Stuff Stupid College Girls Do

Posted by Therese on February 20, 2012 • 42 comments
Stuff Stupid College Girls Do

So today I wanna talk about something that’s particularly relevant and important in today’s society: stuff stupid college girls do.

Yep.

It all started when I decided to look through the 1,246 Facebook photos (really?) that I’ve been tagged in over the years.

Whilst browsing said photos, I came to the shocking conclusion that the majority of my college years were spent not partying, not chasing dudes, not even being hungover, but TAKING NUMEROUS PHOTOS of said activities for the sole purpose of posting them to Facebook.

Why? To prove that I was KEWL, beetch!

Furthermore, nerdy analysis of photos taken during college years revealed astonishing insight into the “stuff stupid college girls do.” Amazingly, at least three quarters of my photos fell under one of three categories:

(1) Proving my excessive consumption of alcoholic beverages, and thus proving my resulting coolness.

(2) Proving my purported sexiness, normally whilst wearing some sort of a costume-outfit-(piece-of-cloth?), and thus proving my resulting worthiness.

(3) Making weirdo faces and/or kissing strange objects. (Not sure what this one proves, but, um… ah well.)

The remaining 1/4 of photos fell under some combination of the aforementioned categories.

It was at this moment that I had a brilliant flash of insight: Before I get all famous and shit and my friends start selling my embarrassing FB pics to the paparazzi for millions of dollars, I decided, hey, why not beat them to the punch and share the pictures myself?

#selfsabotage!!

Today’s post may both shock & embarrass my parents (sorry, Mom), but hey, it all turns out great in the end — promise. So without further ado, let’s get this self-embarrassment-sesh started.

[SIDENOTE: While I appreciate your sincere concern regarding my future employability (or lack thereof) due to the posting of these photos, DO NOT FEAR! I can assure you that I plan on never having a "normal job" again.]

1. EXCESSIVE CONSUMPTION OF ADULT BEVERAGES 

“Look at me! I’m friggin wasteddd! Oh man, I had, like, 16 shots of Jager tonight. YOU SHOULD THINK I’M AWESOME!!”

*Fall on disgusting gum-and-popcorn-littered sticky bar floor.*

“HAHAH!”

“OMG, we gots some beer. We should prolly take a picture posing with it, LOL!!! WE IS SO COOL!”

Shots in the middle of the day, wheeeeeee…

“Will you take a pic of me chugging beer in a public restroom? Mmmkay thx.”

TEQUILA.

CHAMPAGNE!

GINORMOUS MARGARITA!!

Skyyyyy.

I’m sexy, biatch.

2. EXCESSIVE PROVING OF SEXINESS (whilst wearing costume-like-things)

“Oh hey, look at me! I’m wearing a sexayy pirate costume-outfit-piece-of-cloth! Oh hey youuu! Pay attentionnnn!!”

Oh hayyyy! Ladybugs r sexyyy!

Sexy pajama party.

Sexy army chick.

Sexy princess? (Mean mug.)

Sexy pirate II.

Sexy Eskimo.

Sexay.

Alrighty then.

3. EXCESSIVE WEIRDO FACES + KISSING STUFF:

Weirdo face & random floating hand.

AHAHAHAHAHA!!!

Halo face.

Weirdo-face-witha-cup-on-my-head (Don’t ask ’cause I’ve got nooo idea.)

Constipated-weirdo-face-while-sticking-out-tongue (btw, check the RAZR phone. SO COOL.)

Super-serious-scary-face-while-posing-with-bachelorette-party-accessories (bwahahahaha WAIT did I really just post this on the interwebz?)

Kissing a hamster. (But WAIT, it gets weirder.)

Kissing a mannequin.

Kissing a floating head-with-a-beard.

Kissing a dead skeleton-crypt-dude.

Kissing a… pumpkin?

Mmmkay then.

AWESOME COMBINATIONS

Selected awesome combinations of aforementioned categories:

Weirdo faces + drinking of champagne:

Weirdo faces + consumption-of-beverages + costume-like garb (minus sexiness):

& NOW for the ULTIMATE COMBINATION OF ALL THREE:

 

YES!

I mean, NO!!

I mean… WTF??!!!

THIS IS GETTING WEIRD NOW

“So what the heck was that all about, Therese?” you’re probably asking.

Well, here’s what.

Guys, I spent years of my life being someone else’s version of me, trying desperately to prove to others what I couldn’t quite see in myself.

LOOK HOW COOL I AM! LOOK HOW SEXY I AM! TELL ME I’M COOL & AWESOME & SEXY! MAKE ME FEEL LIKE I’M WORTHY OF LOVE & ATTENTION! TELL ME WHO I AM AND WHAT TO BELIEVE AND HOW TO BEHAVE BECAUSE I HAVE NO FREAKING CLUE!

I didn’t realize it at the time, but beneath all the consumption and the kissy faces and the costume-outfits, I was really begging others to validate me, to provide me with a sense of worth & a sense of self that I hadn’t yet come to know. When others reacted favorably, I was on top of the world. When they didn’t, I was crushed.

Believe it or not, it’s not just stupid college girls who do this — we’ve all got things we feel like we need to prove to others. If it’s not coolness or sexiness, it might be achievement or intelligence or wealth or perfection. We’ve all got masks we feel we must wear for the world, until one day we realize that we don’t. We don’t have to wear these masks, we don’t have anything to prove, and who we are when all else falls away — that in itself is enough.

Today, slowly but surely over time, things are changing.

Today, my embarrassing photos look more like this:

(See, Mom, I told you it gets better!)

Today, I’ve come to know this:

I don’t have to drink myself into a stupor to feel like I belong or to prove that I’m the coolest of the cool. In fact, today I don’t care all too much whether I’m “cool” at all — today I’m coming to know that all I need to be, all I want to be, is ME, just who I am, and that this alone is enough. Hell, I am more than enough. I don’t need to fit into society’s definition of “cool” in order to belong.

(Now don’t get me wrong; I still love myself a drink or two. But that’s just it: a drink or two, and not ten. I’ve come to see that the lush I once was wasn’t nearly as cool as I’d imagined she was. In fact, today I look back and think that girl was pretty redonkulous.)

Today, I’ve come to know this:

I am worthy and beautiful and valuable, and I don’t have to show my skin to prove it. I don’t have to live up to some Victoria’s-Secret-Kim-Kardashian-version of sexiness to prove it. In fact, I don’t have to prove it at all; it just is. I just am. My worth needs no validation.

Instead of being defined by others or by my environment or by my status, today I am defined by my self. Today I walk my own path. Today I am who I am. Amaze-balls.

Today you are You, that is truer than true. There is no one alive who is Youer than You.

 - Dr. Seuss

Guys, a true sense of validation and worth doesn’t come from outside of yourself; it comes from within. Others can help affirm it, others can help you come to see its existence, and yet others do not and cannot create it – it is something that already exists within you, something that has always existed within you.

On the same token, others cannot tear down your true sense of worth, your true sense of self. It can never be taken from you and it can never be destroyed, for it’s something that always has been and always will be within you, no matter what.

So go on and say it to yourself:

“Today I have nothing to prove.

Today I am who I am, and who I am is more than enough.

I am worthy & amaze-balls & awesomesauce defined.

Today I am me-to-the-max.”

# # #

OH HAYY, look who joined Pinterest!

 [Image by Helga Weber]


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  • Chris Scott

    Waaaay too true.
    Way, way, way too true.

    ***Psst. By the way, you as a brunette. Nice.

  • http://twitter.com/FrancisLUONG Francis Luong

    Therese,

    You have chosen an interesting way of dynamiting the ways in which you don’t think you were being you in the past. Cool. I really liked the way that you closed out:

    – quote
    “…others cannot tear down your true sense of worth, your true sense of self. It can never be taken it from you and it can never be destroyed, for it’s something that always has been and always will be within you, no matter what.”
    – endquote

    In her novel, The Fountainhead, Ayn Rand’s hero, Howard Roark, talks about how he is not capable of suffering completely:

    – quote
    “Maybe it hurts so much that I don’t even know I’m hurt. But I don’t think so. If you want to carry it for my sake, don’t carry more than I do. I’m not capable of suffering completely. I never have. It goes only down to a certain point and then it stops. As long as there is that untouched point, it’s not really pain.”

    “Where does it stop?”

    “Where I can think of nothing and feel nothing except that I designed that temple. I built it. Nothing else can seem very important.”
    – endquote

    Your words here echo the same beautiful sentiment. I believe that those who are commit to choosing the types of people they wish to be and put it into practice form an indestructible foundation which no one can ever take away. In the story, Roark built an actual temple to the Human Spirit. In each person’s life, one’s own character is also a sort of temple of the human spirit so I think the metaphor is 100% applicable.

    Well done.

    • http://www.theunlost.com Therese

      “Those who are commit to choosing the types of people they wish to be and put it into practice form an indestructible foundation which no one can ever take away.”

      Love this, Francis. I’ll have to check out that book :)

  • Anonymous

    The whole Timeline profile made this so much easier. I scrolled back to my freshman year of college a month or two ago. I’m so glad I’m not that version of myself anymore!

  • http://www.storywrought.wordpress.com/ Elizabeth Hudson

    You look so beautiful in the post-college photos! Confident and happy. I’m with you. Somewhere in the year after college, I lost interest in drinking myself drunk and trying to be the party that others wanted me to be. And now life is soooooooooooo grand. Wish I could have found this out earlier.

    • http://www.theunlost.com Therese

      I wonder if it’s a phase everyone just has to go through? No idea, but I am (and it sounds like you are!) so much happier now. The way I see it, it was fun at the time but ultimately left me empty. All my energy was spent on trying to impress everyone around me instead of on things that made me feel truly alive and brought meaning to my life.

  • http://twitter.com/EnsoJourney Alejandro Reyes

    Great and a bit bizarre post Therese. :)

    I must say I have always thought you were cool, even when i didn’t see those pics. I think on my weird world, being cool is someone who does their best to accept themselves and grow doing the things they love.

    And I believe any pic with a guitar hero controller is cool by definition. ;)

    • http://www.theunlost.com Therese

      Aren’t my posts always a bit bizarre? ;-)

      “Being cool is someone who does their best to accept themselves and grow doing the things they love.”

      Exactly. That’s the thing– I always thought I had to be “someone else’s version of cool” in order to be… well, cool. Or accepted. In reality, though, I wasn’t cool at all. I was desperately seeking myself in everything around me, which was in fact a little bit pathetic…

      I’d purport that I’m much cooler now than I was back then (x1,000,000,000), and the same goes for anyone who’s come to know their innate sense of coolness and worth.

  • http://twitter.com/downfromtheledg down from the ledge

    Funny, those are pictures of a girl I always wished I could be so that I could fit in. Sometimes I still do, so I wouldn’t be the odd ball out still getting peer-pressured at 31. Maybe my way of rebelling was refusing to do what “everyone else is doing” just because they’re all doing it. While everyone else was living it up in college, I was living with my boyfriend and working and studying. (LOser!)

    But what’s interesting is that it’s the same feeling of desperately wanting to fit in, the need to belong that drives us all, the desire to be accepted exactly as we are.

    “To be nobody-but-yourself – in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else – means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight, and never stop fighting.” ~ e.e. cummings

    • http://www.theunlost.com Therese

      YES that’s one of my favorite quotes.

      And bingo-on-the-spot with your second paragraph there. The thing is, any sense of belonging or “coolness” or “fitting in” that I derived from this was false & subject to crumble just as quickly as it was built (if it was ever built at all). Instead of truly validating me, it left me with the constant need to “prove,” to live up to a constant sense of false worth that’s vulnerable to being “popped” at any moment.

      This is true, I think, of anything that we wholly rely upon to define ourselves…

  • IHeartTravel

    This post is so GREAT! Its funny cause it seems most of us play this part at some point in our life. The ” I’m cool cause I do stupid s#*t that really brings nothing of worth to my life phase.”

    I’ve also been there and just reflect on some of the stupidity that I took part in when I was younger. None of these actions benefited my life nor did they make me cooler or more worthy as a person, actually quite the contrary, they probably hurt my liver, they definitely hurt my head, and at the end of the day the praises I received for being “S#*tFaced” or other dumb terms associated with drinking obsessively got me no where!

    So I praise you for having the courage to display this time in your life, and reflect on how redunkulous it was !

    Its funny because out of all the pictures you posted, the one that truly displays true beauty would be the last one…I see a person that is happy with herself and with her life…..and honestly there is nothing better than that!

    Keep spreading your awesomesauce !

    • http://www.theunlost.com Therese

      Thanks J :) I agree that there is NOTHING better than that!

      The way I see it, drinking in itself isn’t “bad” or anything; it’s just that I’ve come to realize that in desperately trying to be awesome, I was in fact embarrassing myself hardcore I was handing my power over to others for validation and approval, and coming off as more insecure and undefined than “cool.”

  • beth

    Looking at these pictures, you were the girl in college that I would have been completely and totally terrified of. I would have thought you were so much cooler than me that I never would have even tried to talk to you. And yet I read your posts and we have so, so much in common! Funny how that works. Thanks for sharing.

    • http://www.theunlost.com Therese

      Noooo! But that’s the thing… I wasn’t cool at all; I was desperately chasing an illusion and trying to fit in. I chased and chased and chased, but I never quite got there. And believe me, I was NOT cool in junior high or high school! I think that’s why I felt I had to try extra hard in college…

  • http://www.wevecreatedamonster.com/ Kevin Bates

    Good for you for embracing your unemployability. Nobody should have to alter themselves or shape others perceptions of themselves for any reason, especially a job. This is why LinkedIn is BORING. It’s loaded with people trying to be “professional,” whatever the fuck that means.

    The irony is that this will just make your core audience respect you more, and push away those who weren’t a good fit anyway.

    But, anyway. Um. Holy-freaking-wow. Jello shots, wooo!!!

    I’ll share my own story for funsies: I was in a punk rock band for my college years.

    Let your imagination run wild, because it’s probably pretty close to the truth.

    Highlights include:

    Breaking into a recording studio in the middle of the night for a month to record our demo.

    Shots.

    I played most of our shows drunk off my balls.

    Shots.

    I set fire to things.

    SHOTS!

    I can’t say I did any of this to prove anything to anyone or to be cool – we genuinely didn’t give a fuck – but it was still loaded with drunken redonkulousness and we made fools of ourselves. (And this is coming from someone who did a Jager bomb while listening to LMFAOs “SHOTS” song two nights ago.)

    I still love getting, ehem, crunk every now and again. BUT instead of putting my footprints on someone’s ceiling I’ll be debating the long-term effects of gluten and/or libertarianism on modern society.

    Live n’ learn. :)

    Aloha,

    Kevin

    • http://www.theunlost.com Therese

      Hahaha. I luv yoo Kevin.

  • http://www.facebook.com/carljamesharvey Carl Harvey

    Very cool, and yep you’re much prettier without the weird drunken kissy faces. Good writer too. I officially validate your awesomeness.

    • http://www.theunlost.com Therese

      No validation needed :) :)

      But thanks, Carl. How did you get so awesome??

  • Jonaprinsessa

    Hahahaha the sexy eskimo nearly made me spew coffee over my laptop. If only the eskimos knew how enticing they could make their culture with a little effort! All this time they’ve just been displaying the wrong kind of skin..

    Love this post. So many people are content with never seeing the error of their collage ways just so they won’t have to admit being wrong about certain aspects of life. And sadly this decision is usually made at the cost of personal development!

    Sometimes we just have to mock our young selves, and in there lies the proof of our growth. You are an inspiration Lady! And not just to the eskimos!

    • http://www.theunlost.com Therese

      Thanks rainbow-lady Jona! (Can I call youthat?!)

      I mock my young self and yet I have compassion for her at the same time… she was A-ok, and the best part is that now she’s finding her way!

      (Ooooh, a rhyme!)

  • http://WhosChrisHughes.com Chris Hughes

    I’m curious to know which inanimate object was the best kisser..

    I love how much you are putting yourself out there Therese. Each and every time I visit your blog and read what you write, I am constantly in amazement. You really are a kick ass amaze-balls person and I admire you.

    • http://www.theunlost.com Therese

      Haha, good question. Um, hamster?

      & I admire you and all the good you’re doing in the world, Chris. We’re all pretty awesome, aren’t we??! ;-)

      • http://WhosChrisHughes.com Chris Hughes

        that we are. We’re going to change the world.

  • Lorne Washburn

    All this talk of validation reminds me of a video I saw in my executive coaching class. I’m going through all of the same stuff you talk about on here, while working 50-70 hours a week and attending grad school full time. I think that much of the pressure placed on our generation is what’s holding us back, not only as people, but as a society as well. If we can shed these chains, the world will soon see an explosion of innovation, creativity, ingenuity, and happiness. Enjoy the vid.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cbk980jV7Ao

    • http://www.theunlost.com Therese

      I love this video! Thanks Lorne :)

  • Emily

    “Instead of being defined by others or by my environment or by my status, today I am defined by my self.” What a great sentiment Schwenk! I love hearing what you have to say every week!

    P.S. Thanks for blurring the faces ;)

    • http://www.theunlost.com Therese

      Hahaha. <3 you SO!

  • http://www.jodylamb.com/ Jody Lamb

    Therese, I laughed hard with this one. Thank you for your bravery and honesty. And as usual, at the end, I thought, “Exactly! She’s so right!”

    • http://www.theunlost.com Therese

      :) :) Thx ms Jody. Glad you didn’t run for the door and never come back!

  • http://twitter.com/dottywine Doka-chan

    I just got a pinterest, too! http://www.pinterest.com/peaceudo :D

  • Sarah Skaggs

    Wow! I can totally relate. I went through a lot of the same behavior for all of the same reasons… but would never be ballzy enough to write about it for so many people. It’s inspiring. Thanks

    • http://www.theunlost.com Therese

      Ahh thanks Sarah! Glad you found it inspiring ’cause I was scared to post it! I’m striving for truth, though, so truth it is!

  • http://www.thayoothsblog.com/ Samuel

    Lmao!! I guess that’s where the dropouts begin, I guess. Even in high school, those pictures of girls who think they look sexy by twitching their noses and mouths. I am kinda sick of them. I say “Insecure”? Sure.

    I am young guy, so it still doesn’t get to me. “Today you are You, that is truer than true. There is no one alive who is Youer than You.” Boom!!!

    Every girl has her sexiness, no matter what! Inside or Out!

  • Aselden25

    Great post!

  • http://twitter.com/tomewer Tom Ewer

    Hmm…your drunken college Facebook photos are far more flattering than mine…

    (Secretly hoping you filtered out the ones that made you look bad)

    • http://www.theunlost.com Therese

      Hahaha…

      No reply ;-)

  • http://RyanCoelho.com Ryan Coelho

    You are awesome. Period. :)

  • http://www.thefitworldtraveler.com/ Mike

    It takes a lot of guts to share these photos with the world, but I’m glad I met and know you as the person you are now. That’s the way I’ll remember you

    • http://www.theunlost.com Therese

      I’ve always been the same person… it’s just that in the past she was more hidden behind other things than she is now :)

  • meg

    Oh Tree, you are the best. I just made Josh look through the entire photo collection whilst I read all your caption aloud to him :) What I love the most is that you look the happiest – and prettiest – in your last photo. Love you, keep writing.

    • http://www.theunlost.com Therese

      Love you too, Meggy <3 :)

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