Q: So I've been invited to a bunch of NSO parties (off campus) and they seem pretty cool. To go to those, I might have to miss a few NSO events. Are those parties actually awesome, or just lame?
A: As with most things here at Penn, the NSO off-campus parties range from “pretty sucky” to “fairly awesome.” This is such a large campus that it’d be impossible to endorse NSO parties with one sweeping and resounding “YES!” That being said, NSO is a great time to see what goes down here after nightfall, and you should definitely check out at the very least a handful of these parties to see if they’re up your alley.
As for missing NSO events: First of all, there are so many NSO events during the daytime that you may have had your fill by the time they roll out the fondue fountains in Perelman Quad on Thursday night. The good news, though, is that you can hit up as many NSO events as you’d like, simply because parties tend to long outlast the official, Penn-endorsed events (as long as they aren't broken up by the po-po). The parties here don’t even really get sufficiently rowdy until midnight, so you can have the best of both worlds by hopping on over to off-campus festivities once NSO dwindles down, should you so desire.
If you want our honest opinion though, we’d say you should lay low in the evenings so that you can wholeheartedly investigate the party scene that blossoms later on in the night. That rest will be quite valuable in what is oddly one of the most exhausting weeks on campus. So stay hydrated!
See our answers to all of your other NSO questions here.
