What hobbies do people have?  Leave a comment for a leisurely activity you really enjoy doing, no matter what, that nothing will change.

one

• Graduated? [√]
• Necessary amount of money? [√]
• Full-time job? [√]
• Working holiday visa? [√]
• Packed? [\]
• Keeping cool? [  ]

none

Wild Turkey with ice.

Yeah, somewhere along the line I switched from being a non-drinker to a drinker.  Not just somewhere along the line, actually: It was November 11, 2008, I believe, after I’d become completely smitten with a certain gentleman who invited me to a house party.  My master plan, as I explained to a friend, was this: “The reason I am still single after this long while everyone else isn’t is that other people drink, and they have Facebook.  I am going to try this, and if he’s not my boyfriend by Christmas, then I will quit both.”  I brought a German friend to the party, and the two of us drank orange juice (a kind gesture of solidarity from her), until she needed to catch the bus at 11:30.  I was too attracted and picking up too many signals to just leave, so I said I would stay and walk home with the guys later.  Everyone around me was extremely drunk and I was lonely, standing against the wall, feeling jealous.  My future boyfriend craned his neck to spot me across the room and motioned me over, rolling his eyes at everyone.  ”Bored?”

“It’s pretty boring being the only sober one,” I said.  He laughed, and I stared at the can of Tuborg in his hand.  ”I want to try it,” I said.

He looked shocked; we’d had this discussion before.  On our first date, I’d even stupidly turned down his offer of another drink (who drinks more than one Coke in succession?  Later I was to learn that he expected me to at least offer to buy him another Guinness in return.  I didn’t understand these customs.).  ”Are you sure?  Really?” he said.

I said yes, and tasted it.  He let me have the rest of it.  It tasted like I assumed it would.  After a while, all I felt was the desire to dance.

Needless to say, my master plan had worked, and it was all fine at first.  He felt terrible that my first alcoholic experience was Tuborg, and introduced me to some finer varieties, as well as whiskey.  My tongue became discerning — I preferred whiskey to vodka by a long shot, ales to lagers usually, white wine to red.  I enjoyed a number of parties and a good amount of dancing.  I would never wake up sick or with a headache, but instead with a keen urge to go on a hike while lifting weights.

And then there was some drama in our group of friends, and it didn’t become quite as fun anymore.  I would start the night sober and anxious, which, after a few too many, would lead to me boxing myself up into a silent creature who wouldn’t make eye contact or respond to any questions.  I would walk home in a fury, reach my room, and sob.  Even on the good nights, I would shut my door and sob.  Even as the drama dissipated and everything started to go my way, I would leave a pub and burst into furious tears.  My psychologist and I later concluded that something about having to leave a place, having to accept that all the anticipation and the night were over, pushed me over the edge.  Perfect nights turned sour on the walk home, and led to arguments over absolutely nothing but my inexplicable mood.  Then I would shut the door and sob.

One night in particular was very embarrassing.  The magazine I worked for had a launch party on a rooftop bar, chock full of free drinks and C-list celebrities.  I started the evening feeling strange over God knows what, and then remember walking down Westmoreland Street, using my mind to force the annoyance to slip away so that I could make it through a few hours.  And then, things turned awesome.  There were free ginger beers and free Häagen-Dazs and a great DJ. My boyfriend and I made friends with an Australian couple, snuck some of his pals in, had an absolute ball.  We went to the Pav at Trinity after, for more fun.  The Australians called it quits there, but by now I was hanging out solely with men who weren’t finished, so I stupidly followed them to an infamous dodgy club, where we still had a good time.  And the next thing I knew, I was waking up in bed.  I burst into tears — I couldn’t remember a thing from the club!  My boyfriend grumbled, “Really, not anything?” and the tone of his voice jarred a sudden memory of screaming at him on the street that I could walk myself home, but also distinctly remembered having absolutely no idea where I was.  I remembered screaming, “You never talk to me!!!“  He told me my attitude came out of nowhere, that moments earlier we had been laughing.  A small saving grace was that none of his friends witnessed my behavior; but he did, and I could not explain what I’d say at all.

I know, everyone has these moments.  But it was becoming an every-single-time sort of thing.  Not the blacking out, I mean, but the crying.  It would start out as a treat, and end with me crying on some steps, refusing to say what I was upset about.  The truth was, I was upset that my relationship seemed to have an expiration date on it, one that matched my visa.  This was something we worked on to get over.  We focused our alcohol consumption towards appreciating it more — visiting whiskey distilleries, committing our trip to Scotland to Scotch tastings, trying new beers, asking bartenders for their top recommendations.  Eating food, drinking water.  Knowing when to stop.

And the number one rule: Never, ever drink if you’re in any way upset.

Sticking to this rule has revealed a lot about what kind of mindset I’m in, and the theme of the last academic year has been AWFUL, LONELY, and AGONIZING.  Which is a shame, especially since I assumed that, because I had developed an affinity for spirits and beers, I could return to the States and BC and finally partake in the social sphere, thereby tackling the loneliness head-on.  And this… did not happen.  American colleges appalled me (and continue to).  The binge drinking and the lack of true socialization; the shots and the games designed around getting really drunk, really fast; these are things I cannot enjoy.  So once again, I hid in my room while parties raged on, declined invitations to happy hour, and had an arsenal of excuses at hand to get out of any social situation.

Because I knew what would happen to me.  The thing I’ve always known would happen to me, one of the major reasons I never, ever wanted to drink before:  if I am in anyway upset or uncertain, I can’t handle it, emotionally.  My inhibitions save me from self-deprecation and depression; they are what I’ve worked on strengthening for years to get myself to a livable place.  When I am with my boyfriend, fortunately, I have little need for them — I’m so happy, and the majority of the time now I don’t have a breakdown when we drink together.  But boy, is that hard to keep up when we’re not together.  We try to recreate a sense of it — cheersing each other over video cameras, playing 24 drinking games while streaming an episode at the same time.  But once the call is over, I am left sitting in my room, buzzed and alone.  This fast turns into buzzed and lonely, then buzzed and depressed, then just flat-out misery.  This then leads to wailing on the phone at my mother and sending bitter texts just because someone has to go to bed 5 hours earlier than I do.

This has been just yet another downer associated with my senior year, because I thought I’d gotten to a place where I was happy and social — but there’s no doubt about it, those have never been two traits people in the States have used to describe me.  On the other hand, they are the first two things my boyfriend says he noticed about me.  Something about being in Ireland brings out good things in me, even when it comes to drinking.  It must be how it’s a place that values quality beers over 30 packs, and where drinking games involve tricky word puzzles and math equations instead of guzzling.

(I should note that this is because of the sort of people I hang out with.  In no way am I suggesting that there’s no such things as alcoholism or binge drinking in Ireland, because there absolutely are.  Just, fortunately, not in my crowd of college students.)

I’m having a Mayflower Porter at the moment, and not freaking out.  But that can only be explained by it being so, so close to my departure date for the motherland.  Can you blame me?  The start of next week will go down as one of the happiest moments so far in my life — the end of my long-distance relationship, the continuation of my real-time relationship, the start of my first job, my first apartment, and getting to raise a glass of champagne (and then Guinness, and then Wild Turkey, and then hopefully not a Jägerbomb but we all know it goes there sometimes) to living out my super-crazy dream life.

none

I barely remember the moment I decided I wanted to go to Boston College, especially because I resisted any mention of college until the start of senior year.  The first time my dad took me to the campus, I pouted and said thought it was a stupid detour and we should just go.  Somewhere along the line, though, it became the only place I had any feelings towards, and after a sunny tour led by one half of a set of very hot twins, I was sold.  It accepted the common application.  I submitted that, including my essay on Dumbledore, got early acceptance in December, and that was that.

The college is gorgeous, no one can doubt that.  And that was really what my entire decision was based upon.  Although I later applied for Providence College, being my dad’s alma mater, I got soaked up to my knees during my campus tour there, forever solidifying my belief that Rhode Island is the most miserably rainy state.  But a few weeks later, at BC, I gazed around at the Hogwarts of my dreams and thought, this will do just fine.

Orientation was… awkward, to say the least.  I did not click with anyone.  We spent 2.5 days socializing and I just couldn’t make a connection with anyone I met.  The girls in my temporary dorm room thought my name was so strange (they were all Asian) and the boys in my group wouldn’t let me joke with them.  Social outings involved me standing silently, or making random conversation with students that I literally never saw again.  I remember crying, calling my mom at home, and being told that it was all fake, it was no indication of what my four years would be like.

Except, it’s exactly what my first year was like.  I did not fit in with my roommate or her friends, and the few friends that I did make weren’t seen very often because I didn’t party or go out.  I did the forceful thing in some situations — joining concert band;  forming study groups;asking others if they wanted to hang out based on similar interests I knew we had, but no one would respond.  I was only comforted by the fact that I had a job and I was still smart and getting good grades.  I cried a lot, weeping especially over the fact that no one wanted to room with me the next year.

I ended up getting placed randomly, somehow scoring prime real estate on lower campus.  I got on well with my 7 new roommates at first, or at least I thought I did — when I see them today I realize what temporary connections I had really made with them.  I became slightly more social, and consistently smart.  I joined the school newspaper and wrote a lot, which made me feel good about myself.  But that only applied to my brain and capabilities — I was forever reminded how much I did not fit in with the rest of the student body.  I liked different things, dressed homely compared to the girls, attracted zero attention from the guys.  My one-liners, usually so popular, fell flat amongst people who had never seen Seinfeld.  There was a growing need to leave BC for a while; I was not sad when I moved out.

The year I spent away from Chestnut Hill was amazing, as has been chronicled in the rest of this blog.  Trinity College Dublin was both different and the same — it had its fair share of snobs, its trendsters, and its useless classes, but it also had a lot of people with substance.  And here I am obviously defining “substance” as PEOPLE WHO LIKE ME.  I had never been disliked in my entire life until I got to BC and found that I was constantly the butt of the joke for prettier girls.  It was a different environment altogether at Trinity, based on feeling like a part of a community of people rather than a community of alumni.  I never learned “For Boston” or attended football games or even set foot inside the Mods, and because of this I was completely ostracized at BC.  But at Trinity, I never watched a rugby match or attended the Trinity Ball or set foot inside the Phil’s room to hear a debate or play foosball, but nobody cared.  Nobody cared that I didn’t drink, and nobody cared when I started to drink.  I was just a well-liked person who made friends immediately and still keeps in touch with them, despite being an ocean away and speaking different languages.  At BC, I couldn’t even manage to keep in touch with girls who lived at the other end of the hall.

My final year was rough (understandably, I hope).  Obviously, I did not want to come back to the States, never mind BC.  I trucked through it, and it went better than my other two years.  My grades remained as high as ever, I lived off campus with a group of very friendly girls, and I finally got to display the mind-numbing majesty of the BC population to my skeptical boyfriend, whose ears almost bled when we sat behind a pair of girls on the T one day.  But at no time did I want to be there.  I just really, really wanted to be anywhere else.  Classes had become a formula, and I knew how to get an A.  I still didn’t want to party, despite having just spent a year traipsing around Dublin looking for pubs that would stay open later.  Suddenly, I was back to being the weird girl who even the professors didn’t want to talk to for long after class.

Graduating yesterday was therefore greatly needed.  It was the wrong college for me.  Who is it right for?  People whose families have a lot of money, whose chief interests are the following things: sports, Longchamp handbags, and Edward 40-Hands.  People whose idea of college stems from movies and are happy to perpetuate as many annoying stereotype about students as humanly possible.  Bros and bitches.  Not everyone was, of course, but in my 3 years I managed to meet very, very few who wouldn’t eventually get slotted into one of these categories.

Academically, it’s a great school.  I did very well on this front, getting only two B+’s, graduating summa cum laude, and getting into Phi Beta Kappa.  I thought the professors in the English department were outstanding, and those that I took in other departments were also great.  Because it’s liberal arts, I had to dabble in a little of everything, and I was really happy to do so — my immunology class was a favorite, and even history (usually a weak subject for me) was engaging.  I established very good relationships with my professors, who have reflected their sentiments towards me in very successful recommendations.

The administration, on the other hand, is pretty miserable.  The most important thing to BC, from my perspective, was my money.  Any way they could swindle some money out of me, they did.  I paid a full year’s tuition despite never setting foot on campus junior year and instead attending a much more prestigious — and much cheaper — university.  Even now, I’ve been getting emails for months about contributing a senior gift.  Hey, BC, howsabout giving me a year or two to see if this $200,000 education is worth its weight in the working world before you start asking for more money?  Have some self-respect, you’re starting to look a little desperate.  I don’t feel like contributing yet another useless golden eagle statue to some empty corner of campus.

It’s the right school for some people.  At a party held in my house the other night, someone explained to me why he loved this school.  ”Don’t hold it against the administration!” he said to those of us saying we’d never give money to the college again.  ”Boston College is not the administration!”

“Okay, but what is Boston College then?” I asked.  ”If it’s not them, then who does represent it?”

“Huh.  I dunno, I guess.  Well, us, right?”

You, I corrected in my head.  From the moment I set foot on campus, I was never “us.”  I could never catch onto the hoopla, the excitement that people felt when they chanted, “We are — BC!” at events.  I never did find my group of friends, and it’s highly unlikely that I’ll ever communicate with anyone I met there again.  I won’t go to reunions, because I won’t be catching up with anyone.  Next time I go back, I won’t even recognize the campus, which is undergoing a 1.6-billion-dollar makeover in the next 10 years.

I’m a little disappointed that college turned out that way, and I often wonder how it would have been different if I’d gone anywhere else.  But I don’t regret going to BC, and I don’t want my parents to feel as though money was wasted.  I suppose if I hadn’t gone to BC, then I wouldn’t have gotten some of the publishing internships that I’ve had over the years.  I wouldn’t have had access to the outstanding Irish Studies department and wouldn’t have gone to Dublin for a full year.  I wouldn’t have met all the people I met in Ireland, and I wouldn’t have had a point of reference to understand just how good life was at Trinity.  I would likely be graduating directionless, heading home and returning to a summer job.  Instead, I know exactly where I’m going.  I know now who I’m not – I’m not BC.  The four years that people said would be amazing were not, but that’s okay, because they were just four years.  And since I tend to do everything opposite, I can only presume that my post-grad life will be not draining and a letdown, as it is for so many people, but fulfilling.  Lively.  Happy.

none

When I named this site, I thought I was being pretty clever — striking on a Simpsons quote while covering my ass in the future.  Either I actually was going to be a big wheel in my figurative cracker factory or else I was just going to be making fun of myself for not managing to get a job before anyone else could make fun of me.

I’m still not sure which way it’s going to swing, but for now, let’s just say: Molly 1, rest of the world 0.  I’ve landed a job, in Ireland no less, and it does indeed involve a degree of writing.  I’m happy and excited to get my life moving, where I want to be.

The one issue standing in the way?  The visa.  It’s hopefully not going to be in my way much longer, but it is going to take about two weeks to process.  This is problematic, as I sleepily booked my ticket for the start of June before doing the math and realizing that that is not going to give me very much wiggle room (if any).  I’m at once hoping that time slows down just enough to let them process my application in time, and stomping around willing time to go faster so that I CAN GET OUT OF THIS PLACE.

I don’t have time to write well on this thing at the moment.  There’s too much to do between now and then!

none

Golly, last weekend was pretty amazing.  I

• flew back to Ireland for a very quick 3-day weekend,
• slept a great deal,
• got up early to go and meet the President of Ireland, Mary McAleese, at her home for tea,
• spent an entire day treating Someone to birthday chocolate truffles and dinner and a movie,
• went to a wedding on a typical Dublin day — pouring rain in the morning, sunshiney and bright in the evening — where we drank loads of champagne, wine, and whiskey,
• ended the night swing dancing,
• got up early, checked my email, and discovered I’ve been called back for a second interview,
• headed to head to the airport,

but the best part was without a doubt, when I

• said goodbye to Someone in the airport for the last time.

Because next time I fly, it’s for good.

none