#25: Planning Things

Because Notre Dame Students were all considered ‘leaders’ in high school, they all became accustomed to being followed by their peers in whatever they did.  These students were also used to planning events for student groups, classes, and social activities.  At Notre Dame, planning things takes on an entirely new level as Notre Dame Students overly plan every activity they do.

These activities can range from the trivial (dinner at the dining hall) to the complicated (travelling in Europe over Spring Break) to the unnecessarily complicated (planning dorm parties).  No matter what the activity is, there are usually multiple students in the group that want to take up the mantle of leader and do more planning than would ever be necessary to properly plan the event. 

Oftentimes these activities have something to do with drinking (see #11) where students constantly feel the need to make complicated plans about what they are going to do.  Drinking plans become take on a life of their own due to conflicting pregames, overly complicated party themes, bar crawls, party playlists, finding rooms for dorm parties, money collection, and the mere task of deciding which bar to go to.

Planning events for Notre Dame Students has become an even more complicated task because of technology.  Even a low key night might involve scores of text messages, emails, and Facebook wall posts.  A party (whether it be in a dorm or off-campus) will certainly involve several meetings, multiple ‘epic-length’ emails, a money collection process, debate over playlist options, and almost certainly the creation of a Facebook event.  These parties will certainly be fun for those that attend, but there is an abnormally high amount of planning that goes into a bunch of college students getting drunk.

While football weekends and special events bring out some fairly elaborate plans, the most over-planned times of the year are the weeks at the end of each semester.  In the winter everybody and their roommate feel the need to throw some sort of Christmas themed event.  Usually this entails cheesy sweaters, egg nog, and peppermint schnapps, and sometimes these events even include caroling and Christmas movies.  Off-campus students especially must be prepared to attend between four and eight Christmas parties just because each and every house or apartment that their friends live in will need to plan a party of their own (despite the fact that each of these parties will be the same).

However, the most overly planned time of the year is the end of Spring Semester when everybody wants to throw their own ‘Last Party of the Year’.  This planning reaches its climax at the end of Senior Week when each and every senior needs to plan an event for their friends and family.  Because these Seniors know that tendency of Notre Dame Students to overly plan events, they are sure to get their event on the calendar early (possibly as early as January) so that all of their friends will commit to it before others events are planned.  This inevitably ends with Notre Dame Seniors shuffling their parents from event to event the nights before commencement just so all of their friends are happy (on the plus side, they get really drunk in the process).