Illini vs Buckeye
I returned last weekend from a road trip to visit my friend at The Ohio State University and I was back on campus for one evening this past Friday. I had a markedly different experience at both.
I rolled out to OSU with three of my best friends to visit another great friend of ours, and our Ohio rendezvous was well prepared for the arrival. She had a party waiting at her place, the bars were packed with students and downtown Columbus was on point Saturday night. It was one of the wildest weekends I’ve had in a while.
This past Friday was the weekend after Greek reunion at Illinois, so most of the visitors were in town then as opposed to the one I went for. This, of course, left our home campus bars a little dead. After seeing the handful of friends I knew to be around, I headed out with one buddy to downtown Champaign. It was my first legal downtown experience and I’m almost bummed that I’ll be living far away from that area next year as I have a house in Urbana.
While downtown Champaign was not the shot-ripping, one dollar wells of Columbus, I very much enjoyed catching up with a dear friend I haven’t seen since January over some cheap margaritas. The downtown bars were much more lively than campus bars and I marginally felt like an actual adult, especially because my friend is 24 and can’t keep up with us youngins like she used to be able to.
The lesson, I suppose, is all in moderation. Crazy roadtrip party weekends are unbelievably worthwhile, but you can’t continue to one-up yourself each time; it’s nice to sit outside at the place you call home and talk for hours on end over a drink that is actually enjoyable to drink.