About blooming time, Gold

I, Gold, am a chronic procrastinator. Mmm, it feels good to get that off my chest. While this may simply be synonymous with "college student," I think I may have a particularly pathetic and acute case. So pathetic, in fact, that I have put off my inaugural posting for almost a month. No, better still: I am procrastinating episode eight of the first season of Gray's Anatomy with this post. Just imagine how full my beautiful canvas laundry bin is these days. Lowest of the low.

Senior year has hit me hard, and shockingly so. In so many ways, life couldn't be better: with senior year came senior housing, which has afforded me a beautiful suite with lovely dark wood accents, a furnished common room that belongs far closer to Better Homes and Gardens than the average (no futons, thank you very much), the wisdom to display eighteen of my most beautiful pairs of shoes in a shoe rack hung outside of my closet door (such an improvement over under the bed, under the desk, on the desk... and ever so pleasing to the eye), and my purses in their sharp dust bags (oh, the beauty that lies within) on an ingenious contraption of elastics and hooks on the other side of the door courtesy of Bed, Bath and Beyond. Perhaps if I drone on with decided glee about the wonders and glories of my surroundings you can humor me and overlook my general confusion about the rest of my life, the aspects of myself that are supposed to matter and bring substance and satisfaction to my existence. But the shoes really do look so beautiful, and life is so much nicer when you can find exactly the right ballet flat to match your gold brocade mini skirt, purchased whilst summering in Europe at the D&G down the street...

Much like Ivy, I, too, recently got belligerent, the only difference being that I chose to rely on the word "kablammered" to describe my extreme state of intoxication. I find the word utterly ridiculous, and felt this was what made it so deeply appropriate a descriptor. Two sad and weak drinks into my night, I found myself at a party themed after some long-gone TV show featuring macho men with their shirts unbuttoned to reveal more chest hair than should ever be seen on an individual at any one time outside of the bedroom or Daytona Beach. Or any beach for that matter, but that one seemed particularly grizzly. With my own breasts exposed to shocking extents (oh, the pressure to fit in), I reportedly spent the majority of my night fondling the chest of a close guy friend, and dancing like someone trying her very hardest to ruin whatever shred of reputation she might have had left. They say I was a hit.

I say "reportedly" because an hour or so into the evening, I remember nothing, until memories begin to creep back in starting with me pondering my drunk food choices at 7-11 two hours later with my boyfriend, who has the patience of a god. Or anything else you can think of that's very, very patient. What is this? But I belong to that small sector of socially-capable people who go to this university, the small, rotating cast that appears at every party worth being at and stays until the venue has been drunk dry! While the rest of our peers spend their hours deep in the library stacks hoping to set the curve on their next physics exam, we make this place rock, sacrificing stilettos to the cobble stones, GPAs to social interraction, and livers to, well, College (or, more appropriately, C-O-L-L-E-G-E). Those two drinks not only left me blackout drunk, but also, days later, continue to sting my pride. Have I not developed a more respectable tolerance in my years as a social being on this campus? Or... another hypothesis... was the sea of freshman girls-- some painfully awkward, some painfully well-dress and put together, unclear which was worse-- simply too much for me, so much so that I began to block out the evening and the resulting psychological trauma (perhaps shortly before counting on my good friend Vodka to blur the class of 2010 into obscurity)?

Being a senior is strange. But nothing great clothes and a killer senior thesis can't make up for.

another week by ivy

So it's Sunday night when I should be reading all about Kohlberg and his theory of moral development but instead I am feeling sad, fat, and reflective. So I have decided to lie in my deliciously comfortable bed with my adorable Mac and write in a blog which, I have decided, is only marginally less productive than reading Kohlberg and preparing my presentation.

Last night I got belligerent. (For all of you who do not attend C-O-L-L-E-G-E COLLEGE, "belligerent" means wasted to the point of well, beligerence). I danced like Elaine from Seinfeld in a bar, I imparted secret information to strangers, I decided everyone I saw that I may or may not have vaguely known was my new best friend. And, in my classiest of moves, I wandered around a party holding a full handle of vodka. Now I wonder why I'm feeling like a beached whale. I don't know where such behavior comes from. I have never gotten so belligerent before, but now I find it is happening much more often, not just to me but my friends as well. I have already rejected the 'late bloomer' theory. I might be insecure enough to only just catch onto the whole heavy drinking thing my senior year in college, but I doubt everyone I know has the same level of insecurity. Anyway, I tend to be drawn to strong people who can make the decisions for me when I am waffling.

Take my roommate of two years, for example. Let's call her Muffy. She is a classic rules girl. Preppy, smart, pretty, rich, friendly, sweet. People fall in love with her right away. She has never succuumbed to the ivy league anorexia that tends to plague attractive perfectionists. She knows exactly what she likes and wants and exactly who her friends are, and that is it. She is always nice but she dosen't bother with much else. Anyway, last night she got belligerent too. So much so that she vomited in her boyfriend's room and decided to sleep on the kitchen floor. Of course, as she has this magnetic hold over boys, he is so in love with her that he slept right there with her, but that's not the point. What is going on here? Muffy is the essence of class. I think the thing is that everyone is scared of "next year" so we are all dumbing ourselves down to live out the rest of college in ignorant, drunken bliss. Maybe we are afraid that we'll never again get an excuse to wake up at 12pm and with a massive hangover curable only by a disgustingly greasy egg and cheese sandwich and we had better use this get-out-of-jail-free card ASAP. Where else will you get ridiculous stories to tell at the watercooler in a gray, florescent-lit office?