The onslaught of midterms and papers doled out by often-inconsiderate professors sometimes leaves distraught students thinking there is a panacea for their mid-quarter malaise: a thrilling weekend with friends visiting from home.
Not so fast.
Reuniting at Northwestern with friends from high school, camp or work can be a memorable experience. Or it can be as big of a letdown as last year’s football team.
Trying to impress your friends and simultaneously show them a good time can be a daunting task. The pressure a student faces in trying to ensure that his friends are entertained is like that of a pitcher working on a perfect game after eight innings.
I know from experience. My three best friends from home visited on a weekend during Spring Quarter of my freshman year, but we spent half the time arguing about alternatives to watching television in my room. Flaring tempers led to one friend and me resolving our differences through a not-so-friendly wrestling match.
I even managed to get in an argument with one of my best NU friends when he drove me and one visiting friend downtown – and got lost.
Finding a place for your friends to sleep can complicate matters. On the floor, perhaps in a sleeping bag, seems to make the most sense. But the roommate waking up to go to class early in the morning may not be enthralled by the prospect of searching for his books in the dark and tripping over your friends on the way out the door. Plus, my penchant for snoring can prevent even the deepest sleepers from getting a good night’s sleep.
One junior who last year endured a visit by his roommate’s four friends said he has never been so claustrophobic in his life. Things can get crowded when your dorm room’s living space – not all that large to begin with – becomes occupied by three times the usual number of people.
For students from the Chicago area, the issue of high school friends coming over can be even more problematic. A junior from the suburbs was surprised repeatedly as a freshman to see his high school friends show up at his dorm, anxious to go to The Keg. He got tired of the act pretty quickly.
Fortunately, all of my guests have notified me before arriving at my doorstep. Well, sort of. One Indiana University student, a complete stranger to me, joined my Indiana friend on a weekend visit here, and then invited himself back soon thereafter – this time alone. His tale about a whipped cream bikini at an Indiana sorority helped me salvage the weekend.
No matter how pressure-filled and intense things get when visitors come to town, the prospect of seeing long-time friends is too hard to pass up. Which explains why I am welcoming two repeat customers to town tomorrow.
This time, I am making preparations. Call me neurotic, but there is less that can go wrong and more to accomplish when you follow a tentative schedule. The most fool-proof plan seems to be making arrangements based on the one thing for which Evanston has consistently proved reliable: food.
This explains why I am structuring my itinerary around when we will be eating at Buffalo Joe’s, ordering from Giordano’s and picking up burritos at Chipotle. Of course, if one of my visiting friends were a vegetarian, then I’d really be hopeless.
