I have more mosquito bites than I can count. #IGTR

If you haven't noticed from the swelling, red, itching welts that are likely covering your entire body, or swarms in the grove, in your college, in your nightmares; then you've probably noticed on Facebook:  Houston, we have a mosquito problem.

You've experienced bad mosquito evenings at Rice before.  There was that one time last year during Powderpuff practice when the mosquito clouds at dusk were so thick that you counted no less than 25 bites by the time you were inside again.  You experienced an occasional bite at one of the forced picnics.  But unless your college's zombie apocalypse defense plan can easily be converted to defend against these bloodsucking monstrosities, there's no way you were prepared for this.

They descended upon us during parent's weekend.  Beginning that evening as you sat on an outside patio at a lovely non-servery dinner, you began to notice there were more mosquitoes about than usual.  Your parents offer to take you and friends to buy mosquito repellant this weekend.  By the time you go to the Target on Main Street the next day, they are completely sold out.  Same for the CVS in the Village. On the third or fourth try, you finally locate a few cans at a Walgreens you've never been inside before.

You spray the stuff all over your clothes, but still the mosquitos taunt you, getting inside your car and under your skin.

 

It's like Rice students are especially delicious.  Our blood must be like the fine wine of the mosquito world.

 

You've considered more drastic solutions.  How could one feasibly keep a pet bat?  Bats are mosquito eating machines, and why don't we have more?!  Then you realize that the mosquitoes have got you acting like a crazy person, and you resolve to just cover up every possible inch (itch) of skin until the cold front sets in on Thursday night.

I am convinced my fire alarm is lying to me. #IGTR

I am convinced that if there is ever a real fire, I will die inside my residential college building.  I think the problem stems from how many false alarms (literally) are set off through out the year.  When I first moved back in from the summer, it didn't quite feel like home until the first inconveniently timed fire alarm went off.

They never occur at a moment when you're like "Hmm, I feel like going for a stroll outside" or "I think I'll take the stairs today!"  It's when you've been up all night working on a project and are now just finally closing your eyes to a well earned afternoon nap.  Or when you've returned home on a Friday night at 2am and want nothing more than to crawl into bed.

But nope.  The fire alarm goes off.

And won't stop.  This thing has literally been going off for like twenty whole minutes.  You were kind of silently hoping that it would stop within the reasonable amount of time during which you would be excused from not having reached the ground floor yet.

The thing is... you just live so far from the ground floor.  I mean... it's like a lot of stairs.  You probably have a better shot taking the elevator in a fire than trying to get out in time after taking thirteen flights of stairs. And the chances of this being a real fire are about twelve to zero.

You and your suitemates, who also haven't evacuated yet, meet in the hallway of your suite to deliberate.  Should we go to the ground floor?  It has been a long time since it went off.  And maybe if the fire isn't real, they would have turned the thing off by now.

You reluctantly put on a sweater (hey, it might be cold outside) and exit the suite.  You still fully intend to take the elevator down (like I said, lots of stairs), but when you get to your floor lobby, you notice that every single person on your floor has convened on the balcony.

That counts as outside, right?  Besides, this building is pretty much solid brick and concrete.  If it hasn't burned down yet, it ain't ever gonna. You decide that staying on the balcony is basically the same thing as evacuating to the ground floor.

You justify this to yourself by reasoning that if ever there was a real fire, you could probably be airlifted from the top floor balcony by a helicopter.

Yup.  You'll be just fine.  You wave to your friends down below.  Another fifteen minutes goes by (or two to three hours, depending or how badly you had wanted to sleep), and the alarm is finally off.  You learn that is was something completely mundane yet random, like welding in the basement. You go back to bed, silently begrudging the forty minute (or four hour) dent into your sleep schedule.

I am forced to picnic. #IGTR

What's wrong, you may ask?  Is the world ending? Am I the last human left on earth? Did Scar just kill Mufasa?  That's not it.  I'm being forced to picnic.

One person notices a flier sitting on your lunch table and innocently picks it up.  After a moment, they read aloud: "Campus wide picnic! 5-7. Free food!  (Serveries will be closed)"  and instantly, the entire table is grumbling and complaining like they're being thrown out of their dorm room for the night and forced to sleep in a tree surrounded by rabid squirrels.

How can a picnic go so wrong?  The concept is not completely terrible: Rice students are fun people.  In theory, getting a bunch of us together with lots of food and sunshine sounds pretty good.  Don't we all like Friday afternoon tailgates?  Of course tailgates don't shut down your servery and force you to eat food like this:

Picnics require effort.

First, you have to walk from your college to Founder's Court or the IM fields.

Then you have to get your food.

And then you've got to eat it.

Thanks for the free t-shirts, though. 

Thursday nights are Pub nights. #IGTR

Thursday night on Rice campus.  At this point you have either done all your homework or have consciously decided to put it off until the weekend (let's be honest, that's what Sunday nights are for, right?).  You're amped up and want to celebrate the start of the College Weekend (Thursday, Friday, Saturday).  Then you hear it.  The call you've been waiting for.

You are powerless to remain in your room.  Before you know it, you've joined a mass of fellow pub-goers and are on your way.  You head in through the back way and down the Stairs of Doom.

You ability to reach Pub is also inversely proportional to the height of your heels, should you be wearing them.

It may be a struggle, but you finally reach the door to the RMC basement, which experience has taught you that you can open without an ID card if you just try hard enough.  

Depending on how often you visit pub, you either hover awkwardly on the fringes, wondering how everyone else knows each other, or you know everyone.  If you know everyone, you're probably a Pub regular.  One time, you meet a friend of a friend at Coffeehouse and they ask you if you work at Pub.  You say no and they say, "Oh, I just assumed."  You wonder what that means about your life and your choices.

You remember the first time you went to pub as a freshman.  Not gonna lie.  It was pretty flippin' awkward.  You just sat with your suite mates and didn't talk to anyone.  But you actually know some people from other colleges now.  You have people to talk to other than your suite mates (although they're still pretty great).  You realize that knowing people at Pub is the key to enjoying Pub.  And the more people you know at Pub, the more people you meet at Pub.

You love Pub.  Any night of the week is worthy of Pub.  But Thursday nights?  Thursday nights are Pub nights.

I'm in beast mode. #IGTR

Quite a few Rice students participate in the hallowed tradition that is college powderpuff.  When you show up to Rice as freshmen girl, by the end of O-Week you probably hear your fair share of: "YOU SHOULD PLAY POWDERPUFF" and "OMG POWDERPUFF IS THE BEST THING EVER."  And after hours of convincing you that "it doesn't matter if you're athletic or not" and "you don't even need to know how football works" and "we'll teach you everything you need to know,"  you'll follow a group of rabidly excited upperclassmen out to the IM fields for your first practice.

Every position takes its own  kind of skill and training to be sure, but there is something uniquely terrifying about being thrust into O-line as a freshman.  While the defense and receivers are cautioned against painful finger jams, someone will undoubtedly bring up that one time your team's o-lineman broke her nose or received a concussion.  Everyone quickly hushes that person.  You're not sure what you've gotten yourself into.

Of course the coaches and captains will spend a long time explaining technique and how to properly block so that you minimize the potential for injury, but all you'll really hear is:

But you soon get it down, and learn that blocking is not actually that terrifying.  Plus, you like that you don't have to catch passes.  You're really bad at that.  You're even feeling pretty good about yourself until your first game comes along. Then you get to the field and your first match-up looks like this:

It also doesn't help that the opposing team is holding up signs that say "CONCUSS HER" on their sideline.

Eventually though, you begin to feel satisfied when you hit a good block.  You learn to embrace the bruises.  Instead of freaking out about them, you comment on them when they turn a particularly cool color.  You don't get worried about those sideline signs anymore: no one's gonna concuss you, not even close.  You got 'dis.  You're in beast mode.