I think what you saw in your head must have been a bloody, horrific uprising in a non-specific distant incarnation of the East Coast in which the government rules all.
So here it is, the big one. The thirtieth birthday. Tomorrow I become socially, culturally and sexually irrelevant.
Pretend to know about books and stuff, and teachers will give you better grades, and people of the opposite sex might actually sleep with you.
You find a bottle of Bacardi outside your dorm. Do you: Bring it inside and share the wealth? Or, guzzle it all down and meet your END?