I love being a Vandy girl. To me, there’s no better feeling than walking to class in the perfect outfit, pearls, and a smile. When I visited Vandy as a senior, everywhere I looked there were these beautiful, confident girls. They were stylish, poised, and looked so happy. After that, all I wanted was to be half as fabulous as they were.

A Vandy girl is a sweetheart. She’s smart without being obnoxious, stylish without looking like her outfit is wearing her, and social without losing everyone’s respect. Everyone makes mistakes and no one, Vandy girls included, is perfect, but when I look around at parties, I can’t help but wonder what kind of Vandy girls some of my classmates are trying to be.

There’s a girl that you’ll see at every party or bar. She’s many drinks past sober and attempting to dance on some kind of wobbly, damp surface. She’s wearing clothes that are too tight and too short. There will be albums full of Facebook pictures of her tomorrow afternoon and her status update will be something involving losing a phone or Vandy card or having the best night and not remembering anything after she left her dorm.

When I was a freshman, I thought that girl was cool. She looked like the life of the party, like someone with so many friends who was living their college experience to the max. I thought that a real Vandy girl planned her weekend by what parties she was going to and would never think of missing a tailgate or a night out regardless of what time class started the next morning. But that’s not true.

As a junior, I now know that I am not that girl, and I don’t aspire to be her either. Somehow four semesters deep, I’ve managed to get a clue and learned that there’s so much more to Vandy than what I may have thought. I still love to go out and have fun and, as many of my friends know, I’m really trying to make the most of the time I have left here. But I’m just not convinced that I have to sacrifice my dignity by drinking just to get wasted or wearing something ridiculously risqué so that some guy notices me.

When it comes down to it, you can be whatever kind of Vandy girl you want to be. While I revel in playing into the fashion side of the Vandy stereotype, in my defense I am from Connecticut so my wardrobe was full of Vineyard Vines and Lilly Pulitzer before I ever landed in Nashville. But seriously, my fellow Vandy girls, do as you please but try to keep it classy. The Hiltons of the world spend their fifteen minutes of fame splashed across tabloids but it’s the Hepburns who are really unforgettable.