Could the media calm down about how terrible millennials are?

It reminds me of how, when you were in 9th grade, you would look at the kids in middle school and say “man, those 8th graders are SOOO much worse than we were. Did you hear that Hanna made out with Jack at the movies this weekend? Slutty!” Just because you’re a little bit older than us, Joel Stein and your wild pseudojournalist cohort, that does not mean you’re better than us.

The main complaint against the millennials, usually, is that we’re narcissists. Narcissistic fame-whoring attention addicts who want trophies for participation. (I should mention that I haven’t actually read Stein’s article because it’s behind a paywall, but I hear he turns around and says we’re not so bad after all. That’s good. Whatever.) We might “save us all,” but only because we’re so self-absorbed. This is the narrative about us (and it’s been the narrative about pretty much every generation since the 8th century BC).

Are we really that narcissistic though? Really? Today I read an article in the New York Times about the effects helicopter parenting. The point was, essentially, that the more helpful parents are to college students, the less successful their kids are. I’m pretty sure the remedy for this is more narcissism, in a sense. Check out their theory:

It seems that certain forms of help can dilute recipients’ sense of accountability for their own success. The college student might think: If Mom and Dad are always around to solve my problems, why spend three straight nights in the library during finals rather than hanging out with my friends?

I think they’re half right.

But I don’t think college kids are slacking off, saying “ah, screw studying, mom and dad will fix it for me!” I promise, most of us do not suck. And most of us have too much pride to consider this an option. But we’re not as motivated (says the study), and I think it’s because we don’t know what motivation is even supposed to look like.

Really, we’re not narcissistic enough.

My generation has had our parents driving us to piano lessons since before we even knew what it was like to want anything more complex than “more cookies.” Our goals have been our parents’ goals for us. Our successes were our parents’ successes and our failures (if there were any) were our parents’ failures. When we did something great, it was great for us but it was also great for mom and dad, who put so much work into that poster for the Greek Mythology project. And I think we knew it.

One symptom of depression is the negative attribution error.

When something bad happens to you, you blame yourself, and when something good happens you think it was just luck. If you write a paper and get a C, you are the worst, but if you get an A, the professor probably didn’t grade them very harshly. Or you assume you only got an A because your parents edited it for you. See what I’m getting at?

Basically, you need to believe that your successes (and failures!) are your own.

So tell your helicopter parents to back the fuck off. Go ahead and be a narcissist. It’s better than the alternative.

(If anyone is wondering what I would recommend parents do, check this link out)

The post we should be more narcissistic appeared first on that girl magazine.

1. People who blow their noses in public.

First of all, blowing your nose is noisy. I particularly hate people who blow their noses during class, because the room is pretty much silent other than you sitting over there making awful fricative sounds with your nose mucus, and it’s not like nobody notices. Everybody notices.

Secondly, have you ever stopped to consider the germs? You’re literally just pushing germs out of your body and into space. Hopefully you get all of them in that one kleenex you’ve been storing in your backpack for the last two months, but you don’t, they’re just floating around the room. Gross. Stop. Blow your nose all you want, but do it in the bathroom or something. Do I even need to explain this?? If you need to expel any kind of substance from your body, step into the restroom where you have access to lots of tissues and trash cans and soap to wash your hands afterwards.

(This entry is brought to you by at least a decade of living with my clinically germ-phobic sister.)

2. Professors who don’t like using slides, when they are teaching a class that really would benefit from using slides.

There are plenty of classes that do not call for slides. For example, Electronic Writing II. That class would not benefit from a powerpoint presentation whatsoever. However, I’ve taken a lot of classes for which using some kind of slideshow or visual aid would be really useful, and in a lot of them, the professor has opted not to because he or she just doesn’t like them on principle.

“I put the slides up here and then everyone just writes down the things on the slides and nobody listens to me!”

I don’t think that’s true, but even if it is, I fail to see the problem. Oh no, I’m writing down the things that you thought were important enough to type into your slideshow!

Instead, we get professors who write incomprehensible flowcharts on a chalkboard at the other end of the biggest lecture hall on campus:

5. Δ –> G –> ⃞  –> O

That is a real thing that my City Politics professor wrote on the board this year. I think it was meant to represent pluralism or something.

3. Meal plans, as a concept.

Come on, Brown. Am I not paying enough to go here in the first place? Can’t we all just eat free food all the time?

I don’t care that this doesn’t make any economic sense whatsoever. I don’t like that I’ve run out of points and now every time I want to go to Jo’s or something I end up buying like, three extra granola bars to justify my meal credit expenditures. I don’t even like granola bars.

4. Places that don’t take credit cards.

Unless you’re running a lemonade stand, there’s no reason not to invest in one of those cute little iphone dongles that lets you process credit cards. I’ve looked up their rates too. They’re not bad.

I don’t like carrying cash anyway. I spend more money when I have cash with me, and that’s bad. If I have $40 in my wallet, I know I have it, I need to spend those $40 right away. If I have $40 in my bank account, I probably don’t even have proof it’s in there except like, a kind of vague feeling that I might have forty dollars. I’m not going to spend money based on a kind of vague feeling that money might be there.

Anyway, my irresponsibility with money is your problem, random business-owners.

5. People who use cutesy middle names on facebook.

If your real middle name happens to be something adorable, that’s fine. Go for it. I use my middle name on facebook because I think it’s a cool middle name (and also because when I put it up circa 2008, I was mad at my ex-boyfriend, and posting my middle name on facebook was something I believed to be an effective jab #highschoolproblems).

No, what bothers me is when someone’s middle name on facebook is something like “Rainboww” or “DrWhoFanatic” or “IDon’tGiveAFuck”. This isn’t MySpace. There’s no need for that. We all know what your name is, and there are other ways to display parts of your personality on facebook anyway. Stop.

6. Shoes that are the right size but don’t fit right.

I have these really great platform sandals that I really like. They are the right size for the length of my foot, but they are too loose in every other dimension. If my feet were the same length but larger in every other possible way, these shoes would fit perfectly.

Maybe that’s what I get for buying my shoes at Target, but whatever.

The post six things that bother me way more than they should appeared first on that girl magazine.

So, in the process of researching for the shockingly popular Cosmarxpolitan, I was pointed in the direction of an excellent feminist BDSM blog. Author Holly just wrote a really excellent defense of her sex-positive stance, so go read it at Pervocracy.

Okay. Now you’re back. If you didn’t go read it, here are the main points in bullet form:

• Sexual pleasure is a legitimate thing to pursue, ethically.
• We shouldn’t judge people for the ethical sex that people are or are not having.

That’s basically what her brand of sex positivity is about, and I’m so into it.

Here’s what I’m thinking though: Why limit this to sex? Pleasure in general is a legitimate thing to pursue ethically (and if you disagree, I have a declaration of independence for you to read), and we shouldn’t judge people for the choices that people make, as long as those choices are ethical. If no one’s getting hurt, then it’s not my chair and not my problem.

Let me tell you a story. It starts in a way that y’all might not believe: I joined a sorority this year. I know. I’m really excited, and couldn’t be happier about it, but it was a surprise for a lot of people. Whatever.

One of the long-standing rules of sorority life is that you never ever drink in letters. It doesn’t matter if you’re old enough to drink legally. If alcohol is going to cross your lips, you need to take off your pin or badge or scarf or whatever else you’re wearing that represents your sorority. It’s unbecoming.

So what I want to know is this: Why? Why is drinking automatically a bad thing to do? Drinking, I assume, is bad for our image because people do dumb and mean things when they’re drunk. But people also do dumb and mean things when they’re sober! We’re discouraged from doing dumb and mean things in our letters as well, obviously, but that’s usually more of a suggestion.

“You know, if you’re wearing letters you’re representing the whole group, so try to represent us well and be a little extra nice. And NO DRINKING, or the world will come to an end.”

That is a paraphrase.

It’s also worth noting that guys in fraternities can drink in letters as long as they’re over 21. (Edit: It depends on the fraternity, actually. Some have the same rule that sororities have. Others don’t.) Double standards rock, don’t they?

Anyway, this blog post has hopped from place to place like nobody’s business. Let me see if I can summarize all these thoughts: As long as you are not hurting anyone (emotionally or spiritually or physically or whatever), you should be able to make whatever choices you want to make without fear of judgment. This applies to sex and it applies to drinking and it applies to what shoes you decide to wear to lunch. Let’s all just do whatever we want, within the constraints of trying to be a good person.

Being a good person isn’t defined by the tequila shots you don’t take or the sex you don’t have or the flip flops you decide to wear to the White House (to be clear, that was a totally weird and probably bad choice, but I don’t actually think that these people are bad people). So stop stressing about the small stuff so much.

The post do whatever you want to do, ethically appeared first on that girl magazine.

For weird date number three, I was debating between that one time in Austria when I went to a ball with a guy I had incorrectly assumed to be gay and we made out in the taxi cab, but I think I’m going to tell this story instead. (The moral of that story is that you can’t just go around assuming someone’s gay because they are a theater major with stylish glasses on, and also that Europe is a pretty sexy place).

The moral of this story is that weird dates are not always bad.

April, 2012

It was the Friday after my birthday, and my lovely then-boyfriend decided it was his duty to take me out to dinner (my actual birthday had been on a Tuesday, and Tuesdays are almost as weird as Mondays, as far as dates go). So far, things sound pretty normal, don’t they? Just you wait.

He presented me with two options: Either the two of us could go out and be romantic alone, or we could enlist some other friends to join us on this dinner escapade. After trying to defer the decision (was there a right answer? Should I have said, “No, screw my friends, I want to be with only you!”? That seems clingy and weird. Then again, saying “Screw you, I want to hang out with my friends!” is also rude. See?), I guess I decided to get some other folks in on this, and somehow it wound up a triple date. This is what happens when all your friends are in relationships — things that were not meant to be triple dates end up being triple dates.

My friend’s boyfriend had just gotten a job, so we stopped by the liquor store so he could buy something celebratory: a ridiculously nice bottle of scotch. I’ve never seen a grown man so close to jizzing his pants in public (and I hate that phrase, but it’s the only one that comes close to describing what was going on). While we were in there, we decided wine couldn’t be a bad idea, and bought more than enough bottles for the six of us.

We got to the restaurant (a BYOB Cambodian place) and immediately started drinking. It was still light out, but that fact is neither here nor there. Dinner was the typical level fun, but afterwards we decided to wander around the Wickenden area.

We found ourselves at the friendly neighborhood sex shop, Mister Sister, drunk.

My friend took it upon herself to show me exactly which vibrator she liked the best, while our boyfriends looked on silently. Were they experiencing fear? Glee? Hunger? I’ll never know.

I found the array of prosthetic (lifelike!) penises to be terribly interesting. The erect ones made some sense to me, but upon discovering a very realistic flaccid replica, I politely asked the salesman what it was for.

 Me (shouting across the room): What IS this???

Salesman: A prosthetic.

Me: A prosthetic WHAT??!?!?

Salesman: A penis. 

I think my highly reasonable boyfriend got us out of there before we were thrown out. Or maybe the salesman just made noises about closing soon and we got the hint. Do I remember? No. But I do know it was probably very #romantic.

The post the three weirdest dates i’ve been on: part 3 appeared first on that girl magazine.

1. No one cares about your size.

No one thinks your shoe size is an indication of your attractiveness or worthiness or moral status. Your shoe size is just the size of shoe that fits most comfortably on your feet.  Sometimes I think “I wish my feet were smaller,” but only because I want to wear my roommates’ shoes or I’ve recently stepped on something. Sometimes I’ll meet someone with hilariously tiny/huge feet and we’ll all giggle about it, but I don’t like, dwell on this fact at length, because it’s silly and arbitrary. I never feel like if only my feet were smaller, my life would be more worth living. That would be silly.

2. You have so many options!

The people who make shoes know that people don’t all want the same thing, and they accept this fact as value-neutral. They just make a whole bunch of different kinds of shoes and present them to you as choices. Even when there’s an ‘it’ shoe of the moment, you usually have a ton of choices within that style (e.g. remember when Uggs were a thing? I remember seriously debating whether I wanted the tall caramel ones or the short sand ones, and it was such a big decision for me at the time).

3. You’re allowed to be inconsistent.

You don’t have to be wearing the same pair of shoes every single day. That would actually be super weird, because different situations call for different shoes. You probably wouldn’t wear the same shoes to dinner that you would wear rock climbing. You’d wear another pair of shoes to the beach, probably. That’s not bad! It’s good!

4. You should do whatever you feel most comfortable with.

This is similar to point 1 — no one pressures you into squeezing into a smaller size. But also, in shoe shopping, comfort is one of the most important factors. This should be the case in life! We should all be searching for the most comfortable stilettos/life choices. Not that we should all do unambitious things, because that’s like wearing birkenstocks all the time, but we shouldn’t put ourselves in uncomfortable situations for no reason.

The post four reasons life should be more like shoe shopping appeared first on that girl magazine.

December, 2009:

I could describe the entire time I lived in Switzerland as one very weird date (with reality! #philosophical). But this was a date with a guy (who I’ve actually mentioned here before).

As indicated in the link above, I had a massive crush on this guy (he was #5). A totally inexplicable crush, but the kind of crush that made you want to wake up in the morning… or choose not to move back to America. True story, I almost moved back, and then he facebook chatted me once and I decided I would stay for the rest of the year because, clearly, we were so in love.

Anyway, he was really into this other girl, who was in our grade but was way older than everyone else (and super pretty). I didn’t blame him for being into her, but there was no way that was going to happen, because she was not trying to date high school boys.

After many months of pining (on my end, for him, and on his end, for this other girl), our mutual friend told him to ask me on a date, so he did. I obviously saved that Facebook Chat conversation for posterity, so here it is.

Boy: hey, i have a very random question to ask you right now

Me: yeah?

Boy: if i asked you out to see a movie, would you accept`?

Me: is this a hypothetical question?

Me: (sure)

Boy: it could become real

Boy: haha

Me: haha

Boy: ok then we should.

We made a plan to go to see some weird British indie movie called “Fish Tank” after school on Monday. We went from school straight to the grocery store to buy something to drink — a flask of Jack Daniels for him and a bottle of white wine for me (I don’t know. It was his idea). The movie was about a fifteen year old girl who loves to dance. She has sex with her mom’s boyfriend, discovers that the boyfriend has a wife and child, kidnaps the boyfriend’s child, gives the child back, accidentally auditions to be an erotic dancer, makes friends with a sick horse, and runs away to Wales. And the horse dies. It was incredibly depressing, and I drank most of the wine.

During intermission (yes, in Switzerland movies have intermissions) we went outside for a cigarette (he was a smoker, and I really wanted him to like me). It seemed like we were actually hitting it off.

After the movie, though, things got really weird. We went to sit on a bench at this really lovely park, and I thought this was all very lovely and romantic. Except then he said, “Usually, at this point in a date, I’ve kissed the girl.”

So I said he should or something. And he did, and it was weird. I think he actually said it was weird (and I probably shrugged or something). Then he told me all about how our mutual friend had totally pushed him into going on this date, and how he was very much hung up on this other girl, and how he was optimistic that perhaps hanging out with me would distract him from these issues, but he just didn’t know.

I told him not to do me any favors. I was also really hoping he would change his mind. We talked for a while, and then I walked home by myself.

EDIT: My memory fails me! He totally did walk me home! I lived behind a gate, and the people wouldn’t open the gate until he left (because he looked like a criminal or something? I really don’t know). As if the evening needed more awkwardness!

The post the three weirdest dates i’ve been on: part 2 appeared first on that girl magazine.

Spring, 2005:

This was not my date. However, it was the first date I ever went on.

Here’s the deal: My 7th grade best friend was dating a guy in our general group of friends. He wanted the two of them to go on a date, but someone’s mom was uncomfortable with the situation. The solution was for each of them to bring a friend along. She invited me, and he invited some guy from his soccer team whom I had never met. I don’t remember his name, although it might have been Michael.

(Fun fact: Many years later, this very same friend ended up dating Michael. He and I hadn’t really seen each other since this one weird non-double-date in seventh grade, but we briefly became friends again while he was dating my friend. They broke up after like a month though, and I have no idea where he is now.)

The four of us went to see The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, which I really enjoyed. We sat like this, if memory serves:

At some point, something funny happened and I laughed at it, but it turns out no one else had thought this thing was funny, so I was the only one laughing. My little row (pictured above) all turned to look at me. I sunk into my seat. It was kind of embarrassing, but then again I was the only one who got the joke, so maybe the rest of the theater should have been embarrassed.

On this note, let’s take a moment to appreciate the emotional resilience of 13 year olds. You go through all these very minor experiences that feel humiliating in the moment, and yet you come out of middle school generally pretty okay. It’s a miracle, really.

Afterwards, we went to a Mexican restaurant in the same complex as the movie theater. Everybody ordered quesadillas, and I guess I’d never had a quesadilla at a restaurant before. I started using a fork and knife, and they all looked at me like I’d smashed my face into the plate and tried to start eating that way. Apparently, in this social circle, a quesadilla is something eaten exclusively with your hands.

So I picked up my quesadilla and made a mental note in ALL CAPS never to try to eat a quesadilla with a fork ever again. I was convinced this was a very weird thing to do, because three tweens had judged me for doing so for about half a second.

My friend and her boyfriend did not kiss. No matter how many times I asked.

The post the three weirdest dates i’ve been on: part 1 appeared first on that girl magazine.

Pros:

• It’s drinking in the daytime! All of the fun of sunshine and all of the fun of whiskey combined. You have to acknowledge how awesome this combination has the potential to be.
• You’re probably not tired. You’ll get tired later, but right now, you basically just woke up. You have so much more energy than when you’re usually drinking.
• People don’t usually drink in the daytime, so you get to feel like a deviant. Also, you get to have a fun secret.
• Stores and things are open, and probably will stay that way for a number of hours.
• It’s light out, for god’s sake!
• Certain types of daydrinking, like drinking wine with lunch in Europe, will make you feel very sophisticated.

Cons:

• 9pm hangovers. You must sustain a steady level of inebriation to avoid this, but that’s easier said than done. Drinking in moderation is something most of us still haven’t quite gotten the hang of.
• Under the wrong circumstances, daydrinking looks a little bit like alcoholism, and let’s not go there.
• You still have daytime-type-obligations. You might need to move your car, but if you’re drunk, you definitely shouldn’t drive (even if it’s just to the spot down the street. I mean it. Parking is hard enough, y’all). So you have to plan ahead, and that’s always kind of a struggle for college kids.
• Your parents might call you, and because you are drunk and impulsive, you might answer. Then you have to hold yourself together for long enough to hear about your sister’s new glasses and your mom’s new idea for your career/life.
• You’re seriously going to be grumpy at like, 10pm. You don’t believe me but it’s true.

The post pros and cons of daydrinking appeared first on that girl magazine.

I should preface this by saying that I consider my high school’s sex ed program pretty good, as far as high school sex ed programs go. We learned all about condoms and birth control and diseases and whatnot, and did so in a fairly open minded setting (in a private school in the suburbs of a pretty liberal city). That said, there were some pretty crucial elements missing.

1. Consent.

In light of Steubenville, it seems like a lot of people really don’t understand what consent is about. Consent is not not-saying-no-because-you’re-happy-or-unconscious-or-mute. Consent is enthusiastically saying yes to sexual activity. Consent is saying, “Yes, I absolutely would love to take off our clothes and touch each other. That is one of the best ideas we’ve ever had. As long as you want to, I definitely think it would be a good thing to do.” (That Girl Magazine suggests that you memorize this and recite it every time you want to consent to something. It’s a real turn on, I hear.)

Part of the problem, I think, is that high schools are caught up in telling kids not to have sex, so teaching kids how to say YES to is a low priority. Sex is something you’re not supposed to want to do, so why schools teach you to express that it is something you want to do? Isn’t that a contradictory message?

Maybe it is. Here’s the thing though: there are plenty of reasons to have sex, and there are plenty of reasons not to have sex, and I’ll get to that in a minute. But high school students have a right to know that their consent is something they have the power to give, freely and actively, and in the end that decision is theirs alone. 

2. Decision making.

As mentioned above, there are reasons not to have sex with someone. If you don’t want to, that’s a good reason not to right there. Other factors like STIs and pregnancy were covered pretty thoroughly when I was in high school, but sex is a personal decision, and not always a logical one.

There are also reasons to have sex with someone. Those are worth talking about too! There are bad reasons and good reasons to have sex with someone, and most high school kids go into these decisions blind. If we want people to make good decisions, we should talk to them about how to make good decisions. Not the decision that we think is right for them, but good decisions of their own.

3. Identity.

My high school sex ed teacher had spent some time working in a trans* resources center, so we actually talked about gender identity a lot in that context, which was awesome (although there were enough other things I would have loved to talk about that sometimes I wonder whether it was the best allocation of our like, two weeks of sex ed).

That said, all high school curricula should have something to say about trans* rights. And all high school curricula should really make a point to discuss sexual identity and orientation in an open and honest way. They need to frame the conversation that, right now, is mostly about procreative sex.

4. Pleasure.

What is good sex? What is bad sex? We might find out eventually, but it might be useful to have some discussion of this in our high school classrooms. I think my high school’s sex ed program mentioned the clitoris once, and all the pervs who read literature porn online (e.g. me) blushed and giggled and averted our eyes.

We should also be telling kids about emotions. Everyone processes sex and emotions differently, and that’s great, but most people do intertwine the two things somewhat, and that’s worth talking about. For example:

Bad: Girls, when you have sex, you’re going to get so emotional. You’ll probably want to get married to the guy, because you are a lady. And then when you and this dude break up, you’ll just want to die. If you hadn’t had sex, it would be easier! Don’t have sex, because feelings!

Good: There all kinds of ways that you might feel after having sex with someone. Let’s have a discussion about that. 

5. Sex.

As far as I can remember, most of our discussions had to do with the consequences of sex, but it didn’t have much to do with sex itself. I realized this during a conversation with a friend of mine.

Me: If you could add one thing to you high school’s sex ed program, what would it be?

Erika: Sex.

Me: What did you learn about?

Erika: Something about gonorrhea, and then we moved on.

Sex needs to be a part of our conversations about sex. I mean, right?

The post 5 important things missing from my high school sex ed appeared first on that girl magazine.

1. Count down the days until your 21st birthday.

As soon as you’re close enough to be excited, start a countdown. I may have had one going since January. I’d go around saying things like, “Guys, only 74 days until my 21st birthday! It’s so soon!!”

2. Make highly ambitious plans.

Make a list of all the places you want to go on your 21st birthday where you couldn’t go before, or couldn’t drink before, or could drink before but now you can drink with your real ID, bitches. Plan to pregame with your girls, then pregame with your girls and also your guys, then go to an 18+ club so your younger friends without IDs aren’t totally alienated, then go to another club, then go to a bar, and then go find someone to have birthday sex with, maybe. This all must happen in one night, obviously. It’s going to be the best birthday ever!

3. Wake up stressed.

Widely accepted fact: birthdays are fucking stressful. Your 21st birthday is, I think, even more stressful than usual, because at least in America, 21 is such a big freaking deal. You’re basically under pressure to be having the best time, all the time. Also, you already have three missed calls from your mother who really wants to sing to you.

4. Go about your life.

The other problem with birthdays is that life goes on, and 364 out of 365 people don’t really care that much about this day. You’re still going to have to go to class or maybe spend four hours laying out a magazine in an office by yourself, so that you’re not a total flaky jerk when you peace out of there at 8:30 (not that I did that or anything).

5. Feel existential dread.

Write a long winded blog post about what you want to do with your life or something. Feel adulthood impending. Realize you are hungry.

Leave the newspaper office (or whatever) to find yourself some dinner, and realize it’s your twenty first birthday dinner. Suddenly, getting a chipotle burrito and bringing it back to your cubicle at the library sounds like the most depressing thing in the world. Wander up and down campus wondering what to eat that will be worthy of twenty first birthday dinner status, because you will obviously remember this for the rest of your life (if you’d just gotten the damn burrito, you wouldn’t have remembered any of this, but now you’re psyching yourself out). Feel like crying because no one is jumping out from behind the bushes to say “Hello I am your friend and I want to take you to a celebratory dinner!” Go to Ben and Jerry’s and get a free ice cream cone because it is your birthday. This will do.

6. Party.

At around 8:30, get all dressed up in a fancy sexy dress so that everyone will think you look special. You get a phone call from a friend at another school, and he’s upset that you’re sober, but you really don’t want to drink alone on your 21st birthday, so pressure your roommates into having a glass of (legally purchased!) prosecco with you. Text all your friends to come over to your house and drink with you and get silly. They will.

7. Forget your elaborate plans.

Pregame hard. Go where the night takes you. Is there a line outside one of those aforementioned clubs? Screw lines! It’s your birthday! Lines are for people whose birthday it is not! (Realize later you were supposed to meet up with people at said club, and they are kind of wondering where you are.) Take a cab less than five blocks back to campus, because you’re a self-indulgent diva and it’s your birthday. Go to the one bar on campus that actually IDs so seriously that no one even tries to go before they’re 21. You’ve heard legends about this place.

Tell the bartender you want something fruity. Take a shot of tequila (“It’s for my sisterrrr! She’s legal toooo!! She’s in EUROPE! I think she’s sleeping. I’m gonna CALL HER!! Why isn’t she answering?! Yeah okay I’m getting out my wallet. Hang on, okay? I just want to talk to my sister!!“) and realize that you are half a drink away from being totally blackout. Stop drinking right there, because you are an adult now and you understand what your limits feel like. Have hilarious and strange interactions with people you don’t know that well but follow on instagram.

8. Resume normal life.

Wake up the next morning and spend a minute mourning for your birthday. Spend another minute mourning for your liver. Skip your morning class. Wear the new clothes your mom sent you. Read all the birthday wishes on your facebook wall. Feel old and boring, but also mature and sophisticated.

The post how to turn 21 appeared first on that girl magazine.