Favorite college memories?

[ree-Xi]

I searched for a similar thread but could not find one.

To everyone who has already graduated, what are your favorite college memories? What do you miss most? (not just Greek-related)

Some of mine:

- Getting ready to go out, picking out (and sharing!) outfits and doing hair and makeup.
- Spending hours discussing philosophy, authors, or life.
- "Snow days" where the campus was shut down. Ordering take-out, spending the day in PJs, and having dorm-wide snowball fights.
- Late night Diner runs.
- Warm, sunny spring days sunbathing in the quad.
- Having people around all the time to do something - or to do nothing - with.
- Formals. Dress shopping for formals.
- Late nights putting the campus newspaper "to bed".
- Painting the ____ on campus with our colors and letters.
- My awesome off campus apartment where people just "stopped by" any time of day or night.
- Staying up all night, reading each other's auras.
- Being an orientation leader.
- Sisterhood dinners.
- Being crowned Homecoming Queen (I mention it only because I'm a geek; no one was more surprised than me!!).
- Whenever I was in the hospital (often two weeks at a time), my friends and sisters would always visit me. The nurses usually let them stay past visiting hours, as long as we were quiet.
- The first few days of the semester, when everything felt brand-new.

[echilling]

I didn't graduate yet but I agree with what you say here on some things. Late night dinners especially.

I'm going to be an orientation leader this fall (and a junior too) I'm looking forward to it. What did you really like about it?

[ree-Xi]

Originally Posted by echilling

I didn't graduate yet but I agree with what you say here on some things. Late night dinners especially.

I'm going to be an orientation leader this fall (and a junior too) I'm looking forward to it. What did you really like about it?

Being an orientation leader was so much fun! Everything from the retreat to the training sessions, getting to know each other, bonding, being together 24/7 - I can't describe how much I enjoyed it. We had a week-long training session in the early summer, followed by four rounds of 2-day orientation sessions. There was one final 2-day program for freshman right before school started, to help them sign up for classes, get settled in the dorms, get their books, etc.

We learned so much about the school that we didn't know, and it was so much fun meeting the incoming freshman who were seeing everything with brand-new eyes. While it was a little nerve-wracking at first - trying to be informative and entertaining at the same time was a challenge, especially when the last thing the kids wanted to do was be in a classroom or tour the campus - it was a great feeling when they took to you. We really had to lean on each other to get through those long days.

I ended up being very close to several of my fellow leaders, and am still great friends with some of the people almost 20 years later! Some are as close to me as my sisters are. Good luck and have fun!

[KSUViolet06]

*Getting a bid. That was a fun day.

*Getting ready to go out. Music, make-up and clothes everywhere, fun times.

*Sitting around the kitchen table and getting the "recap" on Friday morning. Even when you didn't go out, the "recap" was always fun to get.

*I really enjoyed getting ready for recruitment and goofing around between and after parties.

*The random stuff that happens when you're just sitting around the house bored.

*The sheer JOY of finding out that you got a SNOW DAY.

*When my friends all had apartments in the area and they had big parties.

*Having a meal plan! Eating all kinds of crazy junk simply because I could. lol.

*Being a short walk away from all my friends (in different dorms/sorority houses).

*Just sitting around, and having someone IM you and ask if you want to get food, and going. Now we all live so spread out and everything has to be planned.

*Thinking I was cool because I was a freshmen in a suite and had my own bathroom (that I shared with one other person).

*Homecoming and seeing all the alumnae that you only see once a year.

*Turning 21--and the mayhem that followed. I was a young one (started college at 17 with a December birthday), so it felt like I would NEVER turn 21.

*Having deep car talks with my friends on the way to places.

*My awesome house roommate. She is still one of my very best friends.

*Road trips!

*Painting the rock.

Pretty much everything. lol.

[ThetaPrincess24]

--lack of parents poking around in my business
--walks through campus
--being in the rowdy student sections at basketball & football games
--having a burger at 3am at the 24 hour campus hang out
--sneaking food into the library (and getting away with it)
--attending Theta & Panhellenic events
--attending Fraternity Philanthropic events
--making fun of fraternity members and their "public displays of buffoonery"
--Halloween parties & mixers
--Pledging & Initiations of both Kappa Alpha Theta and Alpha Kappa Psi
--formals & having sisters doing my hair
--discovering MP3's and how to burn them to a CD
--learning all the reasons not to take the city bus to campus or anywhere else
--getting my first cell phone!
--learning to cook more than just pasta

[MUSK81]

Let's see ...

• Walking to the all-you-can-eat breakfast buffet the morning after a dance.
• Hanging around the chapter room watching soaps and getting into huge discussions about the outcomes.
• Theme TGIFs (what we called mixers on our campus): Pimp and whore, nerd, biker, western, come as your fantasy.
• Playing Space Invaders, Pac-Man and Frogger at the campus bars.
• Hosting an inpromtu party in my 1974 Mustang II on the house parking lot (no alcohol in the house, but no one said anything about my car!)
• Doing the Hokey Pokey in a fountain on campus on Big Sis Night.
• Eating chips and dip and watching Friday Night Videos after coming on from the bars.
• Dashing into the middle of the busiest street on campus at the red lights to collect funds for our philanthropy.
• The 1983 Marshall-WVU basketball game, where on of WVU's players got p*ssed off at Coach Gale Catlett, ripped off his jersey, threw it and walked out of the arena chanting "Go Marshall!"
• Fraternity rush parties before the drinking age was raised!
• The brunch after initiation, knowing that I was now truly a sister!

[lovespink88]

- Living in the dorms. Even though it was small and had crappy cafeteria food, I loved having everyone just down the hall (I never lived in my sorority house)
- My dorm friends…even though we all were doing our own things by senior year, we still made it a point to get together a few times every semester and party like we did in the dorms
- Football games/basketball games…I didn’t go to many but I went to some very memorable ones (ex: Chief Illiniwek’s last game!!)
- We had a food place in our dorm that was open all day and until 12…unlike the café, the food there was DELICIOUS!!
- Rush (on both side of it!)
- Chapter installation and being initiated by our national president
- Barn dances!! If your chapters didn’t have them, YES, they are exactly what they sound like…so fun!
- Laying on the quad after class when we had nothing better to do
- Those first two weeks of school where all the fraternities were having their rush parties
- The Halloween party me and my roommie had during our sophomore year
- UNOFFICIAL
- Summer visits to school
- The double snow day…My school apparently hasn’t had one since my fiance’s parents went there in the late 70’s. Then we had TWO back to back.
- Dancing at my favorite bars
- Me and my friends being those obnoxious girls who would ask the basketball players if we can take a picture with them when we would see them out
- The first time I could hand the doorman my 19-year-old ID and could gain bar entrance (love that Champaign law)
- Random apartment parties
- Kissing fiance (then boyfriend) under the "eternal flame" ever year on the last night of school
- Singing "Hail to the Orange" at sporting events
- On the last night of school, my dorm friends and I would celebrate..big time! We did this every year except senior year when we had a:
- Graduation barcrawl
- My first sorority semi formal
- My first college apartment, even though my bedroom was the size of my cubical
- Getting accepted into Alpha Delta Sigma (advertising honor society)

I've been gone for just over two months and I miss it so much!

[ThetaPrincess24]

Originally Posted by MUSK81

Let's see ...[*]Dashing into the middle of the busiest street on campus at the red lights to collect funds for our philanthropy.

Probably not my place to ask, but I cant help myself. Why did you risk getting hit by a car for your philanthropy project? How was that not considered a risk management issue?

[ISUKappa]

- living in the house
- skipping class when I felt like it (far too frequently)
- taking interesting classes like History of Rock and Roll and Human Sexuality
- tailgating and going to football games
- Homecoming/lawn displays/Yell Like Hell
- Veishea (before the riots)
- Varieties and being on VCC
- Live bands at Peoples (especially The Nadas)
- sitting in front of the mirrors in the hallways getting ready to go out, music blasting
- stumbling home at 2am, gyro in hand with everyone else
- those drunken 2am conversations
- being on CPC and going to MGCA
- playing Spades on Pi Kapps back patio
- living in London one summer
- Buck burgers at Cy's
- Mug Night!
- FAC!
- hearing all the gossip the next morning in the kitchen
- Kappa dessert!
- Initiation weekends
- serenades
- my on-campus job
- having little to no responsibilities (at least not like now)

[KSUViolet06]

I love how everyone misses simlar stuff. To add:

*Having my only responsibilities be school, sorority, and my service group. I thought it was sooooo much. Heh.

*Spending summer in CA with my friends whom I only saw during summer.

*Waking up, deciding I didn't want to go to class, and not going.

*The feeling of pulling an all-nighter knowing I got to sleep until like noon the next day.

*Getting ice cream on campus with my Little.

*That Bid Day feeling of "YAY NEW MEMBERS" and "YAY IT'S OVER!" wrapped into one.

*Finding out I was FINALLY going to be a Big Sis.

*Staying up all night making/painting Little Sis gifts and setting them up in the chapter room.

*Seeing my Littles' face when she would see her gifts. Hearing her say stuff like "Oh my gosh I love my bag!!!!" not knowing that I had it made for her.

*Traveling for my service org conferences.

[aephi alum]

* Both my initiations - into Sigma Iota Phi and later into AEPhi
* Going to IHOP after pref and seeing people gawk as a group of beautiful women in black formal dresses and heels and full makeup and hair took over a few tables and proceeded to wolf down pancakes and coffee
* Meeting my husband. The funny thing is, I didn't go to college for my MRS degree, it was just an added bonus
* Singing with my a cappella group
* Hacking, including Orange Tours and sodium drops
* Drinking games and beer bashes on Burton Third
* Hosting July 4 parties - when we were grad students (and engaged) DH and I landed an awesome apartment in married-student housing that had a perfect view of the Charles River fireworks
* That random night when I got together with the Indian women who lived on my floor, and we cooked a feast - kheema, dhal, basmati rice, aloo gobi...
* And the other random night when I prepared a similar meal for my sorority sisters, none of whom was familiar with Indian food (but they liked it)
* The time my floormate from Trinidad came in one afternoon all excited for his first "snowstorm" - which was actually a flurry. (That's the closest I can get to a snow day experience.)
* Graduation and turning my brass rat around! (It took a while to get used to putting it on the other way.)

[LaneSig]

*Initiation -I was so nervous, I almost threw up. Chapter advisor later told me that he had never seen someone look so pale.
*Going to classes - In 4 years of undergrad, I only missed 3 classes. If I ever started to sleep late or skip, I told myself that my parents were paying too much money for me to blow off class.
*Hanging out of the front porch of the old Sig house at ASU.
*One specific night, sitting on the porch swings at the house until 4 am, talking with Donny, Vince, Cindy, and Darla.
*Sneaking the flasks into the stadium for the other guys. They said that security would never suspect me because I looked too much like a Boy Scout. Security never did search me; they'd search the other guys and even my date a couple of times.
*Slow dancing with Karen and realizing that I was in love with her. She dumped me for a football player.
*Walking into a Sunday night meeting and being pulled aside by the advisors to tell me they were appointing me the new vice president of the chapter. We had had an issue with presidents - 3 in a 2 month period. The advisors told the chapter that they felt appointing me was in the chapter's best interest to help the new president stabilize the chapter.
*My last meeting as an undergrad. I didn't want to leave the house because I knew it wouldn't be the same.

[LucyKKG]

- driving to San Jose JUST for In-n-Out
- seeing people I know all over campus and knowing where to hang out if I was lonely and hoping to find friends
- "cocktail". At my school, it's where everyone gets dressed up then enjoys a keg and "jungle juice" (Popov + Kool Aid). Theta Chi ones were pretty legendary. :-)
- the view of the Pacific Ocean from campus
- the many glorious taquerias of Santa Cruz
- Sigma Pi's installation party. SO much fun
- Meeting Kappa's national president (on multiple occasions...nbd)
- late night food at the Saturn Cafe - weird people, some weird food cause it's all vegetarian, but amazing mozzarella sticks and open til the wee hours of the morning!

[MUSK81]

Originally Posted by ThetaPrincess24

Probably not my place to ask, but I cant help myself. Why did you risk getting hit by a car for your philanthropy project? How was that not considered a risk management issue?

We went out when the cars were stopped for red lights. Lots of groups did this for fundraisers - firefighters, civic groups, etc. It was the 80's - risk management wasn't even heard of at that time. Fraternities still had little sister groups, the drinking age was 18 and we had rush parties for rushees. A different world ... I miss it!

[Low C Sharp]

Singing under the Christmas tree in Rockefeller Center with my best friends.
Seeing the college on its feet, giving us a standing O, after my first concert.
Watching the sun come up after initiation.
Games of "Truth or Dare" that became "Spin the Bottle."
Football-game road trip in the party van with the keg in the back.
Feeling that I was in the best possible place in the world for me.
Dispensing soft serve onto cookies, brownies, cake, and bowls of Cap'n Crunch.
Streaking in January, at midnight, for Primal Scream.
Wearing a black dress, platform heels, and glitter eye shadow to step on stage.
Singing the line "Having the time of your life" in the song Dancing Queen and thinking, this IS the time of my life!
________
Patriciaa