...Utterly detached from the majority of the student population.
Today, I would quite liked to have put up a massive sign, informing (admittedly, a minority of) the female population up on campus that university is not, in fact, the fashion parade they seem to think it is.
Yes, I'm sure that boy in your seminar is absolutely drop-dead gorgeous and you would do anything to catch his eye, but it is raining. It is also bloody cold. Tiny shorts and goosebumps are not a good look. Nor is your best party frock that barely covers your bum, and stiletto heels that you cannot walk in without looking like a pregnant duck. In front of me. Very slowly. When I am trying to get to a seminar.
Newsflash, ladies: a coat keeps you warm, and dry! Miracles will never cease. Add a hood or an umbrella, and some kind of footwear that does not comprise of a scrap of cream coloured satin, formed into a ballet-pump shape to this, and perhaps you will not find it neccessary to totter around with your girlfriends, holding a Media Studies textbook over your head, squealing that your hair is getting wet, and your beautiful cream shoes with diamante hearts are turning grey, muddy, and very wet.
Also...in a seminar on the politics of ingestion of tobacco and alcohol, I felt embarrassed, twice, and I don't think I should have done. The line "I mean, who in this room can honestly say they've never tried a cigarette in their life?" was voiced by a girl much like the ones I described above. Er, that'd be me then. "SERIOUSLY?!" Yes, seriously. No, my friends didn't try with any real effort to pressure me into it when I was younger. No, I wasn't intrigued. No, I didn't think it seemed cool and grown up. Luckily I was not alone on this, there was one other girl (from Zimbabwe, with a very Christian upbringing) who hadn't smoked, either.
The seminar continued and the aforementioned girl came out with a very similar line; "Who in this room would honestly rather have one expensive glass of wine than a load of vodka and red bull?!" It was meant to be a rhetorical question...everyone laughed, smiled, and nodded. Apart from me. I would rather have one nice bottle of wine than three of Lambrini. I would rather drink gin and tonic than vodka and red bull. I would rather end the evening mildly tipsy and happy having had an evening of enjoyable conversation with people I like, than being put to bed coated in my own vomit, various men's saliva and beer, and god knows what else.
I realise I sound incredibly holier-than-thou, which is probably unfair of me. I spent a large proportion of my first year very very drunk. On vodka and snakebite and turboshandy and alcopops and Corky's and Sourz and all manner of revolting things. I did the evenings and nights of downing a shot of something bright purple or blue or green, pulling a face of utter revulsion and screaming "wooooo, another!" I'll probably do it again, on occasion. But I swear the people in my seminar would have been less surprised if I'd said that on weekends I like to dress up as a bumble bee and skip around town.
Oh, I'm probably just getting old. According to my 14 year old cousin yesterday, you become no longer young at the grand age of 21. Live with it, folks...
8 comments:
"Who in this room would honestly rather have one expensive glass of wine than a load of vodka and red bull?!"
Yeah, you're not alone in preferring the wine. I'm frankly shocked anyone would prefer the vodka and red bull.
Also, I've never tried a cigarette either. Have tried a cigar though...
I wouldn't say the majority, perhaps a significant number, in addition to the fact that these tend to be the types who make themselves known, because after you've spent that long on hair and make-up, why wouldn't you want people to notice it?
I don't wear a coat; I often bare my shoulders in single digit degrees of temperature. However, my reasoning is different. The rationale being it is so bloody boiling in anywhere than is not outside, that I can't bear bringing a coat in only to drag it around all day as I spend most of my day indoors, the cold breeze of fresh air being a welcome relief as I shuffle from furnace to furnace.
Lambrini is digusting.
...Right. Well. That'd be three of us, then, on both the wine and the cigarette fronts. But it's not something to be embarassed about; when someone happens to find out I've never smoked I normally get quite conscious that there is a high chance I'm being too smug. Can't win, I think... Oh well.
Red bull is foul stuff. Eesch.
"Red bull is foul stuff. Eesch."
Dunno if you're aware, but Red Bull own an F1 team. Actually they own two, but David Coulthard used to drive for the main one. Apparently when he joined the team, someone from the press asked him what he thought of the drink. His response was something like "well, I've never actually tried it sober, so I couldn't tell you"...
/vaguely relevant F1 anecdote
Four people.
I hate that being young and students somehow entitles people to act like selfish, lazy, irresponsible, self-damaging idiots. I hate the superficiality of it all. And like you, I hate that it's the rest of us who are made to feel shitty as a result...
If you can't be irresponsible and immature now, when can you be?
At least it's vaguely considered acceptable at this age. If someone 30+ was doing the same thing, you'd think a lot worse of it.
This is why I like this year. It's totally okay to be totally uncool, because the friends who like you for who you are won't stop just because you decline an opportunity to drink yourself stupid.
The people mentioned in the blog probably catch-up with the rest of society at some point. Until then, I'm okay with feeling subtley yet smugly superior in the midst of the student madness.
got to say, from a blokes perspective the girls who spend like 2 hours getting ready, tottering around in winter in miniskirts and tanktops are not sexy to me. i may look on the mild interest, but to go out with? i would rather be single that someone who gets tarted up for a lecture.
it does minorly repell me got to be said, its nice to see a girls casual look. the fact that they only think they look good in a mini skirt and 3 inches of makeup either demonstrates they are ugly, or so insecure about them selves its unreal.
as for the drink, ok i dont like expensive wine, mostly cos i cant taste the diffrence, but i wouldnt take being shitfaced and vomiting over a quiet single drink with friends. and often do, ie the flying bull trips.
feel free to damn me on my sweeping views, but i tend to look at a girl more in jeans and a hoodie and hair pulled back than one in a miniskirt and makup at 11am
I'll add my name to the list of never-tried-a-cigarette, don't-like-red-bull, and would-prefer-expensive-wine-to-double-vodka-red-bull people. It's all true, and red bull is disgusting. C'est ca.
Colourful shots, however, are all good fun and so is going out and getting drunk. Getting trashed, plastered, trolleyed, battered etc is not fun, and having to get people in the aforementioned states home can really put a dent in an evening, and frankly I'm not a fan of either throwing up or being thrown up on. Such is life.
I think laying in to student lifestyles is all very well, but I also think it can go too far the other way. Enjoy responsibly is, while boring, very true. Get both the enjoyment and the responsibility.
Ben, I agree with you. 'nuff said.
As for the Grand Old Age of 21...that's me in three days. In four days time I will be going out on a massive clubbing night where I will doubtless become rather merry with a bunch of other students, and it will be good fun. Age is not so grand as it might seem!
Now I must go and finish the references of my essay. Enough distraction for one evening!
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