In May, I sensed my status as fresh meat quickly rotting.

Perhaps ‘rotting’ is a little harsh. Spoil? Turn? Ferment? No, that’s milk.

All I know is, I was going bad.  I was in the final stage of my transition from freshman hottie to sophomore has-been.

An older friend spelled it out for me early in my freshman year.

“Guys want freshman girls because they’re new and hot,” he told me. “The only way for sophomore girls to compete is to get sluttier.”

So, freshman girls, there you have it: We are just jealous because boys would rather eat your meat than ours.

On the other hand, a female friend offered a different take on why this transition is so bittersweet. Freshman girls remind us too much of our freshman selves – a mold we’d rather forget as soon as we gain sophomore standing.

You know my friend’s type: A skinny blonde who wasted no time Fall Quarter snagging herself an upperclassman fraternathlete for a boyfriend. (For those of you unfamiliar with the term, a fraternathlete is an uber-cool social hybrid of varsity athlete and fraternity member. Imagine how this stud performs in bed.)

She’s right. I would have hated her, too.

So what is it that makes the jump between freshman and sophomore girl so nasty? Is it the uphill battle for boys or simply the disdain for our own freshman images?

Psychological studies say we often dislike characteristics in other people that bother us about ourselves.

So, maybe freshmen aren’t really inherently annoying. Maybe, for us sophomores, the sight of black-booted, miniskirt-clad girls roaming the streets in packs just to vomit and pass out at a party spurs sickening personal flashbacks. One look at them and I am again lost on Noyes Street after my first NU party, dressed in said outfit, being heckled by a bunch of upperclassmen.

Here’s a vow as I head into my second year in Evanston: I will not be bitter when my guy friends are hitting on those virile, doe-eyed, pre-freshman-15 girls. And I will not be jealous when the girls drift home with them, after falling for pickup lines only Keg novices would.

After all, what’s the point at scoffing at the fresh meat?  It won’t take away the pain of realizing that, no matter how many fraternity T-shirts you collect, they still won’t call you in the morning. 

I think the ancient Greeks, too, blacked out their freshman year and woke up toga-less in someone else’s bed. How else would they have had the insight to term the second-year student a ‘wise fool?’

We have grown up enough to understand that the freshmen are stupid, but this only annoys us because we were (and still are) just as stupid. 

So don’t be bitter. Be a mentor.

Buy her a drink and toast to a common idiocy. Just be sure to hold her hair back when she pukes. 

Don’t let her modesty fool you; age only makes Amanda more desirable. E-mail her at a-junker@northwestern.edu