Is This College Life?

I don't know. Maybe it's just me. But there are so many things that piss me off about my roommate that no one else seems to notice. Maybe it comes from living with the person. Maybe it comes from having a very different moral structure. Maybe it's just because I was raised to conduct myself properly.

Whatever the reason, I seriously hope that I do not live with her next semester. In fact, I hope I only have contact with a few people in the group I have found myself in and even that contact better be limited to the weekdays or the weekends they choose not to consume alcohol or mess with illegal substances. Which, in reality, will be never.

I really do not think that any of them have any idea how much I hate the way they act. How much they have driven me to hate my decision to come here. How much I want to just run away every weekend and never come back.

Sometimes I think about my life back in high school and wonder if the people I was friends with then will still be the same people now. Have they changed so much too? Do they drink every weekend with no regard for the law or their own morals? I hope not. I don't want to feel so alone in this world.

It has occurred to me that I could conduct a study here, for my own personal enjoyment, to discover the reason why these people partake in the activities they do, but for reasons not mentioned here that could get very personal very quickly. Perhaps that is not the best idea.

But I really do not understand it. And I want to. I have no desire to ever get drunk or ever get high, yet these people crave it. Is it the freedom? Liberation? Thrill of doing something illegal? Are they simply chasing their first high? What drove them to try in the first place? Peer pressure? Am I the only one strong enough to resist? So many questions running through my head that I want answered. But I can't ask them. It goes back to how I was raised. It is socially unacceptable to ask such personal questions without invitation.

Speaking of how I was raised, my roommate has introduced me to another aspect of college that I am glad to not be partaking in - the random hook up. To clarify, this does not mean simply making out or cuddling. This is the whole shebang, the phrase "hook up" being used to the fullest extent. The first week she did not stay in our room at least twice. She was never "official" with this hook up, and moved on to another fairly quickly. She was unofficially with this one for about a week before randomly returning home and randomly hooking up with someone there before returning to her second hook up. Though she is now pursuing an actual relationship with this one, she will move on if he does not make a move. I am counting the days until hook up number four.

I know a few people in relationships that both go to this college, but live in different dorms. They seem very happy and spend a lot of time together, but not much apart. As I am one of a few people I know in a long distance relationship, I envy this closeness distance wise, but feel that I would not want to spend so much time with my boyfriend. I want to sit them down and ask how it is and if they ever get annoyed by being around each other so often, but that just seems like I would be prying into their relationship too much. The girl across the hall is in a long distance relationship, about the same distance as mine. Her's is not as strong as mine, but they seem to make it work better. I have a different set of questions for her, but again, I do not want to pry.

Somewhere in all these musings, there is a question (and some follow ups, if applicable) I would like to pose to anyone who happens to stumble across this. What was/is/do you imagine will be your first year of college like on the social front? If this includes illegal use of...well, anything, why did you choose that? Had you tried it before? Was peer pressure ever involved? If this includes many "random hook ups," what caused them? Did any grow into anything more? If you were in a relationship, did your significant other attend the same college or did they attend another college? How did that work out? What did you do to try and make it work?

I have so many questions, but no possible way of getting any answers. There are no textbooks for things such as this.