’s hard to pinpoint. Long story short with these girls, at the end of freshman year we all left on what one would call “non-speaking terms”. It just kind of happened that way, but now we are all ok again, because we are grown-ups who can realize when we were just being stupid overdramatic [Freshman]. Shit happens.

Freshman year had its ups and downs. I experienced my first extreme case of intoxication. I experienced someone rip the shirt right off their body. I experienced a group of hippies make fools of themselves in the snow. I experienced someone tell so many lies and then admit they were lies not too long after. I experienced a kid fail out of school, and then fall through the cracks and live on campus an extra month into second semester, doing NOTHING.

All in all, being a freshman in college is one of the best things you can ever experience, if you play your cards right. In order to live the experience, you must give in what you want to get back out. You have to make some sacrifices, skip a few classes (as long as you know you wont miss anything important), and just be young and stupid. That’s the moral of this blog, you can be young and stupid when you’re a freshman. Society allows it. As long as you aren’t a big fool and either fail out, die of alcohol poisoning, or just not actually live the experience, you’ll be fine.

And so it begins…