You Only Live Once – By JDawg #2
The time has come. It appears that our fresher’s year is over (or nearly over for the lucky few still living it up in Costa Del Swans). We are all rather emotional that we will no longer be living in quite such close proximity together, in the Langland halls of residences. Luckily, for the next academic year most of us will be living in the up-market area of Brynmill, so will be not too far from each other and can still have crazy pre-drinks and organise daytime activities together.
I think we would all agree that the past year has been an exceptional one…from Fresher’s week where we barely knew each other and there were many awkward conversations, to the more recent beach times and nights out where we felt like we had known each other for a lifetime. In order to round up such a year, once exams were over, we took it upon us to make the most of living the high-life and do everything we could to have a good time.
The motto we decided to live by is YOLO, which is an acronym for ‘You Only Live Once.’ In essence, if you question doing something, you should just do it, because you do, in fact, only live once.
The Urban Dictionary (2012), claims that ‘YOLO’ is ‘Mainly used to defend doing something ranging from mild to extreme stupidity.’ Of course, we would not do anything that is ‘extremely’ stupid, but may have participated in a few activities which we would not have, if we weren’t living by YOLO.
We began to use this phrase during a game of Innuendo Bingo. [If you do not know what this is, everyone sits in a circle and listens to some audio clips on the radio. However, there is a catch. Each participant must fill their mouth with water, so that if during the clip there is an innuendo, they will laugh and the water will spill out of their full cheeks. (Please note, there should be a large bin in the centre of the circle so that the water doesn’t go everywhere) This is a very fun game although can result in the participants being soaked in water.] During this game, James Smith asked a question in which we all had the same answer – ‘Do you ever get a sudden urge, to just do something out of the blue that you wouldn’t normally do?’ Pigsy’s reply was exactly what we were all thinking – ‘yes.’ In this moment, she decided to throw a few of my glasses out of the window, and shouted YOLO. This was the beginning of many YOLO moments.
One time where myself, JDawg #1 and JDawg#3 (Jammer) shouted YOLO was after a night out on Wind St. We had had a post-night snack from the fast food outlet McDonalds, and were still munching as we came back to floor 5. JDawg himself threw his rubbish out of the window, and shouted YOLO, as this was something he would not normally do. However, the sheer exhilaration shown on his face was seen by myself and JDawg#3, so we took it upon ourselves to follow in his footsteps, and start throwing things out of the window too. The throwing of items built up, and accumulated in the kettle being thrown out of the window. Despite the fact that this meant we were down on a kettle and that some poor man from Residential Services had to clean up all of our rubbish from outside the building, it was definitely worth it.
All in all, the YOLO attitude of life is a fun one to have. Why not do what you want to do when you want to do it? You might die tomorrow.
Peace and love, J Dawg #2.
Don’t forget, you only live once- YOLO!