I also read, and liked, Smashed. It is a young person’s perspective, and at times this is annoying, but is also it’s strength (if that’s what you’re looking for. . .)

As to Rad Readr’s comment about “alcoholic effects” — I get the point, and these books may or may not be useful to the general public or others with a history of addiction. But, for the writer, this type of memoir is a pretty common redemption narrative/strategy as well — the idea of making sense of your negative past and using it a positive way, in order to try to help others. And, if that works for them, then good for them.

The students at this place are the champions of divulging all sorts of TMI in public and not thinking anything of it. So, in one women’s studies class I was TAing we got on the subject of alcohol and date rape and from there a bunch of my students flat-out said they had never had sex when they were sober before — that they always drink to the point of passing out soon after (or during) the sex. What really blew my mind were the numbers of them who were in relationships, not just picking up random dudes at a bar every night, which is disturbing enough. And none of them — well, not until I had pushed them on the issue quite a bit — could figure out why that might be so upsetting. I guess it’s partly having a real strong party/frat culture here, but it also seemed to be saying something important about having to drug yourself until you could participate in today’s highly sexualized culture. That and if you don’t actively work to learn how to do all these “adult”-type things like sex and flirting and relationships sober, you’ll be forced to use alcohol as a crutch to get you through them for a long, long time.

I had some pretty intense crushes on a couple of my professors in both college and law school, but I dealt with them by avoiding the dudes outside the classroom as completely as possible, so that they would never guess. To this day I can’t explain why, but I’m very glad all the same!

It is weird but very many of my friends are former undergraduate students. It goes like this: I meet someone I vaguely recognize, but who knows me. Where do I know you from? Oh yeah, that class a few years ago…what are you doing now? Oh that is interesting. We hit it off and become friends. This has been happening since I was a T.A. I keep getting more and more friends of this description and now many of them are friends among themselves.

I am not sure whether it is unhealthy or not but these people are often more interesting than my colleagues because they are now doing something completely different, or than graduate students, because they’re not in the department any more (and in many cases never were, just took a class).

And Iowa + a$$hats + Facebook = all kinds of mess. Ain’t much to do in the hawkeye state but screw around…