You finished your last exam early and, after waiting for someone else to turn theirs in (you don’t want to be first!), ran down the steps of that lecture hall, slammed that baby on the desk and skipped your way to freedom. As you walk home you notice how great the air smells, how bright the sun is and how beautiful your campus is. School is out and you are feelin’ groovy.

After regaling your roommates with tales from your 90-minute essay exam (“I totally rocked that shiz!”), you head to your room to start the end-of-the-year cleaning session, beer in hand. You grab a garbage bag, sit down at your desk and start sifting through the piles of papers, books and notebooks that litter your desk.

In the back of your mind, you know that some of those notebooks will come in handy for next year’s classes. In the front of your mind, though, you know you will never look at them ever again. So, in a celebratory fashion, you toss one binder after another into the Hefty.

“Bye bye, Econ! See ya never, Psych 240!” The feeling is euphoric. All those syllibi, gone. All those Power Point slides, gone. Those damn course packs, gone. All those near-empty highlighters, gone.

Before you know it, you are left with nothing but a stack of books.

You gather the books, throw them into your backpack and head to the bookstore to sell them back. On your way, you start planning what you will do with all that extra money. A keg for the big end-of-the-year bash? A new bag?  The possibilities are endless. Even though you know the bookstores totally screw you with the buy-back, you have, like, 12 books this time! Giant, expensive textbooks and lots of novels. You’re sure there is some serious cash flow coming your way.

The bag is heavy and by the time you make it to the bookstore you are sweating. Naturally, the line is super long and filled with other students hoping to make it rain. You stand there, cocked to the side from that overflowing bag of books, and watch student after student happily free themselves of the semester. Only the looks on their faces as they leave isn’t one of big money – it is anger.

When it is finally your turn, you unload your books onto the counter. The cashier scans them one at a time, forming two piles.

“We can’t use these,” he says, pointing to the larger stack. “They’re going with the new edition next year.” He offers to let you take them home (so nice of him), or he can donate them to whatever organization it is that wants your used copy of Tom Jones. You consider taking them – you aren’t going to give those away for free! – but then you realize that you’d have to carry those all back home, not to mention pack them up and move them.

“Ugh. Just keep them,” you say.

You don’t think things can get any worse and then he hands you your money. A whole $26. For 5 books. That wasn’t even a quarter of the cost of one! You rip that money out of his hands and storm out of the store.

——

Yeah, we’ve all been there. Maybe if you combine your money with all of your friends, you’d have enough for that keg.

Like with most things in my life (namely, the boy I’m kinda, sorta talking to right now), I have a very complicated relationship with college. Over the past four years, we’ve had our ups and downs. There have been moments when my only thoughts were, I love college (when I was living one of these moments), and there were others (like when I was writing my thesis) when I’ve thought, I hate college with a fiery passion…

Ahem.

But that’s probably because college is a complicated institution, full of things we want to do, things we should do, and things we have to do. Some of the stuff is fun (Saturday tailgates), and some of the stuff is not so fun (Sunday all-nighters). So often, we love college just as much as we hate it. It’s a different experience for everyone, but I’ve pulled some of the more universal love/hate conundrums that go hand in hand with the college experience.

Love: Buying new school supplies. Shopping for school supplies is an art form as far as I’m concerned. You need just the right number of pens, just the right size paper, the perfect color Post-Its. You buy everything you need and you set it all up on your desk, and you take a deep sigh of happiness. You are ready to take on the semester. With these supplies you can take on anything.

Hate: Running out of highlighter ink within the first two weeks of the semester. No, not because you bought really crappy highlighters or because you left the cap open and it all dried up (I hate when that happens!), but because you’ve been highlighting nonstop since the semester started. You’ve never had this much reading in your life and everything seems important. How are you supposed to choose what to highlight? So you highlight a lot. A lot. In all of your books. For all of your classes. And then your brand new highlighters dry up.

Love: Learning something new and interesting. Call me a geek but sometimes I actually enjoy my classes. Reading a good book, discussing an interesting theory, or exploring different ways to look at the world? Not the worst thing in the world. Sometimes it’s not only interesting, but actually entertaining. It’s in these moments that I love my major and my classes, and actually don’t mind the whole “going to class” thing.

Hate: Having all of the fun sucked out of it by writing a 10-page paper on it. Okay, so you love this book? Write a ten-page paper on it. What? Excuse me? Having to focus that much time and energy on any one thing will inevitably lead to you hate it. (Just ask your ex.) When I have to write papers or take tests on the topics that I most enjoy I don’t enjoy them anymore. Because suddenly it’s not something fun and interesting, it’s something I have to do. And nothing you have to do is ever really enjoyable. (Just ask me about sexy time with my ex.)

Love: Being treated like colleagues rather than students by professors. I love that in college the professors actually treat us like adults. They don’t baby us. They don’t coddle us. Some of them actually treat us like colleagues or friends rather than students. They are not demeaning and they don’t try to control us, and they actually listen to what we have to say. They respect us enough to see us as adults rather than young adults, (at least most of them anyway), and that makes our time with them so much more enjoyable.

Hate: Getting Facebook requests from those professors. I don’t care how cool you are, professor, I don’t want to be your Facebook friend. It’s just not going to happen. I can’t skip class and spend it on Facebook if you’re my friend. I can’t complain about papers, or joke about dropping out of school to become a stripper if you’re my Facebook friend. Because you might think I’m serious. (I’m not, by the way.) You might get insulted. You might not understand why that quote from textsfromlastnight.com was placed on my Facebook wall and you might not want to. So no professor, I don’t want to be your Facebook friend.

Love: Having the ability to design my own schedule. Probably one of the things that I always looked forward to the most about college was the ability to create my own college schedule. No classes on Monday. No classes before 10 a.m. Night classes only. Whatever I wanted, I could make happen. And I could make it happen with the best professors and the most entertaining (read: easiest) classes. College was like a dream come true. Or so it seemed.

Hate: When that schedule gets tossed out the window when none of those classes are open anymore. It was during the Fall semester of my freshman year that I first discovered every school’s dirty little registration secret. It may appear like students could choose their own schedules, but that was really only for the lucky few that had early registration times. The rest of us were left with nothing to choose from but Friday afternoon Intro to Public Speaking classes. Exactly what I was not looking for. So yes, I love that in college we have the potential to have a very easy-going schedule. I hate that this very rarely happens.

What about you? Share your loves and hates with college below. You know you got ‘em.

You wake up for class and something is different. It takes you a moment before you realize that – OH MY GOD! – there is sunlight coming into your room! It’s not dark or dreary out!

You pull back the shades (or sheet you’re using as a shade) and let the light in. Your mood is instantly lifted.

You skip to the bathroom to take a shower and hum a little tune to yourself as you lather up. While you blow-dry your hair (no ponytail today!) you plan out your first-day-of-Spring outfit: new bright cardigan, new jeans and – YIPEEEEE – flip flops! You are so excited for the day ahead that you even swipe on a little bronzer.

Before you head out the door you toss a magazine into your bag. You have an hour to kill between classes and instead of running home and sitting by the heater, you will grab an iced coffee and sit outside people watching (read: secretly hoping that guy you heart will walk by) and catching up on the latest celeb drama.

And now you are ready.

You put on your oversized sunglasses, slip your tootsies into your favorite pair of Havaianas and head off into the bright spring day jamming out to your favorite happy songs on your iPod. (What? You’ve always wanted to live your life to the beat of a song.)

A cool breeze hits you as you open the door. “It’s early,” you think to yourself. “It will warm up.” Only it gets worse as you walk to class. Soon your toes are numb, your leg hair has completely grown back, and your hands are so cold you can barely wrap that light spring cardigan tighter around your body.

You scold yourself for opting out of the spring scarf trend.

You hold out hope that the day will get warmer; you are determined to have spring and will not let a few unseasonable snotsicles deter you. It is late March, dammit! It should be warm! If only that hope could warm you up.

When you finally make it to class, you run to the bathroom to blow your nose, stubbing the big toe you can no longer feel on the door. You curse Mother Nature for toying with your emotions and yourself for being dumb enough not to actually check the weather.

And that is when you realize that you are not alone; the bathroom is filled with other Spring-loving girls like yourself, wearing their brightest corals and showing off their freshly pedicured toes as they too run their hands under warm water.

—

Yeah, we’ve all been there. But look on the bright side: at least you aren’t one of the really dumb girls laying out on the quad in a bikini!

There are only 4 days (well, more like 3 days, 22 hours and 12 minutes) until your flight takes off for Cancun. You’ve got 6 lectures and 2 discussion sections between you and the smell of SPF 30/sweet, sweet freedom, but your brain has been checked out for days.

While your professor drones on and on about about the feminist’s criticism of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” you’re having a mid-day dream about strawberry daiquiris and that adorable new tankini you just picked up at Target. Instead of taking notes in History of the Civil War, you work on your packing list, adding necessities like “dangly earrings,” “push-up bra,” and “Listerine bottle full of Absolut.” And when you should be in the library brushing up on Physics, you’re off at the campus drug store stocking up on tanning oil (and aloe for when said tanning oil inevitably fails…3 hours into the trip).

And you’re not the only one. Come on, it’s SPRING BREAK. It’s been months since your last break from school and between midterms and the gloomy, gray weeks, every student on campus has been on a mental vacation for days. And that would be fine with everyone if it weren’t for that hard ass professor who always likes to prove a point. The eternal party pooper who returns home to his 12 cats every night and can’t handle the idea of college students having fun.

The professor who interrupts you as you’re busy building the perfect Spring Break playlist during class to, what else, assign a giant reading assignment with a 3-page reaction paper due the day you return from your trip.

Awesome. Wonderful.
Thanks a lot, Sir Fun Sucker.

First you grumble. Then you bitch about it on Facebook. Then you grumble some more. Then, after someone else in your class gets an embarrassingly long lecture for having the audacity to “use Spring Break as an excuse to stop learning or forget why you’re in college in the first place,” you thank god you were too busy updating your Facebook status to raise your hand to make the exact same argument first. Then you go home, bitch about it to your friends, and spend the next 45 minutes trying to figure out a way to squeeze your stupid textbook into your suitcase that is already 6 pounds over the airline’s weight limit.

You calculate your grade in the class to see if you can skip the assignment without totally bombing the course, then curse your teacher some more when you realize you can’t. So you suck it up, throw that stupid text book into your carry-on and pray to god you have at least an hour of sober time to get the reading done before you’re forced back to reality.

—-

Yup, we’ve all been there. Unfortunately, there are disgruntled professors like this on every campus. So much for Spring “Break,” right?

Best friends are important in everyone’s life. They are the people you can count on. The people you can turn to, no matter what you need. The people who get you through life.

But sometimes they’re not people at all.

Every college girl knows that her best friends aren’t necessarily just the girls she heads out to lunch with. A girl’s got a lot on her plate and therefore must have a full on support system to help her get by. Thank god she’s got her 20 BFFs by her side.

[This post is a favorite of CollegeCandy's 21st BFF, Emily. Love you long time, woman!]

You’re at a house party or a bar… or in line to get into a house party or bar. It doesn’t matter. Wherever you are, you’ve just spotted a very handsome boy and you want to talk to him. You turn to your friends and point him out.

“OMG, girl, he IS hot. Go to him,” they say. Then you spend the next 5 minutes debating the best conversation starter/reapplying lip gloss/yanking your shirt down a wee bit lower to show off the girls. When everything is in order (“Do I have anything in my teeth??” you ask your friends as you flash a big, toothy smile), you move in.

Due to some extreme Power Houring before leaving the house, your friends are feeling rather rambunctious. As you make your way to get a drink, they shove you into the boy. Not part of the carefully laid out plan, but that move has been known to work wonders in the past.

You grab the boy’s arm (which feels nice and muscley through that button-down shirt of his) and apologize for your friends. He smiles at you. [Swoon.] You offer to buy him a drink to replace the one that spilled when you fell into him. He offers to buy you one instead.

It’s already working.

While waiting at the bar for a bartender (any bartender) to look your way, you start chatting with the boy. You get his name (which you may or may not forget .25 seconds later), his major, his hometown….the usual. Then you start chatting about more important things, like why Vodka and Soda is better than Jack and Coke any day.

As time passes, you start getting a bit closer. First, he rests his arm next to yours on the bar as you sip your drink. Then he puts it around you as someone passes by. When you walk away from the bar, he puts his hand on the small of your back and leads you. When you bump into his friends and start talkin’, he puts his arm around your shoulder (and you put your hand on the small of his back). Then he starts rubbing your back….

Then his tongue is down your throat and he’s nibbling on your ear in the back corner by the bathroom. And you are getting goose bumps/weak in the knees.

You silently celebrate your success as you debate what to do with the full drink in your hand. You pull away for a second, put that sucker down and start running your hands through the boy’s hair.

While making out in public is completely socially acceptable in college watering holes, knowing your friends (and the rest of the bar) are watching from the corner skeeves you out. You ask the boy if he wants to go. You both pound your drinks, you not-so-seductively wipe the inevitable drips off your face with the back of your hand, then he grabs your hand and you head back to his place… where you wake up 6 hours later under a dirty sheet listening to him snore.

—

Yeah, we’ve all been there. If we were smart, we stuck around for a morning romp. If we were lucky, we got a ride home. If not, we stuck our bra in our purse, wiped the mascara from our cheek and did the run/walk home as we attempted to avoid snickers from strangers on their way to class.

It’s Parent Weekend, or your birthday, or just a Thursday night and you’re craving a free meal a la parentals. Either way, your parents are coming to campus and that means one thing and one thing only: it’s time to clean.

It’s not like your place is dirty – at least by your standards – but something about having mom and dad sit on that couch (where your roommate hooked up last night and – oh! – her bra is stuffed between the cushions) is just not right. You don’t need your parents seeing the cans from last night’s impromptu party, or the empty Doritos bags littering your
bedroom floor.

You run home from class/work and get moving on the deep clean. You start with your bedroom. You fold all of the clothes that have been piled on your floor for three weeks and put them away.  After you make your bed, you decide some vacuuming is in order. Good idea, too, as you find some less than parent-friendly goodies (your bowl or some empty condom wrappers, perhaps?) under the bed. You remove the dirty dishes (AKA the cereal bowl from last week filled with congealed milk) from your desk and replace them with books and binders.

You take a moment to survey the room. It just screams, “I’m studious!”

You light a candle to cover up the smell of dirty sheets and move onto the kitchen. You begin sweating as you quickly clean all the dishes in the sink and stacked on top of the microwave.  Most of them are shot glasses. Once they are all glistening in the drying rack, you make your way around your place picking up bottles and beer cans. You pause at the bookshelves and contemplate removing your collection of Smirnoff bottles that have been on display for months. On the one hand, you don’t need your parents to see how much you and your friends drink/pride yourselves on it, but on the other hand, you’ve been working on that collection forever! You can’t just throw it away now.

You decide to leave the bottles and hope your parents don’t comment on them.

With only 30 minutes until their arrival, you do a quick Swiffer/vacuum job, organize the Us Weekly’s on the coffee table and throw your roommates’ stuff into their rooms. When you are done you take a moment to enjoy the fruits of your labor. Your place is spotless. Like, really spotless. Like, it hasn’t been this clean since the last time the parents were in town.

But, wait! There is one more thing. You run to the kitchen and take an inventory of the photos on the fridge. You yank down the one of you bonging the beer, dressed up as a slutty Nun for Halloween and the one of you using your Psych textbook as a flip cup “table.” On second thought, you yank them all down. Your parents don’t need to see that.

As you are putting them into a drawer in the kitchen, there is a knock on the door. Proud of your accomplishments, you open it up and let your parents in. You open your arms up for a bear hug and….

“This place smells like stale beer,” your mother says, a look of disgust on her face.

—

Yeah, we’ve all been there. At least she didn’t see what it looked like before…

You fight to keep your eyes open as you take the elevator up to your room. As you round the corner and get closer to your room you grow more excited to kick off your shoes, peel those skinny jeans off your legs (you swear they weren’t this tight when you bought them…) and take a one way ticket to Snoozetown.

And then you see it. Scribbled on the dry erase board tacked to your door: come back later.

The writing is messy, but the message is loud and clear. Your roommate’s got someone in there and you are not welcome.

Angry, you stand there for a few moments taking it all in. It’s late on a weeknight. Everyone else is already asleep. And how long have they been in there?  Where the hell are you supposed to go? When can you come back?

You scan the hallway. Yup, everyone’s doors are closed and the hall is quiet. You are going to have to find somewhere else to pass the time. You take the elevator back down to the study room on your dorm’s main floor. You’re exhausted, but you decide you’ll do a bit more reading and try the room again in a half hour.

When you walk in you find another student in there reading on a couch.

“You too?” You ask. She nods.

You head towards one of the over-stuffed chairs but reconsider and move towards a table. The last thing you want is to get too comfortable and fall asleep down here. You unpack your textbook, grab a highlighter and start reading. But after getting through 3 pages and realizing you have no idea what you just read, you close the book and start chatting it up with your fellow Sexilee. You vent, you complain, you commiserate. Then you see a boy walk past in the hallway and, thinking that must be the man of the evening, take that as your cue to head back upstairs.

When you approach the door you notice the note is still on the dry erase board but you reason that your roommate must have forgotten to wipe it off. To be safe, you knock. You hear some giggling.

“Come back in five minutes!” Your roommate calls from inside.

“Come on! It’s late!” You call. You know you sound ridiculous, but you just want to go to sleep, damnit.

“Five minutes!” You’re tempted to throw open the door and break up the little party, but the fear of seeing some guy’s bare butt stops you. So you put your bag on the floor, pop a squat and wait it out.

Not five, but fifteen minutes later, the music stops and the door opens. Startled (it seems you have dozed off) you jump up. Your roommate laughs and shoos her guest towards the elevator. You gather your things and drag yourself towards your bed. Finally, you can get some sleep.

Well, after your roommate gives you the 20 minute rundown of her evening romp, that is.

—

Yeah, we’ve all been there.
It’s annoying, it’s infuriating…but it feels DAMN good when you can get sweet Sexile revenge.

Best friends are important in everyone’s life. They are the people you can count on. The people you can turn to, no matter what you need. The people who get you through life.

But sometimes they’re not people at all.

Every college girl knows that her best friends aren’t necessarily just the girls she heads out to lunch with. A girl’s got a lot on her plate and therefore must have a full on support system to help her get by. Thank god she’s got her 20 BFFs by her side.

Did we miss anything? Got any other BFFAEAEAEAEs that we missed?

Your hair is done, your makeup is on and your outfit is perfect. All you have to do is pack that wristlet and you’re ready to head out with your friends. Money? Check. ID? Check. Camera? Check.

Before you leave, you mix a few drinks and have a mini-dance party with the girls. Two rum and Diets and a few old school Britney songs later, it’s time to head out. But not without a “SELFIE!!”

You gather the girls around, make your sexy face, stick that arm out and capture the moment.

“Let me see!” your friends shriek.
“Ew. I have a double chin. One more!” So you take one more.
“Cuuuute!” everyone agrees. You put the camera back in your bag and head off to the bars.

Once there, you whip that camera out, strap it to your wrist and settle in for a night of partying. You beeline to the bar and order a round of shots. You snap a picture of them sitting on the bar, then you snap another of you and your friends cheers-ing. Then you ask the random dude standing next to you to get a picture of you taking them.

You chase the shot with a round of vodka sodas. Before you take the first sip, you ask a girl standing nearby to take a picture of you guys holding your drinks. Then, remembering how good you look, you ask your friend to get a shot of you and your drink alone.

“FACEBOOK!” you scream.

Suddenly, you hear Kelly Clarkson blaring from the DJ booth. You make your way to the dance floor, camera swinging from your wrist, to shake your rump. You do a little dance, pause, and take a picture of your friend getting humped from behind by a total shadester. Then you gather the girls together for a selfie.

“Want me to take that for you?” a nice gentleman asks.

“Nah, I love me some selfies.” You stick your arm out (and your chin up – you don’t want any double-chin action) and take the pic. Realizing you left the camera on zoom and only captured your teeth and your friend’s hair, you do it again.

“CUTE!” you all shriek.

“Ok, now let’s do ‘you just found out your boyfriend is gay’,” one friend proposes. You huddle up, stick the camera out and take the pic. Then you pass it around for everyone to admire.

“Ok, how about ‘who farted?’” another friend recommends. So you do it again. And again. And again. There is “sexy,” and “drunk,” and “your drink is empty.”

When you go to the bathroom, you snap some pictures (“SELFIE IN THE STALL!”). When you stop for pizza on the way home you snap some pictures (“SELFIE WITH A SLICE!”). When you get home and your feet are totally blistery from those heels, you snap some pictures (“Ew, our feet are gross!”).

And when you wake up in the morning, you grab your camera and flip through the ridiculousness that was last night. By the time you make it out of bed, you have 5 emails from friends begging you to post those puppies on Facebook.

Yup – been there. I don’t know what it is, but – much like a guy in a hot pair of jeans -  there is something about the alcohol/selfie combo that is just impossible to resist.