July 11, 2007

College Contest

The numbers on my google countdown til school are starting to get small. Really small. Small enough that my stomach clenches up each time I look at them and wonder “Dear gods of Mount Olympus what the HELL am I thinking, going back to school?”

A mixture of panic and good old fashioned PMS reduced me to tears for the better part of my morning while I was making hotel arrangements for that weekend. The tears were only increased by the realization that mommyknitwit and lilsis won’t be able to drive down to say a proper goodbye. We’ll have to do that Thursday night. (Here come those tears again!)

So is born the contest. Leave me a comment with a college story. Funny. Moving. So sweet it’ll make me gag. Didn’t go to college? Make up the silliest drunken-frat-boy-toga-party story you can imagine. Make me laugh. Distract me with silliness. Tell me how you fended off scurvy by eating your Skittle a day or ate so many Ramen Noodles that you had nightmares of being crushed by towering piles of wavy pasta bricks.

Prizes: The more comments the more prizes I’ll have. I’m going to go all out, as this is likely the last contest I’ll have for a good long time.

0-20 comments – 1 prize
21-40 comments – 2 prizes
41-?? Comments – 3 prizes.

Prizes will consist of:
Handmade bracelet in the color of winner’s choice
Beaded book thong
Handmade stitch markers
Mixed CD of songs that make me happy
Yarny goodness

The deadline is Friday July 20th, exactly one month before classes begin.

29 comments:

Anonymous said...

Don't worry about going back to school. I finally went to University and had my 25th birthday two weeks into the first term.

However I am quite suprised that you have to share a room, thats pretty much unheard of over here in the UK.

Whilst in some ways it was scary in many others it was fantastic, but then I did enjoy watching the children (as I called them) making tits of themselves. Teaching some of them how to cook was fun as well.

BTW: You will get a story - gimme a couple of days to mail it to you.

Unknown said...

OK, here goes...

I lived in the dorms my first two years of college. I got up to take a shower once and noticed that no one was around in the halls. This wasn't too unusual because I had a very early class (7:30) that day. I went and took my shower, but even after I showered still no one was up and stirring. It seemed a little odd...

I walked back down the hall to my room ad passed by our "lounge" on the way. Looking out the windows I noticed it was pitch black outside. Upon returning to my room I looked at the clock and it was 3:30am!

Apparently I had woken up for some reason in the middle of the night and thought my alarm had gone off and it was time to get ready for class. I put my PJs back on, set my alarm for 1/2 an hour later, and went back to bed.

I guess the moral of this story is that if you share a bathroom with about 60 girls it's easy to get some privacy if you shower at 3am. :)

Anna-juniorknitwit said...

I remember one pretty sweet college moment...

I was an undergrad and I had applied to pharmacy school. I had made it through the first cut and had been interviewed and was waiting to see if I had been accepted. I had just gotten off the phone with my mom (who I talked to all the time, anyway) and checked my e-mail. Well there it was...an e-mail from the UIC College of Pharmacy with the subject heading "Congratulations on your acceptance..."

Needless to say my heart just about jumped through my throat and (with trembling fingers) I opened up the e-mail, hardly daring to believe, but it was the acceptance letter.

Well I flew to close the internet and just about tripped over myself to get to the phone. I called up my mom (who of course was wondering why I was calling again so soon) only to inform her in a squeal more than anything else that I had finally gotten into pharmacy school.

Well my mom, one of the most professional, reserved, controlled people I know started screaming with excitement and I could hear her yelling to my father as well. We both just screamed like fools for a couple of minutes until we both regained some semblance of composure.

It was a great moment for me, though, both because it was something I had wanted so badly and because my family was happy for me.

Anna :)

Anonymous said...

One of the jobs I had in college was as a night security guard in a coed dormitory. One night around 2 a.m. I was doing rounds through the dorm and heard suspicious sounds from a girl's dorm room. I paused, listening, and was totally sure someone was quite ill. Scared to pieces, I fumbled with the big pile of keys I had for the dorm, trying to find the master room lock, when the noises stopped. I paused; a male voice inside the room said, "you done, baby?" and the girl said, "no, no, keep going," and the noises resumed.

I'm so very, very fortunate I was so slow finding the master key.

Anonymous said...

Oh dear - don't tell my kids this EVER! My BFF (still is) and I were suite-mates known to like our vino - good old Boone's Farm - we went to a frat party and I kinda remember walking home - then I woke up next to my friend on the lawn in front of the college cafeteria and people were walking to their morning classes. We waited a few weeks to have another glass ;0

Eve said...

When I was initiated into my university's humour paper, I was wearing a lab coat and had a dozen muffins taped around me like a corset and I was covered in silly-string. My initiation-mate and I had our hands seran-wrapped and taped together with about a quarter-pint of maple syrup in between. We had to run across town doing various tasks and at one point we accidentally jay-walked right in front of a police car. Believe me, we were a sight. Piss-drunk, covered in muffins, etc. etc., my friend was about *this close* to making a run for it. All he did was take our names; neither of us had our licenses, oops.

The rest of the night was full of the same. I walked home looking like I had just gone through an exorcism.

Ooh, but it was fun! I just graduated and I'm sad it's over.

Olga said...

Pranks are a must at school, to break up the boredom of having to study and write papers. We piled up beds and boxes and stuff in front of friends dorm rooms, we raided card parties with rubber band guns and took the cards hostage, we'd wake someone up at 2:00 in the morning and demand they bake us brownies.Breaking into other dorm rooms and taping all their underwear to the windows. yeah, fun times.

Theresa said...

Your timing is perfect - my randomly assigned freshman roommate in college just came into town for a visit. We were, as I said, randomly assigned, and after a gradual getting-to-know-you, became best friends. Since then, we've been through it all together - our weddings, her first child, and even driving cross-country to catch up. I love it.

Anonymous said...

I don't have any particulary funny stories, but I did just about die of ramen noodle poisioning the first time I went to college!

Don't be worried...you'll be fine :)

Meg said...

A long time lurker, delurking for the perfect reason. I have long felt that my college stories range from ridiculous to absolutely crazy...and I have one for every single year. And now I have to pick one?!

How about the one, my junior year of college, I am walking across campus to meet my BF for lunch. As I hit the "porch" area of his building, something SLAMS into the side of my head - my first thought is a basketball - and I look up to see something FLYING AWAY.

Some girl said she thought it was an owl. I get into the dorm, get to my BF's door and am now hysterical, crying and panicking. I get a can of iced tea to hold to the side of my face, which is swelling. Call the health center; first, explain I got hit in the head by a BIRD - they tell me they don't have an appt. til later in the day, phone call to Mom, who demands I get over there NOW.

So, my BF and I leave his dorm to walk to the health center, and see a HUGE red tailed hawk in the tree by his dorm. At this point, I have a scratch on my face and an abrasion on my temple. BF worries the health center nurses will think he hit me. I explain that my reason for my visit is so far beyond what anyone would use as a coverup for being hit.

Spend the day in the health center - learn that hawks do not carry rabies, get a tetanus booster and my face cleaned up and sent on my way.

Following year - I call to make an appt. for an ear infection, and the nurse asks my name. I tell her, and she replies "Aren't you the one who got hit in the head by a hawk?"....yep. On a campus of about 8,000 people, *I am the one who was hit by a hawk.

I wasn't laughing then, but holy cow it's funny now!

Panda said...

I grew up hearing stories about the years my dad spent in the Navy. His mom would send him all sorts of odd things that were a cause of deep embarrasement to him. Sometimes she woud mail him home-made cookies in an empty cereal box, but by the time they reached him round the other side of the world, they had crumbled into cookie dust. His buddies would gather around for a handful, anyway.

His most embarassing package of all was when his mother sent him a single sock. No note, just open the package and pull out one, single sock. She told him later that he had left it while home on leave, and she didn't want him to be out a pair. His buddies teased him mercilessly that his mother didn't even care enough to send a pair of socks, just a single one.

Flash forward to my own college days, and I received my first package from home. It was quite a bit later than everyone else's first packages. Tradition dictated that when you got a package, you would bring it smugly to the dinning hall, so everyone could be jealous of the goodies from home.

I was so excited when I saw my package. It wasn't terribly large, or very heavy. I took it up to the dining hall, and with everyone watching, opened it up and pulled out . . . a hat. The absolute ugliest hat you ever saw in all your life. It was sort of off-white and looked a bit grungy, and it was about three sizes too big. I looked in the package, but there was no note, nothing. My friends laughed at me until they had tears in their eyes.

I called my dad later, and he was chuckling to himself. "I didn't want you to be cold." He finally had his revenge for his mom's weird packages. It absolutely made his day that I opened it in front of all my friends.

Anonymous said...

Did I ever tell you the story about making up a cooler full of ice, Squirt and gin? It was my favorite college recipe. We made a batch and then decided to climb out of a 2nd story (Victorian house so you know what that looks like) window onto the roof to watch all the folks walking to the high school football game. Believe me, climbing up and out is easy, finding the courage to climb down and in while on Squirt and Gin is not pretty. We were up there for 3-4 hours before anyone got up the "courage".

Kimber8116 said...

Once while living in the dorms I was assigned the roommate from hell (luckily it was only for one semester). Basically she was the most ADD person in the world. During the 6 months that we lived together, she never got around to unpacking anything other than her Pokemon posters & action figure that she collected from some fast food kids meals. She just lived out of the clutter of unpacked boxes. Also she never went to class because she stayed up most of the night playing Mario on 8 bit Nintendo. I would have probably appreciated her eccentricities had we not been living within the same 200 sq ft.

I could deal with the unpacked boxes & really didn't care about the Pokemon decor, but the disruption of my sleep is where I drew the line. I MUST HAVE a good night sleep. One night I began yelling at her to go to bed. It was effective... she agreed to go to bed. The next morning she seemed scared of me. By the following evening, she cracked and began to apologize for waking me up. At first I was confused, but finally figured out what happened. After my yelling fit, she woke up in the middle of the night to play Nintendo. She thought that the light from the t.v. woke me up when I sat straight up in bed and stared her down. So she crawled back into bed while I continued to stare her down for a bout 5 min. She didn't know that I had a history of sleep walking/talking, etc., so the following morning she thought that I was still furious with her for waking me. After that night she spent her sleepless nights elsewhere.

Anonymous said...

OK, so during college, me and a bunch of guys had a fraternity, the Delta House, and due to our frequent partying (an awesome toga party that included a beatnik's guitar being smashed to bits) and belligerent disregard for campus rules we were put on double secret probation. It probably didn't help matters that I slept with the dean's wife. In an effort to "damn the man" we ruined the homecoming parade...

...what do you mean you've heard that one before.

Kristi aka Fiber Fool said...

I had the opportunity to take some college courses while in high school. It started because my blind mother got the adaptive equipment needed and decided to try taking a class or two and needed note taker, so I took some classes with her as her note taker until they set up other students to take notes for her. Then I took some classes on my own.

Because I was still taking high school classes I had block classes that met once or twice a week in the evenings. One of my first classes without my mom was Speech 101. I was nervous as block classes tended to have lots of non-trads in them. I got to class quite early and settled in my seat and started reading a book to pass the time until class started.

I had been settled for a while and few students had followed suit and sat down and busied themselves. Just a bit before class was to start this younger man (though still a non-trad) walks in. He is big, like 6'4" and probably more than 250 pounds. He is wearing some worn overalls. He sits down next to me and his bag makes a thump when he drops it to the floor. He starts to get settled in and leans over to pull something out of his heavy back pack. I try to glance sneakily to see what he is going to pull out because he has already made a bit impression that he is unlike anyone of the other handful of people to arrive in class so far. He pulls out a 2-ltr of Coke and takes several large gups direct from the bottom. I suppose by that point I was outright looking at him. I had never seen anyone swig form a 2-ltr bottle in public before and especially in a classroom. He got a smirk on and made a gesture to pass it to me and said, "You want a swig?"

I later discovered that his name was Mark and we were good friends for the duration of class. He never failed to crack me up and his speeches were never lacking entertainment value!

I found him so funny I think I talked about him a fair bit outside of class. Finally well into the term my Dad interrupted me mid-sentence and said, "Just how old is this Mark person?" LOL! It was really funny for my Dad. Up to that point I didn't think he really realized that I was becoming an adult and it was very uncharacteristic of him to express any sort of parental worries - at least to me.

knitnzu said...

So this is a between college and college story. I'd done a couple yrs engineering school but hung out with the forestry gang, dropped out, lived with said gang. One of them did some nice artwork and would borrow specimens from the school museum. I went with him to get maybe a hummingbird. The curator (Ron) spent the entire time looking at my breasts. Fast forward some 7 years and I have not only gone back to school at the forestry school and gotten BS, but after some time working went back for the MS. I was at a party with other grad students and who was standing at the keg? Ron! I'd already had a few by then and I told him (in full earshot of several other people) "I remember you, you sonofabitch (maybe I called him a P***k). Last time I saw you you couldn't take your eyes off my boobs. I am a person with a face you know" and I proceeded to remind him about visiting him with my pal Ranger. He avoided me pretty well for quite a while until I looked in on his museum and we had some chats about specimens and such. And he always looked me in the face!

Diane said...

I commuted to college. First day the only parking space I could find was on the other end of the campus. I race walked about a half mile to my class because I was almost late. Got to the room and oops moved to another room .... on a different floor. Hummm locate the stairs and take them 2 at a time to get to the correct room. Note from the instructor "Sorry but something came up and I had to cancel for the day." I guess it was ok since I left the friggin books in the car anyways.

sheep#100 said...

Really funny things don't happen to commuter students like me, but sometimes there were the touching ones.

What happened to me was gall bladder surgery. Yes, gall bladder surgery. During my final year. Right in the middle of a 13-week semester. I missed over 30% of the classes and had very little time to make up all of the work. One of the professors was a sweet old guy that let me take an oral exam - which I aced. This was good since I nearly failed one of my other classes. The instructor for that one was a younger guy, himself not too long out of college. He came up to me at our "Thank God, It's Over Party", gave me a huge hug and apologized for giving me a 'D' in the class - it was my only grade less than a 'B' ever and he knew that.

In a sick twist, I was actually kind of glad that I got the 'D': I couldn't afford another year in college and the program I was in didn't offer all classes every semester - they only offered each class once a year, in sequence.

LaLa said...

My campus had a creek running through the center of it and there was only one bridge that was kinda out of the way if you were traveling from the bar back to our on campus apartment. One night we were quite a bit tipsy coming back and decided to hop from rock to rock across the stream to make the trip back a bit faster. Well one of my roomates fell in (of course) but she was carrying the keys to the apartment. She dropped them and we spent a good drunken hour at 3am searchi ng the creek for them before we found them.

Gwen said...

My favorite college story is the first parent's weekend. I was showing my parent's around the campus and we came accross the huge fountain in the middle of campus that was just overflowing with purple bubbles and My Dad said "I can't believe the nerve of some kids to do that to a fountain when the university is trying to impress parents." Ummm...I was had been one of those hooligans the night before, but I wisely kept my mouth shut. For lots and lots of big bubbles, 3 large bottles of Mr. Bubbles and 3 large bottles of Dawn.

Gwen

Unknown said...

In our dorm there was a tradition of leaving "gifts" for future residents in a recess hidden in the wall behind the phone jack. Best thing we found? A classy windchime made of empty beer bottles. Worst thing? A cake. Eww.

mrspao said...

I know who your first comment is from!!! :)

Well, let's see... when I started at university, I couldn't cook or launder clothes. My mum never ever let me near the cooker or washing machine so when I arrived at uni, I was a bit bereft because the dining halls were expensive.

I decided to cook some pasta one night and put the pasta and the cold water together in a pan to cook. Over an hour later, the pasta was still rock hard and I learnt the valuable lesson that you have to boil the water before you add the pasta (or more importantly: read the instructions on the packet).

Just before I started university, I bought a lovely blue cardigan from Miss Selfridge (trendy shop I'd never been in before) - it was just brilliant and I loved it to bits. When I was faced with a large industrial washing machine in the college, I had no idea what setting to wash anything on or that you had to separate clothes out for different temps. One guy just said: "Put it on hot" so I did. Well, my lovely blue cardigan wouldn't have even fit a small child when it came out of the washing machine. Moral of that story: read the instructions and don't trust the boys to tell you about washing.

5elementknitr said...

I went to massage school instead of college so this may not count...

So there I was,

In student clinic for Shiatsu (acupressure massage). In Shiatsu, the client remains fully clothed and the treatment takes place on a futon on the floor.

I was working on a guy and he was being a shameless flirt. Really skirting into some pretty inappropriate territory. I was being as diplomatic as possible but was getting really close to just cracking him in the mouth. Turns out I didn't need to.

The student clinic spaces are sectioned off with floor to ceiling curtains (like the kind they have in hospitals) and other people can hear your conversations.

The guy's wife was getting a treatment too and after about 20 minutes of listening to this jerk, she comes in and smacks him in the face and walks out.

He jumped up and went after her while I rolled on the futon with laughter!

Stupid boy!

Ruth@5elementknitr.com

Carol said...

I had just moved into my dorm room. It was an odd dorm. there were 6 bedrooms with 3 shared bathrooms and a kitchen/common area. Anyway...I was unpacking my boxes and reams of stuff when a frantic knocking was heard at my door. I opened it to find a strange girl , clearly in a a panic about something. "Hi", I said cautiously. "OHMIGOD there's a spider in my room and can you come kill it for me I'm so scared I hate spiders and ther's one in my room ohmigo my brother usually does it but he's not here there's a spider plesespleaseplease...." she gabbled at me. I picked up a shoe, went into her room and eliminated the bug. Twenty years later we are still friends.

Stephanie said...

College was great! I met some dear, wonderful people that I still talk with (10 years later) and we had wayyyy too much fun. :)

Freshmen year we lived in these little suites, 3 rooms and a bathroom to each suite, four suites to a section. One night two of the girls (roommates) went out and left their door unlocked. It was a Friday and the rest of us were staying in and bored. We went into their rooms and turned every single thing in there upside down.

We rehung all the pictures upside down, turned their bedspreads, chairs, dressers, anything we could lift and turn caddywhumpus, we did. It was great fun.

Senior year--that's three years later!--those girls broke into my apartment (shared with another girl who was responsible for the original attack) and turned all of our stuff upside down. It was not exactly a timely revenge, but it made for so much entertainment!

Dreamy said...

I was 17 and so naive, shy, and just YOUNG (unbelievable, I know) when I went to college. Well, the dorm was a triplex, 3 floors and my house/part was all girls. Our doors locked automatically behind us... 6:30 in the morning first day I get up to shower... and forget my key in my room. The RA was in the next house/part of the triplex, and because it was so early-- asleep. There I am, wrapped in a teeny towel, shivering (because it was cool in VT even though it was June) knocking on HIS door, waking him up really really early. :( I was so embarrassed.

Diane said...

My youngest daughter decided to take a class over the summer. It seemed like a good idea at the time however after being out in May she had a tough time getting back into the routine of being up dressed and out to school by the time the end of June rolled around.

I've heard nothing but complaining all summer. "This sucks" "There's too much reading" "This sucks" "It's summer and I should be relaxing" and the ever popular "This sucks"

So the final exam was yesterday and now she doesn't have to balance school and work. The complaint tonight? "I'm bored. Since my class is over I don't have to read and I'm bored"

She's better put me in a nice nursing home when I'm old and feeble ..... I'm just saying

ikkinlala said...

I don't know if I have a really good story to tell. I live off campus when I'm at school so I'm sure I miss out on a lot of the funniest stuff. So I'm going to tell you about the worst weather we ever had, and hopefully you can imagine why it was funny.

My university is in north-central BC, where the weather can be nasty in the winter. Classes are hardly ever cancelled because of it - we've shocked some professors who came from warmer places by all showing up when it's 40 below outside.

The one time that classes were cancelled was when it went from 40 below in the morning to raining in the afternoon, and all the roads had so much ice that the buses couldn't get up the hill. I was in a computer lab at the time, working on an assignment, so I had to figure out how to get down the icy hill without a bus. It was dark by then, and still raining, so I decided that sliding down probably wasn't the safest idea. I sat around talking to various people and hoping the buses would get going again until somebody offered me a ride to the bottom of the hill. I accepted it, even though I knew it was crazy to be driving in those conditions - no way was I going to spend the night in a classroom. When we got to the bottom of the hill, the car didn't exactly stop, but it came close enough that I jumped out anyway (acquiring a hole in the knee of my jeans when I fell). Then I had to walk the twelve blocks or so to the house I was living in (here's where your imagination can fill in the details - let's just say I was bruised by the end of it). We had the next day off, and then it was back to classes as usual and being very careful on the sidewalks for the next several weeks.

I hope you have a great time at school, and that your weather's better than ours.

Karen said...

First off thank you for the kind comments while I've been on a blogging break. They warm my heart.

College Stories?

I'm posting under the wire here, no pressure which was totally unlike me in college. I have not even read the previous comments to see what others have had to say. So unprepared!

A good organizational system helps! Figure out a note taking system that works for you. I'm visual. I used a combination of prominetly placed lists and good old fashioned fear of looking like an idiot to get stuff done at the end of the quarter.

I remember starting back to grad school after a winter break. I counted out that it was my 19th quarter or something like that, or was it 12th, 17th? Can't remember. I'd been at it at a while but I was still a bit terrified. Ok I was terrified and here I was with a an undergrad under my belt and at least a year of grad school.

It was rough at times but I plodded on. It is ok to be scared. It's natural. You will be fine.

Trying to think of fun college memories. The Easter Egg Coloring Party with the Sig Eps where my big sis met her future husband and father of their two great kids. I had fun with my ZTA sisters.

Undergrad was fun but grad school was so much better. I was a non traditional aged student by then. I had a bit of a clue what I was doing and I was there to learn and not just party, not that I partied THAT much in undergrad.

Anyway, school is a wondrous, challenging, mind expanding and over all pretty cool time.

Enjoy!