Why clubbing on your own is the best way to beat exam stress

Yesterday, I spoke to someone who recently did quite a peculiar thing. Albert* went clubbing on his own last weekend. With no pals. Solo. He didn’t plan to meet anyone at the club. It wasn’t a bet. He literally went for a night out alone, voluntarily, of his own free will.

Was this because Albert doesn’t really care about work, whereas all of his friends are shackled to the library atm? No – Albert is really into his degree. He said that going out by himself actually positively influenced his work, and that’s why he did it: stepping out alone, he claims, is the best possible kind of revision break. Relaxing, reinvigorating, restorative. And that’s because it’s uniquely good fun.

This proposal really baffled me initially. To me, the fun of going out comes directly from prancing around with your friends – enjoying music, getting irrational, sharing an extra exciting experience – with your friends. Surely going out minus your mates would be shit because the whole ritual would be missing its most crucial component? Like a G&T without gin, or Game of Thrones without the dwarf?

i’m not sure this would be fun without them

Not so, according to Albert. Apparently I only think this way because society has conditioned me to do so.

Albert said that if you go out on your own, it’s a very releasing experience.

If you’re not with your friends, you’re free to act as you want

You can be anyone you want to be. It’s harder to predict how you’ll act if you’re not around people you know, because you won’t act out of habit.

You’re free from the liability of friends

You don’t have to watch out for them, accompany them everywhere, etc.

You meet new people

Clubbing alone is still a social experience, you just probably meet 10 times as many new people as when you were dashing around in your sick five man ‘squaaaad’.

aint nobody got time – sayeth albert

I personally wouldn’t want to be free from the ‘liability of friends.’ My friends have saved my dignity, pride and probably life on an alarmingly high number of occasions during nights out. I would be in a real fix without them. Also I think it’s just as possible to meet new people if you’re operating out of a core squad.

Think what you want, said Albert graciously, with the air of someone who knows the key to Creation and doesn’t need a fan club. He said: “On my night out alone, I returned feeling like I’d totally escaped my normality and was ready to face revision again. I had total freedom during the night – if I wanted to go outside, I went outside, if I wanted to dance, I danced.”

Much funner alone?

He said he met a beautiful blonde Swedish girl and had an interesting conversation with someone called Zac about whether his namesake Zac Goldsmith would make a better MC than he has a politician.

It’s good to exercise our independence, sometimes, Albert concludes. “In a world where we’re so steeped in our friends’ lives all the time, it makes me value them more highly if I get away from them for a little bit. Plus it does wonders for my concentration span.”

And with that, he picked up his extra-large ring binder of colour-coded, alphabetised, knowledge-oozing notes, and headed back into the Maughan.