You slide into your favorite little black dress and a killer pair of heels. Your make-up and hair are done to perfection. You are more than ready for an incredible night out with your friends, which may include an apartment party or a frat house. But then, as you are about to grab your bag and keys, your friend turns to you and says the unthinkable.
“Yeah so, I think we’re actually going to a bar now. Sorry.”
Those of us who are unfortunate enough to be born in a summer month, thus always serving as the ‘baby’ of our friend group, know how badly those words sting – especially now. We summer birthday 20-year-olds are being excluded from happy hour, bar crawls and countless other activities that the rest of our friends are free to enjoy. Having to wait until the school year is over to turn 21 is simply unjust. It’s an outrage, really.
“First of all, all my friends are in different places during the summer so getting them all to one place on the same day to celebrate when I turn 21 won’t be easy,” says junior journalism major Taylor Clayton. “And that text that says, ‘We’re going to the bars tonight’ gives me the ultimate feeling of defeat.”
It truly is a defeat, too.
As a Penn State student, you fully anticipate the school year to be a time where you and your closest friends will have crazy nights and make lasting memories. But, you can’t make memories when you’re not together.
“Having a summer birthday is nice in the sense that all of my friends will be there for my birthday but it sucks knowing I won’t be there for any of their birthdays. And when they leave for the bar… it just sucks,” adds junior meteorology major Jeff Schmidt.
Are we summer birthday 20-year-olds just being bitter and a bit dramatic? Well, maybe. Okay, probably. But, we implore our older friends to take pity on us. Imagine if you were the one friend who couldn’t head out to The Phyrst or Indigo or any other of State College’s awesome bars. Wouldn’t you be a little upset too?
So we, the babies of our friend groups, are not asking the rest of you to stop exercising your wonderfully legal privileges as 21-year-old bar goers, but maybe consider us every now and again. We like to have fun too, and it would sure be great if we could have it with our friends.
