It’s a new start, a clean slate, a fresh year, a new and improved you. If you’re a freshman girl at JMU, you’ve officially left the bubble known as your high school and have finally achieved collegiette status. So now what?
With an entirely new pool of guys to choose from, countless friendships being made and endless alcohol flowing at open parties in the ’Burg, college is a young adult’s playground. But sometimes, playgrounds can be dirty. Here are the things that will give you a name you don’t necessarily want going around the playground. Essentially, don’t be THAT girl, and don’t do THESE things.
At a fraternity party…
In case you haven’t heard, boys talk. In fact, they generally gossip far more than the average girl. Do something embarrassing at a fraternity party and it’s pretty much guaranteed that there will be a mass email or discussion about it at their next chapter. Things like not wearing underwear and then flashing everyone your lady parts while table dancing, publicly making out with more than one guy in that frat at the same party, throwing up on a couch (bed, front porch, sink, etc.), or even just blacking out so hard that you are unable to form real human words is not the type of attention.No one knows you yet, so this will be their first impression of you. Once you make a name for yourself at a frat, there’s usually no going back.
At a party where you don’t know anyone…
Freshman year is full of parties where everyone’s a stranger. Dear freshman girl, don’t go home with a random boy because he offers you a fun time because what he has might not be so great. Back home you probably knew every guy and everyone he ever dated or hooked up with. Didn’t your mama ever tell you about stranger danger?
On the drunk bus…
It’s not classy or attractive when you’re making out with your suitemate on the drunk bus. We get it, you’re in college and want to “experiment” or maybe you’re just heavily intoxicated. Regardless, you don’t need some loser to whip out his smartphone and start recording this little endeavor because next thing you know, you’re as viral as the girl making out with a tree on YouTube. Save yourself the embarrassing phone call to Mom and Dad and just remain seated or swaying back and forth on the bus like a normal drunk person.
At a sporting event…
Football tailgates bring a variety of girls to the table. You have the girls sporting jerseys and JMU T-shirts and you have the girls who decided they go to a southern school wearing sundresses and cowgirl boots. Then there’s the rare and horrifying sighting of the girls trying way too hard. Collegiettes, it’s great you spend so much time in the gym, but please, do not go to a football game with a sports bra on and your stomach painted!!! This action is screaming for attention and might just end up giving you more than you bargained for. So please, “clothing optional beyond this point” really only applies to a few choice places, and a football game isn’t one of them.
At the dining hall…
No matter how many times you see it, you have to wonder how it’s possible for a girl to walk in the dining hall still in her clothes from last night. She’s over there in a skintight bandage dress, hair in a knot, makeup making its way down her face and seemingly not a care in the world. When she walks into E-Hall with her dorm friends who are in sweatpants, she’s automatically become “the walk of shame friend.” Dear collegiette, food is awesome, but it should never take priority over your pride. If you have enough time to make a trip to E-Hall after you couldn’t make it home, take the time to grab a T-shirt. To everyone who sees you, you automatically become that freshman girl who didn’t care enough to present herself as someone who wasn’t sprinting across campus only moments before. So don’t be THAT girl!
College comes with very few rules. That means that breaking the ones it does have only leads to embarrassment and awkwardness around campus (it’s smaller than you think!). So please, make good decisions (along with some entertaining, tiny bad ones), and don’t be THAT girl, don’t do THOSE things.