…But there were the freshmen who tried to keep up. Some did. Some drank four nights a week (Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays, Saturdays), played the social butterfly, or just played social, hooked up with the older boys (if you were a freshman girl)or alternately, played video games, if you were a freshman boyand were above all happy, while managing to coast through classes shooting in the 3.0s, as far as grades go. But who thought about grades? </p>
<p>Those kids were the exceptions. There were the other freshmen, who drank and got caught. Who drank, and felt themselves carried away by Safety & Security, or, worse, in the back of an ambulance. Or the freshmen girls who, insecure and unhappy, quickly acquired eating disorders, or came to be called slam pieces, as one frat derisively refers to them. The freshmen boys usually had funnier storiesinvolving urinating themselves, or hosing, and nudity. Less funny are the ones who are consumed by it (and I dont mean the wetting of the pants): one freshman boy, whose trouble with alcohol never ceased, told me, my mother says she doesnt even know me anymore. Chaosthat is freshman year. </p>
<p>Its not just alcohol that changes you either, in a college there are also academics, and activities, and new friends, and, at some distant point, the job search, and on and on it goes. For many of you, being an overachieving smarty-pants is old news; being an overachieving smarty-pants who has the drinking habits of a medically-defined alcoholic, on the other hand, is new stuff. Putting it all together will no doubt cause you to change in ways you hadnt imagined. Some will change for the better, others for the worse. The trick is putting yourself in the first category. That requires work, though, as all good things do…