Ok, I'll admit it: during my four years of high school and all years prior to high school, I never had a sip of alcohol. Most people in my high school drank. Even many of my closest friends had at least tried alcohol and knew how it tasted before college started. Not me. When I tossed my graduation cap in the air, I could also proudly say I never let a drop of alcohol enter my body.
The transition to college would entail the transition into nights without a curfew, nights with exposure to drinks and nobody to tell me not to drink them, nights where I had to use my own discretion to determine what was right and what was wrong. Naturally, everybody knew this new freedom is dramatic for all incoming college students, especially those of us who were relatively sheltered in high school, so everybody tries to compile a list of rules for going out in college. Many of the rules I had heard many times before: don't leave a drink unattended, don't go out alone, don't leave anybody somewhere, make sure you have a safe way to get home. However, no rule stood out to me as much as one I had heard on a TV segment about college advice.
Don't let one night change your life.
This rule is all-encompassing. All of the other rules of partying in college are simply precautions founded on this one idea. If we leave a drink unattended, go out alone, leave a friend somewhere, or fail to get home safely, we could suffer repercussions that can change our lives. Do we really want to give a single night of college that power? Power to change every single night that follows whether we suffer from effects of a substance or the burning guilt of abandoning a friend? We have plenty of nights to go out and plenty of nights in our lives to come. One night should not harm them all.
The video The Time You Have (In JellyBeans) can perfectly illustrate this idea. If every single jellybean represented an hour in an average life, we would still have many jellybeans left in our lives. In other words, we have many hours to live. Imagine if a single jellybean represented the hour represented the hour we chose to do one shot too many, the hour we picked up a drink after leaving it unattended, the hour we made a decision to perform an act we would regret forever. That single jellybean would, in turn, soil every jellybean that represented an hour in our lives.
Should we let one jellybean destroy them all?
We all make mistakes and poor decisions in our lives. Sometimes, we may crush a few jellybeans as we pay the price for our choices. We are not perfect. We are humans, we have flaws, and we aren't proud of all of our actions. But sometimes, we have to think and ask ourselves if one of our decisions will destroy too many jellybeans. I now ask myself that question.
As all of us college students continue embrace these four years, often deemed the best four years of our lives, we should allow ourselves to experience them to the fullest. However, we need to live each and every day as a brand new day, a blank canvas we will eventually fill with all that we do whether we stay in or work or let loose. We should not let a previous day stain the canvas of every day to come. Our entire experience should be a progression, where we slowly cultivate skills and blossom into young adults. What do we want to remember the day we bid our campuses farewell?
