This is the child’s pose. In some versions,  your arms are extended beyond your head.

Picture this: it’s Friday night, you and your friends are drinking vodka from a huge plastic bottle. You each take a swig of the cranberry juice you snuck out of Ferris. You put on as little clothing as you can get away with, and you make the infamous walk to the hottest club in NYC: East Campus Residence Hall. If you go to Barnard or GS, you get ready to wait in a line more chaotic than Space Mountain and you anticipate the demeaning looks coming from the CC men. Whichever school you’re from, you anticipate a night of fun. But then you realize it’s a Friday night and you’re at a school dorm drinking Natty Light or whatever version of disgusting, cheap beer. You realize that the sauna-like heat in the room is not from the heater but from the radiating, sweaty bodies of hopeful, underaged freshmen. The speaker is blasting either Sweet Caroline or Mr. Brightside for the third time in the last half hour and the crowd goes wild, again. You turn to your right and you see that weird senior from your class (Seriously, what are you still doing in EC? You’re 21.) making out with a doe-eyed first-year. You turn to your left and you see a bunch of people taking their shirts off, presumably to further spread their body heat and sweat onto others.

Sound fun? Not to me. Here are 10 things I would do before stepping foot in an EC party again:

  1. Do laundry: Take advantage of the fact that it’s Friday night and nobody is creative enough to spend it in the laundry room. Do that gigantic pile of laundry you’ve been pushing off this pre-finals season.
  2. Write an entire paper in one sitting: Maybe that chemistry lab report that was due last week, or maybe that 8-page philosophy paper. Or maybe write about how much you hate college parties…just an idea.
  3. Cook an elaborate, 3-course, midnight meal: what better time to empty your fridge before winter break than when all your suitemates are out? Light some candles, play some mood music, and enjoy a romantic dinner with yourself.
  4. See how long you can stay in child’s pose: Yes, child’s pose, that one yoga pose you can hold but never get to do enough of in yoga class. See how long you can hold it.
  5. Spend extensive time at Times Square: Take a photo with Spiderman, live vicariously through all the tourists, post a story on Snapchat with the “From Times Square With Love XX” filter, buy an I Love NY shirt…No matter how crowded it gets, it won’t be as crowded as EC.
  6. Run from Columbia to the tip of the Financial District and back: Start early, depending on how fast you are at running, and run back just in time to see everyone stumble their way out of EC. Give them a little wave of victory before you pass out for an entire weekend from exhaustion.
  7. Get the unlimited quad meal plan and eat at Hewitt for every meal until you just can’t: If you like dry chicken and soggy eggs, congratulations!! If not, don’t worry, this is still more fun than the aforementioned party and their sandwiches are actually pretty good.
  8. Go to Dodge and try not to cry: Although Dodge is probably on the list of Top 10 Worst Places To Be on Campus, surely it is lower on the list than EC. At least you know the sweat on your body is mostly your own. It closes at 10:30 on Fridays and Saturdays though, so maybe you can cross two places off the list in one night!
  9. Go to a Beta party: Yeah, I said it. If they were still throwing parties, I would rather walk into that candy-cane looking house and listen to frat boys call each other “bro” a million times than pretend I’m enjoying myself in EC’s chaos.
  10. Go to 1020: Always a great suggestion!

Photo via this yoga blog