It’s not hard to enjoy a beer. Just crack that baby, open your mouth and – boom – enjoyed. But thanks to college students’ never ending stream of ingenuity (or their need to drink as much cheap beer as possible without actually tasting it), there’s a wide variety of ways to indulge in the nectar of the gods. (Which, disturbingly, includes through your butt.)

So go grab a cold one from the fridge, crack it open, and stay with us as we outline the many wonderful (and a few questionable) ways to drink a beer.

It’s time to man up, ladies, and empower yourselves to live life without the aid of Prince Charming. Not only does this make our lives a whole lot easier (hello, do you really want to wait around for someone to jump-start your car?), but sometimes it’s safer to take matters into our own hands (instead of asking some rando to do it for us).

Here’s a rundown of the 10 things every woman must know how to do. Watch, learn and take pride in the fact that you are in total control of your destiny.

1. Change a tire: Being your own mechanic isn’t necessarily a manly thing. Whipping out that wrench and jack can save yourself some time, money and can even keep you safer. Sure, when I was forced to fix a flat I looked ridiculous – kneeling on the side of I-295 in my skirt-suit and patent stilettos – but it took me 20 minutes, saved me some big-time embarrassment and allowed me to still be on time to my interview. Don’t forget those hand wipes though; grease could be an outfit-ender.

2. Make a Roast: I’m not trying to say you have to become Suzie Homemaker, but learning some basic cooking techniques can’t do anything but help you out in the long run. You don’t want to end up like my good friend who cooked a knife right with the chicken (even if, according to her, plastic peels off of pans easily). Being able to feed yourself, no matter how rudimentary it may seem, is certainly a skill that’s worth it to perfect.

3. Rock a pair of killer heels: Maybe its one of my personal pet peeves, but I cannot STAND to see those girls who insist on wearing Spice Girl era platform heels and can’t even walk into a party without looking trashy/twisting their ankle/sighing and taking them off. A hot pair of heels is a must-have for any college wardrobe, but they’re worthless if you don’t know how to walk in them. So here’s the deal: first, buy good heels. Not only will they last you, but they will make a difference on your feet. Secondly, watch this. (And if you live on a giant campus like me, bring flip flops or some roll-up flats for the walk home.)

4. Use a power-drill: I ran into a huge predicament at the beginning of this school year. New apartment + newly framed pictures + stubborn drywall = failure. I needed some major electronic help, and it happened to come in the way a rugby player armed with a power drill. I’m a stubborn person who never likes to admit I need help, so in my embarrassment, I watched and learned intently and vowed to be able to be a little more DIY in the future. Whether it’s fixing that wobbly chair in the kitchen or mounting a corkboard above your desk, it’ll always come in handy.

5. Have an effective workout: Everybody wants the perfect body: slim legs, flat abs, great butt; the whole package. No matter how much you run or ellipticize, there are only a few things that will actually be effective. Make every minute of that painful gym experience count!

6. Basic self-defense: Channel your inner ninja. I’m not saying you have to carry a concealed machete with you everywhere you go (because that would never fit in your clutch), but making sure that you’re ready in case something ever happens is the best thing you can do.  When it comes to your safety, you can never be too prepared.

7. Create a great first impression: There’s only one first time and for most of us, this isn’t a good thing. Thankfully, somebody has got it down to a science and is here to help the rest of us mortals out.

8. Remove a hard stain: There’s nothing that ruins a good day more than knocking your sushi on the floor. Except knocking the soy sauce, too. On to your shirt… and all over your pants. Not only is it embarrassing to have a giant brown spill down the front of you, it could quickly become a permanent fixture on your favorite shirt. I’m all about the dry cleaning, but for when you can’t afford some professional help just take a quick gander at this and save yourself some green (and some embarrassment) down the road.

9. Jump start a car: We’ve all been to the epic tailgate where someone’s pickup is blaring Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believing” and everyone’s having a great time. Truth is, the entire time everyone’s jamming to their favorite pre-game tunes, the battery of the car is quickly draining. It’s easy for a battery to drain, and even easier for it to leave you stranded. Here are some quick pointers on how to avoid this unwanted situation and deal if it comes up.

10. Tap a Keg: A untapped keg is borderline sacrilegious. The only good thing about a kicked keg is that I can lift it with one hand, so having a quick backup plan is a must. Everyone makes tapping a keg into a huge deal, but it’s much easier than you’d expect. And when the keg stands return, you’ll be the party savior that’ll go down in history (assuming people remember…).

And there you have it. Take some time to learn these things and you won’t need a man for anything. Well, almost anything.

And that’s totally normal.

But believe it or not, there is a line on that sticky, beer soaked carpet underneath all of the red cups and vomit that can indeed be crossed. Don’t be one of the troublesome party patrons who takes it from acceptable (in the college world, of course) to completely wrong and gross and totally unacceptable party behaivor.

Acceptable: Making out in a corner
We all know one of the main reasons anyone even goes to parties is to hook up. It’s expected that at any given point throughout the night there will be someone in some corner getting busy. Lucky them.
Unacceptable: Getting dry-humped against a wall
There is a point where you should excuse yourself and stumble on back to your own twin sized bed. No one wants to dodge hip thrusts to get to the punch bowl garbage can.

Acceptable: Getting a little sloppy and groping things
We all have the pictures on our hard drives from the nights when a little too much vodka turned a completely average room into a wondrous photo op. The lamp, the couch, the coasters, you name it, we are going to pose with it. Tomorrow your profile picture will be you licking a potted plant, no biggie.
Unacceptable: Getting a lot sloppy and breaking things.
Yes, when someone makes the decision to host a party, some cleanup is expected. They know the next morning their floor will be littered with red cups and possibly a couple stains. But what isn’t expected is that you have one too many shooters and decide to play frisbee with all the dishes in the cupboard.

Acceptable: Bringing a few girls into the bathroom with you
Unacceptable: Bringing a few guys into the bathroom with you
What you do behind closed doors is your business, but not when a house full of party guests (with full bladders!) watches you enter with three guys… and leave without a bra.

Acceptable: Being the life of the party
Every party needs some leaders. Who’s going to get the pong tournament going, turn on the karaoke, and get out the ice luge? It’s totally cool to be the first girl to get up into that keg stand.
Unacceptable: Being the whore of the party
Getting the attention by groping your way down the male guest list is another story. You don’t have to gain popularity and a re-invite by hooking up with every guy you can corner by the chips and dip. This is only going to earn you a nasty label and a reputation for stealing all the male prospects.

Acceptable: Drunk texting your ex-boyfriend
Who hasn’t done it? Had one too many, somehow found “A-HOLE” in your address book, and found a reply message the next morning asking, “WTF? Were you serious last night?”
Unacceptable: Drunk dialing your mom
Your ex will forget about it, your friends will ignore it, but your parents will have you begging for forgiveness for the next three months. They will not find it funny that you are at a raging party at 4 am on a Wednesday morning (“Don’t you have class in three hours?!?”), and you’ll be spending the next holiday break convincing them you’re not a totally irresponsible slacker.

What other party behavior do you guys find totally unacceptable?

7 days of keg stands? Heaven.

There is a holiday that exists that, in my heart, surpasses Christmas and even Halloween (which is a pretty bad ass holiday, because it involves drinking, candy, and costumes).  This holiday is Welcome Week.  Oh yes, that’s a holiday, even if it isn’t recognized by calenders or…anyone who doesn’t go to college.  Every school thinks they do Welcome Week the best (and mine actually does, obvs – go green!) and every student does their best to wipe the slate clean (with alcohol) before classes start.

Now that the end of summer is in sight (thank gawd, I’m so over sweating) and the prospect of yet another semester looms, I am comforted by the fact that before any and all scholastic activities commence I will be obliterated for an entire week.  Oh, the wonders of Welcome Week!  For those of you who don’t know, everyone arrives to school a week early, throws their boxes in a corner of their dorm room and immediately contacts whomever can buy them alcohol.  Then the awesomeness begins.

At my school, tradition dictates that you never sleep in your own dorm during Welcome Week (you just pass the night wherever you had your last drink…usually on the floor of some dorm room/frat house/dirty apartment).  In fact, you rarely sleep.  Instead, your time is spent eating all the junk food you forgot about over the summer and bumping into anyone and everyone with whom you’ve ever had a class, lived in the same building, or hooked up (oh, the joys of bumping into a former one-night stand when you’re all sweaty and half buzzed from the night before).  Oh yeah, and drinking.

Welcome Week is a week of physical activity, the level of which was sadly missing from my summer vacation.  The week before school is one where students relearn the layout of their campus, sometimes painfully (as in, stumbling around looking for the next party, having long ago given up on the prospect of wearing heels anywhere).  Students also have the opportunity to get familiar with their community as they crawl from house party to house party.  Beer pong, flip cup, waterfalls, ice luges, and a million other things are advertised from every porch and patio by the screams and shouts of the adoring population.  Adoring population = me.

After four years of celebrating this most sacred of holidays, my heart has begun to warm at the prospect of a week of debauchery with my school besties.  A glorious fifth year to reign over all that has come before.  Some might ask if I have no shame, partying so hard with people born in an entirely different decade (THE 90′S! HOLY EFF!).  I say no.  No shame for this Spartan.  In fact, I shall use my experience to build a better Welcome Week and to teach all those young disciples coming to my school in the fall.  Here are some sample nuggets of Welcome Week wisdom:

Don’t bring a purse.

Forgo the heels and bring flats.

Always bring your own red cup to parties and an empty Gatorade bottle to hide your pregame liquor.

Keep your cellphone charged and chained to your wrist.

Designate a drinking buddy and don’t separate.

Sleeping is overrated – you’ll have time to sleep when you’re skipping your Friday morning classes during the semester.

And there’s more where that came from.  In fact, I would say that I learn more and gain more life experience from Welcome Week than I do during an entire semester at college.  Here’s to another Welcome Week – let’s see if I make it through a fifth run.  Hope to see some of you there!

It’s amazing how universal the college experience is and how readily we all accept it as normal. Talk to any college student on any college campus in the country and you will easily find common ground: in the drinking games, in the fake ID horror stories, in the theme parties, in the hook ups.

It is only when an outsider (Read: An Old Person) looks in and comments on the college scene that we take a second look and realize that our choices really aren’t that…acceptable.

My friend recently sent me this article, in which some old dude jumps into the college scene and reports what he finds. And what was it? Just your typical weekend at any college campus: parties, makeouts, puking, etc. Only, when he talks about it it sounds a lot different than when we share our stories in a typical Saturday morning recap.

To any college student, this article is nothing new (except maybe that whole Girl Goyle thing…I have never heard of that!), but seeing it from the outside makes it seem so different.  So wrong.

When we are sitting in the college bubble, putting a garbage can in front of a drunk person not only seems normal, it seems responsible. But to an outsider, it is ludacris.

To a college student, grinding up next to someone at a college party is the universal sign for interest. But to an outsider, it is almost barbaric.

And how many girls have you seen giving impromptu lap dances to friends at a party? Or making out with some completely random guy at a party for 10 minutes before heading back to her friends? Or blacking out for a night only to get up the next day to do it all again.

It’s all normal, standard and expected as part of the college experience, but it all seems so shameful when seen through the eyes of someone else. I mean, stop and think about it for a minute: why do people to Keg Stands? And why do we devote so much energy into bouncing a quarter into a glass? And why are we so consumed with sticking our tongues into random people’s mouths in a dirty, stinky basement?

College is supposed to be preparing us for the real world, but how often do you think professionals judge their peers based on their performance in a case race?

How did we get here and is it something we should be ashamed of, or just another case of older people just not getting us? Should we care? And, more importantly, have you ever done a Girl Goyle?!

So, let’s bring it all out in the open. Right here. Because you are not alone - we’ve all been there before.]

Hugging the Bowl:

You started the evening out with the girls and a few shots of vodka to the tune of Bon Jovi blaring from the stereo. Then you moved onto the party, where you couldn’t not play 10 rounds of flip cup, followed by a game of beer pong. You were feeling good – really good – so you decided to give into the boys and do a keg stand.

After all, you had to show them what you’re made of.

When your feet are firmly back on the ground it hits you: you are totally f**ked up. The room is spinning, the floor is rocking and all you can think about is getting home and dying.

But you don’t want anyone to think you are a wimp (because you’re not!), so you pull one of the girls aside and whisper, “I’m tired. I think I’m gonna go,” which comes out more like, “I’m <hiccup> tiiiired. I <hiccup> mthink I’mgomna <vurp> go.” Your friend offers to go with you.

You stumble home, run straight to the bathroom and strip down to your bra and underwear. Your friend brings you water in the bathroom as you crouch over the toilet and start spitting into the bowl. Your knees hurt already, but you are not leaving the bathroom until you puke, dammit.

Your head hurts. You feel like hell. You are never EVER drinking again. Please God, you pray, if you let me make it through tonight I will never drink this much again. Please god. PLEASE. I swear. No more alcohol. Ever.

And at that moment, you mean it.

You keep spitting into the toilet, opening your mouth and willing something other than saliva to come out. You try pulling the trigger (hey, it works for bulimics!), chugging water, or anything else that just might bring up all that beer.

You give up hope, grab the garbage can and begin to head back to your room when – YES! – it comes. Lots and lots of it. Beer, vodka, and the Jimmy Johns #6 you scarfed down for dinner. Vomiting has never felt so good. You welcome the heaves, celebrate the bile, and as quickly as it started you are done.

You are sweating. There are tears in your eyes, but sweet Jesus you feel great.

You pour yourself a glass of water, brush your teeth, grab the garbage can and head to your room where you quickly pass out.

When you wake up in the morning you feel great, and after some scrambled eggs and toast you are ready to hit the bottle again.

Come back next week for more moments of misery that we can all share. Like all those damn drunk texts.

1) The Rachel Zoe Project. I don’t know if it’s her voice, her constant addiction to her Tea from Starbucks, her over-sized furs or the bones jutting out of her body – but there is something so addicting about Rachel Zoe. The hour always delivers entertaining ridiculousness, amazing fashion (that if given the choice to own all that vintage-ness or have my way with Brad Pitt — I would choose the former), and let us not forget her assistant Brad. Anyway, I find myself parked on my couch, Venti Tea in tow every week.

2) Canvas photos. Such a great way to make your fav pics pretty artwork, but chose wisely; that photo of you doing a keg stand from last week’s football game may not be the best choice to be printed in black and white and hung on your wall as artwork. But then again — it could be AWESOME. (Or, if you’re watching too much Rachel Zoe: “I Die”)

3) Pumpkin Spice. It’s just not fall without it, but since Starbucks manages to both steal our hearts AND rob our wallets, why not try to make it a treat, or buy the syrup and make it at home yourself?

4) Christina Aguilera. I love her. Really. So much so that I wanted to BE her. True story: I dressed up as her for Halloween when I was 14, I made some of my biggest fashion mistakes because I followed her (tiger print pants, silver shimmer eyeshadow, hoop earrings that I could probably hula-hoop with and a bandanna…totally normal attire for Hebrew School), and I even convinced myself I should be a pop-star until realized I can’t sing. These days I’m stuck just adoring her (and singing to her music in the shower), so I am pumped about her new song, Keeps Getting Better (a great workout booster), and her new album which comes out exclusively to Target on November 11th! All of my excitement obviously means you should be excited too.

5) Me Too shoes. When walking around campus or a city, you want to be both cute AND comfortable. Until I found Me Too Flats I didn’t think this was possible. But these adorable (and affordable) flats have cushioning on the soles so your tootsies are totally supported. And anyone who can assure me that I won’t be forced to walk barefoot outside by the end of the day deserves a spot on my Love List.

[What's on your L-list this week?]