Hey, Freshmen,
We wrote you an orientation guide to help you slide smoothly into the world of post-adolescent responsibility. Before you read it, make sure you play a name game or two. Get it? You probably had to play so many name games this week. Ha ha!
Anyway, we hope this helps you get even more oriented and we hope you have fun at Skidmore. Tomorrow is the first day of classes so make sure to sharpen your pencils and wear your fancy clothes because if you don’t present yourself as a well-dressed and academically serious student from the get-go you will remain lonely until the day you graduate and be socially under-prepared for the rest of your life.
Enjoy!
Aa
Alcohol:
In college, we have a saying. It goes: Beer before liquor, get drunk quicker. Liquor before beer, you’re a queer. Or something like that. I don’t know. Sayings are hard to remember. The point is, you’re going to get drunk and you’re going to puke. A lot. Don’t worry though, somebody else will clean it up for you. Also, that’s a good way to make friends. “Hey, are you cleaning up puke? Did you know that’s my puke?” “Oh, cool. I’m Jeffrey. Want to play video games?” That’s pretty much how it goes. We have another saying too. It goes: Blame it on the a-a-a-a-a-alcohol. Blame it on the a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-alcohol. You can do anything in college and blame it on being drunk.
Literally. Anything.
Anonymous Confession Board:
SkidmoreUnofficial.com has an Anonymous Confession Board (ACB) where you can talk about how you have a crush on Lucas Frank or complain about your roommate’s odors. Have you seen Ghostbusters II? The ACB is like the
river of pink slime that runs underneath the city and makes everyone feel unpleasant feelings. If you post on it, please try to be nice. We reserve the right to delete anything for pretty much any reason. We’re not sure how we feel about the ACB, but people tell us it’s an enormous waste of time, so we keep it around. Maybe someday some people will get married because of one of the missed connections posts. Probably not. Please be nice.
Runners Up: Adderall, Absences, Arson, Anal, Alpine, Apathy
Bb
Bias Incidents:
Oh man, you’re going to love bias incidents. They’re the best. Not real Bias Incidents, obviously, where an individual or a group is attacked based on their gender or ethnicity or sexual orientation. That is terrible. When that happens, it is not funny at all and it really makes you think about how messed up the world is and how IT IS THE TWENTY FIRST CENTURY PEOPLE and how are gay people not allowed to marry each other and THERE IS OIL
POURING OUT OF A HOLE IN THE OCEAN WHAT THE FUCK and then you think about how lucky you are to even be in the position to attend a prestigious liberal arts institution like Skidmore in the first place when there are so many people less fortunate than you in the world and maybe you should volunteer or something but then you realize that you don’t even know what you would volunteer for so you get high and play Mario Kart instead. That is the kind of bias incident you will not love.
The kind of bias incident that you will love is the kind that gets routinely reported at Skidmore. Skidmore’s criteria for what constitutes a bias incident is as follows: Anything. Literally, anything can be a bias incident. If you report it, it will be taken seriously and there will be an outraged email sent out to everyone. One time, someone had drawn a mermaid on their whiteboard and someone else drew a penis on the mermaid and wrote the word
“bigotes,” which means mustaches in Spanish, under the mermaid and this was a bias incident and there was a mandatory (not mandatory) meeting in the dorm to discuss it. One time somebody drew a penis on a whiteboard and wrote “The cockness monster was here” and this was a bias incident. Not all bias incidents have to do with penises being drawn on whiteboards but the best ones do.
Runners Up: Beer, Black Bean Flat Wraps, Broing Out, Buzzer Beaters, Boot and Rally, Blacking Out, Beards
Cc
Cigarettes:
Look, we all know cigarettes are bad for you, right? Also, they don’t make you cool. And the fact that other people are smoking them doesn’t make it any more okay for you to start. And they make your teeth yellow and your hair smell bad. There is not a single good reason for you to smoke cigarettes. That said, you will smoke cigarettes. Even if you didn’t plan on smoking, you will anyway. Sorry. A recent study in my brain showed that 100% of Skidmore students smoke cigarettes, so if you didn’t want to smoke cigarettes you should have gone to RPI or something. Now you’re trapped. One day you’ll just find yourself wandering out of Price Chopper with a carton of Parliament Lights under your arm and you’ll think, What happened to me? What have I become? But then it will be too late.
Campo:
Campus Security, known affectionately as “Campo,” is already angry at you. And really, who can blame them? Most of them are former (real) police officers who are now stuck writing drinking tickets for spoiled rich kids. They (probably) went through years of intensive training for this job, learning to say phrases such as “You guys can’t stay here,” “Who’s house is this?” and “Seriously, you guys need to leave, now,” and the least you could do is SHOW A LITTLE RESPECT. Just kidding. If you show a little respect, they will think you’re being sarcastic and yell at you even more.
I’d love to tell you how to successfully evade Campo, but I’m afraid they might be reading this and—HEY! SOMEBODY IS THROWING A BINGE DRINKING PARTY IN PINE C! Okay, guys, now that Campo is gone, the way to get around them is—Wait, guys? Where are you going? No, no, there’s not actually a party in Pine C, that was just a trick to get rid of Campo. Wait a minu—ah… shit.
Runners Up: Cocaine, Classes, Coffee, Country Corner Café, Chlamydia, Cover Bands, Crying, Cycling Together
Dd
Drug Dealing:
Woah, wait a minute you guys. I just had this awesome idea. You’re going to be freshman, right? So you’re going to know a lot of other freshmen, right? And the freshman are all going to want to get high but they aren’t going to know where to get weed from, right? They’re going to be all like, “Where do we get weed from? We’re just freshmen. We don’t know anybody.” So that’s where you come in. You find an upperclassman who sells weed, and you buy it from him and sell it to the freshmen at inflated prices. THIS IS AN AMAZING IDEA. NO ONE ELSE WILL HAVE HAD THIS IDEA EXCEPT FOR YOU. Just kidding. Everyone else has already had this idea. Don’t sell drugs. Also, I know college might seem like a magical dream world at first, but if you get caught selling drugs you still have to go to jail. And by go to jail, I mean rat out the upperclassman who sold the drugs to you. But still, bad stuff.
Diversity:
College is a time when you get to be exposed to all different types of people and have your system of beliefs and your preconceived notions about how the world works challenged constantly and you are confronted by hugely varying points of view and political faiths and ideologies and it is MAGICAL and your mind is opened like a beautiful flower of knowledge. JUST KIDDING. You’re at Skidmore. Do you like white people? We have white people. Do you like apathetic liberals? We have those too. Do you like other types of people? Ooh… About that…
Runners Up: D-Hall, Dozing Off In Class, Doing It, Dizzy Bat, Douchebags, Door-Holding, Dirty Dancing
Ee
Eating:
Landing squarely in third place on the list of things you do in college (behind drinking and worrying what your friends think of you) is eating. Unlimited meal plans, a generally delicious dining hall and a terrifying amount of free time (not to mention a terrifying amount of marijuana) means that our humble Murray-Aikins Dining Hall will be the arena for the majority of your social interaction over the next several weeks. You will quickly learn that despite the seemingly egalitarian layout, seating is clearly delineated by social group. I’ll let you figure it out for yourselves but be warned: Not even theatre kids want to sit in the theatre kids section.* Most places in town will deliver food to the front door of your dorm and vending machines will be covered later, but feel free to start worrying about your weight immediately.
*Just kidding, theatre kids!
Esperanto:
Esperanto is a “politically neutral and easy to learn language” created by some dorks in the 1950s and a place on Caroline St. that sells pizza that tastes like beer. They also sell this thing called a Doughboy which is essentially a tube of dough clogged with cream cheese, chicken nuggets, and a secret blend of spices (salt and pepper). It probably sounds really gross right now but when you’re too drunk to microwave popcorn and Doughboy Sauce is dribbling down your chin onto your “party clothes” it’s going to taste like the best thing in the whole fucking world. Esperanto also delivers until way too late and won’t judge when you come to the door smelling like Crystal Palace, American Spririts, and the bathroom of a Scribner house. (518) 587-4236.
Runners Up: Existential Crises, Elevator Rides
Ff
Fake IDs and Finding People to Buy You Alcohol:
Do you have an awesome cousin who is over twenty-one? Did he give you his old expired driver’s license? Guess what. It’s not going to work. You look nothing like your cousin. Give it up. The bouncer at MARE is not fooled. The guy with one tooth who works at the Getty is not fooled. The cashiers at Walmart are DEFINITELY not fooled and they are going to call the cops and have you arrested.* Just saddle up next to some lonely looking older person and offer to be their friend in exchange for alcohol. Ladies, this will be easier for you so make sure to share the fruits of your labor with some fellas.
*This is the only piece of actually useful advice in this entire thing: Don’t buy beer at Walmart with a fake ID.
