“Sorry to ask you but is there any chance you could please leave? We’re closing up?” – Some poor server
Now engineers are not particularly known for being the most fun individuals on campus, but I like to think that the natural assumption is then that we don’t drink. Which I would say is partially correct, but only because we drink for different reasons
…
Mainly to forget… BUT HEY could be much much worse. We could be architecture, theatre, music, or the art school (the fellow North Campus schools, all of which mind you, you can find in the booth at the bar next to you). There’s something fun about North Campus solidarity in that your classes are trying to kill you.
Either way though if I had imagined what I was doing freshmen year first semester and how I ended up here. Things had changed over time mind you, but the same traits had led to the changing situation? This makes rather… less sense than I was hoping but I suppose I can try and write about it.
The person across the table from me was Annie, who’s a fellow engineering student on a project team that worked across from me. Yes yes we were covered in grease a large amount of the time and often didn’t sleep out of fear of failing your classes, but that’s why you get to know someone! Why do you think that midwest winters lead to such great bonding? And I’ll tell you right now the answer is not building snowman.
Since I’ve tried to tell stories that have meanings in most of my posts in recent days. I’m just going to rip through every kind of alcohol I can think of that I have a story with and go from there. After I started writing this it turns out that many of these stories are extensive so I cut off the list of liquors at one point and will be most likely writing a part 2 whenever I can get around to it.
- Beer
“The shirts are designed to absorb warm natty light” – Vanessa
Look I’m sure beer can be fantastic. I even have a brews I like. It just tends to lose to…. Nearly… every other kind of alcohol.
Not for lack of trying on my friends part. Justin has spent years trying different brews with me to see which ones I liked most. The answer is the one that he drank 2 litres out of and was contained in a glass shoe at a German bar in Kerrytown. Nothing like grad school to give you time to waste. Or the time Raymond walked up to drunk me (he was drunk too) and announced “Time to get you a real beer!” and handed me a two-hearted IPA. This happens a lot. They ain’t bad and people are always well meaning. But if you’re drunk enough to be at this stage where people think this’ll work… you’re not really tasting alcohol anymore.
Maya would drink pitchers of beer but she was German so we’ll give her a pass. Lastly, Becca and Bella tried to get me into Busch, and tailgate beers, and really a wide variety of them. Mug monday at Charlies where you get a pitcher for $15 is quite tempting.
Yet it doesn’t scratch an itch for me. Perhaps I just drink to forget my problems. But I do appreciate that my friends try and change that opinion.
- Four Loko
“STARSHIPS GOES HARD YALL” – Greg
Look during the COVID year we got bored. Like really bored. This was not the fun first few months where it was warm and class was easier. This was the brutal grind of the sophomore and junior level engineering classes online.
So I spent at lot of time at my friends house finding bad ways to pass the time. One that was popular was the hour of power.
(Which yes is also a workout common in both cross country and track but I think that it was just coincidence.)
The rules are simple. There are plenty of videos lying around on youtube of “1 minute of 60 songs from __”. Like we commonly did 2010s pop songs because of the nostalgia. And everytime the song changes you gotta take a sip. While singing along badly. And the drink we used a few times was 4 loko. A drink so vile its original formula was banned from the US.
We used the legal version. But it was still something like 3 shots of alcohol and 4 shots of espresso a can. It was killing brain cells. But it kept us up and gave us something for those days in the winter. You can only meditate so long
- Everclear
“LITERAL POISON” – Mya
Mya wasn’t particularly wrong here but I do love the stuff. Mainly for how effectively it does its job and how instant the effects are. If you do 5 shots of vodka you’ll dislike the aftertaste but the feeling of how fucked you are won’t show up for a few minutes until you try and stand up.
With everclear your body will react on the spot with a response akin to having been bit from a black mamba. You feel two drunks later before you’ve finished drinking your chaser. First off, I think this makes it straight up safer than many forms of hard alcohol.
Second off. It’s really funny seeing people think they can take shots of this and suffering the consequences of their own action. You can be an experienced college alcoholic and still underestimate the liver damage this stuff causes.
Brenden said it wasn’t too bad and chugged some. I found him 15 minutes later puking into the bushes. And Brenden is easily 270 lbs. Dom (who is <100 lbs) did the same stunt and that had predictable results. She was asleep on the grass outside by 11 pm.
Good times.
- Bourbon, Gin, and Whiskey
“So why are all your problematic friends named Anna/Annie/Ann?” – Audrey’s mom Kim
Yes yes these are three different alcohols. But they’re all the dark hard liquors so I’m going to summarize them together.
I can’t say I enjoy them as much as I should. I understand that they are classy but I can enjoy wine so that’s enough for me. At least at the old age of 22.
Either way though Audrey’s mom is the only drinker in her family when its her family. Natalie and Audrey drink… rather heavily at college but are uncomfortable around their parents doing it and their father can only have one drink a week due to medical issues. Sadie, the youngest sister at 13 years old, is a little young to be drinking sadly. So luckily for me that opens up a niche that I didn’t expect.
During Thanksgiving at their house we managed to get through a bottle a wine a night between the two of us. And when they hosted a football game afterparty earlier in the semester of my graduate year, they offered plenty of food and alcohol for a ton of folks. But by 10 pm almost everyone had settled down when she offered to make me an old-fashioned.
Which led to gossip, drama, and all sorts of family nonsense being shared. Same thing happens with my mother when she drinks it or really any adult I drink it with.
The dark liquors: the drinks of old people
- Rum
“Don’t be a fucking bitch Sam” – Kiersten
Kiersten was a fellow environmental engineer who graduated the semester I did. Despite such a small major, we took our classes in such a way that I only really met her during senior design, when we were put in the same group.
All things considered she’s quiet, well-meaning, and competent at her work even if it isn’t her love. So any reasonable person. But I never know when to stop poking for information and so I prodded my group members over the entire semester about their lives and what happened.
Yet one day I was worse than ever before, and mainly because I was high as shit on aluminium dust.
Eh? You thought weed? Nah, this stuff hit way worse.
I had been sanding parts on Baja the day before for a good 7 hours in the war room. Which was an enclosed space with poor ventilation. And all these parts were aluminium to prepare them for anodize. And then it got late and I fell asleep sanding. Then woke up and went back to sanding these parts before senior design which was at 4 pm the next day. So when I walk into senior design something snaps. I start shaking violently and cannot do work for the life of me. And cannot shut up.
So Kiersten responds to my questions with the most traumatizing family story I think I heard that year. It was a solid what the jesus fuck moment out of the entire group as she discusses it all. Later on we agreed that I did fantastic team bonding: even if my brain was having a panic attack from lack of oxygen.
(For the aluminium dust side of this. When I got back to the shop my team was in respirators spraying the place down. Apparently they started feeling lightheaded after 20 minutes. I had roughly 14 hours of exposure. Oops).
But fast forward to the summer and I ended up at the bar with her. Which sure is normal enough for two kids working in Ann Arbor and bored. But the bar we’re at allows for 64 oz drinks called fishbowls. And she orders a rum one. And then glances at me and says “Do it.” For some context Kiersten is roughly 5’ and 100 lbs so significantly smaller than even me. So even though I’d already had two drinks I made a rather poor life decision (or exciting one depending how you see it). We had many toasts to the absolute shitshow called life where aluminium dust poisioning can get you someone’s family history.
I’m just imprsesed we got home. Her uber driver did a full 180 in front of the bar and I thought I was going to puke.
- Tequila
“What’s this?” – My professor
I fucking love tequila. I mean its the benefits of cigarettes and alcohol at the same time. What’s there not to love.
(Although I genuinely try to avoid it. I have an on and off smoking habit throughout college)
When you enter grad school in my department, you have to take an introduction to grad school seminar. It’s a chill time. You go over research ethics and practices. Turns out that pouring ethanol into your lab mates plates to sabotage their research is wholly unethical and will get you thrown out of the University of Michigan (true story, happened in 2010).
Plus you just hear a few professors/industry workers speak. Also the time that I walked into class 15 minutes late for no good reason besides I was gossiping with my friend in the hall and the entire class was in a heated and vigorous debate over how much you need to refrigerate hot sauce. Subtopics included how much the vinegar percentage mattered as well as what the sauce was derived from.
Either way though at the end of the semester the professor takes the class out to the bar for whoever wishes to join. They buy appetizers, you go during happy hour and its cute. So one of the other graduate students and I finish our beers and are going to get another drink when we both see that tequila is also included in the happy hour menu. A quick conversation later and we drop a tequila shot in front of our professor and he glances between us and the shot, laughs and says “bottoms up”.
So I have done tequila shots with my professors. What’s your claim.
- Vodka
A staple of college. But of course we need to go before that. Back to the Israel trip (which I wrote about years ago). And one of the dumber moments of it.
Because in a group of 50 college students I was the one high schooler, or rather the null zone between those two areas). Some of the time this was isolating. Some of the time it was a new and intriguing perspective on what life in the future looked like. And times it led to them deciding to “parent” me on the future.
One of those “lessons” was what my alcohol tolerance was. Because of course it’s important to know things like this before college! And there’s only one way to figure out how many shots it takes to puke!
There I was. Taking shots of vodka and chatting with folks while someone is dramatically recording it on a note sheet next to me for no reason to be dramatic. And around shot 5 or 6 I turn around and not only is there now 20 people actively watching this event. There is a straight up betting pool going on for when I puke. There were also categories for “If I quit” or “Something worse happens to Sam”.
Jackasses. It was funny as hell though I’ll give them that.
Overall
So that was the first part of an anthology of memories I have associated with different forms of alcohol. I suppose it’s not the hardest to figure out but largely these topics I choose to rant about are not really the main focus ever. It’s the story that comes attached to it.
Cheers! Get drunk today 🙂
Dead Man Travelling 