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The diary of a rum soaked first-year: learning to booze with the best of them

I came to college unprepared. I came with what I thought were the essentials: a box of fresh Ticonderoga pencils, yellow graph paper and a sleek TI-80 graphing calculator.

Unfortunately, I overestimated the importance of academics in a place of higher learning. I soon came to realize my mistake, while walking around one day, not seeing a single soul besides myself wearing cargo shorts and a ratty old t-shirt.

After a week or so, I caught on and did myself a favor, buying some clothes with the guy riding a horse and shirts that had Moby Dick on them. If nothing else, I at least now looked the part of a Miamian. However, looks would only get me so far. If I really wanted to be prepared for the next four years of life at Miami I needed to learn to speak the language.

I came to college speaking the language spoken by greats like Faulkner, Hemingway and Frost but here there was an entirely different language spoken, a language that involved abbreviations like YOLO, TFM and GBD.

I of course did what any good suburban kid does when they need to learn the meaning of new and exciting words-I consulted Urban Dictionary. Upon learning the meaning of YOLO and TFM, I knew that I still had a long way to go before I was truly prepared.

With all of that in mind, I heeded the advice of Horace Greeley and went west...I mean Uptown. Yes, I went Uptown to educate myself in the art of YOLO.

I went to the bars and got "X"s on my hand and even conversed with the frattiest of frat stars. Like Luke Skywalker learning to use "the force" from Master Yoda, the bros taught me how to drink a Mind Probe and increase my "pull to chill ratio."

Having learned as much as I could from the bros, I set out to forge my own path. Like Pip, I had great expectations. I was going to Beat the Clock, win das boot, and of course get absolutely shwasted on GBD!

Embracing the YOLO mentality, I knew there was only one last thing I needed to do before I was truly a member of the Miami University community. I needed to see a concert at Brick Street. So I went onto my class's Facebook page and asked everyone a million times, "if they had another ticket to Barstool Blackout."

Finally, by the grace of God, I found a person willing to part with a ticket at a reasonable price. After arranging an awkward meeting, I paid my savior in cold hard cash and had the golden ticket I had been searching for.

With my ticket in hand, I now needed to figure out an outfit. Not owning a whole lot of neon and having never played lax, this proved to be a far more difficult task. I knew I was going to have to get creative. I always knew that orange was a color that suited me well and with that in mind I came up with the perfect costume/outfit-traffic barrel.

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Yes, I would go to the bar wearing a bright orange traffic barrel. Fortunately for me, with all of the construction on campus, procuring one would not prove to be too difficult.

What did prove to be difficult was cutting out holes in the barrel for my arms and head. Having done that and only giving myself three nicks from the box cutters, I was ready for my night out - and any costume party I might attend at the end of the month.

Orange barrel and all, I attended Barstool and had a blast. Hung-over, I failed my exam the next morning and went Uptown later that evening to forget about my sorrows. This proved to be a big mistake as I ended up in both McCullough-Hyde Hospital and the Police Beat. Leaving me to ask the question: was it all worth it?

Of course this is just a humorous piece of fiction and most Miami students don't act this way but for some, this account hits a little too close to home. Now I'm not saying we should stop having fun altogether but to keep people from coming home with black eyes and split lips after a bar fight, let's just all agree to tone it down a bit.


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