The 10 Commandments of College

1. Thou shall hook up. It’s exciting being in a brand new world full of strangers. You don’t know anyone and no one knows you. No one knows your past and you don’t know (or care) about anyone else’s. You have a wide variety of prospective hook ups and the possibilities are endless each year, since everyone is constantly drunk and always looking for the same thing. You will make out and more with many people drunkenly and – at least once – soberly (one would hope). However, if you are looking for a BF and/or GF, proceed with caution. Everyone wants to f*ck… just not with feelings.

2. Thou shall black out. You will drink on weeknights and miss class the next morning. You will do a keg stand and/or funnel a beer (or hard liquor – why not?) at least once. You will master the ‘boot and rally,’ meaning you will throw up Friday night around 1am and continue drinking thereafter. You will day drink like a champ while posing for pictures in broad daylight in someone’s big off-campus backyard (whether you know the people who live there or not). You will wake up each morning with a splitting headache and look to bagels for hangover support. You will have a fridge stocked with more booze than food – and you will have an ode to your empty’s somewhere in your kitchen/dorm room that you will hide when your parents visit. You will swan dive off tables, make out with strangers, make out with friends, call an ex until they answer or you pass out, and more… and obv you ‘won’t remember any of it’ the next morning, so it’s okay.

3. Thou shall try too hard. Going to a new place where you don’t know anyone is always a thrill. You need to make friends unless you’re perfectly fine with being a loner, so you must take action. You will act like someone you are not just because you want people to like you. You will act happy all the time even when you’re homesick, tired, or angry just because you don’t want anyone to think you’re lame and/or mean. You will befriend too many people and have too many numbers in your phone to keep track of. You will try too hard to hook up with people and fail… or you will succeed, and feel like an idiot the next day because you said some pretty stupid things (at the bar and in bed). You will try way too hard to dress up for the dive bar you’re going to (heels. aren’t. necessary). And eventually you will stop trying because you’ll feel ‘comfortable’ at school… but to all those you hooked up with, talked to online (before and after orientation), texted on occasion, etc… you’ll still feel awkward when you see them. It never ends.

4. Thou shall procrastinate. You will write and finish papers an hour before they are due. You will go out with friends instead of studying for tests. You will choose the gym over large lectures where your absence goes unnoticed. You will get assigned things weeks in advance and completely forget about them until the professor is asking for your papers/projects the day they are due. You will become a professional in making excuses and will be able to hand in things late and take tests days later without being penalized. You will somehow graduate and be like how the eff did that happen?

5. Thou shall be sick all the time. Whether the sickness is due to excessive alcohol use or due to your immune system collapsing, which it will, you will always be sick. You will get sick from partying… and then get sick from the lack of sleep you’re getting. You will throw up in stranger’s toilets at random parties. You will throw up in a dorm bathroom where people on your floor will be like ‘WTF, that’s gross. who’s the alc?‘ Your stomach will protest against all the gross dining hall food you eat or the sh*t you get delivered when drunk constantly. You will have a cold every day due to lack of sleep. You will take nyquil and dayquil on a daily basis. You will catch anything being passed around campus. You will frequent the health center and not realize how great that place was until you graduate and have to start paying ‘co-payments’ at the real doctor’s office. Nearing the end, you will forget what it’s like not be sick and get antsy when you feel… healthy.

6. Thou shall gain weight. To enter college is to enter a world of non stop food and drinks. Most of which will be bad for you because bad food and drinks are both cheap and good… and those are your only requirements in things as a student. Because of this, you will gain at least 10 pounds and after, your weight will fluctuate like a mother f*cker. You will be amazed at the sight of the ‘free’ food at the dining hall and eat everything (even thought it’s not really free, but you don’t have to pay for it before or after you eat so whatever). However, after sophomore year, you will cringe at the thought of a dining hall and start working out ‘hcore.’ But you will continue to drink beer and liquor on the reg so your gym time won’t matter. You will still feel gross and complain about it all the time, but you won’t do anything to stop your sh*tty health habits because of FOMO (fear of missing out) and the drunk munchies.

7. Thou shall leave your comfort zone. You will leave comfort once you step foot on your college campus, whether you live there or not… or whether your 10 best friends are standing by your side or not. You’re not in high school anymore. It’s the big leagues and you will act accordingly. You will head to parties and get offered to do things you’ve never done before like taking shots, funneling beers, doing drugs, and/or having group sex (you never know)… and you will try one or more of these things to only find out there is more to life than the one you knew before. You will study abroad and/or live in a new place for a semester or for a summer. And you will realize you want to do something different with the rest of your life… or live somewhere different for the rest of your life… or just, like, a year. You will go on Spring Break and realize that some of what you see on TV is in fact reality. You will try new things every single day and in return, figure out who you really are. And yes, I do mean you will ‘find yourself.’

8. Thou shall feel awkward. You will have class with people you’ve hooked up, but have never spoken to. You will hook up with someone, give them your number, and forget their name so when/if they call/text you, you will do everything in your power to stealthily figure out their name without asking. You will be sexiled… or you will not be sexiled and wake up to weird noises coming from the bed next to you. You will be stuck in an elevator with ex-friends. You will pass by ex-hookups in the hallway, at the dining hall, or at the bar on a regular basis. You will be friends with people on Facebook that you don’t actually know, and not know if you should say hi to them in public when they’re standing, like, right next to you.  You will basically feel awkward until you graduate and leave town because after that, you are more in control of who you see from college and when.

9. Thou shall not sleep. You will be busier than anyone in the whole entire world. You will take classes, you will party, you will work, you will party, you will write papers, you will party, and … you will party. Like, when are you supposed to have time sleep? Never. You will constantly find yourself waking up after 2 to 4 hours of sleep in your clothes from the night before (shoes included if your night was awesome). You will stay up late (sometimes all night) writing papers and studying because you, like, had to take a 2 hour break to go to late night at the dining hall or you had to watch a TV show with everyone on the couch. You will have a night where you will you actually try to get a decent amount of sleep, but plans will fail when the fire alarm goes off 1 or 2 times between the hours of 2am and 6am. You will for some reason rarely be tired despite all of this and not crash until after you graduate… and when that happens, you will crash hard. Believe me.

10. Thou shall mature. By graduation, you will mature… even if it’s by the tiniest bit AKA you will stop laughing at the word ‘penis’ or you will start cleaning up after yourself. You will realize who your friends are and you will stop mass texting 3/4ths of your class asking what’s going on this weekend. You will learn to cook – even if it’s just Kraft Mac or scrambled eggs – and you will cook on occasion. You will be able to black out in style… For example, you won’t throw up on someone’s carpet anymore but instead in a toilet. Your FOMO will be not be as high and you will be able to stay in and write a paper on a Wednesday. You won’t care about going to the party that ‘everyone‘ is going to anymore. As time passes, it will eventually be awkward to party with those guys and girls you know of but don’t actually know. Sure you’ll want to get ‘f*cked up’ and go to the party or bar ‘everyone‘ is at later, but you will rather spend quality time with your friends. And by quality time I mean playing drinking games in the living room or drinking around a fire in the backyard. After you graduate, you won’t be prepared for the real world at all… but you’ll be better off than you were as a freshman. You will at least have that going for you.