Waters to Wine Did somebody say, "alcohol"?

Author: Mike Waters

A couple of weeks ago, I was sitting in my suite talking about drinking. It was some lazy Saturday afternoon - the transition period between recovering from one night and planning for the next - when it hit me: we talk about drinking a lot. Something about sitting there, discussing our various propensities to become hungover depending on specific beverages, triggered this moment of great personal clarity. How many times had I had this conversation? How many times had I nodded knowingly when someone made a comment about the unfortunate side effects of boxed wine?

Alcohol consumption plays a role in our lives as college students far more significant than that of your average neighborhood accountant or telemarketer. Much of our social life is alcohol-fueled, and for some people those four or five days from Monday to Thursday are nothing more than a semi-forced, semi-sober interlude unfortunately placed between weekends. In an attempt to avoid forgetting about the more important part of each week (the time between when one starts drinking and one's hangover finally goes away on Sunday), we fill this time by talking about alcohol. Booze, it seems, is always a good conversation starter. Hang around any group of people long enough - in any situation - and the conversation will inevitably take a turn for the alcoholic. Saturday morning brunch? Time to rehash the previous night and plan for the next. Passing through the Bi-Hall Great Hall? Time to ask someone about their plans for the weekend, or what they did during the last one. Sports practice? Time to talk about how wasted everyone is going to be immediately following the next competition.

Why do we talk about alcohol so frequently? And is this a bad thing? As I sat in my suite, alcohol talk happening all around me, I pondered these important questions. Here I was, with some of my closest friends from college, and instead of talking about our futures, our relationships, or anything else, what we chose to talk about was that one time we had a bad experience with tequila and couldn't eat Mexican food for a month. If I thought of all the time we had dedicated to talking about the various aspects of drinking, what percentage of our interaction would it constitute? And was this really the best use of our time? Might we know each other that much better if we dedicated more time to discussion free of alcohol? I imagined us solving world hunger or the financial crisis, or both. If we dedicated as much time to tackling global issues as we do to coming up with drinking games, perhaps millions of lives could be saved in Africa and Atwater Dining Hall could stay open.

Whether or not we'd be better off talking about something other than our preferences for one vodka-based drink over another, it is important to recognize the role that alcohol plays in our lives. Our incessant discussions on one topic or another are not the result of our unoriginality or simplicity, but rather are emblematic of the lives we lead. From the moment we arrive at college, alcohol is an undeniable presence - regardless of whether we're drinking it or just smelling it spilled onto carpets - and represents a universality over which people can bond. Everyone has a story about it or someone else, and everyone has an opinion. Alcohol, in some ways, is the great social leveler, so it makes perfect sense that it dominates our conversation as much as it does. This column is a continuation of that dialogue.

Believe me, the irony of writing about how much we talk about alcohol in a column dedicated to that very thing is not lost on me. Irrespective of my occasional desires for more varied topics of conversation, I understand why drinking dominates as it does. So while it might be worthwhile to acknowledge this fact the next time the conversation takes a turn for the alcoholic, it doesn't necessarily mean we should try to stop it. We can hope that in the future, conversations might tend toward apparently more legitimate concerns, but we shouldn't force it. We can't always push ourselves to seemingly more important topics - good conversation comes in time. We can find a way to reopen Atwater - but first let me tell you what I did last night.