[Feature] Back-to-School Shenanigans!

Back-to-school September conjures up different feelings in everyone. You might be excited at the thought of starting a new school year, whether it's your first year or your last, while others might be dreading the months that are to come. Whatever boat you may fall under, there is no denying that the school year is chock full of memories waiting to be made, and entertaining stories waiting to be told. To get you all in the mood for back to school time, whether you're a student or not, the editors of Life in Boxes are sharing with you our favorite stories from our school years. Feel free to share yours in the comments, the more the merrier. And to all you students out there, good luck!


Jen:
When I was in college, my roommate Stella and I decided to prank our friend May for April Fool's Day. We decided to use a roll of duct tape to cover her entire door, so that she'd be unable to open her door in the morning and would have to cut her way out. Well, our plan backfired when a) we timed the prank poorly so that May was actually awake when we were trying to tape her door, and b) she not only heard us trying to tape her door (note to self, duct tape is loud) but heard us giggling throughout the entire thing. Well, as a good sport, she let us finish the "prank" before vowing that she'd get us back.

Well, that she did. The next morning, I was running late to class as usual, and I totally ran into the bathroom to get my self together. When I reached for my shower basket, gone were my toothbrush, face wash, and contact lens solution, all replaced with such CUTE notes as, "I've decided to run away to the living room upstairs, come and find me!" or "Boohoo, you smell, I'm hiding somewhere in the bathroom on the other side of the dorm!" So instead of running to class, I was running all over my dorm, trying to track my toiletries down. Needless to say, I was NOT happy that I spent the morning frazzled, and that I was 15 min late for my 8-person English lit seminar. But, it was a pretty genius prank to pull, and I haven't thought of anything as creative to get her back with yet. I may not miss school, but I miss the freedom of dorm life, and having your friends live with/near you.


Julia:
What definitely made college an interesting experience for me was the living experience .. by means of dorms, and with a random roommate.

Freshman year of college, I decided to be different, and opted to room with a total stranger. In comes Jamie, a Jersey shore girl who was very ambitious and had plans of graduating school under the expected 4 years. I could tell she was a bit misled by my name ("Park" is also a non-Asian last name), and sort of thought it was cool to have an Asian roommate (mind you, I went to Rutgers, where a plethora of Asians is just a dorm room away). She tried to set me up with the only other Korean kid she knew (oh, the stories with that), and got into love-hate fights with her boyfriend, making for many nights when I would awkwardly go out for walks around the campus. And then there was the time I asked for a Q-tip, only to uncover her dresser drawer full of condoms. Yeah, after just one semester, I requested a roommate change.

And yes, there was lovely junior year. My roommate was pretty amiable, a central Jersey gal, who despite referring to Philadelphia as "the city," was pretty chills. She had a boyfriend who would visit pretty much every day, and even after she broke up with him, I would catch him lurking around our dorm. But then the infamous night happened: the night she came in drunk, with a male friend, and started sexing it up WHILE MY FRIEND AND I WERE STILL IN THE SAME ROOM. Mind you, I had told her in advance that my friend would be over for the night, and she knew that I had an early class the next morning. After hearing enough moaning and grunting, my friend and I left and stayed in the lounge for the remainder of the night. When I got back from class the next morning, she left me a note on my desk, profusely apologizing for the previous night's events, and telling me that she was going home for the weekend to give me space. I, on the other hand, went to the dean and requested my own space - a single dormitory; when that weekend came to an end, I was packing up my belongings, and left my ex-roommate with a double-single for her nighttime shenanigans.


Yuri:
One of my most memorable college experiences happened during the week before classes started during my Junior year.

It was unusually hot for September. Like, very, very, hot. Like, so hot that it was not possible to sleep in our non-air-conditioned rooms, hot. After a day of not being able to fall asleep, Julia and I (we lived in the same dorm building), decided to take actions into our own hands and went to sleep in the basement study lounge, which conveniently was air-conditioned.

The funny thing is, we were not the only ones there. Another guy from my floor had already brought his pillow and blanket down when we got there. We didn’t really exchange words, just sort of nodded at each other and tried to get comfortable on the ghetto polyester sofas.

We all made it through the first night quite happily, but the morning of the second day, we were awakened by the janitorial staff who told us that we weren’t allowed to sleep there.

Undeterred, Julia and I brought down our textbooks (even though classes hadn’t even started) in a futile attempt to make it look like we were studying all night in the lounge and had just fallen asleep there by accident.

The next day, we all woke up to the janitorial staff again. But this time, it wasn’t them telling us to leave; they were all just talking and chilling in the room. Like us, they were trying to escape the heat before they had to start work. I think they felt bad for us and just let us sleep in the lounge.

It was nice of them, but no matter what, it’s kind of creepy to wake up surrounded by strangers sitting near you and talking.

Eventually, the heat dissipated and we decided the weirdness of waking up to the janitorial staff by our feet wasn’t worth it and slept in our dorms again.

Jorge
My first story is very gross, so let me warn you right now: if you're eating, this is the time to stop reading and resume reading this at some other time. During my junior year in college, part of our class went on a trip to Tokyo. We were there to learn more about Japanese business, but that took all of one day. The rest of the time we spent doing whatever it is we pleased. One night, a friend and I decided to get plastered. He then tries to hit on a girl but ends up making her cry (well, in his defense, she was drunk, too). To his detriment, his attempts to hit on her involved him trying to take off his pants. He miraculously makes it back to the lobby of the hotel, only to realize that he needs to go do #2 immediately, but his room was on the 19th floor. He gets in the first elevator he can, and fumbles his way through the door of his room. He opens the door to his bathroom and makes his way to the stall when the _______ hits the pants. He says the next thing he remembers is waking up on the toilet with his pants down and dumplings all over the floor. In his half drunken state, he showers and decides to clean up his mess by hosing the floor with the shower head. As he's walking out of the room to go sightseeing, the cleaning lady walks in and catches sight of the mess in the bathroom. That poor, frightened woman! My friend just smiled and points over to his roommate who's passed out on the bed and blames it on him.

This story is not gross at all, I promise. During sophomore year, my friend suspected that I was trying to get with his girlfriend of two weeks. One night he finds us talking in her bedroom alone, screams something indecipherable, and leaves with a slam of the door. I know, I'm extremely shady. I don't learn my lesson because I stay to talk to her roommate. About an hour later, we hear him coming back into the room, so me and the roommate climb into her bunk bed and pull the cover down so he can't see us. My friend spends the next hour talking to his girlfriend about their relationship, while I'm with her roommate, trying to suppress the laughter from all the drunken relationship talk he's mumbling about: "I just want to be with you." "Baby, I think we have a future." Agggggghhhh. My advice to all men: no relationship talk while under the influence. It makes us sound like pansies. Little did he know that I had actually persuaded her to give him a chance.