Thursday, September 28, 2006

Quarters

So many things have kept me from updating this blog. I managed to finish the first draft of my dissertation which should have prompted an entry, but I was drinking instead.

My sister and I tried to up the sales of Wild Mountain Organics by participating in a county fair. That was fun, but I think I was drinking there also.

Then the school year started and I had much to accomplish without drinking and without writing in this blog.

What brought me back? An odd conversation train in one of my classes. See if you can follow this. I teach a research methods class for communication students. We are currently discussing focus groups and surveys. While discussing focus groups we mentioned the idea of offering incentives to get people to participate in groups. This led to a discussion of what kind of incentives to offer from food, to drink, to money. We discussed different settings for meetings and then discussed different types of groups meeting on campus. Several students mentioned that it was next to impossible to force people to participate and the incentives currently offered - not getting written up, ice cream - weren't incentive enough.

Which led to a discussion of whether or not you could induce participation with booze. One student mentioned that he tried to get people to a meeting by offering soda pong (which is a take on the popular beer pong but with Pepsi or Coke instead of beer).

As a graduate of this fair university, I mentioned that beer pong didn't exist when I was here and then I became the person I swore I wouldn't. I became the oldster who said "Things are much different from when I was here. We had to walk to class uphill both ways in raging snowstorms and we liked it."

Then I said that we played Quarters. And they looked at me. One even said, "What is Quarters?"

I was aghast. I am not that damn old! What is Quarters? Oh dear. What has college life become when students play an elaborate game that requires elaborate props? All we needed was a table or a bar or a floor and a shot glass. And a quarter which someone always had.

Must we resurrect college drinking games much the way we try to protect cultures or languages that are on the verge of extinction?

I am being a bit dramatic, I realize. But it just reinforces the fact that I am getting old and that I graduated from college about 16 years ago.

And they don't play Quarters anymore.

2 comments:

Michael said...

Glad to see you back among the 'living'! Sad to say I don't know how to play 'Quarters' either, but in my case, perhaps it's because I'm too old, which squeezes you into a select middle group!

PWHoffmann said...

I am trying to get back in after being horribly out of it! Will try to keep in touch.