College is a series of addictions. As my senior year comes to a close, I have begun thinking of how my life will be different once I don’t have the excuse of calling myself a college student any more. The predominant difference will be my relationship with reality and whether I continue to partake in the countless casual addictions that have kept me busy throughout my Georgetown days.
Freshman year, like many freshmen, I lived to party. I drank and drank and drank. While I will not readily admit that I was an alcoholic, I will admit that I was addicted to going out. I felt like I was in college to have fun and experience a new sense of freedom whenever possible. I needed to be out whenever I could, finding the most fun thing to do at Georgetown.
Eventually, apartment life and a redefined understanding of friendship kept me indoors, firmly placed in front of a Sony PlayStation. During my sophomore year, I may have logged more hours of Madden ’99 than any other Henle resident, except maybe my roommate Peter who sat across the room from me.
I knew the contours of the PlayStation controller a lot better than Christian mysticism. I knew when to run the half back option and when to throw deep. I’m not sure I even knew what time my economics recitation met.
Apartment life ended, too, and instead of electronic gaming, I began putting time into a student club. I put in a lot of hours at this organization, learning some stuff, making some friends, but most of all staying up all night. And sleeping all day.
Sleep became my newest fix. I slept and slept and slept. Some might call it evidence of depression, but it just sort of met my lifestyle needs at that point. A friend of mine who put in the same hours I did used to say that his week consisted of three sleepless, 60-hour days. We couldn’t be expected to adhere to “society’s schedule.”
You name it, I slept through it. Daytime in the spring is beautiful, right? Not if you’re sleeping in a dark basement until 4 p.m.
As the bags under my eyes began to parallel the trash heap during my PlayStation days in Henle, I realized that I needed to live a more normal lifestyle. I got a real job for the summer. Enter Unreal Tournament, a new addiction.
So, maybe the six guys that I work with each play approximately 15 hours per week of this first person shooter video game. It wasn’t my fault. I had to play to earn their respect. I had to play as part of my job.
I played a lot. I killed and killed and killed. I blew people up with rockets. I captured flags. I defended the base and tried to be the last man standing. It was tough work, but I was hooked.
The lowest point in my UT addiction came when I was walking around the city. Occasionally, I would find myself looking at the tops of buildings for good places for a sniper to hide. I wouldn’t call it a problem, just one example of a casual addiction temporarily warping my sense of reality.
Well, school started and a 6:15 p.m. class kept me from after-hour gaming. With video games still near and dear to my heart and easy access to ethernet, an introduction to Snood probably stole three weeks of my life. Purposely addictive and aimed at idiots like me, Snood kept drawing me in.
Once last semester, I finished a test early and came directly to a computer to get in a few games before my next class.
Two more online games – Family Feud on uproar.com and Tangleword on Lycos’ playsite.com – later, and I feel like I have run the gamut of procrastination.
Moving on to bigger and better things, I had a stint with beer pong which climaxed with my roommate and me playing “water pong” on a Wednesday night before we went out for real. Water pong consisted of him and me each shooting ping-pong balls at one plastic cup across our dining room table. This addiction hasn’t really ended, just sort of slowed as I attempt to embrace adulthood.
Baseball’s opening day brought fantasy baseball into my life. I think I have made more transactions than half of the league combined. I check my players’ statistics between classes and if Shawn Green doesn’t start hitting, he’s going to get benched.
Senior year is ending. Graduation is nearing. And who knows what my next addiction will be?
I’m sure I’ll get sick of fantasy baseball before the season ends, and I’m sure that I’m going to have a lot fewer potential beer pong opponents pretty soon. Maybe I’ll get back into UT as I start working full time. Or maybe graduation will teach me a lesson, and I will start to tackle life in moderation. I doubt it.
Joe Harten is a senior in the McDonough School of Business and Viewpoint Editor of The Hoya.