Dude, Where's my Life?

Chicago Life - I continue to Regress

So, everyone says that when you go to graduate school (especially a professional graduate school like medicine or law or business or whatever) you regress back to college. I would definitely agree, but I think what they fail to mention is that you don’t necessarily regress back to your OWN college experience.

My life here in Chicago is a definite case-in-point. Allow me to paint you a little picture of my life in college. I went to UPENN, which is one of the eight “Ivy League Schools”, and typically the 4^th choice school for most of the students (after Harvard, Yale and Princeton..not necessarily in that order). My college experience was definitely not normal for either a Penn student, or college students in general. For example,

-I didn’t start drinking until the 2^nd semester of my sophomore year

-I never got high

-I never went to any football games

-I didn’t start binge drinking until I was literally 21 years old

-I didn’t wear anything from J. Crew, the GAP, or Abercrombie & Fitch

-I only pulled 2 all-nighters for class in my entire college career, both during my senior year

-I never threw up (silly me, I probably should have on many occasions…live and learn!)

-I never played any drinking games

This is a SHARP contrast to my life here in Chicago, which has regressed to SOMEBODY ELSE’S COLLEGE EXPERIENCE! Highlights of my newfound life include:

1) Getting flat-out wasted at least once a week

and I don’t mean heavy-buzzed, had one or two martinis drunk. I mean stumbling, hideous hangover, possibly throwing up, telling random people I love them, Russian-Samovar-style, big-night-out-in-LanKwaiFung-style, drunkety-drunk drunk. I have been hungover twice a week at least since school started.

2) Pre-Gaming– For those of you who don’t know this expression, it basically means drinking at someone’s house BEFORE you go out in order to be drunk-on-arrival at whatever destination you are hitting. For some reason we never did this in NYC (with one exception, which was making martinis with Colleen in my apartment before heading to her friend Matt’s birthday party. It was a night that will live in infamy forever). Here in Chicago it has become pretty standard, often involving jello shots, another thing that I heard a lot about in college but never really did!

3) Drinking Games – Again, I heard a lot about these in college, but for some reason I never really participated. Last night I played “Circle of Death”, and in a week or two Pong/Beirut will be played. A couple weeks ago it was flip-cup. What is up?!

OK, so its not an exhaustive list, but you can definitely see the trend forming, right? Fortunately I’m too cheap now to buy any new clothing, otherwise it would probably say “Old Navy” or “American Eagle Outfitters” on it, which is a sad testament to my new surroundings.

Question 1 – Am I having a good time? Yes, yes I am. However, I am scared of the where this path is taking me. Pray for Dan!!!

posted by Dan, Lover of Dim Sum @ 1:38 AM 2 comments