|
Close your eyes for a minute and try to imagine your college experience without booze. Your weekends would probably consist of more productive activities, such as studying and charity work. Quadfest would still be a school-sanctioned event and students would actually attend the activities on campus. When you threw a party, your main concern would not be wondering if the police were going to show up, or if someone was going to puke in your washing machine, but what you would wear.
If this lifestyle sounds dreary and dismal, perhaps it's because so many students' college careers revolve around alcohol. Not a day goes by that I don't hear someone in one of my classes bragging about how much beer they drank the weekend before or a person loudly proclaiming that they drank a fifth of liquor by themselves last night. These students are simply touting how much alcohol they can imbibe as a badge of honor.
Instead of bragging about how much alcohol you can consume, try taking one extra night a week off from drinking. Instead of spending this night at a keg party or at the bar, spend it at the library. You will almost instantly see an improvement in your grades. This will give you something more worthwhile to boast about. On top of that, you can put the money you save towards something better than hazy memories. If you were to save that extra $20 a week you would otherwise be spending at the bar, you would be able to accumulate a little over $1000 in a year. Imagine all the things that you could do and buy with a grand!
Remember when you were a kid, and your mom would put a good report card or an exceptional test grade on the refrigerator? This was meant to show your achievements to the world. College students took that idea and put a twist on it. Now when you walk into a majority of college apartments, instead of seeing a test posted on the refrigerator, you are more likely to see liquor bottles as far as the eye can see lining the tops of cupboards. I never fully understood the rational behind this décor. Not only does it look extremely tacky, but why would you want a daily reminder of how much money you spent on alcohol?
What I suggest is this: instead of lining liquor bottles on top of your cupboards, start taping all of your receipts for alcohol and bar tabs up there. If you really think about it, this act would be just as inane as the liquor bottles. However, it would also serve two purposes: you would no longer have to take all the bottles down and hide them in the closet when your parents came to visit, and you could also keep a running tab on how much money you spent on alcohol throughout the year.
Don't get me wrong; I, too, like to indulge in delicious alcoholic beverages on occasion. If I had all the money back that I had spent on alcohol over the years, I would probably be driving a new Maserati right now. However, I don't like to brag about how many beers I can bong or how many shots I can take in an hour. These facts simply make me think about how much money that I am essentially spending on a time that I will never remember.
Cory St.Clair is a smug, egotistical bastard of a writer for the Whim.
|
