We hear that today marks the official commencement of Orientation Week-the hallowed time allotted for you to get to know your fellow frosh, have fun, and begin a new chapter of your life. We know it’s frosh week not because we pay attention to these things, but because we can hear the frat on St. George St. blasting their stereo from here (Red Hot Chili Peppers? What decade is this??) in a lame attempt to attract the confused, sweatpants-wearing masses. We can smell it in the air-that fresh scent of free frosh-kit condoms made into slippery water balloons, the hot, bleached ‘n’ plastic-bound smell of poli sci course readers, the salicylic odour of acne medication, and the egregious reek of Axe.
We know what you’re thinking at this very moment, you who reached adulthood after 9/11. You’re expecting this editorial to talk about how we remember our own frosh week, remembered in our fuzzy 21- and 22-year-old memories, and how much fun it was, how we made friends, how we learned not to eat six egg rolls in a row and wash them down with Smirnoff Razberi, and how that guy with the Abercrombie shirt we thought was cute was actually only cute after the Smirnoff, and how his shirt was actually made for him by his mom and said “Adam Cornbie.”
We would go on to relate how we shined shoes for cystic fibrosis, hungover on a Tuesday morning, and had an epiphany that maybe, just maybe, it was possible to do some good in this world, and how it could have been us with cystic fibrosis, but it wasn’t, it wasn’t, and how we made a vow that, once we reached 35 and, with it, our last student loan payment, we would give money to charity too, or at least shop at stores that offered to donate a small part of the cost of our purchase on our behalf.
We would love to say all of those things, but we can’t. We never went to frosh week. We’re sorry. We also never went to our prom. We’re really not bad people. Part of the reason for not going to our prom was that it fell on the black year we had shaved our heads. But the real reason was money (we had none). Between avoiding prom and frosh week, we saved around $400, which we were able to spend on a whole half-course in existentialism, where we met University Boyfriend #1 anyway.
At The Varsity, we never try to get you to do what we do, because a) it’s pointless, and b) you really don’t want to be like us-really. But we’ll give out just one piece of friendly advice: don’t take part in frosh week if you don’t want to. It can be really fun for some people, and profitable in terms of free deodorant samples and whatnot, but really boring and sometimes humiliating in the extreme for others. You can make friends and relax, or alternately you can lose yourself in chanting and escapism and never really come back, only to find yourself a rez don at 24 still trying to finish up that econ degree whilst unsuccessfully chasing around first-year girls.
Pathetic, no? Yes, it could be. So don’t go if it’s not for you. Go to the events you don’t have to pay for if you simply must meet people. Get started on The Faerie Queene so you can impress the hott poetry prof, if that’s how you roll. Or just curl up in bed, grab the cutie from the next dorm, and watch “Deadwood” on your laptop together.
And if all the “partying” is what you’re after-though you really, really shouldn’t be as you’re way too young-well, as Britney said in that video Kevin took of her that got leaked to YouTube: “I’d rather just sit at home and drink.”
