One night during the spring of my freshman year, I returned late from a party to find that I had left my Village C West dorm room unlocked. Silently scolding myself for the error, I entered the room ready to pass out. As I approached my bed, I saw a sleeping boy in my bed. In shock, I ran out of my room screaming, waking all of my neighbors. After unsuccessfully trying to wake him, my friends called GERMS to deal with the situation. It turns out that he thought he was in Darnall 240, his room, rather than Village C West 240, my room. The next morning, some of my friends found him nursing his hangover at Leo’s and forced him to come up to my room to apologize for passing out in my room. He seemed very nice, but I made it a point to keep my room locked after that.
—Madeline Reidy (COL ’09), as told to Kent Elliott (SFS ’08)
After three painfully boring days of NSO, I was feeling antsy. With a pack of a dozen fellow freshmen, I went over to the Village A rooftops and drank to excess. Evidently I made it back to my room. My memory resumes the next morning, when I roll over to see my roommate and his family, dressed in their Sunday best, leering over me. I felt uncertain about how to engage them in conversation, since I was lying there naked except for my boxer-briefs. I had missed some supposedly important culmination of the orientation revelry: convocation. I’d like to think that my absence was a complete accident, but it’s hard to explain the fact that I also had failed to pick up my convocation robes the day before. Hopefully the powers that be will be good enough to allow me to pick up my robes three years from now; I’d really hate to spend another significant collegiate ceremony in my Jockeys.
—Anthony Francavilla (COL ’10)
It was the very first weekend of my freshman year. I was lucky enough to be partying with girls who all wanted to go to Village A, since that was where the upperclassmen were hanging out. We were under the impression, however, that we needed to bring our own solo cups to the party. CVS was not open past 10 PM at that time, so we were forced to ask strangers on the street for a suggestion. My friend posed the question to a homeless man. This particular homeless man was very large and muscular, and oddly aggressive. He began to ramble insanely for a few minutes as we stood there confused. Suddenly, he threateningly lunged at one of the girls, provoking a terrified scream. We all ran away from our new friend and went back to the dorms. As it turns out, we didn’t even need to bring cups to the party in the first place.
—Marco Cerna (COL ’08), as told to Kent Elliott (SFS ’08)
While I’ve forgotten many of the details, one particular night will always be memorialized by an old Yankees hat with a vomit stain on it. The night probably started off at the freshmen stomping grounds, officially known as the Village A rooftops. From there I stumbled to a Henle apartment of a friend’s older brother. A barrage of drinking games—notably flip cup—slowly but surely got me pretty good. As I took a break on a couch, the party continued around me like a dream. I finally understood what it felt like to know the world existed but not exist yourself. Everything was interrupted, though, by my stomach. My reflexes have never been quicker as I snatched the ball cap off my head in time to use it as an emergency toilet. I’ve since struggled to find a better use for a Yankees hat. Having seen said event transpire, one of the apartment’s residents rather discreetly ushered me to the door. Normally I might have been pretty embarrassed on the walk home, but I wasn’t capable of feeling much of anything.
—Michael Kuebler (COL ’08)
This Georgetown Life is a collection of stories written by Georgetown students all based on the same theme. [Cue trendy jazz music.]
