This post definitely isn't going to negatively affect my image. -Allegra Larson

As a dedicated reader of Classic Brian (Well, semi-dedicated. Which is to say, not dedicated.), I’ve noticed certain themes that seem to get brought up again and again on this black wall of insecurity. Some examples?

-Improv- Understandable. Big part of your lives. Also, just keeeeep rubbing it in. Yeah, you know how I like it. Just like that.

-Video Games- Kind of understandable, but I don’t read those posts. So if you write one with a secret in it, just make the title something like “Call of Duty 3: Musings on a Third Parent.” You’re safe. (BONUS JOKES- World of Bore-craft, Gay-lo 3)

-Sports- Not understandable. I don’t understand.

and finally...
-College.

College indeed! Welcome!

Let’s just jump right in. The writers of Classic Brian (henceforth known as “Children,” “Kiddos,” “Tykes,” or “You People”) are college freshmen. This means that I hold several titles when it comes to this blog. I am the oldest contributor, I am the oldest female contributor, I am the oldest participant in Guest Week, and I am the oldest female participant in Guest Week. As such, I am electing to help you. I will not be offering advice, wisdom, or insight on the college experience. I am going to give you something much better than that. I am going to tell you a series of personal anecdotes that will make you walk away from this post thinking “Hey, maybe it’s not so bad. I think I’ll go to class tomorrow!”

A word of warning: these are very, very sad, and very, very true.

#1-
October 14th, 2008. I create the single most awkward moment I have ever gotten to be a part of. My roommate and I are getting ready for bed. We'd been doing homework for a couple hours in silence, but we finished sort of at the same time. We each brush our teeth and put on pajamas and do our final facebook checking. We turn off the light and get in bed. We lie in the dark for a few minutes. Then I say it.

"Today was my birthday."

I want you to imagine the silence that followed. Can you? Try.
Next story.

#2-
Things work a little differently at community college. For instance, when you have classes an hour or two apart, you don’t go back to your dorm or hang out on the quad. Think having an hour or two to kill between classes at a high school where all the students have a gun and a story. I was in this situation, and it was lunchtime. So I hopped in my Beemer (nbd) and went to grab food. I ended up getting a Lunchable at the supermarket because they’re delicious and cost-effective. So I head back over to the school and turn on some music and start preparing the first of three mini pizzas.

That’s when it happened.

I looked around, and I saw my life.

My friends were at universities, exploring their passions, meeting their future best friends and doing something frightening and exciting every day, while I was sitting alone in my car in the parking lot of a community college delicately spreading pizza sauce on its crust with a red plastic stick.

Was that rock bottom? The answer to that non-rhetorical question is no, because that’s when I noticed that my Capri Sun didn’t come with a straw. It didn't. Come. With a straw. YOU USE THE STRAW TO OPEN THE POUCH. AND THEN AGAIN TO DRINK IT. AND THEN AGAIN TO FILL THE POUCH WITH AIR SO THAT IT LOOKS LIKE IT'S FULL AND THEN SUCK IT BACK OUT AGAIN. It’s a miracle I made it to the other side of that day.

#3-
A little while into freshmen year a salesman approached me on the street with a cosmetics catalog. He was one of those people unfazed by the obvious discomfort of strangers. His technique was aggressive to the point that he stroked my head when he told me my hair looked “healthy.”

I realized later that it was the first time I had been touched, by anyone, in three weeks.

So.

Throw one of these stories into your back pocket and pull it on out next time college is trying to bring you down. Gotten a high five in the past three weeks? You're doing better than I was. But it gets better. And just so you know, my life post-high school has not been just a series of depressing events. I had and have a social life, and since I left Lincoln Land I don't have to write "college" in quotation marks anymore. If these weren't some of the worst moments, I wouldn't remember them. I'm not the kid you see sitting alone in the dining hall pretending to do homework. Not anymore.

Not anymore.