Class of 2015, as you venture through the first few weeks at UW-Madison, you may now be realizing Wisconsin stereotypes about cow farms and cheese are not all true, while rumors about alcoholism and rednecks are very accurate. The school is everything ‘College Life' made it seem to be.
Also, you freshmen are realizing that in this magical time called ""college,"" you are free to stay out late, get belligerent, go to class high, and have unsafe sex (even though in reality your night consists of getting drunk with two other dudes, playing COD, getting Ian's and masturbating into a sock after your roommate passes out). Your class is like any other: the bros, the geeks, the ugly girls, and the dumbasses who only got in because they were validvictorian at some tiny, inbred school up north. I am going to tell you what you don't yet understand: How to be college and shit.
Don't wear your high school letterman jackets. Here in college, people give 0.0 fucks about the fact that you have one. You very likely got it benchwarming on a Division XI football team or it is an academic one. Everyone here has an academic letter from high school.
One more note on attire, and this one is more for the ladies: Don't feel like you need to come to Friday morning classes looking snazzy. We're all hungover, and no one will judge you for coming in sweatpants and a ponytail. In fact, that looks better than if you come to class in high heels and nefarious-looking stains on the skirt you wore last night. Besides, hungover guys at 8 a.m. don't really care about boobs. Try again in 12 hours.
Also, 12 dudes walking down the street hammered is either a frat-squad or a freshman herd. You don't want to be either. Talk to girls. And I know, their menstruation attracts bears, but you're going to have to take that risk if you want to fit in. Same goes to the group of girls stumbling around, about a liter of watermelon vodka too far, screaming, ""ladies night, bitches!"" Talk to boys. We all know how much you like to cock-tease.
Another thing that needs to change is your sense of humor. I was the king of phallic symobls in high school. I drew pictures of dicks on the shaft of a giant picture of a dick I just drew and then wrote ""buttsecks"" underneath it. But it's different in college. Try to focus less on dicks and farts and wondering if queefs are real.
This tip is more my pet peeve than it is college etiquitte. If you somehow convince some drunk, loose gorilla into having sex with you, great. But do not talk about it in class the next day with your bros. It is super annoying, and very freshman, to talk about that kind of stuff in public. ""Dude, it was literally the best 45 seconds of my life. I was so drunk I could barely even see her Adam's apple."" The same applies to getting messed up. No one wants to hear how drunk you were, how many wieners you sucked, or how little you can remember of it.
One last thing from every upperclassman who ever harrasses you for being a freshman. We do not hate you because you are young, or immature, or showing cleavage on Friday mornings. We hate you because we know how good your year will be. It is the craziest and most care-free, energetic year of your life. When we insult you from our awesome balconies, it is really because we wish we were still in that care-free, magical year. Because you get to party a whole year with other crazy kids while we upperclassmen have harder classes, more responsibility, part time jobs and extracurriculars. So live it up, freshmen.
Are you an embarrassing freshman bringing shame upon your school? Make Ben jealous of your youthful escapades at stoffelrosal@wisc.edu
