One For the Rhode

The thing about first year is that when you get to the tertiary education institution of your choice, you never really believe that you are actually entitled to an opinion. Sure, you like to believe that you have one. I mean, you are straight out of high school, just three months ago, you were one of the sharks in a see full of little fish. But then, life gives you one of those dreaded lemons. And you are back to square one. You get to University, and you are the little fish, and you really are swimming in a see full of sharks. However, by the fourth term of your first year, you tend to have formed a number of opinions about a number of things, so much so that you begin to feel a bit like an insufferable know-it-all.
However, one of the main opinions occupying my mind at the moment was formed about three hours ago. Let me begin by setting the scene. For the first time in about five months, a good friend and I decided to stay in on a Wednesday night in order to do some work. This, although seemingly daunting, actually turned out to be a fantastic idea. Why? Because about two hours after our friends had left us to go party it up at the Union (or the "Stevie" as it is now known), two of them returned. The one walked in, rolling her eyes and nodding her head, clearly still too sober to have had fun in that jock, cane-train infested building. The other friend (who I still love very dearly), stumbled in and looked as though she had just been hit by the Rhodetrip Shuttle. Perhaps it was merely the sober state from which I viewed her that made me realise just how bad the drinking problem in our little student town really is.
Don’t get me wrong. I am not trying to preach to the masses about the evils of drinking and partying. We all got the O-Week lecture, we all know that drinking is not good for our liver, and that we all do really stupid things when we drink too much (like kissing random people that we hope to never see again, or when we are on the dance floor, and somehow manage to convince ourselves that ABBA’s song Dancing Queen was written especially for us). The reality is that the song was not actually written for us, and we will definitely see that guy or girl again, because Grahamstown is just so small. So why then, every Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday night do we religiously put ourselves through this?
I know that I sound like a prick. Really, I am not one. I go out all the time. The bartenders know my name, and there are far too many pictures of me looking way past my best on Facebook. But every now and then my conscience reminds me that I am here to get a degree, and hence, my experiences here should be filled with academics and not alcohol. Today is one of those days. It is absolutely fine to go out and have fun. We are all young, free spirits trying to make names for ourselves and find our callings in life. We should be able to do whatever we want to. But when you think about it friends, is it really a good idea to drink so much that you have memory loss in the morning? Are the traditions of this University really going to be built on booze? And when we tell our children about our University experience, what will we say?
I suppose that there might just be an element of jealousy in my heart because I can hear the music pumping from afar as I sit in my friend’s room and complete this assignment. But really, my opinion does sort of make sense. We all act like idiots when we are drunk. But the fact is that we, myself included, do it all the time, and I will not deny that we have fun (even if we cannot remember it in the morning). But this is where that little manipulative worm of peer pressure wriggles in. Personally, I do not consider myself to be one who conforms, and if you knew me, you would totally agree. But on a Friday night, I (along with my "non-conformist" friends) manage to steer clear of Friar’s and go on a little mission to The Old Gaol. So we stay away from everyone and their beloved Cane-trains. But what do we do instead? We order quarts of Black Label, fill our lungs with nicotine and tar, and stumble out of the Gaol few hours later. As you can see, it is exactly the same principle as everyone else, just in a different setting.
So why have we made getting drunk and misbehaving one of our social traditions here in Grahamstown? For the moment, and for our moments to follow in this little town, this "tradition" is our regular bit of fun, but what will happen to us fifteen years from now? Sure, some of us will be raking in millions of rands, or solving the issue of world poverty. But those of us who don’t manage to break free from the Rhodes "tradition", God forbid, might find ourselves sitting in a bar downing tequilas and eating stale pretzels everyday, or living in a trailer with 15 children and a beer belly. So in conclusion, I would like to reiterate the idea that I am not tying to lecture the masses, in fact, I, although difficult as it is to admit it, form part of those masses. What I am really trying to say is that having a little bit of fun every now and then is benign, but not knowing your limits, and not knowing when to stop, could lead to disastrous consequences. Because everybody at this University, everyone like you and everyone like me, deserves a future far, far away from a trailer park.