Living in NYC as a college kid who isn’t old enough to drink legally means weekends are for wandering around the city and seeing what places might serve you. Or going to a place where you know someone that works there so you can get in. Whether it’s making friends with promoters to get into clubs for free or trying to find someone who can buy for you, going out in college is crazy.
I am the youngest of my friends, meaning they could all go out and party at the bars before I could come with them. But, finally at the end of September it was my time to join the party. My birthday weekend was filled with bar hopping and running around the city to find the best new place to go crazy at and some random places just to show my new ID and get excited about being carded. My first weekend of 21 I did so much: we went to brunch and out at night. The weekend was filled with loads of alcohol and a declining card balance. After looking at how much I spent as the nights went on, I knew something needed to change. Each weekend since, I would get texts from friends asking if I wanted to go out to bars and drink all night. I would think “is this worth getting out of my cozy bed and putting on makeup and going out in the cold to only spend money that I should be saving for more important things like groceries?”
Each weekend I would rather go out to dinner and have one margarita with friends than having to spend hours in a bar—where you can not hear anyone—drinking a $16 cocktail.
I know the craze of going out and drinking with friends at clubs and bars is a right of passage, but I think I had all my fun my first years of college. Now I would much rather sit at home with a few friends and a couple bottles of wine and just hangout.
The nights where you didn’t even leave your apartment until midnight and got back at 5am, sure that can be fun when you are a freshman, your workload is minimal, and you don’t have a weekend job. But now as a senior, the thought of not sleeping until 5am makes me sick. I need to get all the sleep I possibly can before I start the real world and lose all the sleep I had.
We are just too tired from our school work, part-time jobs, and internships we deal with going out each week, not to mention walking around New York City from place to place takes a lot out of you.
I know going out and partying is something that I should be excited to do now that I turned 21, but honestly the thought of spending all that money and wasting the time and energy at these bars is not pleasant.