Best College Content:

Earlier this week, I received a message from a USA Today writer saying she wanted to interview me for an upcoming blog/article about political TikTokers ahead of the election. On Tuesday morning, I answered her questions on the phone for a half hour about my career, what I believe in, and what I want for the future of this country. While she might tear me to shreds when this thing comes out….I have to admit that I liked her by the end of the interview. 

Between having that conversation and completing my first book, I’ve been thinking about the start of my career a lot lately. I started blogging over five years ago. Kind of Crazy when you think about it. I’ve moved eight different times in that span, bought a dog, lived in four (soon to be five) different states, quit drugs, had friends die, had family die, been rich and poor, traveled to other countries, eaten all kinds of crazy shit, gotten drunk with celebrities, obtained esoteric internet fame, been fired, seen a dozen concerts/comedy shows, gotten drunk hundreds of times….and made a long list of good and bad decisions I have to live with every day.  

I’ve been blogging long enough to be a different person than when I started. When I read the old blogs I wrote on the second floor of the TCU Sigma Chi house floor, a part of me wants to go back in time and give my younger self some much-needed advice, and another part of me laughs because while I was an ignorant little cunt, I was funny. 

As a big believer in recycling content as much as possible, I figured this morning that I would collect samples from the best blogs I wrote about college (some written while I was in college, some while I wasn’t) and put them all in one place like a tiny, less polished version of the book I wrote. While my friend Tim Moxey will soon be releasing a book of his own about college that will be a funnier how to guide with great advice, these are just a series of my favorite blogs that I wrote about the most frightening and irresponsible time of our lives. 

It’s important to mention that these blogs range in original publish date from 2019(18?) to 2021. For any of you who went to college around COVID, some of these will be nostalgic because of how dated they are, but most hold up (I think?). If you have a younger family member entering school next year, they would like this.

8 Things I Wish I Knew Before College:

When I left for college, everybody and their mother were trying to give me advice. 90% of it was atrocious. Why the fuck would I give a shit about my grandfather’s studying tips when he went to Dayton during the roaring ’20s?! Oh, you don’t want me getting too drunk, Mom?! That’s exactly what I was thinking about when I was ripping warm Cucumber Burnetts and experimenting with drugs my second Tuesday on campus. But I’m going to be real and vulnerable with you guys for a second: there is definitely some shit you need to be prepared for whether you go to school 2,000 miles away or 20 miles away. I had one person in my life whose advice I took into consideration because his opinion meant something to me, and I’m hoping I can bestow that same thing on all you youngins.

Cocaine is Everywhere: I had seen blow a couple of times before college, but I had no idea how prevalent it was until I moved into my dorm. Unbeknownst to me, it actually snows A LOT in the Carolinas, Texas, Florida, Arizona, and Louisiana. Whether or not I’ve indulged in this practice is for me to know and you to assume, but I must stress to you guys how important it is that you are not the guy/girl who’s spending $60 EVERY fucking weekend. I’m not telling you to hit the slopes by any means; if you want to give it a go, that’s at your discretion. But the guy who always has blow on him becomes known as that guy. Like when Ryan Howard almost burns down Dunder Mifflin and becomes the fire guy, you don’t want every hot girl who has a friend in town tapping you on the shoulder at pre-games to ingest your parents 401k(presumably) up THEIR nose. As I get older, I tend to see this drug as incredibly overrated. I can tell you the most fun time you will have on it is getting fucked with your friends before going out to bars(of course not from personal experience…never). Try and think of coke like you think of stuffing. Stuffing is phenomenal on Thanksgiving or once in a while, but do you really want to be eating stuffing three times a week? For sure not.

Know UberEats is a Dangerous Game: These past two years, I’ve come into college with a little over two grand from working during the summer, and I’ve blown through that sum far too fast. Is it the three lemon drops I’ll buy a girl who I want to fuck and her friends? Sure, sometimes. But the real monster here is UberEats. Drunk UberEats is a fucking epidemic. In San Francisco, some metrosexual entrepreneur has robbed me of my dignity by charging me thirty-six dollars and tax for a basic box of Chicken Express one too many times. UberEats is the devil on your shoulder. UberEats is the ex-girlfriend who you used to have great sex with. It’s such a bad idea, and it knows you’re an impulsive moron, and it won’t spare you. I hate that app with such a fiery passion, yet I redownload it almost every Thursday night. My recommendation here is GoPuff(free ad go puff if you want to Venmo me it’s Bobby-DAngelo-4). GoPuff is an app where you can pretty much order anything you would find at 7/11 for a reasonable price and a $4.99 fee. And guess what, they also deliver 4Loko. Instead of drunk ordering an eighteen count of wings and blue cheese that’ll go bad by tomorrow morning, eat some fucking Pringles and deal with the crumbs in your bed; you’ll have to wash period blood-stained sheets anyway.

Don’t Be Afraid To Lean On Old Friends: There will always be a dynamic between you and your high school friends about who is having the better college experience. I remember my best friend from high school calling me all freshman year talking about how much he hated college, and I felt no sympathy for him and truthfully wasn’t the best friend I could be. I would always thought of him as beneath me because he was also at a big southern school and couldn’t make friends. Then, he transferred to our state school and had more fun than I ever had my first two years of college. He’s in a great place, and when I started struggling, he was about as good a friend as he could’ve been. The point being, don’t be afraid to lean on people from your past for help. The people you have known for a semester will never know you like the kids you played little league with, no matter how much hot sauce you guys chugged in a shed while trying to memorize the Greek alphabet. When I was at my lowest dealing with severe depression and anxiety, I don’t even know if I’d be alive right now without the occasional twenty-minute phone call with the guys that are in contention to be the best man at my wedding. 

Learn to Cook: I’ve always articulated that there is a rampant problem with the average college student’s eating schedule. Frat Boy Eating Disorder is 100% a real thing. For me, it was not eating until 4 PM so that I could afford a new puff bar. For others, maybe it’s just ripping pen and completing letting eating slip your mind. Learning how to cook was one of the best decisions I ever made because it made my grandma more inclined to send me money, and it improved my overall health. Averaging five hours of sleep a night and drinking four times a week is already a burden; give your body something at least. My biggest recommendation is to listen to whatever reading you have assigned on some audio platform while cooking. The act of cooking becomes mindless/routine, and you get your shit done. 

Don’t Do Long Distance Relationships As An Underclassman: I did it as an underclassman, surprise surprise, it didn’t work out. Want to know why? Because it never fucking does. 

Go Against the Grain: I would say half the people in my life told me that blogging was a poor decision. In a rat race full of business majors and real estate minors from my Fraternity, writing jokes about my dick on the internet was not quid pro quo. If in your gut you think you can do something outside the box and you have the talent, fucking do it. You google my name, and I’m fucked for any cubicle job in existence. I took a risk doing this shit, but I do it because I wake up every day loving what I do. And after months of blogging on free websites, getting only sixty reads per blog at the start, I like where I’m at a year and a half later. I got rejected from websites a quarter of the size of TFM before landing this job. I’ve severed ties with some people in my personal life through the process; basically, I’ve been chewed up and spit out and booed off stage. Don’t be afraid of doing something outside of what other people want from you. The most successful people in life have failed worse than my dick at 4 AM. But just like my dick…the great ones got up in the morning and cuddled their way into some morning sex…or you know, a position at a hedge fund or something…bad analogy I guess. 

Know Your Functionality: There is a disparity between functionality and limits. Fuck your limitations, you’re going to blackout a hundred times before you graduate college. By functionality, I mean knowing what you can afford to do to function. The three 4Lokos I had on a Wednesday before my 9 AM midterm freshman year are solely responsible for my C in Microeconomics(a class I took to boost my GPA after getting an A in high school). I know kids that can go to class after ripping three chops, mokes, whatever the fuck your region calls them. 4.0 students in the flesh who had that level of functionality. I’ve also seen many a man fall victim to continuous pen rips and Warzone. By the end of your first semester, you should know where you fall and plan your schedule according, or get pulled from school by your WASPY ass Dad.

Never Be A Student Orientation Leader: I assume none of my readers would never, but just in case, I don’t want anyone who reads me ever to lead student orientation groups. If I ever catch one of you motherfuckers acting all giddy as you play ice breakers and talk about the danger of booze, I’m putting the laptop down and quitting.

What Your Fraternity Says About You:

PIKE:

What would baseball be without the Yankees? What would Batman be without the Joker? 

What would Greek row be without PIKE? Somebody has to be the evil empire. Somebody has to wear a visor and do curls on their roof as they catcall bi-sexual girls with cat Twitter avatars walking to class. Some people might say that those guys who make “frat guy” Tik Toks draw their inspiration from PIKEs; those people are absolutely correct. Truth be told, I think PIKEs are more self-aware than people give them credit for, which is kind of amazing for a group of guys that watched The Big Short one time and thought they could beat the system via Ethereum. The average PIKE intramural player claims they were a torn labrum away from pitching for the Cardinals and a healthy ankle away from playing for coach Cal. PIKEs are the most athletic fraternity, hands down. Drinking is SAE’s sport; Sports are PIKE’s sport.

Most PIKEs have access to their Dad’s boat, and the rest post pictures from their friend’s Dad’s boat. PIKEs are interesting because they can give you a thirty-five-minute spiel on the dangers of Red-Leaf pre-workout into your body and then turn around and buy Columbia’s best export from a guy whose Snapchat name is David devil-emoji. Speaking of Snapchat, that’s where most lines of communication run through with PIKE- and I respect that. PIKE “you up” messages disappear like pages about our country’s relationship with Saudi Arabia on the 9/11 commission report. PIKE brotherhood is not like a lot of other fraternities. Between the testosterone and amount of 5’9 guys that wish they weren’t, some chapters have weird caste system-like orders within them. Sort of like an episode of Keeping Up With The Kardashians with creatine poops. On the real, I know a lot of PIKEs, and I like a lot of PIKEs. The only reason I’m going at them this hard is because: 1. They can take a joke 2. They know who they are 3. They know they are arguably the best house in America.

Sigma Chi:

You know when you start off playing 2k, and you can choose what skill sets you want your player to excel at, whether that be a playmaker, a three-point specialist, or a bruiser in the paint? There’s one option where you can balance all the abilities, and that’s exactly what Sigma Chi is. Sigma Chi isn’t trapping harder than Phi Psi, hitting the library as hard as Beta, and posting as many shirtless pictures on Instagram as PIKE. They are men of balance, often wearing New Balance. When I think of Sigma Chi, I think of a kid who starts off the night bragging about his internship at Deloitte and ends it with a public urination ticket and several missed calls from a girl he claims he’s not dating. Your average Sigma Chi might be better at failing drug tests than Casey Anthony is at disposing children, but you’d be hard-pressed to find one that fails all of his classes. Sigma Chi is the place where once good catholic school boys own illadelphs with insurance policies on them. These guys can recite a bible verse to you and then open a drawer with more points in it than a Capital One credit card commercial. 

The only thing more awkward than the moment a light skin Sigma Chi learns that one of the founding members fought on the wrong side of the Civil War is when an underclassman takes a girl home who already knows where they keep their plates in the house. I can imagine dating a Sigma Chi is like watching the character arc of Michael Scott. At points, you want to rip his head off, but occasionally, he shows up to Pam’s art show, and you could shed a tear. Every Sigma Chi has a grandparent who wanted them to go to Notre Dame, and sometimes that weighs on them when they crack the last womp of the night at three in the morning. If you get a bid to Sigma Chi, expect to gain fifteen pounds honing in your dye abilities, a decent job in corporate real estate, and four years hanging out with great friends, in Hoc. 

TKE:

What do Ronald Reagan, Willie Nelson, and Terry Bradshaw share? Yes, multiple wives, but more importantly, TKE. TKE is a lot like Wawa; it’s a great place to stumble in drunk, it’s prevalent on the East Coast, and if you knock on the right guy’s door, he might even present you with a secret menu. TKE has more chapters than the Klan in the ’60s, not clash, the bad clan. That being said, their chapters are relatively small. Apart from the Pac-12 and some Big-10 Schools, PCs can be twenty kids or less. If your school isn’t making the tournament, your TKE chapter will be roughly the size of an NFL team. Some might say this is a bad thing, but I disagree. It’s why you don’t really find a lot of the petty, vindictive girl drama at TKE. If there’s beef between two people, it gets handled Tyler Durden style in a sticky basement with asbestos. 

I like TKE because they don’t have much pride, and that’s okay. The average TKE spends more time looking for the baggy that he dropped on the floor than he does flexing. TKE’s are the guys that you’d want to be dating your girlfriend’s best friend. He’s a good guy, but he doesn’t do too much. He doesn’t walk into a room expecting all the attention like a PIKE, but he doesn’t make you uncomfortable to be around like a Phi Kap. A TKE is just a kid that kind of sits there high scrolling on Tinder until his fingers cramp, then occasionally nudges you on the shoulder and goes yooo, check this girl out. It’s the Lamarcus Aldridge of Fraternities: is it an All-Star some years? Yeah. Does it do too many stimulants and have to sit out with a heart condition? Also yeah. Is it someone you’d want on your team? Yeah. 

SAE:

If fraternities were sports, SAE would be baseball: it’s full of rich history, guys that fail drug tests, and a whole lot of oral nicotine products. SAE is funny because South of the Mason-Dixon line, watching a slavery movie with an SAE would get awkward because they’d end up saying well, my Grandpa wasn’t that bad of a guy while up North, an SAE would scream GO DJANGO, THAT’S MY MF’in GUY. Southern SAE’s rail lines on boats, wear Chipper Jones jerseys, and date hot blonde girls that weigh one hundred pounds less than they do. Northern SAE’s are some of the funniest guys you’ll ever meet, drink any punch-like alcoholic substance like it’s water, and have one friend with a weird cult-like appreciation for 42Dugg. An average SAE GroupMe is more incriminating than Hunter Biden’s laptop. These guys can drink more beer than anybody you’ve ever met. Hands down, not even close. SAEs are either skinny with good bone structure and a relationship with their dealer that mirrors that of Tony Soprano and his therapist or rock a dad-bod with facial hair and a Spotify Daily Mix 1 that’s seventy percent Morgan Wallen.

If you ask a girl that likes SAE about them, she’d say they’re a little crazy, but they mean well, and if you asked a girl who doesn’t, she’d go on a Margaret Atwood-style rant that would bring her to tears. Are SAE’s the best humanitarians? Probably not. Are they incredibly fun to shoot whiskey with? Yes. SAEs ride or die for one another. If you have beef with one, you have beef with ninety. No matter what chapter, school, or walk of life they came from, all SAEs share one thing in common- a deep hatred for Kappa Sig. I have many friends who were SAEs from all over the place. They are good guys. Guys that you would have to explain to your girlfriend before she met them, but good guys nevertheless. If you get a bid from SAE, get ready for the best six years of your life. 

Kappa Sigma:

Kappa Sigma is like a young Kevin Love: it’s white, it’s consistently good, and it’s moderately good-looking. When I think of Kappa Sig, I think of a kid in a roped hat looking anxious at his girlfriend’s birthday brunch because The Tampa Bay Rays lost him a five-leg parlay, and now he can’t afford to front the bill. Kappa Sigs are interesting because they can explain how and why the 2008 economic collapse occurred without missing a beat, but if you asked them to show you where the labia is, they’d be about as confused as Christopher Columbus when he landed in the Bahamas. These guys are from money, but they’re humble about it. They’re the type of guys that make a good impression on a girl’s Mom, who, of course, has no idea what’s in the baggy that’s currently on their dresser. If you have beef with one of them, you have beef with seventy of them. They are loyal guys who would like nothing more than getting into a fight in a Waffle House parking lot at 2:46 AM and recapping it the following day in hyperbolic details.

In all seriousness, they are a great house. Kappa Sigs are the kind of guys to Venmo a girl $25 the next day in the name of equality and possibly bring her to a formal where she’ll facetune what will end up being her most liked picture on Instagram. They might not be great everywhere because there are so many living members that they could make up almost half of Wyoming’s population, but in my experience, they throw good social events. They take intramural sports far less seriously than PIKE, yet still almost beat them; they know their way around a grill, and they always have drunk cigs on deck. If you get a bid from this house, get ready for at minimum one pregnancy scare, sclerosis in your early sixties, and an amazing four and a half years. 

Sigma Phi Epsilon:

Look, I don’t want to be the bearer of bad news, but somebody has to tell Sig Ep something: not all of you will end up being successful DJs. The world can only use so many DJs. I know the thought of JK Rowling face with Barack Obama’s daughter and Louis The Child is enticing, but the world needs some of you to be architects and accountants. That aside, Sig Ep is a good group of guys.

 Every Sig Ep could be the third contestant out on a reality dating TV show, girls love them, and they do a pretty good job with philanthropic endeavors beyond the small Colombian villages that they finance with their yeyo transactions. Sig Eps always has the funniest Asian kid you’ll meet in your life, and the organization does a great job instilling confidence in young men. Every Sig Ep I know is a lot like JR Smith. It doesn’t matter that they miss a few shots here and there; sometimes you’ll see them eurostep their way out of the bar with a girl that makes you say, for Pete’s sake, I didn’t even know that was possible. 

When I think of Sig Ep, I think of a guy who looks like the bully football character on an Oxygen TV show, he’s dating a girl named Margo, but she spells it Margot (she’s got 3200 followers on Instagram), and making the finishing touches on his Kobe themed dye table. Do Sig Eps have the same amount of loyalty to one another as SAE or Kappa Sig? No. Do you ever hear a campus rumor that they are weird with girls? Also no. Sig Ep is where boys become men, and girls catch something that makes it burn a little when they pee. If you get a bid to Sig Ep, expect to learn a lot about Eastern European DJ culture, meet the best men at your wedding, and spend four years having a Zyn in your mouth more frequently than you don’t.

ZBT:

ZBTs are the type of guys that leverage their bar mitzvah money into starting a sludge fund that gets made into a Netflix documentary after defrauding thousands of elderly people in the midwest out of their 401ks. The average ZBT could be at a post-game watching his friend Elijah DJ deep house music that sounds like a bad acid trip until 4:24 in the morning, then somehow get an eighty-eight on his midterm at 11 AM. ZBTs aren’t good dye players; they are great. They all either look like Chet Holmgren or Adam Friedland, and their champion hoodie collections are deeper than that one Brett Farve pass on the Vikings. ZBTs are known for having sick hair, driving MILF cars, and getting yelled at by their formal dates for skiing too much when the theme was beach weekend. 

Is every chapter of ZBT good? No, just like any other big fraternity. The kids are quick-witted and smart, and they roll more frequently than the Armadillo. Can they put back as much beer as an SAE? Hell no. Do they share the same skin tone as Kristen Stewart? Yes. But they are a great fraternity that’s organized and knows how to throw good parties. ZBT gets things done, and that’s why girls like them. They have an aggressive social schedule, and each member’s Venmo is full of shady transactions that will be leveraged against them sometime down the line. ZBT gets my stamp of approval, except for that one kid in every chapter who’s still weirdly into sneaker culture.

Halloweekend:

Halloweekend is this weekend, and far and wide, people will be trying to figure out how to take a piss without ruining a costume made by tiny Taiwanese fingers. This a situation I empathize with because I once had to wear a child’s Batman costume out and ended up giving up, peeing my pants purposefully and knowingly four times, and continuously saying yo this beer smells piss. I did not take anybody home that weekend. Halloweekend is more than guys pretending that they don’t like Hocus Pocus when they are cuddled up with their lady or people thinking not liking kettle corn is still some fresh take. It’s about freedom, watching girls dress like their favorite Disney channel was raised in a white trash part of Florida, and people dressing like Post Malone- because it’s the closest you can get to appropriating another culture while actually playing inside the white lines. Millions of eighteen and nineteen-year-old girls across the country will dress however they want without their parents yelling at them for the first time. They will facetime their Moms in giant hooded sweatshirts, so she doesn’t notice they are wearing less clothing than a BBC documentary about Malawi, put their Snapchat in the phone of the Woody pledge from Sigma Chi, and get 634 likes on Instagram. And I will not like the photo because I will pretend that now, since I’m twenty-two, I’m above thinking that it’s hot, instead of the fact that it’s my friend’s younger sister.  

Halloween gives bloggers something to write about with indignation. I will pass by a guy dressed as that teacher from Canada, I will laugh, and he will love his job the next day because he was tagged in the wrong post. Halloween is when the funny girl of the friend group shines, and the hot one glows. It’s where long-distance relationships come to an end, and your friend gets mauled in the group chat for wearing a matching costume with his girlfriend. If you live up North, you will see girls shaking in line for the bar, but they’d get hypothermia before giving up the ‘fit. On Saturday, I’m going on a bar crawl in my town where I will pass by hundreds of wholesome families dressed in costumes, and one of my drunk friends will knuckle-touch the little boy wearing the Paw Patrol suit and say we back the blue brother. Middle-schoolers everywhere will pretend that they are too cool to dress up, and the lamest person you know will wear a platonic jersey despite the fact they’re in their twenties. All over the country, guys will send some spooky messages at 2:18 in the morning and be haunted by a swell of open Snapchats the next day. Have a fun weekend, everybody.

What Your Nic of Choice Says About You:

Dip: 

Dip guys are strong minded guys. Men that poop with purpose. They are either the best guys you’ll meet in your entire life or the dumbest. Dip guys can go from doing the most intricate, precise work on your engine then turn around and go on a thirty-two-minute tirade about Michelle Obama being a man. This country wouldn’t FUNCTION without these motherfuckers, and they don’t give a fuck about your opinion. They like blonde women, Brantley Gilbert, and Billy and Spud.

Vape:

Vape is a little bit weird because it’s so convenient, and girls don’t think it’s gross, but at the same time…you’re a pussy. I’ve been in a vape phase the last two weeks, and today while I was on a zoom call with Northwestern MutualI, I had to turn off the camera to take a rip of what felt like gaseous skittles going into my lungs. There comes a moment in every man’s life when he rips a my little pony ass juice lush ice flavored vape when he thinks to himself…I’m way too old to be doing this. It’s an effortless way to meet women. Yes, they will use you, but if you’re funny enough, you have a foot in the door.

Cigarettes:

This is the most diverse group because sober cig people are a strange breed. They are either in shambles, or they are like…rich and European or something. You never see someone lighting up in an Acme parking lot at 2:32 PM and think to yourself, I bet they’ve had a normal life. Cig guys are either starving artists with trust funds named MARquese or guys named Bill that tip a little extra at Hooters because they think they have a chance. 

Zyn:

Zyn is modern medicine. Girls think it’s gross, but not that gross; the burn feels fantastic, and you don’t have to do cardio because you poop like a labrador retriever. The combination of coffee and Zyn hitting my stomach at 10:44 in the morning is actually Crimea. It’s accessible, and everyone has their own flavor that’s unique to them. That being said, I’ve never seen anybody that’s incapable of getting sunburnt Zyning. We are sort of in the “pre-Jackie Robinson” era of Zyn. And hey, let’s be real, when my light skin friends start Zyning, they will probably somehow do it better than me.

The Texts Your Mom Sent You As A Pledge:

Mom:

Hey honey, I just wanted to tell you how proud of you Dad and I are for getting your bid. I’m so excited to see the leader and man you’ll become throughout your time at insert fraternity here. I’m happy college seems to be going well, and I’m excited to meet your new friends. I know leaving your buddies from high school was difficult, but it’s fantastic that you persevered and joined an organization. I know I don’t have to tell you this, but it is IMPERATIVE that you keep those grades up. Love you!!

 Mom:

Hey sweetie, during tennis today I mentioned to Linda’s daughter that you are pledging insert fraternity here. She said that at her school those boys were horrible to their pledges, even making some chug alcohol to assess their knowledge of the Greek alphabet. I just want you to remember that there is no shame in saying no. She also mentioned that the boys at University of Wisconsin in insert fraternity here took a habit of using hard drugs. One boy even overdosed!! I know your Dad and I taught you better than that, but I just want to reiterate that hard drugs are nothing to mess around with. I’ve seen people DESTROY their LIVES. I hope the older boys aren’t making you do anything gruesome. I sent you something that should arrive at the post office tomorrow. Your Father and I will be watching the game today, GO insert school name here.

Mom:

What do you need all this money for? It seems that almost every other day I’m getting a Venmo request. Isn’t that why you had a job over the summer?! What are your grades looking like? Please be sure that you are beginning to prepare for midterms. I saw your old coach today and he was asking how you were doing. The dog misses you and your sister can’t wait to see you over your fall break!! 

Mom:

What the F-ing Hell?!!! Why do I keep seeing Venmo transactions on your account for snowflake emoji? Is that a drug thing?!!! Is that why you looked so skinny over fall break?! I know you said that the older guys in the fraternity were nothing but nice to you, but I don’t believe that for a second!! The loss of weight and the decline in grades are starting to concern me. Maybe it’s time to consider dropping that stupid fraternity. Are those guys making you do-dare I say it- cocaine? You know I love you, I just don’t want you to go down the wrong path.

Mom:

Yesterday at tennis Linda showed me an article from the Times about the dangers of vaping. I hope your not doing any of that stupid stuff. Your father and I are eagerly awaiting to see your grades soon. We took your word that you would turn this semester around, and I pray that you did. I know you’re getting initiated soon. I hope initiation week is fun! Send pics!

Mom:

Ds!!!!! Call me right now!!!!

Mom:

Answer your damn cell-phone before we turn it off!!!

Mom:

You are in for a long talk over winter break!! Cabo? More like I don’t think so, mister.

Mom:

Did you get your flight information? As disappointed as Dad and I are in your behavior, you’re still our son and we can’t wait to see you. We are going to have a long talk. See you soon.

Five Pieces Of Advice I Wish I Got When I Was A Freshman:

Living on a college campus is a toss-up. The food is trash, the bathrooms perpetually smell like a mix of chemicals and diarrhea, and the average dorm is packed tighter than a white trash Mom’s backpack on a bi-annual trip to Disney World. With that being said, you’ll be too distracted by the freedom you now have to care that your future self or your parents are paying fifty grand for glorified prison living conditions. There ARE little things you can do that will make a big difference in how your years on campus will go. So to everyone like my brother who has just stepped foot on their new home for the next two years, take this for what it’s worth.

Librivox: Librivox is the Limewire of audiobooks. It’s an app where you can save anywhere from four to fifty dollars on Apple Audiobooks and stream them for free with an ad that plays every three chapters. Albeit this isn’t sexy advice- and you certainly aren’t going to get laid from listening to audiobooks, but it’s a big time saver. If you popped in your AirPods between each commute in your day, you could potentially get all your reading done for the week AND not have to Moneybagg Yo when he comes on Rap Caviar shuffle. 

Buy An Air-Fryer: If you fed an Afghan refugee leftover pizza that you microwaved right now, even HE would tell you to get that soggy shit out of here. Air-Fryer’s are the fucking best. With a fifty-dollar purchase off Amazon, you can make the frozen section of any supermarket your bitch. You can even fucking grill on an Air-Fryer if you’re brave enough. I’m certain that air-fryers are frowned upon in freshman dorms, but I’ve seen kids trap a blogger’s annual salary in a semester out of a freshman dorm, so don’t be a pussy.

Hide Your Dab Pen: If I was to list the most important things to keep in a college dorm, it would go: John Belushi poster, PS5, Dab Pen. Every kid comes into college with a pen; it’s the most accessible way to get high before living off-campus; the only problem is that it’s the number one cause of strife between roommates. I’ve seen cold wars go down in rooms when one kid left and noticed his pen was one-tenth-of-an-inch used—my advice: hide it. If your roommate asks you, let them rip it every once in a while. And most importantly, don’t be that kid that goes door to door asking for pen rips; if you’re actively doing that, I promise people already don’t like you.

Ration Your Alcohol Violations: Ninety-nine percent of the people who live on a college campus are underage, which means they have an RA. Once in a blue moon, you’ll have an RA that gets it. He’ll Paul Revere for you when inspections are coming, turn a blind eye to your degeneracy, and possibly even become one of your friends. That’s the dream. The reality is a curly-haired graduate student from Cincinnati who has cat memes and pictures of AOC hanging on his door. For most colleges, three Alcohol violations can equate to suspension, so it’s essential to ration them with the homies. If your boy already has one, and he’s only had two beers since he’s been in your room, take this one for him. Ideally, your entire friend group can leave campus with one or two AVs and call it a day. No suspensions or no major student conduct meetings- just guys being dudes.

Find A Water Source: College is a lot like Africa. Between girls with giant tits, a surplus of the best drugs on the planet….I can’t even finish this one. But seriously, finding drinking water on most college campuses isn’t easy. This might be a hot take, but in retrospect, I would have taken an office cooler over a TV when I was living in the dorms. The number of times I’d wake up delirious at 5:30 in the morning and have to inhale lukewarm water mixed with an old batch of toothpaste from the sink was just way, way too many. I still need a goddamn trigger warning whenever I see Crest Scope.

When It’s Time To Breakup With Your Girlfriend:

To whoever needs to hear this,

Your friends say you’re a shell of what you used to be, and that really pisses you off. Quite frankly, it’s not fair. It’s not your fault that you’re getting older, and starting off your Wednesday with a qweeb of Xanax and a chop isn’t an option anymore, but it’s time for a look in the mirror. You’ve been with this girl for a long time. On paper, she’s everything you want and more. She’s attractive, the sex is great, and getting high while watching Ozark seems timeless. Sure, you miss playing die with the guys here and there, but you’re trying to be an adult here. That Instagram story you took of her next to that charcuterie board made you feel in a weird way…good? On Mondays you guys split a $12 bottle of Kendall Jackson Chardonnay and on Wednesday you drink Pacifico as you try to explain to her why Kawhi Leanord Is hilariously weird. At this point, you’re sleeping at each other’s places most of the time, and you find yourself increasingly paying for her purchases (which in your mind is only right). 

Days of being an underclassmen who played 4Loko flip cup are over. You’ve met your close-knit group of friends, as has she. Even in your early twenties, for the first time in your life, the blueprint for the future is in front of you. The internship you’ve been working has been going about as good as it possibly could have. Even though in your mind your still a fucking dickhead, you’ve finessed yourself into your bosses’ good graces. The girl, the internship, a dog? Holy shit, are you where you’re supposed to be? 

Take a step back for a second. Your friends are always going to be by your side because they have…for the most part…your best intentions at heart, but let’s calm down your ego and ACTUALLY think about what they’ve told you. Do we really think that they are jealous of you? I mean in a sense you have a right to think that. You’re doing what you were programmed to do by your suburban upbringing, and those fucktards still log in four hours a night on Elden Ring . But yesterday, your girlfriend took TWO icing packets for ONE Toaster Strudel and even though you played it cool, on the inside you thought about Ray Rice’ing a bitch for a second…so maybe they have a point when they say that your relationship has become unhealthy. You constantly reassure yourself that the spark is still there by re-living the night you guys first met, but you don’t get excited when she walks into your house. Everything is routine, and the only time it’s not is when you guys fight (which is happening way more frequently than before) because the makeup sex is a buzz you haven’t felt in too goddamn long. Your relationship has essentially become your Juul addiction from two years ago when you would buy two packs of pods a week. You’re putting your lips on something because you feel like it has some comforting sense of control on you, not because you catch a dome. But restarting…well that seems like a bitch (spoiler alert: it is). Your mom already likes her and your Mom is not only hard to impress, but annoying as fuck when anything pertains to your love life. Seeing her at bars will be brutal, her friend’s may boycott you from getting laid, the whole situation will be a mess. 

But man you have to put a lid on this before you dig yourself deeper into this hole. The last thing you want in life is to be more excited to go to work, than spend time at home. If her little humming noises when she sits shotgun in your car piss you off for some odd reason now, imagine how much they will when your driving to Disney World in a fucking Honda Odyssey rental with two booger-eaters in the back. Pain is temporary, unhappiness is forever. Reevaluate your choices and lean on your friends, it’s worked for me before. It’s time to break up with her man.

School Down South v. School Up North

Going to school down south is what the college experience is depicted as in movies. Picturesque campuses full of blonde girls with long legs, overwhelming school spirit, and bar strips with alcohol establishments that are so easy to gain entry to, that a piece of paper mache would pass as identification. I mean, I’m not even joking, Kroger (if you’re a yankee it’s southern ShopRite) implemented a special needs program where people with special needs scan your ID when you purchase alcohol- nobody talks about that enough. If you find yourself at a University south of the mason dixon line a freshman girl isn’t asking what’s your major, she’s asking, what Frat are you in? Not being in a fraternity down south is  like going to art school without a polaroid camera, you will always be on the outside looking in. Kids with pictures of them holding a fish on their Tinder profile are actively destroying mansions that rich alumni destroyed long before them, it’s glorious. Elevators are so sticky with piss that there’s a millisecond where a passenger might genuinely believe his New Balances are permanently welded to the ground. The girls join sororities that they end up hating by Sophomore year, and spend the rest of their college years searching for a slightly overweight guy with just enough facial hair to bear their child. But it’s not like there aren’t cons. Kids from the south are plain and simple, not as funny as their northern counterparts. It requires serious levels of deteriorating mental health in order to be a hilarious kid, and there is too much vitamin C in the south for that. People walk slow as fuck, and fraternities are about as ethnically diverse as a Zac Brown Band concert. A southern school’s auxiliary cord is sporadic and weird. How in the fuck do you consciously queue Fisher after listening to The Best Of: Kenny Chesney. These kids are from homes where god and football are king, and they see college as the peak of their existence. 

The North has an element of grit. There’s something so beautiful about seeing a girl that goes to Wisco out on a lake drinking a seltzer in ten degree weather. Up North, turning twenty-one is an actual privilege, and your underclassmen experience is spent sweaty in basements, with punch that may or may not have some secret ingredients in it. Kids up north actually have friends outside of their fraternity, because they had to wait to rush until their Sophomore years. Girls are less attractive and wear more makeup, but they have exceptionally better personalities. It’s a common occurrence to see sorority girls risk hypothermia to make their tits pop, and that’s a level of scrappiness you HAVE to respect. The money up north is also different. Down south, you have Dad’s that belong to a country club, up north you have Dad’s that OWN the country clubs. People are meaner, but they speak their truth. Campuses are about as clean as your friend’s older brother who got into heroin at a young age. It smells bad, it’s dirty, but there’s nothing better. Guys smoke cigarettes inside while wearing hockey jerseys. Wherever you are up north, you can find a good slice of pizza in a one mile radius. The food is incredible, and bars typically don’t have big cover charges (fuck you Rounders). A fraternity GroupMe anywhere north of Virginia will make you laugh hysterically and also make you want to kill yourself. Kids bag on each other RUTHLESSLY and nothing is off limits. There’s no pageantry where girls feel the need to take pictures at a certain campus landmark. Kids lie, they cheat, and they fight, but they are considerably more entertaining to get fuck up with. But northern kids will always look enviously at their friends, there’s no vice versa. There’s too many fucking rules, the cops actually punish people, and the bars are shitty. 

The Girlfriends Your Friends Will Have:

The Different Types Of Girlfriends Your Friend will Have

The Psycho: Big Jen Psaki Vibes. This girl is the Fred Phillips of your life, every time she walks into your house, you feel like going full Logan Paul Japanese forest. She has not only made your friend a shell of his former self, but she has psy-oped him into becoming more insecure than the thirteen-year-old girls we had middle school assemblies about the dangers of Instagram for. Sometimes you see him taking pictures of her wearing a birthday sash with her friends who all talk shit about him behind his back, and you just want to give him a huge hug. You try to shake this guy awake, and he looks at you like you’re Alex Jones and pretends things are okay. She once got upset with him for Ubering her drunk friend home because he “shouldn’t ever spend money on another girl.” 

The One That Makes You Wish You Had A Girlfriend:

What A-Rod and J-Lo were to Big Cat is what she and your friend are to you. Do you understand why a girl with her looks is dating a guy who hasn’t accomplished much since his string of Snapchat Stories Victory Royales in 2019? No. But her butt is a WMD, and she’s smart, so you couldn’t be happier for your friend. Sometimes, when you go into your kitchen late at night to grab something and you see the two of them drinking cheap wine as she’s doing erotic sign language under a blanket, you think to yourself, maybe I should get a girlfriend. No couple is perfect, but like Lebron in any 2k from 2009-2018, they are as close as possible. 

The One That Becomes One Of Your Friends (Jenny From The League): Despite the fact that she has friends, you get the sense she gets along better with guys. Not in the hot dog meme I only like guys because they are less drama way, more so that she had three older brothers and grew up falling asleep in hand-me-down sherseys kind of way. She may be able to look good in a dress, but make no mistake, she will roast the fuck out of you when she finds out that you went inflatable used-parking-lot after a few too many with the girl you took home last weekend. Aside from being a member in the group chat, she’s basically in your friend group, which is what could make the possibility of their breakup complicated. She’s basically a friend of yours that you can’t nut tap for legal and biological reasons. 

The Quiet One That You’re Convinced Hates You: 

It’s nobody’s fault that he keeps convincing her to come to B-Dubs with you guys for $5 pitchers; it’s just weird. You really have no qualms about her. She’s quiet, she tags along from time to time, and the only thing you could even consider giving her shit for is the fact that she sits shotgun in his car…and even that’s a stretch. The situation at hand is odd: your friend wants to allocate time to you guys and her, but the two groups mix together about as well as cucumber Burnetts and Apple Juice…sure, could you make that combination work; yes, is it enjoyable? Fuck no. You and your friends get drunk and talk about Livvy Dune as she watches on with disgust and confusion. You try your hardest to make amends with her, you buy her a shot on her birthday, but even then, she stares at you blankly. She doesn’t like you because she’s seen too much. This relationship is unmendable, and you just have to ride it out until it ends. 

The One That Completely Changes Your Friend:

I know there’s a connotation that this is a bad thing, but it might not be. Maybe your friend was treating his nose like the Swiss Alps, and now he’s off hard drugs and…like hiking or some shit. For better or for worse, this girl has been able to give your buddy’s life a 180. If he was the kind of guy that would put down nine beers and drunkenly ride rent-a-scooters on a Tuesday, and now he’s a Marxist who gives you shit because your Mom sent you a variety pack of fun-sized chips via Amazon, I can understand why that would bother you. But you have let him figure out these things on his own. The second you articulate hey man, you kind of suck now he’s just going to peg you as ignorant and jealous, despite the fact you have no inclination for wearing fuzzy pajamas and watching Brent Rivera videos.  

The Worst People In A Group Project:

Singing Girl: Girls are too nice to say this out loud, but I know they think this. We all do: if you’re a person that actively sings out what you’re doing, everybody around you wants to rip your vocal cords out. If my head is pounding and I’m at work or doing school, and somebody is singing about reaching into their bag to grab their laptop charger, my mind goes full Adam Lanza. Most of the time, these people are actually decent singers, and that’s cool, but leave the singing to whatever improv group you’re a part of that gets eighty-three people into the door once a semester.

Bartard Guy: As soon as you see a guy blowing bloody nose boogers the first time a group project meets outside of the classroom, everybody knows that that’s the kid that will only be responsible for three slides. I’ve been this guy, and I hate this guy. Don’t be dapping people up in the library when four other people went out of their way to get together for a presentation on the gentrification of Chicago. Nobody wants you interrupting them to scream at your boy on the other side of the room about your parlay tonight, just do the bare minimum to the best of your abysmal academic abilities and sit down.

Person Amidst A Breakup: This isn’t Euphoria or a room where you get charged seventy-five dollars an hour to talk about your toxic ex; this is a group of four people that never want to see each other again after this project about Eukaryotic Cells or whatever stupid marketing pitch your working on is over. If we wanted to see someone be emotionally distressed, we’d toss on a Nicole Kidman movie. Let’s keep the emotions in check and start worrying about the Powerpoint transitions, please.

Dumb Person That Thinks They’re Smart: While I appreciate the confidence, there is always a guy that grinds harder than a New Jersey Italian for his 3.1, or a dude that got his job because his Uncle owns the company that wants to make every pivotal decision on a group project. The whole point of group projects is for everyone to provide a perspective. You are not Winston Churchill; you’re just a dude with a clean Linkedin headshot.