Winter Break Memories

This time of year always reminds me of finals week at Penn State, just before the winter break. Students would trudge through a very hard semester of drinking, partying, and a little bit of schoolwork. Then, finals week would beckon said students to open up many a book for the first time all semester, to try and cram as much information into their alcohol-soaked skulls as possible. Or, as my roommate Mung would do, purchase Nittany Notes and leave them all around the apartment.

** Mung informed me to let people know that despite his lax college attitude, he is in fact very successful, being a vice president in a large company. Learning came very easy for Mung, so he chose other alternatives instead of going to class and being bored.**

I thoroughly enjoyed when I only had 1 final to study for. That way, I wouldn’t be overloaded with harmful studying that would get in the way of drink specials at the local hangouts.

Winter break was always a welcomed time to reconnect with friends and family back home, shop for Christmas presents, get away from the rigorous studying, and most importantly to detox for three weeks. For me, I would go home, hang out with some friends, and work at the pet shop for vital spending money.

Of course, the 3 weeks went rather quickly. Don’t get me wrong – I was happy to see my roommates again and resume our bar schedule, but it was nice to not have to worry about classes and responsibilities.

A New Twist on the Chicken Dance

Sometimes we used to go out and drink on a week night … o.k., we did it more than sometimes. But, in our defense, there was some fantastic deals that we couldn’t possibly afford to pass up ($1.00 pitchers at the Den, 50 cent black and tans at the G-Man, 5 cent wings at the Café).

One night, we decided to go to one of the bars, but Mung was unable to go because he actually had to study. Of course, he used Nittany Notes, because his notebook was curiously empty due to the fact that he was never able to make it to class (note – he wasn’t busy, he didn’t have any conflicts, and he wasn’t sick. He decided that scratching his balls and sleeping were more important to him).

The remaining roommates decided to get plastered. I forget to where we went to pickle our livers, due to the horrid events that came after the self-medication. As faithful roommates, we decided to come back and wake Mung up. You see, we thought he’d (a) enjoy being woken up by his drunk roommates, (b) certainly like to hear his inebriated roomies tell him undecipherable stories about what happened at the watering hole, and (c) he’d certainly enjoy the damp musty bar smell that we had managed to bring home with us.

But, we roommates were a creative bunch. Instead of just plowing the door down and making a loud ruckus, we planned a different entrance (actually, I’m not even sure we planned it – it just kind of happened). We flung Mung’s bedroom door open, and began to do a drunken chicken dance – never once looking to see if Mung was even awake. I believe we entertained ourselves with this for a good 5 minutes, before we tired of it.

Then, we glanced over at Mung’s bed and viewed in horror at the sordid appearance. Mung was smiling at us. Normally, this is scary enough. However, Mung was smiling at us, whilst wearing his birthday suit. We were frozen like Roman statues for what seemed to be hours (but was only probably 10 seconds). And then, we decided to “sacrifice” the closest-standing roommate to Mung. We flung Slant on top of Mung and exited the room as we heard the waning shrieks of Mung’s sacrificial lamb.

Weird College-Related Dreams

Have you ever had dreams that revolved around your time in college? I’m not talking about memories, or anything like that. I’m talking about dreams that you were BACK in college. I’ve had several of these in recent years for some reason. The recurring theme of the dream is that I can’t remember all the classes that I have scheduled for the “current” semester.

The dreams take two directions. The first one, I am half-way through the semester, but I fear that I have scheduled a class that I have forgotten about and never shown up to. I hate this one. I feel so helpless, and I actually start going to the class in the hopes of somehow passing it. I never finish the dream, so I’m not sure if I passed.

The second dream actually starts before the semester begins. The only problem is, I don’t have a list of any of my classes. I go to the Bursar or Registrar (or whoever is supposed to help me), but they ask me for a lot of stuff that I can’t give them (ID, transcripts, etc.), OR they ask for a whole sh*tload of money.

I’m not sure what these dreams mean, so I figured I’d see if any of you geniuses can offer “ideas.”