House party

This past weekend was one of the best post-semester weekends I've experienced thus far in my 27 years. I'm still getting used to the fact that I'm now 27, but I digress.

Saturday night, Amanda and I headed out to Lawrence for a house party full of grad students. I had a blast from my past, yet again, when I met the host's roommate. It turns out that she and I went to grade school together and were close friends way back in the day. When he (the host, Patrick) introduced us, Jenny looked at me like she might recognize me then asked me what my last name is. That's amazing - I hadn't seen her since I moved and changed school districts in the fifth grade. It was a special moment. She and I were in Brownies together and had sleepovers. I told her that I remembered how much I always liked going over to her house because she had MTV and I didn't, and we got to watch Guns N' Roses videos. She thought that was funny.

A little while after that, someone told me that I have no soul because I worked for Time Warner making television commercials. He was being facetious, I think. Maybe not. Here's the thing about J-School - we have a very distinct dichotomy. There are those who follow the strategic communications route, which involves advertising, marketing, and PR. We all semi-jokingly refer to that as "going over to the dark side." Then there are the (underpaid yet somewhat arrogant) news and information peeps. Our motto: "We may not make very much money, ever, but at least we have souls." Somewhere in the middle lies people who do PR for non-profits (way to be moderate, Amanda). I'm clearly biased, though. And apparently I have no soul because of my past work experience. That was a funny conversation.

The night got weirder, though, when I started talking to a guy who is in the Army. He was visiting his brother for the weekend, who happens to be a colleague/friend of mine. About ten minutes into our conversation, army dude corrected my grammar. So then I told him that he was obnoxious (and I wasn't joking...he was already being obnoxious before he did that). He seemed to like that, because he talked to me and followed me around the rest of the night. At one point he told me that he was an officer and a gentleman. I didn't buy it.

posted by elizabeth @ 10:15 AM