Ode on a Grecian URL

The free hebdomadals you wrote a few weeks back were a delight to read, and I wanted to post a couple particularly exciting examples of the answers I got to my questions about drinking - if nothing else they should furnish you with some wonderful excuses if you're ever caught drinking. First, Melanie from 301:

Alcohol. To many college students, this is their nearest and dearest friend. Alcohol is readily available for all your needs: it will warm you up on a chilly night, it will make you forget your problems (if even for just a little bit) and it’s not afraid to do stupid, outrageous and potentially life-threatening things with you. Like all good friendships though, alcohol and college students have their ups and downs, like down to the toilet, or down to the ground as they pass out, or watching their grades go down. . . but yet college students keep coming back to their trusty friend alcohol. Why is that?

For college students, alcohol is the ultimate mask, their salvation from social awkwardness. Alcohol makes you forget that you’re in a new surrounding, far from home, far from your close friends, far from any comfort that has surrounded one for the past 18 years or so. With alcohol, you can open up, do stupid and crazy things and the best part is, you think its fun because you can’t quite remember what happened most of the night. Alcohol is also freedom, its taboo. It’s our little way of saying “Stick it to the man (Mom and Dad)! I’m a big kid now!” Even for students that are of legal drinking age, being “the drunk guy” isn’t socially acceptable a lot of the time (Who would bring home their significant other to meet the parents after a night of partying in Madison?). I also believe college students drink because that’s what they think college is all about. Look at Animal House, the epitome of a college movie, or any other cheap college comedy out today, TV shows and commercials. . . they always show college students drinking. When you talk to your friends about college too, what do they tell you about? Usually not that thrilling paper they worked on Saturday night but their funny drunk stories. People are scared coming to college of not fitting in, not making friends, so they do what most people do, drink. Drinking promotes cookie-cutter people who mask their true identities in a bottle but hey, everyone likes cookies.

How much can one learn from a depressant, that clouds reasons and could poison/kill you? As much as Calculus seems to cloud my reason and depress me and even though I manage to convince myself that my teachers are secretly in a plot to kill me with all the homework that is given, I generally come out with a fun (excruciatingly boring) fact. When I drink, I usually come out with a nasty hangover, a garbage can full of puke, and one of my friends passed out on the futon. Is drinking in itself useful? Will it look good on your resume (or legal record)? No, that’s a ridiculous statement for anyone to make. Is it an experience though? A natural part of growing up and learning who you are and where you fit in? Yeah and I think that’s really what a lot of college is about.

And here is Lindsay from 302, who totally gets bonus points for sticking in a quick reference to J. S. Mill:

To me drinking is something that at least in my family was something that was acceptable, but only once you were in college. In high school to drink we had to sneak around our parents, but oddly now that I have graduated high school and have moved on to college, drinking seems oddly acceptable to my parents and there older friends. When my dad tells stories about his best times in college they always end up being with his frat brothers, and I always find myself wondering how he really remembered them because they always seem to start with, well we threw a keg in the back of the truck…and move on from there. Even the adults at my high school graduation party would write in the cards, here is X amount of money use it to buy a cup at a party. I’m not saying that I feel pressure to drink solely from my parents and other adults, but to me it seems like somewhat of a tradition. You grow up, graduate high school, and you go to college to “find yourself” which somehow seems to include taking as many vodka shots as possible in one night.

However, I think there is something to be said for the drinking culture here at Madison. A lot about being in college is about being on your own for the first time, making your own decisions and messing up. As stupid as it sounds, the first thing you want to do when you’re in college is do what you have never been allowed to do, and for many people that includes alcohol. Its not that people haven’t drank before they got to college, but a lot of them have never been able to drink in such an open environment. I think in the time between high school, and being a grown up people want to mess up and alcohol has a funny way of accelerating how quickly people tend to make mistakes. I’ll admit a lot of it is ego and peer pressure driven. There has to be some driving force behind waking up at eight o’clock on a Saturday morning hung over from the night before, and forcing yourself to drink before a Badger game. For some reason I have yet to figure out, there is a certain pride that goes along with having consumed so much alcohol and survived the night. It is sort of like J.S. Mill’s arguments in “The Subjection of Women”. As different as the subjects are they carry same ideas, the “custom” image of a college student is one that is always drinking, so to be a college student and not drink makes you…a genius. Well maybe all of Mill’s arguments aren’t completely accurate, I’m not sure that putting down the pitcher will help turn you in to a genius but maybe if you put down the pitcher and picked up a book you would get a lot closer.