The Drunk Biology Study

Freshman year, I was a much less responsible person than I am now. It made for some experiences that were less fun, but for much better stories. It worth mentioning again that I was a much less mature, stupid, freshman at the time this story occurred. An unsurprising amount of these stories involve alcohol.

The fall semester was just starting. As the deceptively nice summer weather gave way gradually to the hell that is winter in Storrs, CT, I was taking college classes for the first time. Since I had always done well enough in high school without studying, I just assumed that the same would go for UConn. I sat through my biology class with my friend Jake once or twice a week (the class met Monday, Wednesday, Friday).

The professor, Dr. Abbott was 6’5” and had huge bushy grey eyebrows. We naturally assumed they were so bushy because they were filled with knowledge. A quick digression if you don’t mind (and if you do, then this is the wrong blog for you). Dr. Abbott had a best friend at his post doc fellowship who was a “little person.” The LP was also a post-doc working on the same project. They quickly became best friends. This was my favorite fact about Dr. Abbott.

Our first exam for the class came about a month into the semester. Because we lived in the honors dorm (we were both honors students), we decided to try this “studying” thing we’d heard so much about. On the night before the exam, a Thursday, we sat in the ground floor lounge of our building and ordered Buffalo wings. In between mouthfuls of wings, we quizzed each other on the study guide. It was boring.

Karolina was a girl we both knew through a mutual friend. She was having a much better evening. We decided that studying could wait and headed up to her room. The cool thing to do in the honors dorm (other than studying), was to have parties in your dorm room. Since being an RA, I have found it almost impossible to understand why we ever thought this was a good idea. “Drinking underage and making lots of noise? Oh you know where that would be better? Remember that person being paid to stop you from doing that? Why don’t you do it next door? To where they live.” We were also not especially sneaky about the whole thing. After being on the other side for a year, I am shocked that we weren’t caught.

We got to her room and immediately took a pair of shots. Each. This, we rationalized, was absolutely responsible behavior in light of the circumstances. Karolina had squeezed at least 15 people into the tiny double room. There was music pounding and the overhead lights were off. One advantage of living in an extremely isolated dorm at the extreme far end of campus was that you knew everyone relatively well. That meant that we had probably ten friends in that room.

Two “responsible” shots each quickly turned into four, and then six. We were both starting to feel the effects. After an hour, we realized we needed to get back to what we were doing before we got distracted. And so, we left the party and ordered more wings.

After we ate those, we realized we still hadn’t studied in any meaningful way. We headed back downstairs and parked ourselves in the main study lounge. Again, the effective isolation of our dorm worked against us again because one table over were a group of our friends. After hanging out (procrastinating), we got out the study guide and started quizzing each other.

It was laughably easy. We always knew the correct answers. Our small group of friends gathered around our table. For some reason, they seemed very interested in our study session. They were even laughing along with is—we thought—about how easy the questions were! This studying thing was working out great! So far, I had eaten wings twice, gone to a “party”, and generally had a great time. Logically (and this made perfect sense to me at the time) since I never studied in high school, and got okay grades, any amount of studying at all would mean an “A” on the exam for sure.

The next day, we got up and walked to class, confident we would ace the exam. As I worked through the fifty multiple choice questions I found myself getting a little irritated. Dr. Abbott had given us the study guide after all, and it seemed like none of the material I had known so effortlessly the night before was on this exam!

It took a few days to get back the scores. Jake got a 66. I got a 72. And we never drank alcohol again. (Not really). But we did learn a valuable lesson: Never make friends. (Just kidding).