10/10

So basically if you asked any Grinnellian what his favorite time of the year was, he would probably tell you it was 10/10.

Why?


Well the most obvious answer is because he imbibes a truly horrendous (and for most other people clearly fatal) amount of alcohol in a roughly 4-5 hour period.


But this isn't really why.


No, the reason why is much more complicated and difficult to articulate. It might be helpful to get an understanding of what 10/10 actually is before I go into what it means.



Basically 10/10 is a celebration occuring on the nearest Saturday to October 10th as possible. The reasoning behind this is that back in the old days students would get their first pay checks on the 10th and subsequently blow the contents of these checks on as much alcohol as they could get their hands on. Today the pay schedule is different but the party still remains. There are other origin stories to 10/10 and it is mostly likely that 10/10 is actually a product of all of them rather than just the first weekend students could blow their paychecks.

In any case 10/10 is a progressive party which starts at Norris, which is the northernmost dorm on campus and slowly makes its way to Gardner Lounge, which is the basement of Main Hall, the southernmost dorm on campus. Few people actually make it that far though and for most the night actually culminates in the campus wide shot at midnight, truly one of the most beautiful things about Grinnell in my opinion. 600+ (probably much more) all taking a shot more or less at once is no easy task I assure you.


10/10 is such a uniquely Grinnellian event not because it we get super trashed (to be honest I've been more trashed on other occasions, at least I that I can remember) or because it's a progressive party. No 10/10 is more than that, it's a celebration of all of us, Grinnellians of all walks of life (meaning people who live on North Campus, East Campus, South Campus and off Campus) get together and celebrate who we are. We have something the rest of the world cannot possibly understand, we have a deep and well developed mythology surrounding a party that basically should have killed us all right now.


So if I call you tonight, and I probably will, sounding impossibly intoxicated and enthusiastic understand that I am celebrating what is possibly the finest of Grinnell traditions.



10 MOTHERFUCKING 10