#1 Party School

                This week I listened to and episode of This American Life called #1 Party School. It talked about the number one party school in the country ranked by the Princeton Review, Penn State. There were many stories of party experiences by locals, law enforcement, and students. This made me start to think about my own school, Plymouth State University. This year we were ranked number nine on Playboy’s Top Ten Party Schools. A lot of students may think that this is a good thing and think it is awesome but is it really?

                When I first was looking into PSU I had no idea about its “party school” reputation. I actually didn’t know about it until much later, after I had made the decision to come here. I found out through people, who asked the ever popular question,” Where are you going to school next year?”  When I answer this question people always had a slightly grim look on their faces and said something like, “You that it’s a big party school right?” I never got a single positive response to my choice and it made me wonder if I had made the right decision.

                I decided to give it a chance, I thought “I’m sure everyone was just exaggerating, It can’t be that crazy.” So in the fall I packed up my stuff and moved in to my new home Plymouth State. I wasn’t a newbie to drinking before I came up to school, so I wasn’t worried about looking like the little kid who can’t handle their liquor and makes an ass of themselves.  The first week I went out with my roommate and his friends and partied, A LOT, so much so that I had already started falling behind in classes. Finally I smartened up and realized that I couldn’t keep doing this.

                One night soon after, I finally met the girl who lives across the hall from me. Soon I became good friends with her and her group of friends. They didn’t party too much so I finally thought that I had found a good place to fit in. But then I realized, they all went home every weekend. This became a problem because then all weekend I would sit in my room all by myself, bored out of my mind. I couldn’t afford the bus fare to go home every weekend. I did go home as much as possible but still I became so miserable that I had a countdown in a notebook to when winter break started.

                Over winter break I realized that this isn’t what I want to do for the next four years. It wasn’t the college experience I was looking for. So I worked very hard over the break and saved up enough money to go home every weekend this semester. I’ve filled out my transfer applications to schools near my house that  I can commute too, where I can live at home and be with my friends and  not have to deal with all of the distractions that come with being at this school. I think that I can’t be the only person who feels this way. I think the school really needs to change something before the reputation and the partying gets worse.