You Meddling Kids

I think I'm officially way too old to live in a dorm. I have a prime room by UNH standards--an air-conditioned single in Congreve, newly renovated, perfectly located etc. But aside from a few upperclassmen, the floor is almost entirely made up of freshmen. (And since when do freshmen get to live in Congreve? I earned this, goddamnit. I lived in a built up triple on Stoke 8 freshman year. Big, bad, vomity, pissy, smelly, Keystone-soaked Stoke: that's where freshmen belong. It builds character. )

But freshmen. Oh, freshmen. They slam the doors. They still think it's awesome that there are no parents around to tell them to turn down the music. (They have two songs: "Fire Burning" by Sean Kingston and"Airplanes" by B.o.B.) They think they're the shit because they got into a frat. They puke in the bathrooms and wear their IDs around their necks and rather adorably ask you for directions to the MUB. And it wasn't even that long ago that I was one of them.

I feel like I'm caught at a weird age. Going to the same party over and over (beer, Beirut, Axe) has gotten kind of boring at this point, but I can't go to the bars and...well, let's be honest, Durham does not offer that much of a chem-free nightlife unless you're really into comedian Bob Marley. I'm old enough to be cranky about asshole freshmen waking me up with slamming doors at 6 a.m.. but obviously, I'm still a 20-year-old. I like to go out and have fun... it's just that lately "fun" doesn't necessarily mean pregaming in somebody's dorm room and then going to some dumpy apartment in the Greens and drinking warm beer. That was awesome when we were freshmen, because we were freshmen. So I don't begrudge the class of 2014 a proper freshman experience--the globe would probably tilt off its axis if freshman girls were mature, sensible creatures.

For me, though, there's something new this year; and I think that it's the very fact that it's not new. I know where everything is. I don't (often) get locked out of my room. I'm not scared of my professors, and I don't get surprised when one of them says "fuck". The dining hall food has long since lost its novelty. Don't get me wrong, I love it here. And I know how fortunate I am to be here and not yet in the working world. But as junior year began yesterday morning, it struck me that this college business is feeling less like an Asher Roth video, and more like...well, I don't know what. Maybe it's only that mysterious "real world" starting to seep in at the edges, just a bit.