As a college student, a common stereotype, or societal expectation, of your weekend activities include drinking, or partying, or using recreational drugs, and in some cases, all of the above simultaneously. Well, not this college student. First off, where I go to college the most common recreational drugs aren’t legal, nor is consuming alcohol at any age under 21. Parties? Yeah, those are legal. So why do I choose not to party and drink? Good question, the answer is simple, I don’t want to.

First, I’ve never been a fan of large crowds of people and ridiculously loud music. It’s just not appealing to me. Lots of people, songs that I don’t know or like, sweaty people, strange smells, lights making it impossible to see straight, nope, count me out.

Secondly, I don’t see the point in drinking, as in getting completely and utterly wasted to the point where you don’t know what happened last night. Sure, it’s fine to have a few drinks when you’re hanging out with some of your friends, but only when you're of legal age. There’s so many risks you take when you make that choice that a lot of people don’t even realize. Growing up with a first responder as a father, every officer on the police department, every firefighter, every paramedic, and so on, knows him so the minute they figure out my last name they automatically connect me and my dad. Also, I’ve heard all the calls at two o'clock in the morning, “18 year old female excessively vomiting, possible alcohol poisoning”; “head on collision, one driver intoxicated minor injuries, other driver unresponsive”, and so on. I understand that it doesn’t always happen like that, but even so, what would you do if it happened to you? How would your family react? These are dangerous situations and sadly, some people don’t come out of them alive. That’s what people don’t realize. They think, “it won’t happen to me”, but newsflash, if you could ask one individual sitting behind bars for manslaughter and driving under the influence what they thought the night they decided to go out and get drunk and then choose to get behind the wheel; they would say they didn’t think it would ever happen to them. Just because it may not have impacted you personally, doesn’t mean it can’t. Things happen unexpectedly all the time.

Thirdly, I also don’t see the point in messing with drugs of any sort, other than ones that are specifically prescribed to you by a doctor for a certain amount of time that you take as prescribed. Today’s generation, college students especially, are using recreational drugs more and more. Personally, I don’t want to ever mess around with that. The same thing goes for using recreational drugs as for alcohol. There’s so much that can go wrong. Yeah, nothing may have happened to you while using them yet, but it doesn't mean it won’t. Life is full of unexpected events, some are good, but some are bad, and some... are fatal.

Now I’m not saying you can die just by simply consuming alcohol, or using recreational drugs, or going to parties, there’s a lot of other variables that factor into making dangerous, life threatening situations. What I’m saying is I don’t see the point, that’s all. But I know a lot of people who think it’s fun, and I’m friends with some of those people. I don’t think less of them just because they choose to do those things. It’s their life so they make decisions for themselves, as they should. If they ask, I’ll give them my honest opinion. But if not, then I stay out of it. Do I get a lot of crap from people saying that I’m not fun, or that I’m boring, or that I play it safe too much? Heck yeah! And do I get called your stereotypical “good girl” or a “goody two shoes”? Yep! Do I care? H-e-double-hockey-sticks no! It’s simply how I’ve chosen to live my life, and last time I checked, I’m a legal adult and I can make decisions for myself. So please, step aside and go back to your life and making decisions for yourself. I'll continue to be a "Goody-Two-Shoes". Thank you.