This semester I spent too many mornings dead from a night out.

I spent too many mornings Facetiming my friends piecing together what exactly had happened the night before. I spent too many mornings savaging my purse making sure I had all my cards, ID, and lip gloss. I spent too many mornings not waking up in my own bed.

But looking back, I am totally OK with it.

If you made it through reading that you are probably thinking either: “What the hell is wrong with you?", “How irresponsible can you possibly be", or “Literally same, girl." Guess what? I don't care what your opinion might be. I had the time of my life this semester– and I'll have memories and crazy stories for a lifetime.

I am aware you don't need to go out to have fun. Yes, I did party a little in high school, but most my time was having fun without it. So, I do know what fun without partying is like.

However, I am in college and paying for my experience, and frankly, I want part of my experience to be going out on the weekends. I worked hard studying and working during the week, so going out is how I chose to reward myself most of the time.

Because of this semester's partying, I have pictures and videos with friends and strangers singing, dancing, and just acting ridiculous– which is more fun to look back on than the nights I would have spent in bed binge-watching TV and reading alone– I have a retirement lifestyle in my future (if I live that long) to do those things.

This semester I have genuinely been the happiest I have been the last few years.

I do contribute much of that to be because I spent most weekends being carefree and letting loose.

I'm social and love meeting new people, and going out allowed me to do just that. If you are being completely repulsed by this article, I am sure you are thinking then, “You can do that without going out, blah, blah, blah…" and you are right. And I have. But going out allowed me to meet even more people who were out having just as good of a time as I was.

If you made it through reading this, I didn't write this to brag about my partying– even though that's exactly what I did. I wrote this because it's perfectly okay and acceptable to go out– as much, or as little, as you want.

My GPA isn't suffering, and neither is my mental health.