When I started the somewhat excessive two-week training program for House Fellows last August, one phrase I kept hearing from trainers and returning House Fellows alike was that I would “learn a lot about myself.”

People say that about a lot of things — taking a year off after college, studying abroad, joining the Peace Corps — and for a lot of people, I suppose that’s true. Personally, I struggle with it. I don’t know what the hell I ought to be looking for, and I’m such a Costanza-esque whiner that I can’t really get the benefit of “challenging myself” in doing something I don’t really want to. In the words of the immortal Steve Stiffler of “American Pie:” “I dunno, man, that sounds like a lot of work.”

So I cannot say I really bought into this sort of journey of self-discovery as a House Fellow. However, I did learn an awful lot about UW and its student body:

There really are many students who don’t need alcohol to act goofy

I lived my freshman year in the Southeast Dorms, on a floor where drinking was so common we’d subconsciously drop the “e” from the word “absolute” in our English essays. Eventually, it seemed everything had to be associated with drinking to be fun: “Let’s drink and then go to a movie,” “Let’s drink and then play ‘Trivial Pursuit,'” “Let’s drink and then go see that classic Shakespeare tragicomedy at Vilas Hall.”

But going back to the dorms this year — this time to Lakeshore — and getting to know a different crowd, I’ve discovered that the researchers at the Robert Wood Johnson project aren’t lying. A lot of people at this “party school” don’t drink much or at all — which is great — but I don’t think it’s some high moral choice. They just don’t need it: they have no inhibitions to begin with.

My first week on the job, I attended a karaoke event at which something like 50 people were singing, yelling, dancing on tables — every one of them dead sober. I’d always been one to smile (or smirk) at this kind of scene, but it was contagious. I even joined in — much to the dismay of those close enough to the speakers to hear my voice or within 10 feet of my awkward self on the dance floor. Hey, at least I made them look good.

Everyone’s parents had to know when they partied in high school

A lot of students with watchful parents — myself included — envisioned themselves the James Bonds of the party scene when they were back in high school. Honestly, I thought they never knew when I would show up hungover in the morning after an “all-night card game” and that my friends’ parents were clueless when we drank “quietly” in their basement. Who was I kidding?

As a freshman, we were always desperate to find a party, but, after eight months as a House Fellow, one can smell a lot of them in the air before they even happen. Just imagine what your parents, with their vast experience, must have known.

Put people of the opposite sex in close quarters, and eventually they behave like zoo animals

Scientists trying to propagate endangered species have known this for years, but living in the dorms you realize humans haven’t lost this trait to evolution. You’d think with a school of more than 40,000 people in a similar age range, finding a special someone outside of one’s nightly cage would be a little easier for University of Wisconsin students than, say, the woodland caribou of Idaho. Yet “Dormcest,” as some call it, runs as rampant as ever.

There are an awful lot of weird lectures that take place on this campus every day

One of the House Fellows’ duties is to post fliers we receive from different campus groups about events going on. I knew this university was huge and diverse, but I never knew it hosted lectures like “The Moral Economy of Food Safety in Poland” or “Innovations in Welsh Furniture Design, 1740-1780.” What kind of crowd do these things draw? And why are they spending money printing up posters for the dorms?

I’m really getting old

I noticed a few hairs falling out before, a few aches and pains I never used to have, and a few times when I started to talk all responsibly, but living with friends my same age I never noticed too much because they were going through the same things (except for the hair). If there’s one realization I’ve had as a House Fellow that I’m certain of, it’s that I’m suddenly an old man.

People down the hall are all groaning about the classes they can’t get into; I’m staring down graduation. People down the hall ask each other who they hooked up with last weekend; my parents and friends ask me when I’m getting married. One part of my job is to go around my building and tell the people in it to be quiet; as Jerry Seinfeld once lamented, “Am I really a shush-er? I used to be a shush-ee!”

I guess those returning House Fellows were right all along.

Matt Lynch ([email protected]) is a senior majoring in English and political science.