New Year’s Eve Checklist

So Christmas is over and the time for relaxing is behind us. You have only one week left before you need to go back to Evanston. While you probably don’t have your New Year’s Eve plans set yet, follow this checklist and you might make it out of the night with some dignity and a few new friends. At the very least, you’ll have a couple good stories and no less than three inexplicable bruises.

Bonus points if you nail that one dick from Junior Year English Class with the cork.

1. Drink
Going home can mean a lot of different things to a lot of different people. It can mean relaxing, watching TV, losing the Meineke Car Care Bowl of Texas, and even reading (as dark as that may sound). However, to most, it probably means raging and drinking with friends and making bad decisions like you’re right back in high school. While most nights on break can feel more casual and laid back, New Year’s Eve is the night where you get to show all your friends and the randos at the party what you’ve learned at a higher learning establishment, primarily your newfound raging capabilities. An innocent bystander at the party might say, “Oh you go to Northwestern? I go to UC Santa Barbara and party on the beach because it’s 70 degrees year round. You must…like…do a lot of work and stuff.” Just wait, person who I’ve never met, because by the end of the night I will not only be blackout and ghostriding down Market Street, but also in the midst of a heinously deep conversion with a cop about the futileness of the Occupy Wall Street Movement and probz will get a fb friend request from him/her in a few days. Where did you say you went to school again, some, like, state school or whatever?

2. Hook Up
Go for it. You’ve been eying her for this whole party. She wants you. Just try to keep it classy and remember you’re not in the keg anymore, and there’s a decent chance that she actually knows where you live.

Nobody said it would be easy.

3. Wake Up the Next Morning
If you wake up the next morning, no matter where that may be, don’t worry, you made it. You made it through another year alive and you’re still raging like there’s no tomorrow. Now try to act like you have an idea of where you are, find your car, and drive home before your parents start assuming you’re dead and rent out your room.

4. Do Not Black Out Before the New Year
Even though counting down New Years may not be the ultimate highlight of the night, it’s up there. Blacking out before New Year’s kind of puts a damper on your memory of the night and it also makes the previous point a little more traumatic. If you can make it to midnight with a little consciousness and the ability to maneuver your two feet then you’re doing well: feel free to do whatever you please for the rest of the night. And remember that only on New Year’s Eve is the saying “nothing good happens after 2 AM” completely null and void. If you go home before 5am you’re doing something wrong. If the party is at your house, then congrats on having wonderful parents, can I like come over? I’ll have Mario Balotelli bring some fireworks too.

You'll always have your bros.

5. Get All Sentimental About Home
Since we’re on the quarter system here at Northwestern, we go back to school only one day after New Year’s. That not only makes this party your last chance to go hard before you head back to school and snow and total heinousness, it also reminds you how much you love being home and how awesome your friends are. So make about 50 toasts over the course of the night, reminisce over past debauchery, and even cry if that’s your thing. Everyone is blackout so they won’t even remember those two guys crying near the champagne.

–Andy Shartwood

Summer Bucket List

This dog doesn't know how good he has it.

Only three weeks after leaving Northwestern for Summer vacation, and you’re already bored as hell. By now, I can only assume that the allure of your unpaid internship at the Wichita Falls Times Record News has started to wear off, you’ve realized that your friends from home are no longer interested in your stories of hedonism and debauchery that pale in comparison to a standard Tuesday evening in Champaign, IL, or you’re just desperately missing everything about being at school for the first time since Kindergarten. That is why, as your faithful and spectacularly humble servant, I have compiled my very own Summer Bucket List, in an attempt to shake off my own Summer doldrums while simultaneously inspiring our readers to perpetrate majestic acts of grandeur over the break. Please bear in mind that if you suffer any sort of egregious harm due to my suggestions, I cannot be held responsible. But if you happen to get laid as a direct result of my sage advice, you know who to thank.

I mean... seriously?

Get Kicked Out of a Museum
Northwestern already has a great history with some of Chicago’s finest museums. And who doesn’t love to spend their Summer evenings in the Art Institute, escaping the sweltering heat by loudly discussing the monochromatic tendencies of Postminamilism or the intricate details of the sexual connotations Salvador Dali found in lobsters and telephones? I sure do. But one of these days I’m going to snap, and if I’m going to be forcibly escorted from a museum, I want to make sure it happens in the most badass way imaginable. Dressing up as a mummy in the Field Museum’s pyramid, taking an axe to a Rothko, or fishing for a shark in the Shedd Aquarium all sound pretty good to me. But I have nothing against leaving my dog’s excrement in the MCA as art, wearing a lab coat in the Adler Planetarium and assuring everybody that the sun will be extinguished next Friday, or getting drunk with a Chimpanzee at the Brookfield Zoo, just as long as notoriety ensues.

Oh, sì! Conjuga los verbos para mì!

Seduce a Professor
Summer at Northwestern is a magical thing. Boredom and loneliness coalesce into a formidable cyclone of pure libido, and nobody is safe. Perhaps Summer School professors are particularly susceptible to this phenomenon, especially when their students are charming, witty, and strapping young lads who tend to spend their time writing self-indulgent posts on the internet instead of playing outside. Here’s how a hypothetical situation might play itself out between the clumsy, yet affable, student and his Spanish professor:

El Estudiante: Hola. Estoy teniendo algunas problemas con mi tarea. Puedo obtener instrucciòn adicional despuès de la clase?

La Profesora: Por supuesto! Nunca notè que bello de una sonrisa que tienes, y lo sensible y tranquilizador que eres. Estoy ruborizada?

El Estudiante: Es el calor del amor. Venga, vamos a navegar en el Lago Michigan, mientras leìa la la poesìa de Neruda.

La Profesora: Dios mio!

Kick-off My ASG Student President Campaign
As ASG Student Body President, I would work tirelessly to bring an inter-campus zip line to Northwestern, replace our football team with the starting lineup of defending Lingerie Bowl Champions the Los Angeles Temptation, put a keg in every dorm room, and a segway in every garage. I will also work hard to meet student demands for a grow house in Tech, the extension of formal recognition to the Merpeople living in Lake Michigan, and the construction of a border wall between the University and the City of Evanston. Most importantly, however, I will not rest until my bill declaring Morton “Morty” O. Schapiro as “Supreme Master of the Universe” and endowing him with plenipotentiary power over the Galaxy is passed by the United Nations. What better time to get the jump on my fellow opponents for next year than during the summer?

It would be like dining with the Ghost of Hookups Past

Eat Lunch at The Keg
Doing so would be in direct violation of the only two rules that govern The Keg: Never go when sober, and never go when it’s bright enough to see the floor. Even the notion of entering the Keg through the front door fills me with fright. But how can I resist such temptation in the face of unparalleled danger?

Skinny Dip in Lake Michigan
This might be a difficult challenge, considering the regrettable dearth of cheap booze and impressionable friends over the summer, but a challenge that must be surmounted nevertheless. The Snowpocalypse is over, Summer is here, and the time is ripe to brave the Evanston Police and an E-Coli outbreak for the blissful few seconds when I can freely wade into Lake Michigan before my love apples turn into kiwis. I like to remind myself that there is no federal law against nudity, and channel the notable nudist President John Quincy Adams while I free myself from the physical constraints of modern life. I am also willing to provide a sizable reward for anybody who can supply me with a dependable cure for shrinkage.

Using sophisticated computer technology, this is a graphical representation of what I would look like with a mustache

Grow a Mustache
Being clean-shaven and presentable is sooooo passè. And there’s no chance in hell I can grow a full beard. The solution: a compromise. Maybe if I just focus all of my hair-growing power on my upper lip, I can valiantly return to class in the fall sporting facial hair with the tenacity of Burt Reynolds and sex appeal of Geraldo Rivera. As Walter Cronkite proved, all you need is a well-groomed and bristling ‘stache to gain cred in the world of journalism. But then again, when it comes to journalistic street cred, I think Sherman Ave’s doing alright.

Get the Blog Back Together
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