OK, so now I am at college. I live in a 7 story dorm, in a room with two beds, cinder blocks and a girl who won't talk to me. She is a Forestry student and tells me she hates people, only likes trees. The dorm is on top of a huge hill, that you have to walk like 100 steps down the hill to get to class, and 100 steps back up to get back home. That was a huge incentive to want to go to class. Oh, and it rains and snows non stop. My parents never discussed weather, when we were looking at schools. silly me, I thought all places had Long Island weather. I really was naive.
One great thing, and it is great to this day, is that a friend of mine from high school, was put across the hall from me in my dorm. I didn't even know she was going to my school, so this was very lucky. We became fast best friends, and she is still my close friend to this day, so that was a real blessing.
So, we have to figure out our schedules. My father was into me being an accountant remember? So I was enrolled in the Business School. I had no interest in this. I don't remember going to any kind of guidance session on picking classes, but somehow I learned about basic core freshman classes and just signed up for the regular Liberal Arts freshman classes. I never did take a business class. I was way more interested in the Liberal Arts. I signed up for Psychology and Philosophy, and I remember being excited about those.
I think the main mistake of my college career was, I went to a school that was way too big for me. Neither of my parents had gone to college. It was more like the American dream they never got to do, so they were living it through their kids. So I don't think they realized or understood that smaller schools had smaller classes. At my school many of the classes were in huge auditoriums and I just couldn't really relate to it. You had a text book to read and the teachers just basically regurgitated back what you read. There didn't seem to be any room for creative thought. I remember my first English writing assignment. The teacher gave back the papers and was so proud of himself for giving everyone in the class either a D or an F. To me, this just ruined my inspiration. The straw that really broke the camels back is when I handed in a philosophy test about a book I had been really excited about. I got a bad grade because I had my own perspective on it, and was severely reprimanded for putting a smiley face at the bottom of the test paper. I was 17 when I entered college.
My freshman year in college I majored in getting stoned. Yup, you read it right. I was thrown into an environment where everyone was getting stoned. It was 1970. We were behind the times at my hometown, or at least I was, but they were right in the swing of things in my college. Not only were people getting stoned, but they were on alot of other things too. Alot of people were on downers, whatever they were. I never took any. LSD was really popular too.
So I had a great time. I was stoned all the time. It was lots of fun. I went to my classes, did my work, passed everything, but when I think back to that year, the main thing I remember is getting stoned.
A footnote. I am NOT advocating getting stoned on pot with this. Actually, I do not like pot. When I look back at my college days, I look back with sorrow about all the drug use that went on there. I was simply an extremely naive kid, thrown into that environment, by my unsuspecting parents, and got swept into the tide of things. I believe pot hurt my physical body in the long road, and I DO NOT advocate it's use.
copyright 2010 © Stacey Bander. Please contact for any reuse.
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