I’ve always had a problem with Thursday. For one thing, you don’t really know what exactly it is: a weekend or weekday? Is Thursday a day of torture that takes its form in an additional 24 hours of potential schoolwork? Or is it a day of hope and rebirth, a reawakening of your senses and your thirst for cheap, hard-to-swallow, sweet, sweet alcohol? I can’t really say.

But as early as freshman year, I learned that if you knew what was good for you, you would rearrange your schedule in any way possible to have Fridays off and Thursdays free to party.

The only problem with this whole plan has been the fact that three years later, I still haven’t figured out what to do on Thursdays.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for drinking. There’s no other time in life when you are allowed, and often even encouraged, to say the most obnoxious things that come to mind and are not held accountable for them the next day.

However, sitting around your apartment with your roommates and drinking just for the sake of drinking is not that stimulating. You can’t really embarrass yourself in front of your roommates. They’ve already seen you pass out face-first on asphalt and have still agreed to associate with you. So the incentive just isn’t quite there.

There’s almost never frat or house parties on Thursdays, either, because of those poor, lost souls that actually do have classes on Friday. So you won’t be able to spend your evening rubbing up against sweaty strangers in someone’s dark basement.

The bars are open, of course, but there’s that little issue of identification. And as a victim of the ‘late birthday,’ I have officially lost all of my friends, and some of my will to live, to Chucks on Thursdays.

I’m sure I’m not the only one experiencing this conundrum. But our fair collegiate community is so unanimous in its love for Thursdays that I feel as though there might be some special, secret activity that takes place that I somehow don’t know about.

I decided to do some research. Fifth-year industrial design major Josh Harris told me, ‘Things have changed a lot over the years. Thursday nights used to be the best night of the week, but now most people care too much about their property to have parties. That being said, I have no idea what I would do now if I was underage.’ Very helpful.

Senior advertising and marketing major Ilana Vakhovskaya said, ‘People really just want Thursdays off because everyone else has them off. It might also be your last chance in life to have a three-day weekend. And if you don’t drink, well, I guess … you can catch up on sleep?’ Great.

But I refuse to be influenced by everyone else’s blind faith in Thursday nights. I will not be unproductive, just for un-productivity’s sake. I will attend ‘Late Night at the Gym.’ I will indulge in my secret passion for Antiques Roadshow on PBS. I will finally come to terms with the fact that maybe the best thing about Thursday nights is that you can finally just relax and reflect on how you’ve successfully made it through another long, hard week of college.

Then again, my 21st birthday is in a month.

Marina Charny is a senior English and textual studies and writing major. Her column appears weekly, and she can be reached at mcharny@syr.edu.

 

Published on September 29, 2010 at 12:00 pm