Drankin' at CU

The Wrap Up

2010-04-08T14:03:00.000-07:00

Readers,

Today will probably be one of my last posts for a while due to the fact that school is winding down and I have about three weeks left before I go home for the summer. It has been a whole school year already and the time has just flown by. I hope that this blog, I know it’s only six posts, has shown you what to expect in college.

I have seen a lot of things here that I never would have thought would happen ... I always thought that alcohol abuse and accidents would never affect me but it has. College has really opened my eyes to the bad affects of alcohol and it has changed my perception on it. I have realized that alcohol isn't just some liquid in a cup like water; it is a drug that can become very devastating. I found that drinking with a group of good friends in high school is very different than in college. College is different in every aspect, socially and academically.

Another thing I realized is that all those alcohol classes that I thought were a joke are actually true, I never thought I'd say that but they are. I hope that high school seniors will realize this and pay attention when they have to take those classes because personally I think what I learned in those boring alcohol classes was the best advice I ever got before going into the uncontrolled world of college.

Thanks for reading and have a good summer.
John

Two Faced

2010-04-02T14:48:00.000-07:00

Hello Readers,

Today during class I was thinking about one of my friends. During around lunch time my buddy texted me and asked what I was doing tonight and if I wanted to drink with him and hang out. Now this kid is great, he is nice and he has a great sense of humor; he is a very genuine kid which is hard to find sometimes. However, I told him no, just like I have the last six times he has asked me, I tell him I'm busy or I got too much homework. Every time he asks me to hang out on a Friday or Saturday night I always say no. You may wondering why because obviously I respect the kid. Well my friend has a problem when it comes to alcohol. He not only drinks too much but he turns into someone else when he is drunk.

Like I said, him and I are great friends on the weekdays. However if I or anyone for that matter hangs out with him when he is drunk they will learn to hate him. Every time he gets drunk he either fights someone or becomes extremely vulgar and brutal. I cannot tell you how many times I have been punched by him or pushed. I cannot tell you how many times this kid has hurt girls emotionally and physically. I cannot tell you how many times he has hurt himself because of his unstable drunken state. When he is drunk he is a wrecking ball, seriously he destroys everyone and thing in his tracks. He goes from a nice respectable kid to a worthless bastard. I just cannot be around him nor can anyone else and through his drunken haze he has turned into maybe the most hated kid in our dorms. This is all because of the abuse of alcohol. Its sad and he knows it, he knows what he turns into but he continues to drink, it doesn't matter if he drinks alone he'll still do it. He is what you call an alcoholic.

My friends and I have told him not to drink. We have begged him to stop. We have told him that he has a problem. But he plays dumb, he ignores the obvious and just laughs it off. This problem of his is ruining his image. I know he is a good kid inside but if you add alcohol it is an automatic disaster. So far this year he has received a DUI and two MIPs (police issued alcohol citations). It is amazing he hasn't been kicked out of CU yet considering his now criminal record and the fact that he is on acedmic probation because let me tell you, DRINKING ALCOHOL WILL CONFLICT WITH DOING YOUR SCHOOL WORK so please be advised.

I am telling you guys this because I want people to know that not everyone is happy when intoxicated. I named this post Two Faced for a reason because that is basically how my buddy is. On the week days he is your normal kid, like I said he is very nice and passive. On the weekends he is an aggressive idiot and for that people hate him. I am just devastated to see someone, especially a friend, destroy himself because of the abuse of alcohol. Alcohol is a poison, it poisons your mind, your judgement, and your image. Just be careful with yourself and your friends because not everyone is themselves when they're drunk.

Lastly I wanna ask why must my buddy keep drinking even when he knows what he turns into, is it just because he is an alcoholic? Maybe, Maybe not. It is not like I have asked him why he continues to drink and maybe as a good friend I should. But what makes him continue? I believe that college is not helping his situation. The pressure to "party" and drink are astounding. On top of that ONE of the major ways to socialize, aka to meet girls, is drinking (I want to make it clear that drinking is not the only way). I believe that the pressure to drink only enforces his desire to consume alcohol. As a friend I probably should help him other than just talking to him. I just am having troubles with what to do next. I never thought I would be in a situation like this...

John

School Sponsored

2010-03-29T00:36:00.000-07:00

Dear Readers,

So I have yet another experience to tell you about today. This story has potential to be long and drawn out but since my last couple entries were lengthy I will attempt to make this one short and to the point.

This weekend I went on my first school sponsored event. Which to most people is a students worst nightmare. At my dorms we have school sponsored events all the time. They coin such titles as Dormformal: get your groooove on! or Board Game Night! or my favorite, XBOX 360 game night: challenge your roomates to a game of Call of Duty or Guitar Hero! Now as you probably can guess these events are not too popular. Obviously the school is putting these events on to build the community through none alcoholic events. These events are here to give kids another option rather than partying and drinking on the weekends. You have to give them credit they try hard but the only problem is that its alcohol free so no one will go. I feel bad actually for the directors of these events. They are fighting a battle that they can never win.

Anyway the only way anyone is going to go to one of these events is if its an event you cannot turn down. For an example, a FREE weekend trip to one of the biggest ski resorts in Colorado, with free catered food, free passes, and free lodging at one of the resort's prestigious hotels! Yes this example was the only school sponsored trip I have attended this year. See something like this is hard to turn down. The only catch was that participating students would have to talk about alcohol at CU and what trends we have noticed. It was basically a mini alcohol education class; which in my opinion was well worth it.

What basically happened is that my roommate and I won a spot on this trip through a raffle that was outside of our cafeteria. The trip limit was 50 students and we were one of those lucky winners. The rules to the event was no alcohol, a good attitude, and participation in the alcohol discussion sessions, they were about 2 hours a day. Easy enough right? Well we leave for this trip and it looks like its a going to be good time even with no alcohol included and who cares if there is no alcohol, its basically a 5 star vacation, what more could you need? Well it turned out that this fantastic trip wasn't enough for some students.

Word got around fast through the students attending that some kids brought a couple handles of vodka with them to make the trip more "enjoyable" per say. Basically some students got together the nights we were there and raged. The usual happened, someone booted in the hallway, the directors found out and the kids drinking had to pay for their half of the trip which was about $400 to $500 per person. Then for the rest of the trip the director was rather pissed off to say the least which set a sour mood for the remainder of the trip.

Seee now this is just pitiful, I'm sorry but come'on. We are going on this sweet ass trip which is totally free and the event's big theme is alcohol free. But kids still can't keep from drinking even on a trip like this when the event leaders are trying so hard to teach us that we don't have to drink all the time; you can still have fun without alcohol. But people still have to bring alcohol with them and go against everything these people are trying so hard to do. Its like anything the school tries to do when it comes to alcohol free events fails. The only thing that has worked for CU is enforcing under aged drinking more strictly through the police.

From what i have found, school sponsored events are usually up for failure. Unless it is on a Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, or Wednesday night. Other than that your majority of kids will not come or if they do come they're drunk. I am quickly realizing that the "popular" or "cool" social aspects of school is all about live, drink, sleep with alcohol. At least that it was it may appear... I never thought it could get this out of hand. I wonder how much better student life would be if students knew how to control their alcohol consumption and had some self discipline and control. No one realizes that you lose your head when your drunk and it rarely turns out good.

John

College is Just One Big Party! Rightttt???

2010-03-23T14:08:00.000-07:00

Hello again. First off I'd like to make myself clear here. I am generalizing when I say everyone. Some students may not apply to what I am saying here, which I do not doubt whatsoever. I am just talking about mainstream society within high schools.

So about two weeks ago I asked some questions in my post. Mainly I was asking if everyone going into college expected to get drunk and have a great time? Are kids expecting that college is just one big party? I am now going to ask, does this whole idea of partying once you get to college affect the way students pick their college? What if you don't drink?

These questions I never really considered before I sat down and actually thought about them. Before I came to college I wonder what my thoughts about college were? I decided this weekend to ask my little sister this question, she is a junior in high school. She basically told me what the movies portray. Which makes sense. Thats the only way a high school student would know. See, the gap between high school and college is enormous. Its almost secretive I guess you could say. College kids don't usually hang with high school kids. Thats an unwritten rule I guess. Why in the hell would you hang out with some junior in high school when you could be hanging out with some college kid you never met before. Anyway, I think this whole partying scene of college is true.. Movies and media does play an enormous role in how college is viewed. For an example my 16 year old sister has no idea what college is really like and when she watches a movie about it, Road Trip ect., she is going to see college how that movie portrayed it. Besides who wouldn't want to believe the movies, they make everything seem awesome. In this case kids are going to be coming into college thinking that drinking is a huge part of college and they will get drunk everynight of the week if they can help it. And you know what, they are partly right.

So now that we have established that high schoolers have this party school idea in there head when it comes to college. We must wonder how this image effects the decision on what school to attend. See when I looked for colleges I looked at them with only a couple things in mind, in this order:

1. Do they have the major I want?

2. How is the town/party scene/social aspect.

3. Is this an academically good college... is it too hard where i can't have fun, is it too easy where all the kids are going to be dumb.

When looking through the college review sites I mainly looked at the social rankings of the school.. for an example #2 for weed... #7 for hard alcohol... #11 for parties.. #33 for prettiest girls. If it was ranked in those categories I took interest in it. Now what did I want to see here? Personally I don't know. When I saw alcohol, parties, girls... I got a little excited and to be honest I favored a school much more that had these rankings than a school that didn't. Of course a prospective student is going to want a great social scene but when do you draw the line. When is #1 better than #11? When does academics play a role? I can not tell you the amount of people that have told me they came to CU boulder for the party scene, where was academics? I'm interested to see if schools with rankings in the top ten list for party schools are considered more by prospective students. However you have to ask what makes a party school in the first place. Good sports team, 25,000+ attendance, what is the magic factor? Or does this even matter; party school or not, parties will still rage and alcohol related accidents will still flare. With whom to blame, sports? Mass amounts of kids? Movies? Freedom? Stress? Work load? I'd like to blame everything.

Now the last question I'd like to consider is, what if you don't drink?

Do people seriously decide to not drink in college?! Well they must be weird.

Welllll actually no, those people aren't weird or dumb, they're smart although it takes discipline. Let me explain. Down the hall I have a friend who chooses not to drink. Everyone likes him because he is different and genuine so he has friends... not necessarily friends he can hang out with on the weekends but other than that he has friends to talk to and eat with. Now how about the weekends, what does this kid do? Well he got involved. He goes skiing practically every weekend and as for what he does on a Friday or Saturday night? Well he is a genius so a lot of his time is spent studying, but when he doesn't study he either is working or he goes out with his friends from his church youth group. See you don't have to drink to make friends or fit in. This kid probably has more friends than me and he hasn't had a drop on alcohol in his life. You don't need to drink. See if you sit on your ass all day and don't do anything to get involved and you still don't drink then it will be difficult to find friends and thats even the case if you do drink. I think the best way to avoid alcohol is getting involved on campus, get a job, and focus on your school work. Friends come easy, you shouldn't have to be making sacrifices to get those friends.

John

Alcohol Can Really Bring Out the Bad News Bears

2010-03-18T10:51:00.000-07:00

Hello Readers,

This entry I wanted to talk about the questions i asked about last week. However that is going to have to wait because last night, Thursday night, was an interesting night to say the least.

I'd like to first start out with my view on drinking alcohol, under aged or not. I have always thought that consuming alcohol has always been an enjoyable social thing. If it’s on the dinner table or in a dixie cup on a pong table, I use to believe that alcohol was always just good hearted fun. You know I would always hear about people getting hurt or dying because of alcohol but I never understood how or why? Last night showed me how and why.

Now i will tell you what happened around 6:00 PM on Thursday, 3/15/10. At this time I receive a text from a nice girl down the hall. She needs me to drive her to Planned Parenthood because she needs to get a pregnancy test. Now you may be wondering why this has to do with alcohol and getting hurt. Well I'll explain. About a month ago, this girl was at a party and got sloushhed. She was taken advantage of by a guy who she doesn't even remember and now it turns out she might be pregnant. Anyway, I end up taking her to the place and it turns out she is pregnant. She comes into my car crying, first off she doesn't even know the guy or his name, she has a boyfriend that will obviously break up with her, she can't tell her parents because they will kill her, and she now has to decide what she will do with her baby. This hit me like a freight train, the girl felt hopeless. How does this kind of stuff happen? If she had one or two shots less would she still be in this situation. Where was her friends? Did they leave her because they were too drunk to realize or because she was too drunk to function? I just can't help to think what could have changed this from happening.

If this one event wasn't enough my friend tells me about something that happened to him that night as well. Last night my buddy was walking back into the dorms at about 3:00-3:30 AM and he sees this girl he knew on the bench passed out. I guess what happened was he picked her up and helped her back to her room. Then when he dropped her off at her dorm she wanted him to stay with her for the night. He obviously said no. But this blew me away. The girl was passed out on a bench at three in the morning in the middle of March; it had to be 30 degrees out! Thats terrible. Then she asked my buddy to stay with her for the night and she could barely walk. Seee this is how girls get knocked up. It’s not good. It could have been worse too. Ideally my buddy should have called the ambulance or something. Imagine if this girl died on her bed. I don't know. These two experiences showed me that alcohol isn't just fun and games. I just did not realize what could happen. I'm not going to lie I drink alcohol and always laughed about it. Like its no big deal, drunk driving doesn't happen with my friends, girls getting knocked up doesn't happen to my friends, my friends don't pass out in the middle of nowhere, we're smart, at least thats what I thought. But after seeing what has happened to these two girls it just put things in perspective for me. No one told me about this. I didn't hear this in any advice given to me by the people I knew.

Well I got to go. Sorry about the tangent there. I just was blown away yesterday. It wasn't good or fun.

Hopefully I'll try to answer those questions next time,

John

Has College Changed all That Much?

2010-03-07T06:26:00.000-08:00

Good morning readers,

It is very bright and early morning for me today, 6:20 AM Sunday, March 2nd 2010. A lot of people may be wondering, why the hell are you up this early. WELLL my roomate, next door neighbor, and I were suppose to go skiing today but unfortunately my one friend is married to the toilet and the other friend is MIA; unfortunately i found this out after I woke up and put all my ski gear on. So now I am sitting at my computer at the ass crack of dawn with absolutely nothing to do except listen to my roommate puke which, I will not lie, is amusing. However, despite the fact that I am sweating to death right now because i have about five layers of jackets and sweatshirts on I find myself thinking about what I have been told about college. I guess you could say what advice I was given.

Before embarking on my first semester of college this year I had a diverse group of people give me advice on what to do and what not to do at college.

First, my best friend's older brother, he is 20, took me aside about year ago saying: "Now John, you are going to attend the University of Colorado at Boulder next year, you should know a couple things. A. You need to learn how to drink. B. You need grab yourself a 35 pack of some Trojans. And C. When cops come, you run."

The second person to give me advice was my older sister, she is 22 and goes to CU as well. "Johnnnny!! You goin ta college, ya gunna go ta collegeee, I am so excited! You know I can hook you up with boo's anytime you need it and maybe we can even drink together this year. Its going to be fun don't worry."

Lastly I have my dad, he is 54. "John, be careful and be smart. I remember what it was like in college. Sometimes your friends will be drinking and you have to study, other times your friends will be studying and you'll be drinking. Just know what comes first, your there to learn not to puke."

Now you could argue some advice is better than others but nevertheless when you think about it all three pieces of advice that really stood out to me was about, you guessed it, alcohol. So I got to wonder, is every student getting this same advice? And why is it that people in their 20's and people in their 50's have the same view on college. Is going to college all about getting drunkand doing things you never would have done before? Well from what society has made it up to be, yes, yes getting drunk is what college is portrayed to be about and its portrayed pretty well.

For an example, when I talk to my high school buddies back home, I ask: hey hows school going? They answer, "It’s sweet! It’s a new party every weekend and the hunniess are gooooood..." blah blah blah. It is like when we, college kids, ask each other about our schools it is as if we are asking them, hey hows the party scene? It is almost like a competition.

Anyway, I'm asking a lot of questions with no known answers yet. Maybe next time I can answer some of those questions. It will be interesting to see what I find. However I have to help my roommate now.

Thanks for reading.

John