Collegiate Times

You?re sitting on the couch in your apartment, doing the same old things you do every day. Flipping through channels, deciding whether to watch a rerun of ?Parental Control? on MTV or rent the second season of Laguna Beach on DVD. Look at yourself and what you?ve become.

This isn?t what you imagined college was going to be ? was it? It could just be that end-of-the-year malaise that makes you feel like there?s nothing left to do in Blacksburg, but it?s not. Here?s a reality check ? sitting around waiting for something fun to happen isn?t what college is about. It?s about creating your own fun and being spontaneous.

Every day seems to be the same around here. You wake up, go to class, get haggled by someone in the middle of the Drillfield who gives you a flyer you immediately throw in the trash, and return home to procrastinate until you?re too tired to browse Facebook profiles any more.

I had a revelation the other day when one of my friends very bluntly stated the words, ?Guys ? we are in college.? Though those words seem to be simple and few, they hold importance to the way we should be living.

These are the days we should be enjoying ? spending time with our friends, doing outrageous things and just having fun with life. These are some of my favorite spontaneous college memories, all of which occurred without the help of alcohol.

There?s the time we baked cookies and sold them from a balcony downtown on a Saturday night. This may have been one of my most random college memories thus far. This balcony, overlooking College Avenue next to the Lyric, was from an apartment where my friend lived last year.

We could have easily stood there throwing water balloons on people, but I learned that drunken people would pay anything for a cookie, and there is a certain satisfaction you get from feeding the intoxicated.

If you want to be spontaneous and get a good date out of it, I suggest holding a ?Date Night? in your apartment or dorm. The boys can ask the girls, or the girls can ask the boys. All this night needs to consist of is three guys, three random girls to be their dates, a little bit of awkwardness because nobody really knows each other that well, and a home-cooked meal like spaghetti (idiot-proof enough for a bunch of college boys to make well enough to be edible), but which still comes out a little questionable and funky-tasting.

From my experiences with date night, I?ve gotten to see that harmless dates are amusing and some boys out there are genuine enough to do things like this for girls.

This year I realized that living in a dorm shouldn?t be a barrier that holds you back from having your own date night. This year my friends and I premiered quite possibly the worlds very first ?Date Night: Dorm Style.? I know that probably sounds like a new MTV reality show, but it?s innocent fun I think everyone should have once in a while.

Maybe you think I have yet to reach true spontaneity in my college years and I should just stop writing this column for my own good. Well, the past two weekends have proven to be the most spur-of-the-moment of my college days. One consisted of pulling an ?all-nighter,? but don?t be fooled. This night had nothing to do with studying.

It was a series of semi-illegal events on the Virginia Tech campus that probably shouldn?t be explained any further, ending with a breakfast at Joe?s Diner at five in the morning, where of course the milkshake machine was ?broken? (because they always say it is). This night made me glad that I went against the norm and had a night of fun with my friends I won?t ever forget.

Then this past weekend happened. I thought it would be a normal Saturday night just hanging out with a group of my friends, being indecisive as usual and probably not ending up doing much. That lasted until someone made the suggestion, ?Let?s camp out and watch the sunrise at Dragon?s Tooth.? Sunrise? It?s 1:30 a.m. and the sun doesn?t rise for another five hours. Exactly.

So basically what I?m trying to get at is that fun isn?t always going to be planned out for you during your college days. Sometimes it?s going to be up to us to utter the spontaneous idea that our friends might reject, but if you don?t, you may never know what they think.

So be safe and spontaneous, Virginia Tech, because college shouldn?t be about playing by the rules. Just remember that even though the year is almost over, the spontaneous fun doesn?t have to be.