It’s currently Monday afternoon (actually it’s way closer to evening, but I’m really pulling at straws here trying to make myself feel better), and I am still snuggled up in bed recovering from a weekend of both bliss and absolute insanity. Now, most schools would have looked at the events of our weekend, shrugged and commenced their hard partying and no-studying ways, but here at William & Mary, there’s only so much a somewhat nerdy, once-too-sheltered, Northern Virginia native can take. It was a weekend full of daytime craziness (with the infamous Campus Golf), as well as a formal full of mysterious (and by mysterious I mean intensely creepy) townies, embarrassingly quasi-sensual dancing and awkward wardrobe malfunctions. Allow my dear co-conspirator Morgan and me to elaborate.
Philanthropies. Now, don’t get all sassy about what we’re about to say. We all know that deep down philanthropy is really important and helps a wonderful cause and blah, blah, blah… I’m not here to bore you with a sappy, college essay-like spiel. On top of being helpful and important, philanthropies are one of the only excuses on this campus to have complete, silly, dress-up, go nuts FUN.
Why else would the school knowingly schedule campus tours on Campus Golf day? They really want to try to make William & Mary look like a blast. Like a place where no one is too overly concerned with grades or uppity professors that will never give you an ‘A’ or the fact that Tucker is not only haunted, but has become an empty building that may or may not be infesting us all with Asbestos. Even professors do this. Today, in Morgan’s philosophy class, her professor told a visiting potential student that the campus was full of “damn drunkards” on Saturday while he attempted to work in Blair. But we digress. Philanthropies are meant to achieve something and bring on some silliness to our everyday lives in Williamsburg (the school that only has 2 running bars and some problems understanding the concept of minimum wage for its employees).
This weekend, we all ran around the Sunken Gardens hitting tennis balls (or just chucking them) into buckets and endearingly calling it “golf”. Each team tried to outdo the absurdity of the previous one. Whether it was the hilariously tight and colorful outfits of the “Orange Mocha Frappuccino” team (a not so demure homage to Zoolander), or the bearded oddity of the “Soggy Bottom Boys” team (if you don’t know what this is referring to, do yourself a favor and rent O Brother Where Art Thou—so good!), or the uncomfortably funny “To Catch a Predator” team (so many gold-rimmed glasses and pencil-thin mustaches!), all the teams added just the right amount of hilarity to the event. Everyone, Greek or not, wanted to participate, join together, and run around reveling in our goofiness…and yes, our dorkiness too. And while this was super fun and amazing, I still had a formal to attend…by 8 PM. For a second I contemplated going in my feather boa and pink zebra print tights. Exhausted much? Oh yes.
Which brings us to the second fun thing to do on a weekend here. Going to formals. It’s like high school homecoming three times a year. And we’re sorry, even if you were a non-conformist, indie rock-jamming hipster in high school, there was no doubt you liked dressing up to go to a dance. If anything it’s a place where you can show off your own sense of unique style. And now, it’s still fun to look nicer than the usual sweat pant sweatshirt combo you roll out of bed in to go to class. What’s not so fun? A. being exhausted, B. creepy townies crashing the event or C. watching people embarrass themselves on the dance floor. Still, at the end of the night, these things made for funny memories (thank goodness) and a time we can look back on and really laugh at.
At about 10 PM, Morg and I finally made it to the venue sleepy and exhausted from the day. What’s worse was Morgan was partly in charge of formal and spent some of it hoping that nothing would go wrong. Almost immediately, this dream was shot. If girls weren’t dying of being utterly pooped, they were getting all sorts of rowdy on the dance floor. And we don’t mean that in a good way. No matter how “totally awesome” a song is, it doesn’t mean you are suddenly wearing pants and can break out into all sort of complicated moves to express your said love for the song. You are wearing a skirt, act accordingly. We cannot stress that enough. No need to “see all the junk inside that trunk” just because you hear it blasting over the speakers (and yeah I know that song was cool like 5 years ago but give me a break I’m in bed at 6PM on a Monday). Anyway, please, for the love of all things holy, abstain from pulling a Lindsay or a Paris…it’s just super awkward and no one knows what to say to you. Also, must people grind so forcefully and intensely nowadays? No matter how hard you may try to remedy the situation, it’s not a rap video, it’s Williamsburg. Stop it.
Along with that, there were awkward townies suddenly everywhere. Williamsburg can really go both ways. Sleepy, retirement haven by day, beyond sketchy, weird underground gang headquarters by night. Seriously, our venue suddenly had tons of guys who no one had ever seen before and who either didn’t speak English, or thought communication was outdated and invading personal space was much more useful in terms of meeting girls. By the end of the night and after the crazy day though, it was almost like a weirdly acceptable addition all the bizarreness. They were innocuous enough, despite their attempts to fit in (sorry buddy, a soccer jersey from Brazil paired with red athletic shorts doesn’t quite scream sorority formal).
All in all, despite the craziness of the formal, the wackiness of the philanthropy event, and the fact that I’m still curled up in bed recovering, there really wasn’t a better way to spend the weekend. It was one those that Morgan and I believe, will go down in college memory (which is bound to get a little muddled here and there…that’s what cameras are for) as some of the best times here at William & Mary.