It’s Friday night. You’ve just taken a beautiful two hour-long nap and hop into the shower. Mid-way through shaving for the first time this week (TG for no-shave November), you stop and wonder if all of this effort is really worth it. Should you really have gotten out of bed just to go to the same party again for the fourth year in a row? As a senior in college looking back, going out freshmen and sophomore year was just SO much more exciting.
College parties were a brand new experience, and an opportunity to meet new people or just run into the new friends you just recently met. The feeling you experienced was thrilling and you just felt so much more mature upgrading from your high school basement get-togethers. Bucket and Smirnoff tasted like heaven because you didn’t know what good liquor was like yet, and you didn’t care if you ruined the outfit you barely afforded from Forever 21. Embarrassing yourself was more accepted and tolerated because “you were a freshman” and were still learning the ropes to college partying. But now, as a recently turned 21-year old, the experience just isn’t nearly the same.
By senior year, you’ve been going to almost the same exact party every weekend for four years. You’ve spent a semester abroad or in an amazing city like Manhattan or Los Angeles, where you’ve learned to appreciate the finer drinks in life. Though dropping $20 on a drink at the club was excruciating, the experience almost always made up for it. You were at a place full of new people, while still getting to go with your closest friends. Better yet, every other person you encountered wasn’t stumbling all over the place and spilling their drinks all over your hair and shoes. In fact, outfits at bars and clubs are more often parts of your nicer wardrobe because everyone is trying to make the best impression.
The biggest point I’m trying to get to is this: at bars, you had the opportunity to actually TALK to people. The music isn’t deafening and the dance floor isn’t a sweaty hot pit of hell that you avoid like a plague. By senior year, you find it harder to have actual conversations with new people you meet on the weekends because the opportunity doesn’t present itself as often. You scream “hi!” at someone, and they may or may not hear, and then that’s basically it most of the time. You’d rather ask a bartender make a well drink for you that won’t give you a migraine the most morning (given done in moderation), or even better, have a mysterious, well-dressed, attractive guy offer to get one for you. “Getting drinks” with friends seems 1000 times more appealing at this point, and most weekends are spent in with Netflix because it can sometimes feel more engaging and fulfilling. That being said, the struggles of being a 21-year old on a basically bar-less campus are SO real.