We all love a good away weekend. But the fun-filled weekends with your favorite fraternity men come with a cost, a cooler--those big painted pieces of plastic we all love to hate. No matter how artistic you are, there comes a time in the process when you consider throwing it in the garbage because it is not worth your time. But in the end, you know your date will cherish it and all of the likes on the 'gram will justify your labor with a paint pen. However, no matter how optimistic you are about finishing it quickly, in reality, it will take a week to four months longer than you think it will.
Here's the real timeline of painting a cooler, as told by our favorite "Grey's Anatomy" characters.
Over break, you compile a Pinterest board with coolers that far exceed your artistic ability. Cooler season rolls around and you get asked to the same formal that a bunch of your pledge class is going to. This is great because you can all paint your first coolers together at the house, you're in it together.
The base coats make this seem like the easiest thing in the world. You think you'll probably finish in two weeks. Your Big tells you to take this time commitment seriously, but you're sure she's just being dramatic and blow it off.
Then you start getting into the detail on the sides and begin to understand why this takes so long.
When you mess up a side of your cooler and you're extremely tempted to throw it across the room at your pledge sister's cooler so you both have to restart.
When you put the finishing touches on a side that is nearly flawless, you feel like you're performing open heart surgery.
Suddenly you realize that corners are basically an entire side of work because you are painting everything on an angle. That's it, you're done.
You start taking more snack breaks and end up laughing too hard at things that aren't that funny because you and your sisters are so tired/depressed about all of the work ahead of you. Realistically, it feels like you'll finish your cooler in about two years at the pace you're going.
You complain to your mom on the phone and she asks why you took on this huge time commitment. You can't explain why but you know it will be worth it once you're in that cabin or at that hotel.
And this is how it feels when you think a side is dry and you end up smudging your hard work.
You're pretty sure you've spent more hours on the cooler than with your actual date at this point.
And sometimes, you mix paint to get the perfect shade but it becomes impossible to recreate the next day, meaning you have to repaint entire sections with the new shade.
No matter how many hours you put in it feels like you're nowhere close to finishing.
You try to explain to your date and your friends why you've procrastinated this long but there's really no reason except "life."
It seems like all of your sisters are done and you still have hours of painting ahead of you while they celebrate.
But because they're your squad, they stay in to help you finish. God bless them.
In the end, it's all worth it because you're in for a perfect weekend with your sisters and closest friends and you're thankful for the memories with your sisters from working on your coolers at the house together.
