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September 27, 2006
Esther Hwang
The freshmen are here.
The freshmen are everywhere. One can see them stopping passing strangers to ask where Wheeler Hall is. Or one can see them in class, furiously scribbling down professors' words verbatim. Or one can see them with their overzealous friendliness, trying to make as many new friends as possible, as if buddies were something you collect in pokéballs. Their ubiquitous presence invades every nook and cranny of this school, exhausting the already jaded upperclassmen with their overly enthusiastic, painfully naďve, and exhaustively friendly attitude.
The most obvious way to spot a freshman, however, is at the Welcome Week Greek parties. The freshman is the one looking overly nonchalant as he tries to suppress the grimace from the stinging taste of the alcohol. The freshman is the one miserably blowing chunks on the sidewalk while her girlfriend holds her hair back and is visibly fighting joining in on the purge herself. Or you can spot the more experienced ones, the ones chugging the life out the plastic red cups, enjoying this first-ever opportunity to not be drinking while discreetly squatting in a driveway while keeping an open ear for the sounds of approaching parents.
I don't mean to ridicule the freshmen, or sound superior from my sophomore throne, or vilify the drink. At this point, I can't tell if it is disdain or pity I feel for these newborns. Perhaps a bit of both: disdain for them reminding me of how ridiculous I looked myself a year ago, discovering the merits of alcohol, and pity because I know of the hard times to come and how much they are suffering in their own heads. They are confused at why this new college form of fun is at the same time painful and foreboding. In a few weeks, they'll fall asleep in class for the first time or perhaps not show up at all. This will become a pattern, and their grades will begin to slip.
Eventually, they'll learn of the falsely alluring fun of drinking and partying, and their exorbitant price. Once having done so, they will have to fight themselves, tooth and nail, to resist the temptations to party the night before a test, to learn to decline a sake-bombing to let their overworked bodies heal. It will be a painful weaning, require great self-discipline, but I have faith and believe that most students will make it through.
The unfortunate few who fail to do so may have already given up their GPA and perhaps some of the opportunities they would have had otherwise. They'll tell themselves if they could get into UC Berkeley, they can handle themselves, or that grades aren't everything as long as they're enjoying life, or that they never really wanted to become doctors in the first place. They will fail to see how this moment in time will affect them in the long run.
This all sounds over-exaggerated, as if I'm trying to stop this cyclical trend in freshmen. But I'm not trying to scare anyone - these are merely objective observations and my friends' and my experiences.
However, I would like to ask the freshmen to please be careful. This is the start of a new life, and it is so very easy to get off on the wrong start. It'll be a painful learning experience, but you'll come out a stronger person in the end.
For everyone else, go easy on the newbies, and try to lend a helping hand somehow. Scold, cajole, restrain, whatever it is you need to do. Try to suppress that sadistic pleasure you get from corrupting a freshman with a tequila shot, and if you can't do that, at least keep an eye on them once they're smashed.
For now, I'll pretend I'm irritated by these new arrivals, and secretly hope that they'll see through my attitude, and realize the vague warning I am trying to send out.
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September 18, 2006
Anniversary
Kate Frankola
Local time is 3:30am and my head is bent over the toilet bowl instead of on my pillow, where it belongs right now. This time, for a change, alcohol is not to blame, and I actually haven't the faintest idea as to why I'm coughing so violently that my midnight snack is threatening to end up in the porcelain receptacle, a mystery that worries me only slightly more than the dreaded weariness that is certain to attack just in time for 8am class tomorrow-er, today-in just a few short hours.
I rarely stay up late, and even more rarely do I get sick. I do not remember the last time that I've thrown up due to genuine illness-third grade? Instead, my thoughts naturally drift to far more recent memories of nights remarkably similar to this one, though all with the inclusion of one major ingredient: alcohol.
Sometimes life almost mocks you with the coincidences that it forces you to realize, an insight that has dawned on me several times as I've grown older, but that was specifically clear to me that early morning-which was, in case you were wondering, September 4, 2006. It was the brand-new beginning of a Tuesday morning, quite possibly the most sobering Tuesday morning of the year for many Americans, who mourn the end of not only their Labor Day weekend but of their entire summer. But that's not why the day or the date stood out in my mind. Instead, it was the one year anniversary of what was, without a doubt, the stupidest partying experience that I have ever inflicted upon myself.
I had just completed the online AlcoholEdu course earlier that summer and, with such a haunting reminder of the physical and mental consequences of alcohol still fresh in my mind, I really had no excuse to behave as irresponsibly as I did. Except maybe for the fact that Hurricane Katrina had just, to make an extremely lengthy and complicated but thoroughly interesting evacuation adventure short, ruined my life. Worst of all, Katrina had robbed me of my chance to escape from my stifling, petty high school life, and it was precisely that promise of escape to Tulane that had gotten me through each tedious day of senior year. Unexpectedly back in Pittsburgh for Labor Day weekend, with no plan for the rest of the semester-not to mention no clothes, no books, no laptop, no tennis racket, no hope…the list goes on-I felt compelled to escape from, essentially, my entire life. Though still, as I said, that's no excuse.
My friends did not have to say much to convince me to accompany them to a Carnegie Mellon frat party, and they certainly did not have to convince me to drink-and drink very irresponsibly at that. Some of my personal bests (the ones that I can remember) from that evening include: throwing back eight beers in under an hour and a half, initiating a random saliva swap with the geekiest-looking freshman that I could find (that decision, however stupid at the time, actually worked out: a year later, he and I are still dating), and, of course, the grand finale of puking my guts out for literally hours at the end of the night in the rancid bathroom of a guys' dormitory. The next morning, I woke up in a twin-sized bed with three other people, still feeling horribly sick to my stomach and not a bit like I'd escaped from anything, with the possible exception of sound judgment and maturity.
Since that critical night, I certainly haven't secluded myself from partying opportunities; heck, I moved to New Orleans, where the fun is simply infectious, and the most carefully planned evening of responsible drinking faces a direct conflict of interest with what seems to be the city's collective goal of facilitating everyone's good time…and the ensuing results may not always make for the most pleasant morning after. But just as I've gradually learned through partying experience how to gauge and honor my personal limits, I've learned through life experience much more effective means of coping with disappointment, loneliness, and stress.
The vast majority of college drinkers that I know began drinking for social reasons or out of curiosity, but they continue their usage of the drug largely as a means of escape, mostly from stress. Freshman year, many of my friends partied and drank only on the weekends, opting to spend their weeknights responsibly hitting the books instead of the bottle. It's sophomore year now, though, and the weeknight partying appears to be getting harder along with the classes. "I'm just too stressed to write this paper now," a classmate will say. "I'll do it tomorrow. Tonight I'll go out drinking and get my mind off it."
One of my good friends here received word last spring that one of her best friends from home had died in a drunk driving accident. He had been the drunk driver. My friend, rather than being temporarily deterred from irresponsible drinking, promptly went to Bourbon Street that very night and proceeded to drink so much that she missed her flight home for her friend's funeral the next morning. "How else was I supposed to deal with hearing that?" she rationalized to us the next day, one round-trip on the airport shuttle later.
Drinking to escape is not fun. At best, it is desperate, hurried, asocial, and excessive. At worst, the long, miserable hours spent puking at the end of the night are heaven compared to the myriad of problems that still await you in the morning, joining you once again in greeting yet another day.
For precisely these reasons, I drift off to sleep with a smile and a sense of relief on the night of this newly-discovered anniversary, on which I've been prompted to ruminate only due to another bout of illness. My first class looms less than three hours in the future, and my throat is sore and my body exhausted from being so sick. But I fall asleep smiling because, unlike in the case of last year's experience, life really will be much better in the morning.
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