The 5 Things That Change After Your First Freshman Semester

Look at you. You’re a big fancy college person now. A few months ago you were in a high school prison of eight-hour-long days, and now you’re about to drop your bags in your foyer at home after coming home for Thanksgiving a changed being. Enlightened, perhaps. After you trudge through finals and go back in the spring, things will be different.

No more free drinks

All of those beers you were funneling at the expense of the fraternity you pledged are now on your dime. The first semester freshman are basically given a free pass – they don’t know how the scene works, and everyone gives ‘em the benefit of the doubt. You’re expected to throw down for a case rather than just reach into a vat of Keystone now. Don’t worry, you’ll still drink shitty beer. It just won’t be given to you by the upperclassmen who wanted to get you piss drunk in the fall.

 

Better handle on drinking

I wasn’t exactly an “experienced” drinker when I went off to college. I had had a few fun nights in high school (read: was a huge virgin), but nothing like the stuff I experienced when I got to college. Accordingly, people still remind me about all of the time I passed out at 7 PM on the pavement because I couldn’t handle my fucking alcohol. Second semester freshman year was different – I still got equally intoxicated, I just had found my limit and knew when I was approaching said limit.

 

Different weekend schedule

Without college football on the weekends anymore, there is a completely different schedule of things to do. As a club sport “athlete” the spring meant lacrosse practice and games. If you aren’t invited on a sorority formal, the weekends are usually wide open. Take a road trip to visit some friends at another school. Go to a pro football game. Get high as giraffe pussy and melt into your couch. Do what you want, but just remember that this is one of the only times where your easy class schedule is going to allow you to freely travel and experience things outside of your college. My freshman spring semester I went to a NASCAR race at Talladega Motor Speedway (which turned out to be the second closest finish in NASCAR history, I believe). Lets just say it took a few years off of my life.

 

Girls

Somehow, when guys go off to college they come to believe that every girl who looks at them wants to have their penis in her mouth immediately. And why the fuck not? The first semester is essentially an orgy of destruction for freshmen. I suppose freshman girls may calm down while freshman guys may feel like they are just getting started. Perhaps it is just the moment when we as men realize that we innately desire to dip our wicks in anything that moves.

 

Appreciation for small things

I went on one sorority formal where the girl put us up in a hotel for a night. You would think that the fucking Holiday Inn was the Ritz Carlton in my mind. Someone could’ve been murdered in that hotel room, but I was simply happy that to not be sleeping on an XL twin mattress. Can we also talk about mom’s cooking for a second? Shoveling dining hall food down your mouth for three months is a gross injustice to your colon, and your mom’s fresh food is a shining light for your digestive tract. Only after you have fallen so far from grace can you appreciate the immense impact of the small things you once took so easily for granted.

It has taken me years to be able to dissect my entire freshman year. It may be my prefrontal cortex still fuzzy from all the shitty plastic handle vodka I consumed, but I am now semi-thankful to be able to recall certain facets of it all. I use this power for good only. I think.

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