Every year the second to last weekend before Finals UConn hosts its Spring Weekend. You may have heard about it being the biggest party in the state, and that’s 100% correct. There’s no doubt that Spring Weekend is an insanely fun time, where the entire student body comes out in full force and let loose after a hard year. Technically Spring Weekend starts Thursday, but we started Wednesday. I’ll give you a little rundown of the weekend in as much detail as UConn will allow me, but also remember I’m 21, so take that how you want to.
Wednesday: Debbie Downer and The Wet Blanket Kill Joys celebrate their ridiculous intramural season.
You know how you go to a big family restaurant and you see the local little league team eating burgers, fries, and ice cream in their uniforms. You think about how awesome it was to be in their shoes when you were younger. Well we all chose to relive that as adults and went to Rocks and Wings at Bidwell’s Tavern, 30 wings and 6 pony beers for 15 bucks. Needless to say we all lost our athletic physiques and pigged out to no end. After the party is the afterparty, so we all came back to our apartment to hang out, watch the MTV’s Duel (don’t judge), and take shots of spices (don’t ask…well do). People thought it would be a good idea to take shots of cilantro, garlic powder, cinnamon, hot sauce, and pancake batter. Hilarious, but not a good idea.
Thursday: Carriage Apartments
Thursday afternoon consisted of cleaning up spices around the apartment and then playing some tennis on what was the first of a string of absolutely gorgeous days. At 8 oclock that night all of our friends got together to hang out for a bit before we followed the other 10,000 people to Carriage House Apartments, the first off-campus venue of Spring Weekend. Everyone was pretty happy as you take the minimum half hour walk there, everyone loves that its Spring Weekend and basically you get a million high fives from people you don’t know. The cops are obviously out in full force, trying to make sure as little as possible of dumb stuff occurs. There’s always the occasional fight between people that don’t even go to UConn, but generally the first night everyone loves everyone.
Friday: Celeron Square
There’s a freaking massive line at Dunkin Donuts this morning. I don’t get it, I thought people had class. I chose to neglect all of my responsibilities after Wednesday at 9:30AM, but I didn’t think everyone did that. We all go to Cole’s place in Woodhaven, and proceed to have a fantastic barbecue. Burgers, hot dogs, steaks, and an interesting concoction of sherbert, gingerale, and lime juice. Also they decided they wanted to paint their apartment’s walls, so they provided the paint and we all took our turns signing the guest list wall and then drawing our own piece of the mural. Pictures ranged from trees to oceans to deserts to my fantastic stick figure surfer dude. Moran decided to recreate Van Gogh’s starry night, showoff. At 9 that night everyone started to head over to Celeron Square, my least favorite night simply because there’s never any cell phone service and the numbers on the apartments are incredibly confusing. If you want to meet someone there, just walk around randomly and shout or don’t bother. The night ended early because I had to have my absolutely favorite part of the weekend at 730 the next morning.
Saturday: Oozeball and X-Lot
You probably think I’m going to be talking about oozeball, the greatest event UConn offers on Spring Weekend as my favorite thing. Well you’re wrong, I was lucky enough to be up at 515, pick up Amanda at 545, and drive down to Milford to take the Praxis 2 Exam in content knowledge for my teaching certifcation. I never mentioned it but I was accepted into Teach For America and will be teaching elementary school in the Mississippi Delta the next two years. Scary stuff. Regardless I had to take my two hour exam and Amanda her three hour, so we had to miss out on our respective oozeball games. Oozeball is mud volleyball held for hours that is just a massive event that everyone loves (if you can get up for it). We also had two softball games that day for intramurals, and I took a long two hour nap before the last night to go out. X lot is either the lamest or most exciting night for people, because you’re either too wiped out to finish off the weekend strong or you’re so jacked up for the last night you go all out. This year there was no Spring Concert on Spring Weekend, so 15,000, thats right 15,000 people showed up to stand in a parking lot. It’s the highest number I’ve seen since I’ve been here, and it was a really cool site to see.
Sunday: Last ever intramurals, Mansfield Hollow BBQ, and Dairy Bar
Again we had to wake up early to play our playoff softball game and then play in the tennis tournament. We had four teams and comprised nearly half of the total tournament teams, so naturally we finished off strong. We got blown out in softball, but nobody wanted to play again and it wasn’t a big deal. A couple hours later 13 of us headed down to Mansfield Hollow, a lake and park area 10 minutes from campus to grill out, play some frisbee, throw around the football, and just chill out after an awesome weekend. After the BBQ we headed to the Dairy Bar to cap off our UConntastic weekend. We took a stroll up horsebarn hill and took a picture to capture the essence of the weekend. It was ridiculously hard to realize that it was one of the last great weekends we’re going to have in college, but it was all completely worth it. I was so dead that we got back at 8 and I was asleep at 830. And yes, I forgot I had a paper due at 930 the next morning, so it was definitely a great weekend.
