The Perks of Being a Wildcat

Dear friend, I’m sorry I haven’t written to you in a couple of weeks, but I have been trying to “study” like my advisor said. It’s strange because sometimes, I read a textbook and I think I actually understand what I have read. Also, when I write notes, I spend the next two days trying to figure out what I have written in my notes. I don’t know if this is good or bad. Nevertheless, I am trying to study. In terms of my grades in classes, I am trying to go to fewer social events that I get invited to at school. It’s too late to try and get any A’s or anything like that, but I still try to stay in sometimes and do the work I can. Things like the assigned homework problems that don’t count for points and actually reading the textbook, even if I don’t have a fucking clue what it’s saying. I cannot imagine that I will ever have a 4.0 for even a quarter while I’m here, but it was fun to pretend that I could. I found Ceyoncé and Lakira on Thursday sitting in their normal spot in the core, and I started acting like I always came to the library with them even though it was only like the third time this year. I sat down. Ceyoncé told me about this party going on at a house on Garnett on Friday. She said I should go. I told her I’d think about it, but I was really trying hard with this studying thing so I was probably just going to stay in on Friday. She just looked at me and said that not letting loose every once in a while is just as bad as not studying. Her logic seemed a little flawed but I pretended I believed her and said I’d go out. Being an actual student is a lot harder than I thought it would be. There is a feeling I had that Friday at the end of the night that I don’t know if I will ever be able to describe except to say that it was heinous. C and L came by to pregame and found me in full mental breakdown because I could not possibly fit any more psychology information into my brain, yet could not bear the thought of disappointing Renee with a bad midterm grade. So I was freaking out. And C and L came in and saw the state I was in and took my books away from me and threw them on the ground. Then they grabbed my handle of Skol and made me take like 10 shots with them. Needless to say the rest of the night is a blur. I’m not sure if we ever made it to that party on Garnett, but I do know we made it to North beach. By that time I was sobering up, but was still taking pulls from a bottle of Jack’s. No one knows where I found it. Anyway, we decided we might as well take advantage of the fact we ended up on the beach, and decided to go for a swim. I guess I wasn’t that sober because I didn’t notice how cold the water was. For a while we ran in and out of the lake, swam around, tried to pull each other in. At one point, we all ended up standing shoulder to shoulder, looking out to the lake as if we were fucking Jay Gatsby looking for his damn green light. Then it hits me. “Guys. I have 2 midterms on Monday and a research paper I haven’t even picked the topic for due on Tuesday,” I say. “I just got an actual 28% on my chemistry exam. I mean the average was a 50. But still,” C sighs. “Wanna go to the Ke…oh” L sniffles. C covers her face and begins to cry. And I sit down in the water and sob. And in that moment, I swear we were wildcats. Love always, A$