Back to college?

Whilst I am here in the USA I really, really want to find out more about what college (university) life is like.

Look, I’ve watched enough crappy TV shows and movies (yes, I am totally basing this on American Pie 2 and Monsters University) to have a burning desire to rock up as a Freshman and infiltrate all the clubs and societies and go to lots of fraternity and sorority parties and do all the things like they do in the movies (well, perhaps not all, but a lot 😉 ).

I think my burning desire to do this is partly based on the fact that I hear from my American friends what their college days were like, and it really does sound so very different from university back in the UK. Like, really different, except that I expect people would say ‘like’ a lot like I just did in the middle of, like, a sentence.

Did I actually just say I was inspired by American Pie 2….?!

Anyway, I have been advised by my lawyer chum Tom that it would probably be best not to ‘infiltrate’ these events (he also advised me against giving my cell number to a couple of 18 year olds who need a ‘responsible’ adult to come to their aid when they are getting busted by the PoPo for underage drinking, just so that I can go and pick them up and then suss out what’s going on in Partysville – note, that it is not a real place in the USA, I just made that up). In retrospect, he may very well be right.

If I really wanted to get the lowdown, a lovely young lady has created the Freshman Girl’s Guide to Frat Parties, so in theory I could just read this and be done with it.

However, my ‘need’ to experience this first hand is possibly also based on the fact that I turn 39 tomorrow and I keep thinking of all the things I want to do before I am 40. I can confirm that attending a Freshman’s party is one of them. I just want a peek in! Life at a British university in ‘Freshers’ Week’, as we called it, was pretty raucous and exceptionally good fun, but there is a side to it in American unis that it totally and utterly different and I know I would never get to experience it, unless I enroll on that drama course….! 😉

Oh my….

College football

Oh, this does my head in. Not that I don’t like it, cos I think I might do if I could just understand it, but the truth is that I don’t understand how these kids play this sport, and how massive it is, and how everyone follows it, and it’s on TV ALL THE TIME, and they are like heroes, and everyone talks about it, and it’s like the biggest thing ever, and I HAVE NO IDEA!

It’s part of the culture, again, that folk here have been brought up on and which they all seem to find common ground with. And I am like a little lost blonde British bimbo (actually, sometimes I am), wondering what everyone is getting their knickers (underpants) in a twist about.

Whooping and cheering and wotnot

Asking a college student about it, he was telling me about the money behind the game (oh my, so much money), and the hero-worship of the players, and the Friday night lights when everyone is out watching the game, and there are marching bands and cheerleaders and wot not, and I just know I want to experience it

So, I suppose this is just another reason why I should get my British arse into an American college 😉

Obligatory cheerleaders pic 😉

American stuff that tickled my fancy over the weekend

1. A comment that really amused me, which was made by an American chum: ‘There is the East coast [where he is from], California and them the mid west. That’s America.’

2. ‘Fixing my coffee….’ – a phrase I hear but don’t use, cos I am usually ‘Making a cup of tea…’

3. On Amazon.com I have a ‘shopping cart’ and on Amazon.co.uk I have a ‘shopping basket’.

Cheerio!