Bucknell Through a Current Student's Eyes

ericatbucknell
Mon, 27 Sep 2010 12:02:16 +0000

theres a school study out there somewhere in which 27.9% of bucknell freshmen claimed to drink an average of zero nights per week. another 18% claimed to drink one night per week. and thats not counting the substantial percentage of students drinking more frequently while hanging out with friends, eating pizza and watching a movie… exactly what theyd be doing if they werent drinking. (something like two thirds of freshmen reported typical intakes of five or fewer drinks… so its not like everybody is out there binging until they black out.)

to me, the real difficulty in the college transition is leaving a very strong circle of friends, with friendships developed over the course of a decade, and entering a situation in which you know no one. if your initial social circle (basically, people on your hall) arent great social matches for whatever reason (and their drinking habits is certainly a perfectly acceptable reason), finding that those matches can be difficult. but short of transferring to a school in which you have friends from high school who have also chosen to abstain, im not sure transferring at this point makes a ton of sense. theres no guarantee your new hallmates and classmates will have different drinking habits… and to make things worse, they wont be college freshmen actively looking to make new friends, either.

in that light, my suggestion would be to get involved in as many clubs as humanly possible. they may not be particularly interesting, but if you havent met ‘your’ people yet, you just have to continue taking initiative until you do. that doesnt mean you cant have a less than ideal social circle in the mean time. but its just something you have to learn to do. after all, youre going to have to do this over again in a few years when youre in graduate school or take a job in a city where you dont know anyone. and then probably once more after that before you get married and start a family.

i can say from experience that i only ended up being really good friends with one person from my freshman hall… and we certainly werent really good friends in september. i met two other really great people in my foundation seminar, one of whom i only got close to as a result of a labor-intensive final project. im not sure i knew the names of any of my other eventual friends a month into my freshman year. so give it time… and do anything but sit in your room.