Rory Levine: Sometimes, it takes a weekend away to get out of the shell you've worn for three years

As I pushed my way across the sticky, crowded floor, through the smoky haze and sweaty, pulsating, mostly shirtless bodies gyrating wildly to the thumping beats, I couldn't suppress my nervous laugh -- where the hell was I?

At first, I just stood there, boldly staring around me at this completely foreign environment and trying to take it all in, silently calculating the distance to the nearest exit and trying my best to summon up the disappearing spell from the Harry Potter books. My limbs felt inadequately heavy and groggy, in comparison to the smooth-moving dancers boogeying next to me, like an anchor slowly sinking to the bottom of the ocean while schools of fish animatedly dart all around. Even my T-shirt -- a favorite of mine, ironically reading "Too smart for L.A., too dumb for N.Y." -- seemed, although slim-fitting and black, blatantly inappropriate and unfunny for this international crowd.

But then, slowly, something in my mind changed and the tension began to subside. Maybe it was the "If you can't beat 'em, join 'em" mentality, because I was clearly in the minority here. Or maybe it was simply the peer pressure from my new friends, who had cajoled me there following a dragged-out, boozy, overpriced dinner. Or maybe it was simply the blaring of a particularly irresistible remix of ABBA's Dancing Queen, a longtime favorite of mine.

All I know is that by the time 2 a.m. rolled around, there I was, up on the club's stage, dancing (and laughing) hysterically, as Gina G's long-dead pop hit Ooh Aah... Just a Little Bit blared all around me. (It's OK, go ahead and laugh, though trust me, it's a surprisingly catchy song, especially when you haven't heard it for seven years...)

So why did it take me flying 3,000 miles across the Atlantic Ocean for a weeklong London extravaganza to get me on the disco floor? It's not as though Philly's hurting in any way for dance clubs, or that there aren't hundreds of opportunities to go "get down" at the various Penn parties.

In other words, for the last 20 years, we've all been force-fed this inescapable notion that college is the true place to start afresh, to erase who you were in high school and constantly reinvent yourself, as the cool Ivy League BMOC or the party-hungry frat party staple.

But as I sat crammed into a tight airplane seat next to an odd-smelling old woman for eight straight hours on my flight home, I found myself wondering whether this mythic Madonna-esque college transformation was even possible. If indeed this metamorphosis is available and waiting for freshmen on college campuses every fall as promised in the media, how long does the golden ticket last? Is reinvention even available for all four years, or does it evaporate by the end of fall break, trapping students in largely predetermined archetypical roles that they are then forced to play for the remainder of their studies?

In the last few weeks, Oscar-winning actress Nicole Kidman has made the cover of multiple gossip magazines with the confirmation of her long-rumored relationship with retro rocker Lenny Kravitz, perhaps one of the least expected romances ever. Maybe Nic and Lenny won't work out, going the way of countless other Hollywood couples and dying a slow tabloid death, but shouldn't we at least give her credit for challenging herself to try something out of her comfort zone?

In the last few weeks at Penn, we've all been swamped with heated coverage of the crime wave and the alleged groping incident, with portions of the student body raising quite a stir with claims of racism. And while I'm definitely not following my fellow columnists into that trap, I did find myself troubled by the incident's aftermath, with each predetermined side immediately retreating to its corner to sulk.

Nobody appeared to stop and even attempt to take a new perspective, even if only momentarily. Instead, everybody followed the assumed script: several people called the DP racist, and the DP defended the most devout of journalistic integrities, worthy of only The New York Times -- and nothing was solved.

But now that I'm back from fall break and my Penn career is definitely in its final days, I find myself wanting more and more to challenge myself out of the role I've played these last years. So, in the past few weeks, I learned to program a cell phone, joined a senior society, took a spur-of-the-moment international trip, publicly announced I was a 21-year-old virgin and contemplated moving to L.A. for a job in January, all culminating with my diva-esque dance floor performance last week and all things I swore I'd never do.

So maybe I'm not leaving Penn with the most traditional of experiences, especially if my peers have been hitting the dance clubs on a regular basis all these years while I spend another night at home with TiVo. But I'm finally not afraid to push myself into new territory. Hey, Britney may be "against the music," but I'm all for it...

Rory Levine is a senior Communications major from West Nyack, N.Y.

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