Life After College: Alumni Weekends

After you graduate college, certain things in life are easy to define as socially unacceptable. Like driving your parent's station wagon. Or working retail in a mall department store. But road trips back to your alma mater are a little more unclear. There is a questionable line between recent college graduate and creepy old man. But what is it? When are college road trips filled with public intoxication officially deemed socially unacceptable? Is it when you run out of friends at your old school and are forced to rent a hotel room? Is it after you get married and have your first kid? Or is it when it seems like a good idea to buy a coffee mug with your school’s logo on it from the campus bookstore? As you head back for your next college visit, take a look at some things you’ll run into when trying to escape the reality of growing up for at least a couple of days.

Friday Morning: After taking Friday off from work to get an early start on the weekend, you wake up around noon without a care in the world. It's just like your Friday mornings were in college, but instead of waking up next to the girl who sits behind you in Economics, you wake up to the family dog drooling and staring back at you. Five years ago, you were told the reason to go to college was to get an education and make something of yourself. But as you drive off in your same old shit box car retailed at $1,200, you realize the only things your college education has given you are student loans and a recreational drug habit. Enjoy the ride. Maybe it will give you time to think of your future.

Day Drinking: A few acceptable excuses for drinking before noon are bachelor parties, living in the Midwest, and alumni weekends. And although you already have your degree, you've never been one to forget about the advantages of secondary education. If the local townies can drink all day without being judged, why can't you? For this weekend, you're just like them with the only difference being that your salary lies slightly above the poverty line.

18-Year-Old Freshmen: When you were 18, these girls had yet to buy their first bra and still loved their father. Since then, things have changed. The definition of consensual sex with them has become legal, although the ones who hate their fathers the most are usually the ones still not wearing a bra. In a crowd of hundreds of girls, it's hard to pick out your soul-mate for the next few hours. Fortunately, the bouncers mark an "X," or bullseye on all of the underage girls entering the bar to give you a better idea of your sleeping arrangements for the night.

Sleeping Arrangements: Unless you're cheating on your wife or have a cocaine habit, renting a hotel room if you're under 30 is for losers. And you're not a loser. You're just saving your money for a long term investment. For the $100 you could have spent on a hotel, you're better off spending that on drinks to sneak to the underage girls in the bathroom. And unlike a hotel, a freshmen dormitory comes with free sex and prescription drugs, otherwise known as "Hilton Rewards." If you're unable to get lucky, you always have the floor of your old roommate's little brother to fall back on. Suddenly your parent's basement doesn't seem like such a bad thing.

Sunday Drive Home: By now, you know what Brett Favre felt like for the last 10 years of his career. Your head is ringing, your back is going in and out of spasms from sleeping on the floor, and you've realized that you're too old to continue keeping up with this lifestyle. But unlike Favre and football, a weekend of binge drinking is not a legitimate medical reason for a subscription of painkillers. And as you walk back to your car, you'll have to settle with the physical and emotional torture of a lonely ride back to the "real world."

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