I figure pretty much everyone has a rude awakening to life when they go away to school for the first time. You are exposed to so many new experiences and people. You are only responsible for yourself and you are beholden to no one.
Oddly, this led to my first "grown-up" feeling. You know. Those moments in life where you think to yourself "OMG,! I am actually an adult!"
This is not a typical adult moment by any stretch. I was in this dormitory talent show with two other girls who were my next-door-neighbors. They were music majors, too. Holly was a violinist, and Laurie was a voice major. We teamed up to sing "Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy" in three part harmony. Holly on the lead, Laurie on soprano, and I got stuck on bass but also sang all the highest notes since Laurie couldn't go as high as I could. I didn't have her power, but I had the better range.
We were waiting our turn to perform and Holly started playing around with the microphone, pretending to fart into it after each line of the song. I had a very clear sense of knowing I was an adult in that very un-adult-like moment.
I am not sure what it was that made me feel that "I'm an adult" feeling. I think it was because no one was there to tell us not to act so silly. In fact, the only person who could be called "an authority figure" was the RA who was probably all of 21 years old. A peer, really.
You would think that maybe my realization that I was in adulthood would lead to more mature decisions. Riiight...
I can honestly say that I was a super straight/nerdy/prudish teetotaler in high school. I never got drunk. Never had sex. Didn't have any clue that there were even any drugs in the world. I am pretty sure, in hindsight, that there was a whole world of debauchery going o around me but my friends were savvy enough to leave me out of it. I'm not sure why they let me be their friends, given what a judgmental party-pooper I could be!
I won't say I went wild in college. I never skipped a class , even though I never carried fewer than 16 credit hours. The worst thing I did academically were that a dropped a class (The History of Jazz- the professor took all of the soul right out of it and left it bleeding out every ounce of interesting).and I flunked statistic the first time. Since stats is a required course for psychology majors, I had to take it again. The second time I took it, I found a professor who understood the math anxiety from which every female psychology/music major suffered and geared it toward being something interesting...like what the statistics actually measure rather that just how to get the measurement numbers.. Actually, the real reason I don't like math is that you can't divide numbers by zero, and I just can't get a visual of why. Plus, the only useful part of math in my life is percentages, because I need to know how much a sweater costs if it's marked 30% off.
So academically at least, I remained pretty committed and made some semi-mature decisions. I won't say I was wild in college at all, but to some degree I discovered the sex, drugs, and rock and roll aspect of life.
The very first thing I discovered was that boys were actually attracted to me (!!) I had boyfriends and dated in high school, but the friendships always happen first. Now, the guys were pursuing me, Since I'd never seen them before, I knew it was based purely on how I looked. Revelation! I was a hottie! I didn't really know how to handle that type of attention. I made out (just kissing and groping. I think the kids today use the term "making out" as a euphemism for intercourse) Some of the guys were cuter than others, and I had one guy who followed my around like a puppy dog until I let him down gently bu completely ignoring him. Telling him I wasn't interested just seemed rude.
I also discovered that college guys were not willing to date a girl who wouldn't go past that version of making out. I had at least two guys who quit pursing me after a few weeks of dating because I wouldn't have sex. I told one guy I didn't have "experience" and he said, "Do you think I;m stupid?". I took me a while to figure out that he thought I was lying. Nope, I was just naive.
The "drugs" part of my wild and crazy freshman year was actually just me getting drunk for the first time. Remember Holly, the microphone farter? We used her empty violin case to sneak a bottle rum into our dorm room. I don't know how we got the rum in the first place, but were thought we were pretty ingenious to use her violin case to get it past the RA. Just think of how much more booze we would have been able to sneak in if we used a cello case instead!
My first serious drinking experience was a rum and coke party in the dorm room. I got drunk enough to puke it all up. To this day I am no fan of rum and coke. As I puked into the trash can, I just kept thinking "This is so un-ladylike". I don't remember getting drunk again for a very long time!
The rock and roll aspect of those days was real more of a discovery of true straight-ahead jazz courtesy of my first real long-time boyfriend. I branched out from Brahms and Tchaikovsky (my fave composers) to Phil Woods and the Toshiko Akioshi-Lew Tobackin big band. What a rebel I was!
That's enough for this post. Here is a picture of me from those days
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