I was unbelievably stoked for my junior year of college. I was finally living with my best friends and we had mastered an efficient system of frats and bars for our party needs. What I didn’t realize is that junior year is a time where you transition from being a frat groupie to a wine connoisseur. 

I walked in to a frat party during welcome week and was surrounded by a sea of sloppy freshmen trying to impress their other fellow sloppy freshmen. Conversations consisting of which dorms everyone lived in and which dinning halls were better were being slurred from the mouths of prepubescent-looking boys to pre-freshman 15-year-old-looking girls. Some attendees seemed like they desperately needed a shower and bedtime story rather than another cup of whatever concoction was being poured from gallon coolers. And as I saw an awkward freshman girl dance with an awkward freshman boy on a very unstable looking table, I experienced a moment of enlightenment. I was too old. I no longer wore boot cut jeans and Sperry’s, or thought that drinking the punch was a good life decision. Immediately, it all began to make sense...

What was happening to me was the beginning of the decline: the latter part of the college years, where you begin to get exhausted by frat parties and White Wolf. I was ready for a new social scene, which led me to my next unfortunate realization - I’m still not able to get into bars legally. Sure, your fake ID game could be on-point, with black light and scanning abilities, but the second the bouncer you thought was your homeboy looks you in the eyes and tells you that he’ll no longer be accepting your fake, your world will shatter. And while you can pay $40 to buy it back under-the-table, that $40 won’t buy you back your dignity. And paying the cover to get in underage will seem like a viable solution, but those X’s on your hands will scream, “look at me trying to play grown up!”

Truthfully, 20 is a strange time. You immediately begin counting down the days until you’re 21. Suddenly, being the youngest in the group seems like cruel and unusual punishment because you’ll be the only one who can’t order a glass of pinot at dinner. I know because as of yesterday, I’m now a 20-year-old eagerly awaiting another 365 days to pass. My best friend has two months left of this “not a girl, not yet a woman” limbo before she can tell the bouncer to suck it. The others will all start trickling into the 21+ club soon after her, where they can ask the bartender for martinis rather than pounding Keystones in someone’s laundry room beforehand. And here I’ll be, the world’s oldest toddler, too old for another “Athletes and Mathletes” party and too young to do a bar crawl.