Drinking, and particularly underage drinking is a possibility that seems to flood your consciousness when you step onto a college campus like the University of Georgia. It’s pervasive, and everyone who’s anyone seems to be doing it. Of course there are conscientious objectors, medical abstainers, and those who decide to just wait until they’re 21, but at least in my experience it seems that almost everyone falls into the camp that imbibes.
One of the first things I did in college was decide I couldn’t beat them so I might as well join them. The obvious question is why, but until recently I didn’t know why. In fact the answer to that question has always eluded me, because everything about my first weekend of college should have convinced me …show more content…
The officer gave us a warning for making an illegal left turn and let us go. He talked to the driver for about half an hour to freak the rest of us out, but at the end of the night, we made it home. The next day we discovered the tire that hopped the curb was flat, but in the grand scheme of things, so many more things could have gone wrong.
The fact that we didn’t get in more trouble than we did that night was a blessing, and an opportunity to reflect on our decisions. That didn’t happen though. Two days later there was another party, at another house, with the same people, and all the same people were drinking. All the same feelings of insecurity arose, and similarly the same poor decisions regarding alcohol arose. I’d lie to say this pattern resolved itself after I got settled in, but the fact of the matter is that it plagued me for most of my freshman year. To make things worse I was struggling with all this on top of struggling with my faith. The two were intertwined; my drinking challenged my faith, and when I’d be put in a situation where drinking was an option, I didn’t have the faith to state that I was uncomfortable. Meanwhile I grew to enjoy drinking, particularly craft beer, and that made me less comfortable with my faith. It was turning into a cycle. To be honest it was worrying me, and that was worrying the people that knew me well enough to know what was going
One of the first things I did in college was decide I couldn’t beat them so I might as well join them. The obvious question is why, but until recently I didn’t know why. In fact the answer to that question has always eluded me, because everything about my first weekend of college should have convinced me …show more content…
The officer gave us a warning for making an illegal left turn and let us go. He talked to the driver for about half an hour to freak the rest of us out, but at the end of the night, we made it home. The next day we discovered the tire that hopped the curb was flat, but in the grand scheme of things, so many more things could have gone wrong.
The fact that we didn’t get in more trouble than we did that night was a blessing, and an opportunity to reflect on our decisions. That didn’t happen though. Two days later there was another party, at another house, with the same people, and all the same people were drinking. All the same feelings of insecurity arose, and similarly the same poor decisions regarding alcohol arose. I’d lie to say this pattern resolved itself after I got settled in, but the fact of the matter is that it plagued me for most of my freshman year. To make things worse I was struggling with all this on top of struggling with my faith. The two were intertwined; my drinking challenged my faith, and when I’d be put in a situation where drinking was an option, I didn’t have the faith to state that I was uncomfortable. Meanwhile I grew to enjoy drinking, particularly craft beer, and that made me less comfortable with my faith. It was turning into a cycle. To be honest it was worrying me, and that was worrying the people that knew me well enough to know what was going