Hopefully, you and your friends have survived nights of benders - if you drink - consuming every drop of alcohol in sight and have not been picked up by the police like 74 students were last weekend.
Congrats.
But there are other, less apparent consequences than flashing red and blue lights, mugshots and a night in the drunk tank.
Those fuzzy, drunken nights that might seem like part of the college experience are probably wreaking havoc on your academic experience.
About 25 percent of students say they've missed class, messed up tests, fell behind on work or got lower grades overall because of drinking, according to collegedrinkingprevention.gov.
That doesn't support the idea that it's easier to write an English paper with a beer in hand. Alcohol impairs thinking, and that's not beneficial to any academic endeavor. Many students drink, but it's a struggle for some to balance fun at college and classwork.
This is college. You're probably going to kick back with a beer -¡-¡- or five - at some point in the four or five years at Ball State. There's no point in telling students not to drink.
But it's important to know when to have fun and when to work.
After all, 159,000 first-year students drop out because of alcohol or drugs, Henry Wechsler writes in his book "Dying to Drink." It's probably not smart to get wasted the night before three finals. But with some planning and thinking ahead it's possible to have the best of both worlds, successful social and academic lives.
Help yourself and help your friends. It's possible to enjoy a few drinks and still do well in at Ball State. In theory, college is the best years of our lives, so go out and have a good time.
Just don't let nights out boozing interfere with the (supposedly) real reason young adults attend college - to get a degree.
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