Aoife Mawn – Music Editor
My Debs was a rollercoaster of emotions. Highs and lows all round. First, I won Debs queen, a highlight of my secondary school career, and despite not getting a much wanted tiara, I revelled in my free shot and the drinks that were being handed to me as congratulations. While still on this high, we crossed the road from where we were having our meal to the nightclub where the rest of the party was going on. As I walked in the door, delighted with my new title, I spotted the guy I’d been seeing casually for a few months shifting my best friend’s brother’s date - in the doorway, for all to see. I stopped dead in my tracks and stared, but quickly composed myself and carried on with my night. In retaliation for this, later, I got with my long-time crush (who came out as gay a few months after). I also blew the entirety of my €70 budget, but found €20 on the dancefloor and €50 on the floor at breakfast. My night ended holding back my friends hair while she puked into her doggy bag on the bus. Was it the most eventful night of my life? Absolutely.
Heather Reynolds – Arts and Lit Editor
The Debs were the most criminally overrated night of my young life. Under eighteen, living my rockabilly fantasy, and woefully sober (the venue didn’t stock gluten free beer, also, underage drinking is bad), it was far too long, far too warm, and the food wasn’t even good enough to justify the amount of time I spent explaining to the waiter exactly why I couldn’t eat the pasta dish. As the token sober person of the night, I broke up two fights, spent half the night walking people in higher heels to the bathroom or smoking area, and had to deal with every person I’d had a minor falling out with since Junior Infants wanting to “bury the hatchet” after they’d downed their fifth vodka cranberry. This included the twink who called me out publicly in a Paris underground for unfriending him on Facebook. Plus, my year was too coupled up for any single person to even attempt getting the shift without risking being called a homewrecker. After they finally freed us from the basement club we’d been locked in at five in the morning, the only thing in the complimentary breakfast I could have was coffee. It’s not an experience I’d relive again sober, much less for €75.
Emma Kiely – Film and TV Editor
It’s a hard question to answer as it relies on one’s own expectations. I, being brainwashed by rom-coms and guy-gets-girl high-school films, thought that I would ride off into the sunset with the guy of my dreams after the debs. Not so much.
Around a week before the boy’s school debs I was asked to be a date, by a guy I had never even set eyes on before. He asked me because our dads were in business together and he must have had a creep on my Facebook page. I did think it a little odd but hey, any excuse to spend extortionate amounts of money on clothes and self-pampering, not too bad.
We met for the first time at his house on the day of the debs. He was nice, I was drunk. A perfect combination for plutonic comradery, but for romance, not the best vibe. Now, if my life was applied with the rules of films, we would have fallen in love at first sight, have a great night and ride off into the sunset. In reality, we parted ways after the dinner, and never saw each other again. The most romantic part of the evening was a handsome waiter letting me keep the naggin I had strapped to my thigh.
Tara Hanneffy – Otwo Co-editor
Ugh, the debs. To this day, I’ve never understood why some people always went to such extortionate lengths to get themselves invited to every debs in the county. And I’m being serious; there were some folk in my year at school that practically had a career as a debs date. Anyway, I’d easily call it the most overrated night of my life – I had more fun at Arts ball in first year. Understandably, I was really excited the first time around. I couldn’t wait to get dolled up, get loads of pictures taken, and dance the night away. Then I had to sit through the average dinner; watch people get escorted out for drunken behaviour FAR too early on in the evening; suffer many, many hours being locked in the Palace nightclub in Tullamore; listen to some guy drunkenly sob that he’d spilled his pint on a speaker and endure the stench of vomit in the bathrooms all night. I did all this sober, and the appeal very, very rapidly wore off. And the worst part? I had to repeat the whole sorry rigmarole the week after: same date, same venue. Same torture.