The Flip Side of the Freshman Fifteen

Most people grow fifteen pounds their freshman year of college

The methodologies behind such gains are for, all intents and purposes, grossly transparent:

Be it the late-night self-medicated stress appetite

Exacerbated by the decision just minutes earlier

To go ahead and add a little THC to your Xanax high -

Or the evenings of innumerable keg-stands coerced by jeering faceless crowds

And a poorly-thought desire to flex your drinker’s stamina

Followed by near black-out excursions to your local 24/7 eatery

Where you and your intoxicated compatriots storm

The value menu like it’s Omaha Beach on the 6th of June, circa 1944

Feasting like malnourished canines on whatever combination of vaguely multi-cultural

Fast-food slop you managed to order while focusing entirely on the possibility

That you may indeed vomit on the disheveled night-staffer at the till

Whose professional demeanor belies his underlying urge to quit on the spot

As he screams the self-righteous soliloquy of resignation that he’s been drafting for nearly a year -

Or perhaps its just that the overwhelming credit load that your naive decision to triple major

Has pigeon-holed you to leaves little time for a daily sweat at the campus Rec -

Or maybe it’s a combination of all three …

And so regardless of the pendantic narrative jabs

Most people grow fifteen pounds their freshman year of college

But I didn’t

In fact, I lost fifteen pounds

And sometimes I think it came off my soul.