Being in your first year at a university can be one of the greatest times of your life. However, getting thrown into a new environment and exposed to a whole new “culture” can create the perfect mix of elements that leave you lost, confused or embarrassed, with the upperclassmen simply shaking their heads in distain and muttering. College Magazine readers share their most embarrassing, hilarious, or just plain disastrous stories from freshman year.
“During my freshman year at IWU, the election hype was big because most of my class had just turned 18. Of course, rather than asking each other rational reasons why we planned to vote for our chosen presidential candidate, we all looked at it as more of a game. My roommate and I were both outspoken Democrats…We decided to rally support in a non-traditional way (and one that the Obama campaign would probably not have endorsed): we encouraged our all-girl floor to, ‘Shave for Obama—No More Bush!’ Unfortunately, the signs we put up on everyone’s doors and in the shower rooms were taken down by our RA…” –Jennie Ceisel, Illinois Wesleyan University
“Once I got really drunk freshman year…for some reason I thought it would be a good idea to slap the butt of every single girl at the pregame; so that’s what I did. The next morning I found out it was captured on video by my friend. Luckily everyone sort of thought it was funny, even the girls, but I was humiliated” –Pat Devlin*, Purdue University
“My first final exam of freshman year, I wandered around someone's house for 15 minutes before I realized that my exam was in another building. I had never been to the department building before, many of our university buildings look like houses, and the door was open. After seeing 5 empty pizza boxes and 3 blowup reindeer, and yelling my professor’s name [in Hindi, since I was trying to find my Hindi exam room] I realized my friend had accidentally given me the address for the house next to the exam building. Luckily no one was home.” –Nicole Noronha, Brown University
“When I got to college, I’d never heard of the term ‘jungle juice’ and didn’t really understand the concept or how unsafe it could be. I went to a party where every fifteen minutes, you had to finish your cup of jungle juice. No one was really doing this, but as a gullible freshman, I was. After 3 full cups, someone told me that this jungle juice included extremely high alcohol content liquor and kool-aid. The night did not end well and from then on, I realized to be careful with mixed drinks at house parties—and that you don’t always have to follow drinking rules” – Fern Armstrong*, Georgetown University
*Names have been changed
