Overheard on Campus: State Patty's Day edition

Welcome to a new feature on Distant Wanderings. In "Overheard on Campus" I will share tidbits of conversation I overhear as a part of my daily life in a town where half the population is between 18 and 22.

This weekend was State Patty's day...essentially, because Saint Patrick's day falls the Monday after Spring Break, the students decided to mark the occasion en masse by getting outrageously drunk this weekend. This plan started last year, when March 17 fell during Spring Break itself. Today's paper was filled with stories of arrests for public drunkenness, underage drinking and DUI.

As I was leaving my office I overheard a girl on her cellphone speaking with a tone of shock and despair:

"OH MY GOD! OHHHHHHHH! That just makes my weekend, like, a gazillion times more shameful!"

...not sure what exactly she had just learned, but if her weekend was already shameful, and now it's a gazillion times more so, it can't have been good.

Actually, I shouldn't mock, because I had my own State Patrick celebration, hanging out with my friend and neighbor Rachel, her boyfriend and two of her grad school friends who were visiting. Between the gin and tonics and the wine and the more wine and the alcohol in the fondue we made, I probably could have given any of those undergrads a run for their money.