Diary of a Gen Z Student: I’m not sure ‘College Christmas Day’ is different from other nights out

College nights out are not classy events. If you ever want to see this in action, head to Harcourt Street on a Thursday night (student night). 

These nights out tend to look the same. There’s always someone who doesn’t make it to the club after pres (pre-drinks); there’s always someone sent home early in a taxi because they cannot remain upright long enough to convince a bouncer to let them into the nightclub, and there’s always someone who mysteriously goes missing around midnight.

The next morning, there’s always a debrief. We all want to be up to date on the antics. That debrief is the best part of the night out. I have questions, and I need answers. Where did that person disappear to? Who did they disappear with? We all love the gossip. It never disappoints.

The past few weeks, I’ve watched my friends go on Christmas-themed nights out organised by their college. They call it a ‘College Christmas Day’. And I’m jealous. We don’t have one where I go to college.

On ‘College Christmas Day’ everyone wears a Christmas jumper. It’s sold as a festive day — singing ‘Jingle Bells’, drinking mulled wine, eating gingerbread. 

The reality is a little (a lot) more uncouth: the sound of ‘Jingle Bells’ is drowned out by the screaming of inebriated students. Mulled wine quickly turns into tequila shots chased with vodka and Red Bull. Gingerbread turns into McDonalds chicken nuggets at 4am.

Christmas jumpers are left in a bar or cloakroom somewhere (it’s hard to feel the cold when you’re seven tequila shots in). It all sounds like fun, if you ask me.

Though in reality, I’m not sure that the ‘College Christmas Day’ is so different from any other college night out. 

Another night of drunken debauchery. Trinity Ball, for example, mainly consists of young drunkards falling over on the cobblestones.

A friend of mine fell and lost a shoe in the crowd at Trinity Ball last year. But she stayed until the band had finished playing. 

She had gone beyond just attending Trinity Ball — when she kept dancing with one shoe on, she had lived it. 

She stumbled away from that night out with a good story. That’s what every social event in college is about — the experience.

Humans like to feel connected. It’s this anarchy that connects us students. This desire for the bedlam of a night out becomes ingrained in the psyche of a college student. 

Maybe it’s because college is the first taste we have of freedom, but this desire is borderline pathological. We act like we’ve just been let out of prison. And like we’re going to be sent back very soon. 

Behaving like we have this really brief opportunity to embrace chaos. And embrace we do. Caffeine, Doc Martens, alcohol — they keep us going. 

There is very little to stop us, though €10 for a single in most pubs in Dublin City comes close. Just not close enough. I’ll give the barman my firstborn for that drink.

Luckily for my liver, college is only four years, which means I’m almost halfway through this part of my life. So, while the nights out are hectic, expensive, grimy, and almost animalistic, I don’t have much time left in this uncivilised existence.

Not that I’ll cease to exist when I hit 25, but sometimes I’m not so sure. I’ll have a real job. Drinking with your friends six nights a week won’t be socialising, it’ll be alcoholism.

Until then, I’ve got to put in the hard yards. Take advantage of all of this while I can. Who knows what the price of a drink will be in five years? 

On that note, I’ll take another one of those €10 drinks. I’ll give the barman my secondborn and my friend’s left shoe. That should cover it.

• Jane Cowan is a student in Trinity College Dublin, where she is in her second year, studying English. She is 19. She is from Dunshaughlin, Meath.