AS EXAMS quickly approach, academics begin to invade the social lives of students throughout the University. Debate over which Corner venue has the cheapest pitchers on a given evening turns instead to which floor of Clemons has a better view of the meat market -- er, I mean a more quiet place to read my Cicero notes. This will not matter in the long run because there won't be any tables left anyway, but the point is that for the next week to week and a half -- depending on how good you were at putting your schedule together -- the "play hard" attitude takes a backseat to "work hard" for a few days.
After the papers are done, the exams are behind you and your liver begins to function normally for a brief time, the holidays sneak up quicker than the add/drop deadline in October. Resplendent with family bonding time (translation: attempting to not react homicidally when re-immersed in the idiosyncrasies of the kin you just escaped after Thanksgiving), abundant home-cooked food and daily trips to the nearest mall, the stress of academics is merely traded for the tensions of the traditional commercialized American holiday season. And then it all ends.
The holidays are done; the academic work is nowhere to be found; and the friends from home are ready to go out and get royally trashed. It's just like the good old days in high school that never really happened but you just choose to imagine since you were really miserably tired of it all and just pining for the day when you could leave your trite, immature high school social scene for the utopian college society that everyone had promised. No, I'm not bitter. Let me know if I'm hitting close to home.
Enter New Year's Eve. Ahh! The epic party! This is what makes the epic travails of December worth enduring. With expectations of unfathomable debauchery and consequence-free substance abuse in the company of friends who you barely know anymore, the promise of a memorable celebration that nobody plans to remember looms large.
Though we have all matured since high school, the formula for the New Year's Eve party has changed little:
House where parents are conspicuously absent or choose to ignore gratuitous binge drinking. Check. Fireworks. Check. Cheap liquor. Check. Female friend from home who you aren't really interested in but will have to suffice for the midnight kiss ordeal. Check. Car parked several blocks away in preparation for the arrival of uniformed officers who heard the party from three counties over. Check. Preplanned escape plan. Check. Cell phone full of numbers of people who are also searching for all of the above criteria who you don't really like that much but want to make sure end up at the party where you do. Check.
Game on.
Now that all the ingredients are there, the celebration will no doubt end up proceeding in one of several potential scenarios. First, your friends aren't around, you can't find a suitable venue or your parents have since moved to a new town since your high school days. You sit in your room crying alone in bed, asleep by 11 p.m. so that you won't miss any of the parade on New Year's, and wishing you were back in a fraternity basement with sludge up to your knees in Charlottesville. This is a common threat to New Year's celebrations in college, but sometimes just can't be avoided. Scenario two: You find your high school friends, drive around trying to find a place to party, remember why you hate them, drink a Mic Ultra at midnight and head home by 12:30 a.m. Again, a common side effect of realizing you had no high school social life, this experience can be equally traumatizing. Scenario three: You wake up on the beach in Ocean City with eggnog all over your blazer and unidentifiable Christmas tree ornaments clinging to rips in your clothing. You have never seen the girl next to you in the Elf costume before in your life and are wondering how you ended up there from Fairfax.
Obviously, some New Year's celebrations are more memorable than others. As you curl up in the fetal position on your couch feverishly attempting to turn down the volume on the television because the Georgia AEIO&U marching band sounds like the opening volley of the Tet Offensive, your hangover will eventually subside. Just remember that soon you can return to your comfortable clique of friends back at the University. Before you know it, long evenings watching reruns of "The Shawshank Redemption" on HBO with the family will be replaced with the endless party opportunities that accompany a happy return to the Hook.
Though refreshing in many ways, the Winter Break that follows the pending juggernaut of an academic week can so often become stale by late December, and even depressing by the second week in January. Enjoy the time with family, appreciate the free food and take advantage of time to let your liver heal a bit. New Year's Eve tends to be overrated anyway.
After all, if Hallmark hasn't taught us anything, it's that the Christmas season is all about avoiding our annoying families by fleeing to the overcrowded mall where everyone else is attempting to hide, buying lots of gifts thanks to compulsory television advertisements and enjoying lots and lots of cooked beasts. 'Tis the most wonderful time of the year. Pass the ham.
(Preston Lloyd's column appears Thursdays in The Cavalier Daily. He can be reached at plloyd@cavalierdaily.com.)
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