The promise of the weekend is what gets most of us collegiettes™ through the week. On Friday, when your history teacher is lecturing about things that happened (what feels like) a billion years ago, the only thing stopping you from dropping out of school and applying to Taco Bell is knowing that in just a few hours you’ll be forgetting your problems, drinking cheap beer and enough Solo® cups of Hunch Punch to forget that Samuel Adams did anything but make beer. We suddenly turn into our dear friend Alice, lulled to sleep by the boring book her sister (now the professor) was reading, falling into a dream. As you sit in class, using all of your energy to hide the fact that you don’t care (like, at all), you allow yourself to daydream about what the night will bring you as you have your adventures in “Fratland”.
Fridays offer endless possibilities—all you have to do is decide what your goal for the night is. You might choose to go to that fraternity that has the strongest Jell-O shots, minimizing the time it takes for you to achieve your desired state of drunk. The endless selection of hot guys in that frat down the street may be your destination if you choose to spend your night securing the hottest formal date. Or maybe you pick to go to that frat where you know everyone and can spend all night dancing like an idiot (let’s be honest, we all need a night like that once in a while!). That’s the great thing about Fratland. The choice is yours, and it’s yours to change… over and over and over.
Getting off the night shuttle after you finally decide on the perfect outfit (after trying on everything in your closet) is like when Alice fell into the rabbit hole. Not only is this the start to both of your adventures, but they can also both be ungraceful, depending on how hard you went at the pregame. But while Alice falls into a world of talking caterpillars and an evil queen, you stumble into a world of pounding music and drunk guys. Regardless of the differences, both have potential to create an unbelievable night.
Ok, if you say so.
Alice has the displeasure of bumping into Tweedledee and Tweedledum in her trip through Wonderland. In Fratland, however, you’ve either ran into the annoying girl who’s had a bit too much to drink (or maybe even been Tweedledum yourself!) We can all admit that we love a good sloppy drunk girl to gossip about, even if some nights that girl is us. It’s not like we can be innocent little Alice’s all the time… there’s hardly any fun in that. But there is a lesson to be learned from this annoying pair; make sure you’re attending to the buddy system. It’s never smart to travel through Fratland alone.
There are always sure signs that it’s time to leave the current party and make your way down frat row. It’s probably time to move on when you find yourself, much like Alice, stuck in a conversation with a smoking catepillar. You know what I mean–the type of conversation where you spend the whole time wondering if he or she is always this stupid, or if they’ve been busy doing something a little stronger than anything you’ve put in your system. And, to add to their bizarre banter, they don’t see the problem with blowing their potent smoke in your face and asking “Who are you?”, even though you just told them your name five seconds earlier (and probably ten times before that).
Did you just call me a wh*re?
Then of course, there is always the problem of the guy that just won’t let you leave. You’ve only been dancing with him for thirty minutes, but he acts as if he’s already in love with you. You keep trying to pull away, but he just won’t let you go. It’s time to make a quick exit (Fail-safe options: You need to go to the bathroom or you need to get another drink)–grab your girls and get out of that frat castle. Unless you’re in the mood to hangout with a crazy SOB that you just met, it’s definitely time to switch frats.
Uhm.. no thanks.
We’ve all seen it–the heavily intoxicated girl bawling in the corner, her eyes glazed over that it’s easy to guess how much she’s had to drink. Even though her Tweedledee is consoling her, this Tweeledum continues to cry so hard you think she may just flood the frat house, much like Alice. If you find yourself or your friends in this not-so-pretty situation, it’s definitely time to make a beeline for the door and head to another fraternity, or even back home.
Yeah, so does everyone else.
But much too quickly it’s all over and you’re waking up with a pounding headache and questioning “What the hell happened last night?”. While Alice wakes up to discover it was all a fantasy, you wake up and try to figure out what was dream and what was actually reality. And all you can do is pray that you didn’t actually say that and you couldn’t possible have made out with that guy.
Although Alice had the luxury of waking up to no truth of her adventure, the same cannot be said for yours. But after a few required minutes, possibly an hour, of droning on to your friends about how you should not have done that, you add the memories (though potentially spotty) to the numerous others and move on, getting ready for the next night and the many weekends after that. Whatever, it’s college.. it’s safe to assume that Alice would definitely be doing the same.