15 August 2013

Why I'm Not Defending My College of Choice Anymore

I work on the beverage cart at a golf course during the summer aka I sell booze to rich guys who can afford to golf instead of work every day. So lots of the golfers make conversation with me while I'm preparing their morning Bloody Mary. This is a normal encounter…



Rich Golfer: "So, honey, what do you do for school?"
Me:"I'm going to be a junior at UMass Amherst this fall."
Cue the looks and the snickers.
Rich Golfer:"Ooooohh, I get it, I had some wild times there back when I went there in the [insert some time period 20+ years ago]. You must get pretty crazy up there."

This is when I usually defend my school and say how good UMass is academically and how it totally can be a party school if that's what you want, but it doesn't have to be. And they laugh me off give me a few bucks tip and continue their game. 

This is my least favorite kind of encounter.



Yes, UMass is known as "The Zoo," or "ZOOmass-SLAMherst,"and I even have a t-shirt that says Zoomass on it. Yes, if I want to go to a party on any given night of the week I probably could find one without too much trouble. But it drives me absolutely nuts when people only know UMass for partying or for the riots that happen after Super Bowls, World Series or terrorists being caught, and shove me in some category of being that wild girl. I'm not.

I enjoy the weekends just as much as the next girl at any college but I didn't go to UMass because it had the representation as a party school. And if that's all you think about the school then you're kind of behind the times. School is hard, I study, a lot. I stay in on weekends sometimes, and I don't have a fake ID (mostly because it wouldn't work for me even if I did because I'm forever 12 years old)



Ask most of the student at UMass and they would tell you it's not the party school it used to be anyways. It's hard to get into bars, the cops have cracked down a lot, and Hobart Hoedown unfortunately isn't really a thing anymore. We can't even have tailgates because our football team doesn't play at UMass anymore! Whenever something happens that could potentially turn into a crazy weekend, like a sporting event, a snowstorm on Halloweekend or even a presidential election, we get an email from the Dean of Students reminding us how not to behave and how many repercussions there will be if something goes wrong. UMass has totally tried to change it's image, and to be honest campus is totally different than it was even 10 years ago, but I think the representation of it is here to stay.

So heres to you UMass I'm not defending you anymore, and I'm even going to try to embrace the image because everyone is going to think what they want anyways.




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