Staying Home Is The New Going Out And This Is Why
Most students at university will spend the entirety of first year exploring all of the clubs and nights that their city has to offer instead of staying home. By the time you get around to second year, you start to discover how fun pres is, and how fun it is just to skip the night out all together.
When you talk to your friends after a night out most of them will just remember how fun pres was. The fun games, the music everybody actually likes, the cheap drinks and the ability to chill easily outside.
I am one of the people who would rather sod ‘the night out’ for a much preferable ‘night in’ staying home.
One of the biggest issues for me of a night out is the expense. Firstly, you need to buy drinks for pres, which will never cost you less than a fiver. Then you need to get to the club, at least in Manchester you’ve got the Magic Bus as your best friend. Then you need to pay for entry at the club, where you’re looking at anything from £3 to £15.
Then you probably need to buy drinks once you’re in there because no one is ever perfectly club drunk, and club drinks are a notorious rip off. Once you’ve done the clubbing, you probably want post club food. Chips are never enough so it’s a full meal at 3am costing anywhere between £5 and £10. So once you’ve collapsed back in bed: drunk, tired and poor, you don’t think about the money you’ve spent until the next morning when you realise (at least) £20 has gone from your account in one night.
If you have a night in, the only money spent will be spent on buying drinks for the evening. Many big shops like Sainsbury’s do great deals on crates, so you can easily have enough booze for a night in without blowing much cash at all.
The second issue for me with a night out is timing.
Perfect timing is key to a good night out and is very difficult to achieve. You need to be able to fit dinner, drinking, getting ready, pres and actually getting to the club into a very narrow time gap.
With a night at home, you can do all of this in as much time as you like, you don’t even have to get ready because you can get drunk in your pyjamas. Your friends might even prefer it if they can just rock up whenever, looking like whatever and having a stress-free, timing-free night.
You could argue that going clubbing gives you something to do rather than just sitting at home drinking. You could be thinking that when you go to a club, you have a dance and you have an experience. Nights out do involves things happening, and the walks to the club and around the city at night are always a good laugh.
Despite this, a night in has amazing opportunities to offer.
At my student house we have a Nintendo Wii, many hours in the house have been lost to endless games of drunk Mario Kart and Wii Party. Similarly, by pushing all of the furniture out of the way you can create a pretty good dance floor. Student houses do often have the added benefit of a garden, which means people who smoke aren’t separated from those who don’t and anyone who wants a bit of fresh air can have some. The garden is also a fantastic space to make a game of Beer Pong extra fun.
Staying home is so much more fun than going out. You save money, you can forget about time, and you can make some incredible memories. Screw smelly overcrowded clubs with crap music and instead live the life of a student hermit! Enjoy your student house, it doesn’t last forever!
