Junglee Juice

Did you ever notice that when people tell you that college was the best four years of their life, they seldom explain why? It’s just a simple sentence, trailing off into a nostalgic sigh and glance into the distance that commands you to have a great time, to enjoy--to make it the best four years of your life.


Now, we all take this on in different ways: drinking a lot, skipping class, just sitting around and doing nothing. But none of us really understood why college was the best four years of life--although damn fun--until it’s over.


Granted we understood that complete and total lack of responsibilities, endless free time, and living totally off our parents’ money was AWESOME while we were doing it. However, the real reason that our long hours free to spend devising new drinking games wasn’t anything more than good times didn’t sink in until we were booted out of our happy little world and into the reality of life after college.


The real reason people look so fondly upon their four collegiate years is because the next two years afterward SUCK. I mean, truly and utterly. Suddenly you have to pay for your own alcohol, get up early, brush your hair, and don’t have money for delivery at every meal.



Thanks for the warning people. Oh, and thanks for mentioning that the economy was planning to totally take a nosedive and turn the job hunt from difficult to nearly impossible.



Can we get a class, a heads up, a slight little warning? A signal that we will be shot from the lap of luxury into utter struggling with little to no transition period? A little more than a nostalgic, “Enjoy it while it lasts, kiddo,” from Uncle Mark. Maybe then, we’d take it a little more easily instead of being sent into a collective crisis at why life has suddenly become awful, and instead of being surrounded by forty of our best friends to help us cope, we have all been dispersed to different corners of the country to suffer alone, only able to respond to the question, “How’s life after graduation?” from hopeful relatives with a strained, “Fine.” And struggle not to burst into tears at how awful life has become. Maybe that’s what senior seminar should have been on.


That brings me to the url of this blog. While simply enjoyable to hear due to it’s lovely resemblance to JUNGLE juice one of my favorite college cocktails, it doesn’t stop there. Junglee is a Hindi word used to refer to wild ladies, who are not easy to control. Headstrong, confident women who refuse to take the common road, and pave their own path along the way. Dazzling, unstoppable women who move with the force of the wilderness behind them. This is the kind of ladies that have surrounded me throughout college and beyond.


Second it’s a daily juice, a day in the life of a girl trying to make in this world after college, and graduate school are over, and the economy is tanking. Getting by as a waitress in NYC opens the door to at least one funny story or encounter a day, and I plan to give you a daily injection of this junglee daily juice.