I'm 22, And I'm Already Over The Bar Scene

I can't even move on a Friday night at my local college bars. It takes 20 minutes to get a drink. The music is overplayed. I'm tired of getting hit on by 18-year-old frat boys. I'm sick of gossip and brain-rot conversations. 

I constantly find myself saying, "I'm too old for that sh*it"—at least, I feel too old.

But how is that possible? I only became old enough to legally consume alcohol at these places last year. It doesn't seem fair; how am I already burnt out from the bar scene? 

Here's the theory: college life is cultivating a complete distortion of reality. It totally f*cks with your sense of age. 

Basically, it's a fast track into life. If you follow the typical timeline, you're living on your own by the time you're 18. You're kind of expected to act (at least somewhat) like an adult. However, at that age, we're realistically not. We're still immature, as our frontal lobe is still about seven years away from full development. 

So, with this newfound independence and a false sense of adulthood, we make stupid decisions. I found myself drinking heavily, on average, about three days out of the week, but sometimes (many times), I took it a lot further—yet that wasn't just me; it was the norm. 

I would frequently find myself out five or six days in one week, and at the time, I rarely felt the consequences. Freshman year classes weren't as intense; I didn't have a job. I never got a hangover that was bad enough to interfere with my daily life. 

This bled into my sophomore year; by my junior year, things got more intense with work and school, so I was forced to calm down a tad. But by my senior year? I'm done. I even stopped getting FOMO. Why does being in bed by 10 pm on a Friday night sound so much more exhilarating than having drinks with my friends out on the town? 

I place the blame on my significantly lower hangover tolerance, paired with an increasing level of commitment, for the demise of my desire to go out. But how did I reach this point? Why can I no longer handle a silly hangover, and why do I have so many commitments? Let's backtrack. 

Because of my immaturity at 18 in the college scene, I over-indulged in the party scene too young. 

During my sophomore year, I became pressured to pick a major, and by the time I turned 20, I had decided what I was doing for the rest of my life.

According to university culture, in your junior year, you must get an internship and become more involved. Apparently, school isn't enough to land you a job after college, and the extra work to ensure your rat race success starts here. Don't forget to keep those grades up! 

Suddenly, it's my senior year, and society says I need to have it all figured out by the time I graduate. A clear career path, a well-paying job, financial independence, a place to live—but that's not realistic. 

And that's how I got burnt out at the age of 22. I'm living in this weird version of adulthood on steroids. I'm so stressed out trying to make it through the remainder of my senior year and to figure out what the f*ck I'm doing after; the bar scene just isn't enjoyable anymore. 

Everything about being at a college bar that used to be not just tolerable but fun becomes exhausting and aggravating when your mind is constantly wandering to your double at work the next day, your presentation due next week, that thing you need to do for your internship, if you're going to hear back about that post-grad job, or how you're going to afford to live on your own in a couple of months. 

And it's honestly kind of sad because I don't want to hate my college bar. I don't want to be terrified of the next chapter of my life; I want to be excited. But that is where the problem lies. It feels as though I've been kidnapped by societal norms and watched from the backseat as I was driven up this shortcut road into adulthood I never wanted to be on in the first place. 

It feels as though I've been fooled into sacrificing some of the greatest years of my life to solidify my future—yet how is that future still so uncertain? And why am I so upset that it is? 

Rather than villainizing uncertainty and shaming the slower pace, it's time we embrace it. You blink, and your once-in-a-lifetime experience is behind you. Hold off on the blinking, take a breath, and enjoy a beer at your local college bar. 

Strike out, 

Morgan Harms

Boca Raton 

Morgan Harms is the Senior Editor for Strike Magazine Boca. She's a student journalist and creative writer who enjoys taking an artistic approach to her pieces. Her work ranges widely, from the hottest news stories, to college relationship drama, and even some sappy poetry. You can reach her by email at morganjharms@gmail.com or on Instagram @morganjharms and @morganjharmswrites.