TIme...like money, there is never enough

Fucking-A. I know I am supposed to write a hysterical treatisie on dating but have been running around all day. Got rescued last night from the library, and spent the later part of the evening in a pub making playdates for xanax and wine movie watching. Don't ask.

I played my first Rugby match today, and right before I went in, I watched a girl get taken away in an ambulance--I think she broke her leg. And then I'm told to play wing. But, seriously, it's a fucking awesome game. Despite not knowing what constitutes a position, I still had fun and even caught the ball a few times! It's like playing football when I was younger, except the women are a lot scarier than my brothers who are 6'2 and 6'3 respectively. To be honest, I was fucking scared each time I got the ball--and sadly, I know how to catch so I had the ball a few times. As soon as I saw some big woman barrelling at me, I threw the ball or ran out of bounds. I like my nose, and I question the state of the surgical care in this country. But, despite my "fool proof method" I did manage to get my head knocked around, actually my neck is beginning to hurt. Fuck. But we did win--actually a massacre. And I played hungover

As I've been shit on the postings, below is a draft of the article I submitted. I know it needs to be editted, but I sent them something that wasn't perfect to make sure that the style was correct. Evidently, I am assuming, that since Fresher's week already happened like three weeks ago, it wasn't timely. So, I know it needs to be editted, but you also need to read some of my shit too. Please be gentle.

Oh, and tonight is the Captains' drinks. I'm putting on my school girl uniform and going to an open bar. I am saying I am going for two drinks, especially after last night, but with Nina involved, I may be persuaded.

So Below--An American's take on Fresher's Week

And it’s Sunday night, one week after Fresher’s week that I write this. The beer belly has subsided, the acne is disappearing, and my body is beginning to feel somewhat back to its old self—although I’ve been too afraid to try my luck at the gym yet. I think any form of exercise may propel me into an asthmatic fit, as the only air I’ve fed my lungs is when it was inhaled through a burning cigarette for the last few weeks, the vice acting as a nasty holdover from my debaucherous time . Two weeks ago today, I declared war on my body. And you know the old cliché “mind over matter”? Well, my body didn’t quite understand that. As much as I pushed my body by feeding it pints for an entire evening and then following up with the kebab van at 3am, it couldn’t make it. I couldn’t make it. So yes, there were a few nights during Fresher’s Week that I missed out on, and instead stayed in reading my trashy detective novels as the rest of you went bop hopping and brought back social and economic vitality to the city.

I just couldn’t hack it.

See, I’m not your typical Fresher who just had their first taste of freedom, reveling in the high of this whole new world of carnal delights of getting blind drunk and pulling people—all without worry that mom and dad are going to find out. I’ve been around the

metaphorical alcohol block, having taken part in such wonderful traditions as Kegs and Eggs (Beer and Breakfast), gone through my own Fresher’s week back home in the United States as an undergrad, and hell even partied my ass off during Mardi Gras when I lived in New Orleans. I know alcohol, and I know how to party.

Or so I thought.

Nothing prepared me for Fresher’s Week—seven days where, for probably the only time during term the alcohol is free, you meet the other strangers you will be living with for the next year, and the only thing that you can be completely sure of is that the other students sitting across from you share your love of Strongbow. No wonder why school sanctioned alcoholism exists. Could you imagine making your Fresher’s week friends without it? Or the real question, what about keeping your new found friends after you sober up at the end of the week. Yea, I didn’t think so either.

It’s understandable why Fresher’s Week exist. No matter what culture you come from, or if you grew up just around the block from the university, it’s still daunting walking into a building of strangers and having none of them know who you are. We’ve all experienced the awkward conversations around the bar, asking the same four questions, “What’s your name? What are you studying? What college? And where do you come from?” while smiling as you try, in vain, to remember the names that you know you will soon forget by the time the next person answers those same four questions. Alcohol, with its ability to inspire self confidence and give you best friends by the end of the night, isn’t the best antidote for lapses in memory—actually, often times it is the culprit.

So you sit around these tables, at bars, at bops, even at dinner trying to find anything in common. Just as you are about to give up hope for any inspiring conversation, that slight tipsy feeling takes hold, and the conversations suddenly get better. Now, I still haven’t figured out whether it is the beer loosening our tongues or just making whatever s/he says that much more interesting—something like beer goggles, except with conversation. And as the night wears on, more drinks are poured, the stories unfold, something in your mind clicks and you begin to think that the people seated next to you, or dancing with, are your best friends.

Or maybe they just feel like it. You know, cause you are thinking with the clearest head at that moment.

And then you start talking, reveal too much, and everyone follows suit. It only takes just one person to start the chain. As the last person finishes talking, telling the group how she cheated on her boyfriend with his best friend or some other defining moment, you are all knee deep in each other’s confidences—a purgatory of friendship status. You know too much to be considered a casual acquaintance, but you also know too much to look that person in the eye the next day.

I’ve been through this. I experienced the American version of Fresher’s week. I’ve told my fair share of embarrassing stories both here and abroad. After a while, getting drunk can get a tad boring. Even if you do drink like an American.

What’s interesting about Oxford is how orientation lasts a full week here, and all of the days end with a trip to the pub—either as a college excursion or in the form of pre-gaming for the bop that night. In the United States, universities know better than to leave American first year students to their own devices with alcohol and other such indulgences. Hence our Fresher’s Weeks tend to last three days at the most—with campus security on heightened alert, and town police making the requisite crack downs on fake IDs as to prevent you from going to the local bar and sharing a drink with your friends.

Confronted with a 21 and over alcohol law, we’ve compensated. Learned our lessons from prohibition era America, and formed elaborate rituals to enable our intoxication. . It’s a catch-22 for the American universities. As underage drinking is illegal, they are in no position to sanction the consumption of booze at parties. But they also know that it breeds this binge drinking culture. We’re forced to retreat inside our rooms, and drink as much as possible so our intoxication will last for most of the night. While ending up incredibly drunk in the process. Catch a drink with an American student on a big party night, and you’ll see our tendency to binge drink as a hold over from our under twenty-one days. We still throw back shots and pints, one after the other, not wanting to lose a moment to sobriety.

I thought I was able to leave that culture behind. I’ve graduated from university back in the states a few years ago and have acquired life experience that dictates, “you really don’t need to chug vodka cranberries, it’s ok, you can get more later.”

But, I’m finding that I did just that during Fresher’s week, reverting back to my undergraduate tendencies. Not realizing that pubs close here by midnight, and the only places left that could legally serve booze are over priced lounges. British students know this, so you’ve adjusted. You tend to start earlier evenings out, grabbing a pint or two with friends and pacing yourselves throughout the night. In the States, “going out” implies drunk, and it also implies a much later start time, especially since we’re afforded the luxury of bars being open until 2am, unlike here. So often times I’ve found myself leaving my room by almost 11pm, only having one hour of drinking time before places close. So once again I am left pounding back drinks because of an early last call, as opposed to the threat of campus police.

It’s actually a curious thing I’ve noticed. Walk the streets around Oxford at 2:30am during Fresher’s week, and you’ll see hoards of students looking for a party, drunk off their asses. I think American students have it the worst though.

This is why I stayed in on some of those nights. I drank like an American student on vacation instead of a European who grew up around it. I couldn’t imagine going out with all of these new people who I knew nothing about without the social ease that each sip of wine, or vodka coke provided.

So it’s no wonder why it can last a week here. As Europeans you are all familiar with the ropes, you already know the rules and how to abide by them—pubs by 8pm to grab a few drinks, make your way to the party at 9-10ish, and then call it a night by 2am. I see Fresher’s Week as an induction of sorts, not only to the culture of the University, but also to its laws and the culturally acceptable way to get drunk.

As I spent the week learning, like many of the international students I ended up at the Purple Turtle looking to dance at 2am, still at the height of my drunkenness as I didn’t realize I should have gotten an earlier start. But, ladies, the Oxford Brooks students are very liberal buying drinks, I’m just saying.

I’m not bashing American laws, nor saying that all American students are out of control binge drinkers and the English are civilized with their drink. Because if that was true I wouldn’t have seen a Fresher vomiting out his window at Brasenose college at 2am one night. But what I am trying to highlight is that I came over here thinking I knew better, assuming I had it all figured out since I’ve “been there, done that”. It wasn’t the case. I learned a lot Fresher’s Week, met a lot of cool people, and of course gained a cultural understanding of what it means to go out Oxford University style.