Insomniac Events’ Beyond Wonderland festival came to the Bay Area in Mountain View for the weekend of Sept. 28 and 29. If you are a Cal student and you went, you probably went through a series of realizations before and during the concert that revolved around your studies. (We know. We go here too.)
You realized you had three midterms this week the day before the concert. As you prepared your cool neon outfits, whether they included weird fluffy boots or rainbow overalls, you might have had the revelation that you had a bunch of exams within the next five days that you probably should have spent the weekend studying for. “Oh, I’ll just study before I go to the concert” was probably something you told yourself to make yourself feel better … and then you realized the concert started at 1 p.m. in the afternoon — and not at night like normal EDM festivals — on both Saturday and Sunday. Then you probably did this weird thing where your laughing about your situation slowly turned into a self-pitying cry.
This girl’s “oh shit” moment.
You had periodic mental breakdowns throughout each performer’s set. And not just because of the drugs. Not that you do them. You tried your hardest to enjoy the show, the music, the people — and you did! Congratulations! But you can’t deny the fact that every so often, at the most random times, you’d have those “Oh shit, I need to study” moments. If you’re especially hardcore, you may have even made Kandi bracelets that spelled out key terms from your econ exam to help you study.
“Cats,” money, weed…
You probably annoyed the crap out of the people around you with your school worries (unless they were Cal students.) You may or may not have been the most annoying rave friend people met at the festival. (Joking.) Throughout the process of “rave socializing,” you probably gave a number of interesting people a good idea of your midterm schedule for the next week without even realizing it. They were probably really nice about it — we wonder why — but after realizing you were stressing too much with all of these randos, you probably resorted to venting to your Cal friends. Luckily, they knew exactly what you were going through, because they were going through it too. Go Bears! Go high-strung, stressed-out, academically driven Bears!
You at a rave.
You enjoyed yourself. Hopefully, this is the case for all of you who went. After stressing for however long, you probably told yourself, “OK. I’m here. I went through with going here. I spent money on these tickets; I might as well enjoy it.” And you did (we hope)! You realized allowing yourself to dance and bounce and jump and wiggle was the best way to destress before some major (and inevitable) cram sessions.
Hopefully you climbed a random person’s shoulders like this girl did.
You’re currently going through “Beyond” withdrawals. After an exciting weekend of playing, dancing, singing and raging with your friends, getting back into that study grind is a pretty difficult process. After coming back to Berkeley Sunday night and realizing you needed to channel your “positive vibes” into “study vibes,” your thoughts probably consisted of rather negative vibes. Either way, we hope you did well on your exams. Try not to focus on all that bad stuff. We hope you had fun at the festival and aced all those exams!
The opposite of studying.
How was your experience at Beyond Wonderland 2013? Let us know in the comments!
Image source: Orin Zebest, Gabrielle Nguyen/Staff and Rae Zhuang/Staff
Contact Gabrielle Nguyen at [email protected]