Today, the Oregon Ducks play the Ohio State Not-Winners for the NCAA Championship and I am going to a bar at 8am to watch it.

Watching this well-dressed team over the past few months has made me miss a lot of things about college and laugh about how different life was then, and how much eye shadow I wore. I am thinking about how my friends and I went to EVERY SINGLE football game, and how I would lose my voice almost every time. There would be a massive group of us and we would walk to Autzen Stadium from our house on Mill St, rain on shine, snacking on green jello shots or something equally classy. I got pneumonia twice.

It’s been 9 years and infinite hair cut/color combinations since college, but there will always be a place in my heart for Oregon. I was very lucky and met some of the best people is the world there, who I still love and try to see as often as I can. Most of my college friends are married/pregnant/parents, but some of us take the slow train to Adult-ville. (That would be me.) I have changed a LOT since leaving Eugene, but as I get ready to go yell at a TV and trash talk total strangers, I miss it.

College Cait vs. Alumni Cait

-The aforementioned eye shadow. It matched whatever I was wearing, or it was green. So much green.

– I live in Cambodia now, a country I probably couldn’t find on a map when I was 22.

-Less karaoke. I’m not happy about this one.

-Party shirts! Tube tops! I miss party shirts, I do not miss tube tops.

-Trying to make everyone else happy, I am too old for that business now.

– The overwhelming anxiety that accompanied me throughout every bad choice I knew I was making. I still have some pretty fierce anxiety, but I make fewer bad choices.

-I no longer drink cocktails made in trash cans.

-No more desire to hang out with boys that are mean to me.

-No more shopping at Abercrombie.

I am sure there are many more, but I have to go to a bar now and say terrible things about someone else’s home team.

GO DUCKS.