When my arbitrarily assigned housing lottery number determined that I’m the coolest senior ever, I got all excited and megalomaniacal about being able to exclude people I think are assholes and banishing them to the Village or the gulag we call “Grad.” Then my minions of coolness and I would have alcohol-doused parties just to show the extent of our awesomeness.

My delusions of grandeur, however, successively crashed and burned as they came into conflict with the tangible elements of my reality. For instance, I quickly discovered when it tore off into my hand that the stair banister of my Foster Mod had been masking-taped to the wall.

The bathrooms are filled with hard tile and have two story ceilings, resulting in great acoustics, a fantastic feature if you plan on cramming a string quartet into your bathtub. Not so great for the bathroom’s intended purpose. Just ask the suitemates who slept in the rooms nearest the toilets after the great guacamole rush of 2006.

A characteristic completely unique to my mod is the soothing waterscape. Whenever anyone takes a shower, a torrent of water falls from an exposed pipe through a hole in the ceiling of our living room. I wish I were joking, but if you don’t believe me, come stop by Mod 9 during your next drunken stupor.

While some Mods have been filled on the basis of common interest (as appears to be the case with the Orthodox Jews a few doors down who never stop singing; in case you guys are reading this: shut up) it is also quite possible that all members will be completely different. Our kitchen contains four major staples: tofu, gourmet espresso, hummus, and vodka (and a creepy oven that turns itself on during the night).

We also all have different majors. At four in the morning you don’t immediately figure out that Zimbabwe looks like a carbon atom because you’re staring at suitemate #4’s chemistry homework and not a map of Africa. And then you’re like, “holy shit, how come I never realized before that Zimbabwe looks like a carbon atom?” One of my friends recently discovered while accidentally reading my con-law textbook upside-down that all amicus curiae briefs to the Supreme Court contain secret messages from the devil. And Satan claims in Jehuda v. the Power of Good (666 U.S. 50) that Bush actually has the right to suspend habeas corpus.

Worse than the devil, however, is the freshmen. They come, they get rejected from parties, and then they sit on our stoop and make noise until I come out and shoo them away. Then they get lost in an attempt to escape (I like to chase them off wielding my banister and a bottle of Windex) and come in through the door in the kitchen, at which point they sit down at our table and help themselves to a beer. It’s rather annoying to come home on a Saturday night after a hard day of thesis research and find a bunch of skanks fresh from high-school talking about USEMs and Britney Spears.

That’s why there’s so much drinking in the Mods.