You're off to great places!: 2014

PLZ READ THE "QUARTER LIFE CRISIS" POST FIRST BECAUSE IT'S AN IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER AND NECESSARY PLZ.

Here we go, guys, these are all the memories and lessons I learned my Freshman year. As expected during a major life transition, a lot went wrong and a lot went right. I made some of the best memories and some of the worst mistakes my first year in college. I'm covering an entire year's worth of memz, so obviously this post is gonna be super long. I'm gonna try and tell the stories in chronological order though, so if you're looking for a specific story, scroll on through.

Disclaimer to readers: If you don't know me very well (why are you reading this?), I'm really sarcastic, so if I ever sound like a total douche I'm likely 100% not serious.

Gay House

I'll start before it even began. With the guidance of my older friends from high school (god, I was so cool hanging out with older grades), I decided the best way to go about finding a roommate was to do some online dating. Like, the last thing I wanted was to get stuck with some friggin smelly weirdo who sucked and hated me. So like many others, I posted an "about me" blurb on the Facebook page for the incoming class of 2014. I wish I could find it now. I was really sarcastic and made a joke of the whole thing. I know I specifically wrote that I enjoyed candlelit dinners and long walks on the beach. I also know I fibbed a bit and said that I am "disorganized, but not messy." I'm really messy and disorganized. But I obviously didn't want to scare off potential roomiez!!! I also remember I wrote that I wanted a roommate who would make my lazy ass go to the gym with them so I didn't get fat. I went to the SERF two times in my entire college career. Both times were my freshman year. Both wildly optimistic, but ended after about 20 mins.

After sifting through page after page of girls begging me to room with them (not), I finally decided on Lanie. Aka Lan-dogg, aka Helen. She was perfect, I love that friggin girl, she just gets me. Also, Helen if you're reading this, I'm sorry for lying about being clean (she's really organized and clean, whoops). I was so excited about my new BFF! We met up at Ian's pizza during her SOAR session to make sure we weren't weirdos. I made Bill Thiel come with me for emotional support, and as chance would have it, Lanie brought Clare Jacobs with her for the same reason. It was a really awkward lunch, but I knew that we would get along fine when I gave her a ride in my volvo station wagon hearse and she didn't scoff at me.

As senior year drew to an end, I remember getting so excited knowing that I would soon find out my dorm assignment. And then, while sitting with Wedemeyer in the library for study hall, I got the long awaited email!!!! "Roommate: Helena Wolf, Sellery Hall, Room 578 A, Gay House"

Wait...wut. Gay House? Did we accidentally check a box electing to live on a LGBTQ floor? I mean, I'm totally fine with that, love is love, but whoops??? I called Lanie during study hall and told her the news. We were both so confused. Turns out, no, some alumni with the last name "Gay" just paid all the money to sponsor that floor. Very confusing. But guess what, guys? Gay House turned out to be the best floor that ever existed in the history of all dorms ever. Except our RA, Scott. F that guy. By the end of the semester, our floor collectively accumulated the most write ups and violations of any floor in every dorm on campus! What an accomplishment!

CARLY THE CATFISH

Forgive me, but I am going to back track a bit, but trust me, you'll want to stick this one out. This is straight out of a horror movie and I swear on a bible I am not making a word of this up.

As previously mentioned, prior to move in, everyone was freaking out about roommates and using Facebook to find a cool one. We started our own little community in attempts to make friends prior to starting school, it was cool, we all knew each other and talked frequently, even though we hadn't met in person yet. One of these people everyone knew was Carly. She was a super pretty blonde girl from South Carolina who was nervous about moving and relocating in the north, but her dad got some nice ass job in Minnesota so her family had to move. Her pictures on Facebook were really cute and got an impressive amount of "likes." She had a really close group of friends from high school that were also pretty blonde girls. They constantly wrote on her wall stuff like "come back, I miss you! I need our Bachelorette and gossip nights!" and like "Let's skype this week, pwetty please?! I miss your face!" You know, classic girl stuff.

Carly definitely fit into our little Facebook "clique." We even texted pretty regularly. I remember specifically she sent me a classic "white girl legs in front of pool" picture showing me the pool at her family's new house. Lucky bitch.

She gained even more support when she found out she got matched with the roommate from hell. Her name was like Tabitha or something. You know you're destined to be strange when your name is Tabitha. Tabitha's facebook picture showed her as some fat, dark haired, emo girl with a pet parrot. What a friggin oddball. So you got stuck with a weird roommate, that's the pits, but whatever it could be worse.

No.

Then this roommate started publicly bullying Carly on Facebook. I can't remember the specifics but it was some mean shit. Our Facebook community immediately jumped to Carly's defense, scolding this roommate for being so vicious to someone she hadn't even met yet and would have to live with for a full year! Don't worry, we assured Carly, you can basically live in our rooms! We've got your back!

Then tragedy struck.

Carly's younger sister, Holly, committed suicide. She was like 12 or something and hanged herself in her closet. Carly is the one who found her. As expected, Carly and her family were absolutely destroyed with grief. Our Facebook clique rallied around her with outpouring support and love. Her high school friends and acquaintances wrote their condolences on her Facebook wall. Like omg, poor Carly, can you imagine moving to a new place, get a roommate from hell, and then have your sister die? Everyone was so sympathetic... except for Tabitha. Tabitha wrote something like "not sorry your sister died haha u deserve it." THERE WAS OUTRAGE!!!! Public Facebook war. EVERYONE jumped down this girl's throat. DO YOU EVEN HAVE A SOUL, EMO BITCH?!

After Holly's suicide, Carly struggled with debilitating depression and anxiety. She texted me probably every other day about how much she was struggling. She didn't even want to go to Madison anymore, she wanted to take a year off. I did my best to console her and reassure her that her grief was normal and everything would be okay. At one point, after clearing it with my mom, I even invited her to live at my house for the rest of the summer because she constantly talked about how she couldn't stand living in that house anymore.

She was in so much pain and we all felt so bad. Her best friend from high school, Corinne, even Facebook messaged me and some others in our FB clique asking us if we would write an encouraging letter to Carly. Corinne was planning on making a scrapbook filled with letters from all her future UW friends and old high school friends to cheer her up. What a beautiful idea, and what a damn good friend! So you bet your ass I wrote some sappy letter encouraging Carly to hang in there and telling her how much fun we would have in Madison.

I was not the only one who was this close with Carly. Two of my other friends in the Facebook clique, Sammi and Tanner, were also good friends with her. Tanner even had kind of a crush on her (I'm sure he'd deny it now, though) and they would always Skype. It sucked though because her webcam didn't work so they could only video chat like voice wise. Since Sammi was also from MN, her and Carly planned a few meet ups, but they always fell through. When Carly's SOAR date came around, I made plans to meet up with her for lunch. About an hour before our agreed time she called me and said she was having an anxiety attack and couldn't even leave her hotel room. One of the SOAR advisors was going to meet with her privately to help her enroll in classes.

This is starting to get really fishy and we started to get suspicious. Tanner took the lead on the investigation. When he started to dig, Carly's story began to unravel piece by piece. There wasn't an obituary for her sister. She told people two different companies her dad worked for. There weren't any records of her from high school; no honor roll, no newspaper articles, no sports involvement. She had never actually met up with anyone, she always bailed last minute. It ended with Tanner doing a reverse search on her phone number and finding it was registered to some 45 year old man from Minnesota. When Tanner called "Carly" by the man's name, it was shut down. Carly's facebook was deactivated, Tabitha's facebook was deactivated, ALL of Carly's high school friend's facebooks were deactivated, her phone number was disconnected.

WUT THE FRICK. THIS WAS THE MOST ELABORATE CATFISH EVER. Do you know how long it must have taken to create those Facebooks? It's not like they all only had a picture or two and a suspiciously low amount of activity. NO! They all had albums of pictures dating back months and posts and posts from months in the past!

How creepy is that? Needless to say we all freaked out. This man had a lot of our personal information. What was his endgame? Was he going to break into our dorm rooms and kill us? The police and University were notified and I slept on the floor of my parent's room for a good week.

No friends

Hey guys, this story is going to be lighter. It's about how me and Lanie tried to make friends the first day of move in and failed. She made cookies and we went around to all the girls' rooms introducing ourselves and offering cookies. NO ONE WAS INTERESTED, we frealz felt like the biggest rejects. Bitches. Luckily, I still had my cool older friends from high school who went to UW and invited us to stuff.

But don't worry, they eventually included us and we made friends.

Recruitment

Lanie (Helen) knew going in to college that she wanted to join a sorority. All her friends from high school were rushing and sorority life is like sewww totallyyy kewl. I was not convinced. I wasn't interested in living with 50 girls it sounded like an estrogen overdose. But recruitment was scheduled during welcome week and the majority of the girls on my floor were participating so like... what was I going to do all alone for 8 hours a day for the first 3 days? Whatever, I decided, if I don't like it I'll quit. Plus my dad, strangely enough, really wanted me to rush for the future alumni networking and a close family friend constantly told me about her fabulous Greek experience at UW.

Let me tell you, looking back I have no idea how any sorority even wanted me. I'm not exaggerating, I didn't know a SINGLE thing about Greek life. I could not remember the difference between Gamma Phi (pronounced like it rhymes with bye) and Alpha Phi (pronounced like fee) or between Kappa Alpha Theta or Kappa Kappa Gamma.

Additionally recruitment SUCKS. IT SUCKS SO BAD. The first 10 hour day, you are herded to all 14 sorority houses THAT DON'T HAVE A/C, and packed into a cramped room with 100 girls. It's loud as shit. And you have the same conversation with every girl at every house because they ask you all the same questions "What's your major? What dorm are you in? Do you like your roommate? What did you do this summer?" Spare me. Also, normally there are 3 food rounds where the girls feed you, but I somehow managed to get skipped at EVERY SINGLE ONE. Dude, I was so hangry and sweaty I can't even properly explain.

I was gonna quit. No fricken thanks man, I had seen enough. But Helen convinced me to go with her to second rounds (it's going to be so much better! you can only get invited back to a maximum of 8 houses!) Ugh. Fine.

Second rounds were admittedly a little bit better, you got to talk to the girls at each house longer and they tried to ask different questions. I also got fed. But real talk, I still don't know how I got invited back anywhere after second rounds. Since I didn't understand how recruitment works (you are quite literally being judged on how cool you are and how easy you are to talk to. The girls are looking for people they would actually want to be friends with, go figure), I treated each round like a job interview? Idk, the sorority girls seemed like they were authority figures so I tried to be super professional? Idk.

I also broke like every recruitment rule imaginable. They forgot to tell my group this, but the sorority girls have rules. Strict rules. They aren't allowed to touch you in any way. They aren't allowed to talk about the 4 B's: Boys, Booze, Brands, Bibles. It's actually ridiculous, like they aren't allowed to mention their dads or brothers, if they're telling a story about them, they have to change it to "my sister" or "my mom." So here I come, rollin in hot, reaching out my hand to introduce myself to every girl assigned to talk to me and again to thank them as I was leaving the house. It makes sense now why they always hesitated to shake my hand. It also makes a lot of sense why some girls floundered and got all awkward when I started asking if they had met any of my guy friends or what their plans were for the upcoming badger game. Lawlz.

I did get called back to my top 3 houses for the preference round though and ended up in Kappa, probably because the other 2 houses dropped me after I started laughing at their seniors touching sob story. The rest is history, I guess. Now I am a sister of the key. Blue and Blue. Go KKG.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dAq0OevRjBY

The night we stayed in

One random weekend night that Lane-dog and I decided to stay in turned out to be one of the funniest nights of Freshman year. The majority of our floor went out drinking and then graced us with their presence afterwards. E.O, Tyler, and Shanahan treated us to a free-styling rap battle, Matt and Brandon showed us how to Dougie, and Polelle and Mike Rankin attempted the milk gallon challenge and puked it all up. I have videos of all of these events but I don't think they're funny to anyone who isn't me or the subject of the vid.

Mouse

Lanie and I were convinced at one point in time that we had a new roommate. A mouse. We occasionally heard squeeking and scampering. 100% F no. We investigated and concluded that the mouse had taken up residence behind Lanie's storage trunk. Big thanks to Mitch Polelle for coming to our rescue and bravely looking for it, weapon at the ready. No mouse was ever found.

Iowa game

This is one of the stories that I am most embarrassed and ashamed about. However, it was an important life lesson, so I forced myself to include it. Don't judge me too harshly.

Early in the football season, the Badgers played the Hawkeyes at Iowa. Fortunately, one of my good friends from high school went to Iowa, so me and 2 other friends decided to road trip there for the game.

I'm regretting starting this story already. There's a pit in my stomach.

Anyways, we left early in the morning because it was an early afternoon game. I left my packing til the last minute obviously and sacrificed breakfast to throw my stuff in a bag and pick up my roadtrip companions. We got to Iowa at about 10am and our host was ready to roll. This was mistake number 1. I mentioned I hadn't had breakfast and needed to eat first, but there was no time, so the host offered me a granola bar that I demolished real quick.

We left the dorms and headed a bit into the outskirts of campus for a tailgate our host was bringing us to. Obviously this was a Hawkeyes tailgate. And it wasn't the kind of Badger gameday tailgate I was used to which is usually a crowded shitshow where the main event is binge drinking. Wisconsin, amirite? This tailgate was a mild family tailgate. Lots of adults. A buffet of game day food prepared by adults. Coolers of wine coolers and nice beer bought by adults. People playing that game where you throw the bean bags into the hole of the wooden thing across from you. My friend and I, decked out in Badger apparel, felt really awkward. Cue mistake #2. We decided to drink more to quicken the social lubricant. Mistake #3 we were drinking Ron Diaz Superior. Not regular, superior. K.

Mistake #4, Ronny boy did his job with the social lubricant but decided to be an overachiever and also provide me with liquid confidence. After being harassed by some Iowa fans, I decided to run my mouth and brag about how WI could drink them under the table any day. They came back challenging me to a shotgun race. Like beer shotgun. Mistake #5- I accepted the challenge and continued to talk smack. It's important to note that I didn't really ever drink in high school so I only had about a month and a half of college drinking experience under my belt. Also, I had never shotgunned a beer before. So I lost within seconds obviously. Don't think I even managed to get a fourth of the can down. When I've told this story, I've always lied about this part though and said that I crushed the Hawkeye dudes. I don't know why I always felt the need to lie about winning, to make myself feel better I guess.

So my friend and I, accustomed to drinking after the Badger game starts and showing up fashionably late during the 2nd quarter like the rest of the student section, assumed we had quite a bit of time left to "buzz up" for the game. Wrong. Our host wanted to get to the game before it even started to get good seats close to the field. Mistake #6, my friend and I were horrified of, heaven forbid, having to endure an entire football game, getting harassed, sober. So we took the water bottle of Ron Superior and passed it back and forth until it was empty. HINDSIGHT FREAKING SUCKS, GUYS, LIKE YA I KNOW THIS WAS SO DUMB WHAT WAS I THINKING.

We get to Kinnick Stadium, get seats close to the field in the student section.... and then have to wait like an hour before the game even starts. Ron is starting to work his magic, liquid confidence and invincibility is at an all time high. Mistake #7- The only two red dots in a sea of yellow and black, my friend and I decide to start shit talking everyone around us. My friend almost got into a fight. I have a vivid memory of snatching a kid's WI driver's license, holding it in his face and yelling "YOU TRAITOR, HOW CAN YOU WEAR THOSE FILTHY COLORS!" K.

From here on out is where it really gets bad and I'm really ashamed. One of my last full memories is the realization that I was WAY too drunk and it was hitting me all at once. I remember sitting down on the bleachers, looking up at the sky and taking a deep breath, desperately trying to cling to what I knew were the last moments of full awareness and conscious thought. Fade into darkness. I'm not even going to number the mistakes from here on out because everything is a mistake.

From what my friend tells me, I put my head between my legs and starting puking. Class fricken act. Obviously everyone freaked out, the police supervising the student section saw the commotion, and came down to check out what was going on. Found me, and told me and my friend we had to leave with them. Apparently, I was too incapacitated to walk on my own at this point, and was escorted out of the student section to the adoring "ASSHOLE" chant. Nice.

While the officers tried to assess the severity of the situation, apparently I became aware of my surroundings, and in what I'm sure was barely comprehensible slurs, tried to convince the officers that "I was fine. I am a pre-nursing student. I'm fine. I just want to watch the game. I'm fine. I'm sorry. I'm fine." I bet they were holding back laughter. "This dumb drunk girl," they probably thought. And then they breathalized me. I'm not wiling to admit what I blew. My friend tells me that at one point in my attempts to compromise with the police, an officer turns to him and says "listen, she can either shut up and come with us to the hospital, or she can sober up in jail with a ticket." I shut up real quick.

All I really remember is coming back around, sitting in a chair where the visitors usually sit in a hospital room, puking into a trash can. My friend was still with me, but our host had stayed at the game. I checked myself out, still 100% hammered, and my friend and I walked back to our host's dorm. Time frame: as we were walking past the stadium, there were still 4 minutes left in the game.

When we got back to the dorm, and I started to sober up a little bit, I realized the magnitude of my actions and how severe the consequences were. Our host and her mom came back to the dorm, rightfully upset, scolded me a bit, and after making me promise I was done puking (I was, they had given me anti-puking meds), took my friend out for dinner and out for the night. I was obviously in no shape to join.

I knew that my friend had contacted my parents while I was in the hospital, but I hadn't spoken with them yet. So after everyone left, I called them. Lots of tears. Lots of disappointment. Really one of the most terrible feelings ever.

I will fast forward quite a bit, but to sum up the skips, I scared the shit out of my host's roommates, who had no idea what had happened, with my hysterical crying, causing my host to come back with her mom and yell at me for sucking so bad and ruining the weekend.

One funny part of this story that I've never told ANYONE though, is after my host, friend, and roommates returned that night and were fast asleep, I woke up, sober and wide awake and having to pee like a friggin RACE HORSE! I didn't want to inconvenience or disturb anyone anymore, so I tiptoed into the hallway to try to find the bathroom. Oh perfect. They lock their bathrooms. You need a room key to open them. Tiptoe back into the room and try to find keys with the light from my phone.

No luck.

I am going to piss my pants. I am. I'm going to pee my pants. I had never been more sure about anything in my life. It was just like the wedding dress scene in Bridesmaids. I RAN back into the hall, desperate. Omg, the recycling room is open!!! I fricken sprinted to the recycling room and barely got my pants down in time to pee into a recycling bin. RIP underwear. Never told anyone that. Sorry, host and entire dorm hall. I really truly from the bottom of my heart am so so sorry.

Next morning everyone was so hungover. I wasn't. I felt perfectly fine. But that was probably due to the anti-nausea medicine they gave me and the fluids I had drank.

I'm so ashamed guys. I wish I could take this weekend back so bad, but at the same time, I'm glad I learned my lesson early.

Floor mother

Maybe because of my desire to rectify my Iowa mistakes, or maybe because of my saint-like qualities, I somehow became known as the mom of the floor. Whenever someone was too drunk, people would come and get me to take care of them. Cleaned a lot of puke. One of my favorite stories is below.

Drinking tickets

I somehow miraculously made it to 21 without a single underage ticket. Bam! Booyah! Yeah you read that right, I didn't even get a ticket in Iowa! Just a bill to my parent's insurance for the anti-nausea pills. I had 2 close encounters though. One is funny, one is not.

Story One:

It was a Thursday night. Lil Wayne had just been released from jail so obviously celebration was in order. I went up to the 8th floor to Casey and Mike's room. It was literally just us three, sitting on a futon, drinking beer, blasting Lil Wayne music. Maybe like 10 pm. Well, Weezy attracted some unwanted attention, and the RA and patrolling police decided to make a visit to Casey's room. We didn't hear them knocking because Young Money Cash Money, obviously. When we finally heard and opened the door they were pissed as shit. Thought we were ignoring them and stashing illegal contraband. Nope. Beer cans out in the open. Damnit.

They asked to search the room, Casey wouldn't let them, but technically they don't have to listen so they did. Mike and Casey got sassy. I was scared shitless. When the cops talked to me I was like super polite and cooperative so they told me they weren't going to give me a ticket. Score! They said they wanted to breathalize me as protocol, but I wouldn't be getting a ticket because I was honest. At this point I'm feeling really proud of myself, and that nice people do really come out on top, and I'm a fricken boss etc etc etc

I swear, I had only had like maybe 3 beers, but I blew a .16. The cops looked at each other, looked at me, and asked me again how much I had to drink. I swore to them that I wasn't lying and they just kinda shrugged and told me to go back down to my room. YOU FRIGGIN BET, OFFICER! I booked it back down to my room, in shock that I just escaped a drinking ticket.

Sat down on my futon and bragged to Lanie. Knock on the door. Fudge. It was just one of the girls on my floor, phew. She told me, though, that one of our friends who nicknamed himself "Diesel" was passed out naked and drunk in the boys bathroom. Oh, brother! Are you kidding me? Ughhh, classic Diesel.

Fulfilling my motherly duties, I went into the boys bathroom, and sure enough, there was Diesel, naked, locked in a stall, passed out sitting on the toilet. With no success trying to wake him by yelling or pounding on the stall door, I gritted my teeth and prepared for the only other option. I got down onto that disgusting bathroom floor, and as I'm reaching up to unlock the stall door, I hear from the doorway "...are you serious?"

I turn to see who it is. "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!" I say (I really said that). It was the two cops who were continuing their rounds. The cop goes ".....what.......what are you doing? we let you go?" I tried to explain that I know! I went back to my room just like they told me to but then I heard that my friend was in trouble and I was worried about him! They literally were like "just get out of here." Sir, yes, sir!

Diesel ended up going to detox, but not without trying to convince the officers that he was actually 40 years old, and born in 1972. When they asked if he did any drugs, he said "why, do you have some on you?" Fricken Diesel.

Second Escape was far less entertaining.

I had been up on the 10th floor drinking in a room with a bunch of friends. They were playing beer pong, so I sat on the bottom bunk of their bunk beds and watched. Then the cops came. Busted. They ordered everyone out of the room and into the hallway. I was paralyzed.

The way that the room was set up was if the door was open it blocked the bunk beds that were against the wall, and you could only see me from the hall was if you looked through the crack of the door. I was completely hidden as long as they didn't come into the room. Everyone went into the hallway except for me. They were all breathalized and given drinking tickets. I was shitting my pants, trying not to breathe or make any noise, worried that the police or RA were going to come into the room to confiscate the alcohol and see me.

By some stroke of luck, they asked the guys who lived in that room to bring out all their booze and dump it out in the bathroom. When they came in, I gave them the face like "I'm so sorry I'm such chicken shit and you are all in trouble" and they gave me the face like "you lucky bitch I'm like super mad at you right now, but not really I'm mostly jealous and mad that I got caught."

Friends Visiting

Finally a drunk story that isn't about me! Friends visiting always get the most drunk. My favorite was when Michael came to visit.

He got too drunk, puked off the couch at the apartment party we were at, accidentally kicked stuff off the end table at the end of the couch, breaking it, and got us chased out of the party by the drunk roommate of the host swinging a bat at us. Lawlz.

Walking back to my dorm, Mac and Michael fell behind and got lost. Great. They were both hammered and wouldn't answer their phones. I ended up finding them both in the girls bathroom, having a heart to heart. Mac was talking his usual peptalks that are absolutely insane and don't make any sense. They also puked on the floor directly in front of my RA's door. Scott deserved it, he sucks.

Ohio State

We beat Ohio State and rushed the field. It was unreal. Sportz.

Harry Potter

So I am a huge Harry Potter nerd, and I'm proud. I'm not even the least bit ashamed. I've been to every midnight movie premiere and the last few midnight book releases. Freshman year though, the midnight movie tickets sold out. I'm not sure I can really articulate how upset I was. It was devastating.

Sellery, however, had a bunch of tickets they were raffling off. I entered my name with the same fear and anxiety as Cedric Diggory had when putting his name into the Goblet of Fire. And let me tell you, I felt like I had just been chosen as prefect, head girl, quidditch captain, won the quidditch world cup, the house cup, the triwizard torunament, and ridded the wizarding world of Voldemort when my name was selected as a winner of the tickets!!!!! I dressed up, guys. I dressed up like Luna Lovegood and I had a wand. It was magical.

Myspace pose

Date Party

Great memory. Kappa had a Krush party in the late fall. A Krush party is essentially a date party but you can either invite two dates, or you can give the social chair two boys' names that you're krushin on and you want to be there, and she invites them anonymously. Sounds fun. But Lanie and I didn't have any male prospects. She had a serious bf from high school and I was playing the field (or that's what I told myself).

We decided we would advertise and accept applications to be our dates for the party. We printed out flyers and hung them up in Sellery. In order to apply, you had to write a paragraph about why you felt you were qualified to be our dates. Surprisingly, we didn't get any applicants besides our guy friends on our floor. Dan Shanahan definitely took it seriously though. He wrote a very long list of his qualifications including things like "his eyes cure cancer" and "horses are jealous of his endowment."

The theme was like preschool or something. Idk you had to dress like a little kid.

Helen ended up pregaming a little too hard and kind of died. She left early and actually accidentally locked me out of our room (I obviously had already lost my keys like the second week of the semester). I banged on the door and yelled at the top of my lungs to try to wake her up. No success. I did successfully wake up the rest of the hall though. I could hear her phone going off when I called her so I knew she was in there and probably not dead.

Fast forward. Next morning. Lanie has an exam at like 10, so I wake up at 9 (Charlie so kindly lent me his bed) (Not in a sexual way) and go bang on my door. That's when I hear through the door the most pathetic and sad whimper "Oh my god...."

Lane dog opens the door looking a hot mess, immediately starts crying, and goes "I'm so sorrrrrrrry." I laugh. It was humorous. You should've seen her with her pigtails on different levels of her head and stuff.

She opens the door all the way and the smell hits me before the sight. Puke. Puke everywhere. Black puke. She must have projectile vomited from her lofted bad. It was insane. I couldn't stop laughing.

She's still crying and goes "Where's my phone?" Swear to goodness, it was like a movie. We both look down, and there, in the middle of a HUGE puddle of black puke, is her slider phone, face down. "Oh there it is," she says in the whiniest, most defeated voice, and she bends down, picks it up, and wipes the puke off on the front of her dress.

I was just like, Lanes, go shower and get ready for your test, I'll clean this up. It was like, I couldn't even be upset, she was still dressed like a child and was just so pathetic looking.

Sportz

I'm obviously really sporty and have a lot of sports stories.

Some of us on my floor accidentally signed up for the competitive flag football intramural team. We got demolished by seniors every week. Kerry got clotheslined and got a concussion. Not funny, but so funny.

Gay House was redeemed, however, at the Sellery Hall Frosty Bowl, a flag football tournament for all the floors in the dorm. You better believe we got first place. I'm not kidding. I think we won like a gift certificate to Ed's or something or like money for floor activities that Scott never planned. Scott sucks.

Christmas

We went to a Christmas party at ZBT, a Jewish fraternity (intended irony). It was crowded and not really fun so we peaced out. It was freezing and we didn't wear real coats in fear that they would be stolen and didn't stay long enough to have a liquid jacket so we did what any girls would do in that situation. We took our heels off and sprinted back barefoot and coatless in the snow to the dorms from Langdon. We ended up getting a shoutout in the Badger Herald though which was a definite accomplishment. Sports.

Lanie and I also decked out our room in Christmas decor and paper snowflakes. We thought it was so cool, but looking back now it looks like shit.

Winter Formal

Our first sorority formal was definitely another learning experience. Shout out to Bill and Andrew for being such champs. Long story short, too much liquor was consumed, and it didn't end well for any of us but especially Helen.

After puking in the sinks at the Overture with our 80 year old House Mom, Karen, we left in a cab. That story is so #EPIC if you know who Karen is because she's a #boss, but I feel like I owe it to KareBear to clarify that she was puking because she was sick, not because she was drunk.

When the cab drops us off back at the dorms he's like prolly not the happiest guy in Madison because Lanie almost tossed her cookies like ten times. Classic me, I tried to tip him extra for his trouble, but Bill and Andrew realized that he had already overcharged us hoping we were too drunk to notice. It led to an argument where he tried to yank my tip from Bill's hands and it was an almost brawl.

In all the commotion, Helen who is pretty much down for the count, escaped from under our noses. We couldn't find her ANYWHERE. She wasn't in our room, on our floor, in the den, or in the bathroom. I am very concerned because she is too drunk to be lost and wandering. Mind you, it's like 10:30, people are still sober.

I barge into one of the study lounges on the main floor that is full of good students studying and I desperately plead for any information regarding my missing roommate. One of them is like uhhh...I saw a girl in a dress stumble into the bathrooms. Omg ur a guardian angel and true detective, thank you!!! I exclaim. There she is. There's Helen. We found her. Bill and Andrew help me get her to bed and then they're like Peace! I'm not dealing with this BS. Sorority girls *eye roll*

Lane dog was not happy and decided she was too drunk and I needed to call an ambulance because she is dying. I decide I'm unable to handle the situation alone and decide to call my parents. Smart. They decide they need to come down and assess the situation themselves. Great.

Meanwhile, Mitch Po tries his best to help and drunkenly makes us hot chocolate, which gets spilled. It was a sweet gesture though, appreciate it, Mitch.

My parents show up like minutes after Helen passed out. But she is out. Cold. Lynn and John decide the best course of action is to take her back to my house so they can monitor her. There is no waking her up. So with Mitch's help, my dad and Mitch carry what looks like a dead body wrapped in a blanket into the elevator and out through the lobby to load the corpse into the car. One of the best parts is when some drunk asshole made some smart ass comment and simultaneously my dad told him to shut the hell up and my mom told him to mind his own business. YEAH! TAKE THAT, ASSHOLE KID.

Another highlight is when my dad had to carry the corpse from the car, into my house, and up the stairs to my room in front of a living room full of staring children. Ally was having a sleepover. Make good decisions, kids!

I would have to say though, hands down, the best part of the story was the next morning when the corpse was awoke from the dead confused as hell. After explaining what happened and where we were she was like "omg no i'm so embarrassed," then she was like what is this and reached down her dress and pulled out A FLASK. Omg r u kidding, how did that even make it through the night without falling out. The lone survivor of Formal: the flask.

Hands down the worst part of the story though was that I later found out that formal had a MASHED POTATO BAR where the mashed potatoes were served in cute martini classes and you could add like unlimited of so many delicious toppings. AND there was a chocolate fondue fountain. AND I MISSED IT. That is my karma because those are probably two of my favorite foods.

Winter Break

Winter break had it's up and downs.

Up- My family was going on vacation to Hawaii!

Down- When trying on my outfits to pack for the trip, I couldn't pull my shorts (that I had fit into 3 months earlier) up past my thighs. I called my mom crying at midnight and she was like omg you woke me up for this? then she pulled the fricken mom card and was all like "you're becoming a woman, your body is not going to be your high school body forever, you're not fat you're just changing it's normal" And I'm all like NO MOM I BECAME A WOMAN WHEN I GOT MY PERIOD IN 8TH GRADE, I'M FAT, YOU JUST CAN'T SAY THAT BECAUSE YOURE MY MOM BUT YOU KNOW ITS TRUE HOW DID I GAIN THIS MUCH WEIGHT IN 3 MONTHS, I DON'T HAVE ANY CLOTHES TO WEAR NOW FOR THE TRIP WOE IS ME. I think she hung up on me.

Up- The Badgers made it to the Rose Bowl! ZomGz!!!

Down- I couldn't go. FOMO. We lost.

Up- My dad and I went to a sports bar at 10am in Hawaii to watch the game.

Down- we were surrounded by TCU fans. Ugh.

Spring Break

Brenna, Sara, Rusk, and I went to South Beach Miami for SB. Mac was supposed to come but then decided last minute to be a little bitch and go to Daytona instead. Poor Rusk. The lone boy. Also he was the only one who was 21 so we were dependent on him for booze.

The highlight of this trip was when we walked probably 2-3 miles to the nearest liquor store to stock up for the week. We bought like 2 big bottles of Svedka and started the long trek back to the condo. As we were WALKING UP TO THE FRONT DOOR OF THE CONDO, the bag rips and the bottles shatter. I think we all just stood there, slack jawed, desperately brainstorming any possible way to salvage the booze from the huge vodka river streaming down the walkway.

Easter

I can't remember the exact day, but the day before the break for Easter began, Kappa had their etiquette dinner with DU which is just dressing up classy, getting served a nice meal in the middle of a dirty fraternity dining room, and getting really really wine drunk. Since I didn't have a fake ID, when everyone moved on to the bars, I headed over to the Man Cave. Famous last words. We died. I then had to do an unwarranted walk of shame the next morning in my dress and heels back to the dorms and had the pleasure of watching all the parent's jaws drop as they picked up their kids for Easter. Don't assume anything, you judgmental parents, that just makes and ass out of u and me.

My parents were not pleased that I was hungover either. I made them pull over in a bank parking lot to puke out of the van door. My poor innocent and naive sisters thought I was just really sick, and were rubbing my back through the heaves, yelling at my parents for being mad at me for being sick. "WHY ARE YOU GUYS YELLING AT HER! IT'S NOT HER FAULT! HOW CAN YOU BE SO MEAN? SHE'S PUKING!!!!!!! SHE'S SICK AND YOU'RE MAD AT HER! SHE CAN'T HELP IT!

Bless their hearts.

Wedding fever

Spring time, us Gay House girls got wedding fever. We sent each other wedding video after wedding video. We made a pact that we would never be the "fat" bridesmaid in each other's weddings because it ruins the photos. Wow, we were such sweethearts.

I was also dead set on my wedding song being "A Drop in the Ocean" by Ron Pope. Um, that's definitely changed.

Finals

Probably my fav finals story is when I forgot about a big paper that was due so I emailed the professor and told him I was having computer issues but that I attached my final paper to the email so he would know I actually had it done.

I actually hadn't started it.

I sent a word document with like computer symbols and coding gibberish. He emailed me back thanking me for letting him know and being so responsible, then emailed me again a day later saying that something must have happened when he tried to open my paper because it was all gibberish and asked if I could send it again.

I made up some BS about oh it must be because I wrote it on my Mac, then transferred it to a flash drive and tried to submit it from a library computer and it must not have been a compatible file. Idk. He bought it and it bought me enough time to write the paper and send the real document. Got an A/B.

You're off to great places!

Thursday, December 11, 2014

Freshman Year

READ THIS FIRST! My Quarter Life Crisis