DR. WALLACE: I'm a female college student who is much more interested in my grades and my future career path than I am partying in college. There are times I find myself at a party where many of the attendees do a lot of drinking, especially shots of alcohol which they absorb in various unusual ways. I always opt out of drinking any hard alcohol, so I just nurse a glass or two of wine over the course of the evening.

One of my friends told me to still be careful driving, but I know that wine has a lot less alcoholic content than whiskey, vodka or tequila does, so I really don't worry at all.

I mentioned this to my brother the other day, and he also warned me to watch out. Why are people so worried about just a few glasses of wine when others are getting "hammered" with shots of just about everything else? — Wine Sipper, via email

WINE SIPPER: You should heed the warnings you're hearing. Any single drink of alcohol, be it beer, wine or hard liquor, counts as a "measure" or a single drink that counts similarly when considering how intoxicated an individual is that has consumed alcohol.

For example, one 12-ounce can or bottle of beer and one 5-ounce glass of wine or any average mixed drink (or shot!) of hard liquor all contain roughly the same amount of alcohol and would count as one drink from a biological point of view. Of course, drinking several shots in a short period of time would raise a drinker's blood-alcohol level dramatically.

But don't be fooled or lulled into thinking that your wine is "less alcoholic" than any other single drink. Once you consume multiple glasses in one setting, you're vulnerable to testing about legal limits in some cases, depending on your weight and other potential factors that may affect you at that time.

I'M QUITE TIRED OF THE COMPARISONS

DR. WALLACE: My older sister is a fantastic athlete at our high school. She's truly one of the greats at her sport in the history of our school. I'm one year younger and I don't play any sports competitively. I do work out a bit and so forth, but athletics are not my passion.

I do love music, however. I play an instrument at a very decent level, and I foresee a career someday playing my music on stage in an orchestra. I'd love to tour, see new places and meet fellow musicians around our country and even the world, if I'm lucky enough to be able to do so.

My current challenge, since I'm a junior and she's a senior, is that many people, even some of our teachers, often ask me why I don't play the same sport as my sister does, especially since they say she could teach me how to be a great player. I feel I am a great player — not of her sport, but of the violin. Why do so many people want to question why I don't play her sport but literally nobody questions her about why she isn't as talented at playing the violin as I am? I love my sister dearly and the two of us are very close, but we simply have different passions. There shouldn't be anything wrong with that, right? — Music Is My Passion, via email

MUSIC IS MY PASSION: You said it very well yourself! I agree with your point of view and feel some of your teachers are off the mark when they question why you don't follow in your talented sister's athletic footsteps.

At the high school level, athletics do often take up more of the general public's attention and bandwidth due to the drama involved in wins and losses being added up as athletes strive to achieve championships and team success. There's nothing wrong with that, of course, and I myself competed in sports in high school and even as an adult spent several enjoyable years as a varsity basketball coach.

Yet I always had appreciation for many other facets of life as well, particularly classical music, which I came to appreciate and love after taking a college course in my undergraduate days. Your passion for music and the violin is absolutely 100% as important, valuable and impressive as your sister's athletic skills. Neither of you deserve to be negatively compared to the other's talents (or lack thereof) in any one field or another. You both deserve to be celebrated for the wonderful, unique individuals that you are.

Dr. Robert Wallace welcomes questions from readers. Although he is unable to reply to all of them individually, he will answer as many as possible in this column. Email him at [email protected]. To find out more about Dr. Robert Wallace and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

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