Before freshman year of college, I was most hype for one thing and one thing only — parties. The idea of going to a frat house and partying with my friends and meeting cute guys was a possibility that seemed... exciting and oh-so-college. It was like a rite of passage in my mind. College equated to going anywhere with anyone to just have a good time and meet others.

But what I figured out very soon is that in our desire to find connection and friendship, these random parties with random people really only lend themselves to disconnection. No one is there to meet or make friends, people are there to get drunk, kiss a random, and...? That’s it?

I constantly find myself asking why it’s fun to be intoxicated around random people that I don’t care about in the slightest; these environments don’t really lend themselves to conversation. The best memories I have of my freshman year — sober and not sober — have been times when I was with my closest friends in smaller, more intimate settings, having deep or hilarious or random conversations, and not in a dingy house basement with beer-soaked shoes and random drunk people body slamming into me. At a certain point, I realized that it feels like a waste of my time and energy being at these parties when I could be making memories with people I actually care about and see on a daily basis.

Additionally, there’s a very sexualized culture around party-going to these functions because of the girl to guy ratios needing to be correct or quite simply, just nonexistent. I can’t even count the number of times my friends and I would walk up to a party with a couple of guy friends in tow only to have those friends denied because of the illusory concept that they’d take away someone else’s chance to hook up with someone. That’s assuming that girls only come to parties to have sex which is just ridiculous, and it immediately establishes all the women that walk into the party as objects.

Not only does it suggest that women are only there for others perusal and enjoyment, but it establishes a very sexualized idea of why there’s even a party at all — because they only want more girls there to choose from at the end of the night.

People talk about finding the person they’re going to be with forever in college, and I don’t think it’s going to end up being the random girl or guy you’re grinding on at some party. It doesn’t seem likely that a real connection — romantic or not — will be fostered at a rager. Casual is usually the norm in college, I understand that. However, I just feel like after a few months of that I simply grew up and realized that even if it is just casual, it’s still more fun and much safer to be with someone who I know and trust and respect as a friend rather than risking my emotions and my safety on someone who simply doesn’t know me. And if I actually want to meet someone worthwhile, I want to remember doing so in a place where I feel comfortable and safe.

Listen — I don’t want this to come across like I’m a square who is convincing you to never party. I just continually ask myself if certain party scenes are really where I want to be and questioning if they are lending themselves to my contentment. It seems like these nights of random hookups and crowded basements usually ended up in disappointment and insecurity. I’m just fed up with the culture that these are fun and inviting places to be, because according to my understanding, those expectations usually aren’t actualized no matter how much I wish or think that they’re going to be.