The Freshmen

The first verse is about the singer and his girlfriend getting pregnant and then having an abortion. The second verse is about his best friend breaking up with his girlfriend and his girlfriend committed suicide. The third verse is about the fact that the two men never moved on from these tragedies. The Chorus is about how stupid they were to let their small teenage problems blew up and they are still paying for what they did when they were young.

Experiences.

It's like reading a book and seeing a word that you don't understand. You either stop and deliberate over its meaning or if you're like me and you don't always have a dictionary on hand, you'll keep going and hope you understand the passage anyway. But then you realize how important that one word really was--it's what changed the entire passage and potentially the story.

We aren't dictionaries, we don't understand every little detail in our lives at every moment. We sort of just skim a lot and hope for the best. We continue and we continue and then one day--it's like damn, I wish I took the time to think that one through. I wish I didn't just skim over it.

Regret.

Experiences and regret. That is the worst. Then again, that's life. I can't complain.

You people are all wrong!

The true meaning of this song as stated in an interview with lead singer/songwriter Brian Vander Ark:

What is "The Freshmen" about? It was written by Brian Vander Ark. It told the story of a guy whose girlfriend had committed suicide. At the height of the The Freshman success, Vander Ark told reporters that the song was based on bits and pieces of a conversation he'd overheard at a party. Now he admits that the song was more personal than he previously led the public to believe, and that his actions in covering the truth were cowardly. "It happened to me," he said, "but I didn't want to expose myself in that way, especially without a safety net. It's funny because The Freshmen was written about a situation that had happened to me and I said it was about somebody else," Vander Ark says."I was feeling guilty about the success of The Freshman, because it came from exploiting a girlfriend who committed suicide. So, I thought, Okay, I'm successful now because I wrote a song about this. That's basically exploitation.Then I thought, screw it. Because I wrote this song, I made so many people happy and so many people could identify. It was therapy for those people. So, I thought, I'm a jerk but I want to be a hero."

Speaking of “The Freshman”, did any of that song actually happen ?“Yeah, I mean I used a dramatic license to have the girl commit suicide when she is actually still alive and well. But, for the most part, yeah. She had the abortion and that’s about the whole story.”

"stop a baby's breath and a shoe full of rice" I believe means that they got pregnant and were told to get married but instead the aborted the baby and therefore no wedding. Especially since in the third verse he it states: "for the life of me I cannot remember what made us think that we were wise and we'd never compromise for the life of my I cannot believe we'd ever die for these sins we were merely freshmen." The compromise that they were probably encouraged to do was to get married but didn't want to, thus the "shoe full of rice," but instead they aborted the child, thus the line "stop a baby's breath" and for this choice they were shunned and told what they did was sinful even though they were so young and not ready to be married and have child. The "Baby's Breath" can also be a play on words because it is used in weddings and can have a double meaning as a symbol of a wedding and an abortion. I believe this is so simply because the word "stop" is in front of of the whole line.

The latter verses are about his friend having some break up or falling out with a girl where he hurt her enough to make her want to commit suicide, except that he didn't care for her as much as she did for him, which is partially why he feels so guilty because he probably used her. Now together he and his friend are trying to forget the abortion and the suicide, but they can't which is what the line "we never talk about our like of relationships" means. And they know that they are to blame as much as the girls they hurt but they make excuses saying that it was her fault that she fell in love and that they were merely freshmen so they were too young to take responsibility for it.

And I do not believe the analysis about the song being about two guys using a girl that committed suicide because they hurt her because when he talks about his friend's situation he refers to his friend's girl as "his girl."

She was touching her face? Anyone? ? It's the last line that I don't get.

Do not get me wrong, this is a great song. I listen to it every day, and I don't pretend to know anything about this band. However if the story about the girl killing herself is true, I feel like the fitting thing the band could have done was to break up and never play music again. They made so much money off that song, and unless they gave it to the girl's family, (which they may have done, I wouldn't know) I feel like morally this song shouldn't exist. It seems like a poor way of repaying the girls memory. I commend the band for realizing they were wrong, but I don't feel like this is the correct way to express it.

10 pages of comments and nobody mentioned “a week’s worth of Valium and slept” should read “a week’s worth of Valium and slapped him”? “Slept” works, but I hear “slapped him” and think it is more appropriate–she slapped him bu taking a weeks worth of Valium, thus killing herself, and that is quite a slap in the face. That is how I’ve always heard it, anyway. Also, I think the baby’s breath line should read “it’s not a baby’s breath...” Obviously, this is interpreted as “this won’t lead to a wedding” (baby’s breath is a flower often used in wedding bouquets and rice is often tossed at weddings) and not anything to do with abortion.

Just my 2¢.

Sixteen years later, this song still haunts the fuck out of me, and I never even had to deal with any of what it talks about. It is so profoundly sad, beautiful, regretful, and human. Its poetic license based on the (fortunately less tragic) events that inspired it is excused ten times over. It's great art...full stop.

baby's breath is a flower maybe it symbolized flowers put on her grave? just a guess

in fair verona...