In the eyes of a freshman, college translates to staying out late, skipping your 8:00 am classes (and maybe your 10:00 am if it’s a Friday morning) and drinking excessively at fraternity parties. These are supposed to be the best years of our lives! No parents, no bedtime, no repercussions! In the words of Ben Franklin, “beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.” For most college freshman, the amount of drinking done on some college campuses comes as a huge shock. Think about it. You spent the first eighteen years living under the jurisdiction of your parents and their rules and now there is no one telling you what to do or when to do it. After four years of rigorous studying and AP classes, tyrannical parents and their curfews, are you ready to party like a cast member of Animal House?! Doesn’t it seem like college is a place where the beer flows and the weed grows? WE’RE ALL GOING STREAKING! Up through the quad and into the gymnasium! Come on everybody! Come on!
Well I hate to be the bearer of bad news but if you want to do all of those fun things than you need to get yourself in the library every day. This school is no joke. Didn’t you hear that F&M was ranked the fourth most rigorous school in the country last year? Surprisingly, you have to actually do work here if you plan on partying hard during the week and on the weekends. F&M has a great social scene but it comes at a cost- you’re going to actually have to work hard if you want to play harder.
Binge drinking is one of the most serious problems on college campuses across the country. So why is it that underage drinking, most commonly binge drinking, is so inviting to college freshman? Reason number one: Easy access. Alcohol is everywhere on college campuses. It is entirely too easy to access alcohol if you are underage on a college campus. I spent the majority of my freshman year putting class on the back burner and searching for upperclassmen to go to the liquor store for me and my friends. That was not a good idea. Reason number two: all my friends are doing it! A lot of college freshman begin to binge drink because a lot of their friends are doing it. There will be plenty of times when you are in the library studying and one of your friends will text you saying everyone is going out tonight and you immediately drop your books and run back home to get ready. Which soon beckons the age old question: would you jump off a bridge if your friend jumped first? Obviously not! Making friends your freshman year is obviously extremely important. No one wants to sit at the lunch table by themselves in the dining hall. Drinking in large groups, whether it is in your dorm room or at a frat/loft party, is often seen as a way to make new friends. The term used to describe this scene is “social drinking.” When one social drinks with their new friends, they loosen up and their inhibitions go out the window, allowing an individual to feel more relaxed around their new friends. This is not a good thing. You should never use alcohol as a way to make friends. I repeat, you should never use alcohol as a way to make friends. As I’m sure your mother would say, people will love you for that shining personality of yours and not for how long your keg stand time is.
Regardless of whether you see alcohol as a gateway to new friendships or you’re just drinking because alcohol is everywhere, you need to be safe and be smart about it. It’s not cool to be the drunkest girl or boy at the party. You just look like an idiot and everyone is secretly, or outwardly, laughing at you and you never notice because you think you look super cool doing that sweet dance move. Trust me, I’ve been that girl and I know from experience that you do not look super cool- just super stupid and you’re probably spilling beer everywhere. So don’t be that person. It’s not cool to be the freshman who got a strike the first week of school or the freshman who is puking outside of Schnader because they couldn’t make it into the bathroom. Or whatever other drunken mistakes people make while intoxicated. This is a small school and everyone will know about it the next day, or possibly even within a few hours of the incident. This college is no joke and if you don’t actually do work because you’re out getting “shwasted” all the time, you are doomed. I repeat, you are doomed. But like I said before, these are supposed to be the best years of your life and you are fully entitled to have the time of your life. You just need to be safe and smart about it. All you need to do is learn to balance your academic life and your social life and you will do big things here. YOLO!
This article is written by a student writer from the Her Campus at F and M chapter.