The other day was a YAS moment! As soon as we brought up the norms of society, my attempt to go with norms of society experience popped in my mind.

I was never the student to get in trouble or head down the wrong road. The person I’ve become since I’ve been in college is not the person I would like to continue to be. When I arrived at college, I wanted to have the entire “college” experience. Throughout high school I was never the type to go to parties and drink, I never saw the need nor cared for it.  So coming to college was a huge adjustment. I had the idea of “everyone comes to college to experiment,” so why not experiment with drinking?” The following is about my embodiment involving hegemony. 

The idea of “everyone else is doing it, so why not,” will always be one of the worst mindsets. I know most of you are thinking “oh wow you dummy, just because everyone else is doing it doesn’t mean you have to.” For the people who are thinking that, my response to you is, yes you guys are right but it’s easier said than done. Let me put you in a situation, you’re at a party and it’s pretty dead; no one is dancing. Just a typical UMBC party, people getting drunk, just conversing.  So you notice all your friends just decided to take a couple shots to get the party going and then they offer you. Now, put the facts together: party is dead, no one is dancing, and you see your friends turning up and starting to dance off the liq, what would you do? In my opinion, I would start throwing shots back but I mean that’s me. The problem with such a mindset is that you don’t realize some of the choices you make until you experience the consequences.

In my case, I learned it the hard way. So long story short, I got wasted one night off of tequila, followed home by the cops and written up. I am now on disciplinary probation, residential life probation, have to take an alcohol.edu class for $125, make an action plan and write a reflection letter. They also send a letter home to your parents to alert them of your actions and consequences. The way I felt after such an experience was an out of body experience. I felt like I was not “insert my name” anymore. I began to think how my parents would react, how my friends would perceive me and how faculty that knew of the situation would distinguish me. My mom was in awe, she literally said, “I don’t know who you are, but you are not the daughter I raised.” Of course she understood in college people got turnt, but she was more surprised at the fact that I never came to her about it until a problem was presented. My friends saw a different me, a changed me. They knew me well enough to say I had to get my shit together. Finally to top it off, the faculty that was informed, were in complete and utterly disappointment. They never perceived me as that type of person, and now I have to spend a long time to earn their respect back. In the end, I realized that because I was going through the norms (hegemony) of college. I was just slowly changing the person I used to be. I knew that something needed to change and I am now in the process of doing so. Unfortunately, it took an out of body experience to do so.