The weekend is the most important part of the week.
The way we choose to spend our time outside of school and work says more about who we are than how we do choose to spend our working hours. While our free time doesn’t define us, it certainly contributes.
Weekends are when we get two whole days that make up for the five we spent slaving away at life. We can use this time to explore our city, hike in the mountains, veg-out on the couch, and get totally blasted.
The weekends also change with each stage of life. What you did with your weekends when you were 16 is not how you spend your free time at 26. These are the five kinds of weekends we have in our early adult lives.
1. Teenagers
Teens have a weird relationship with the weekend. They love the weekend, except there’s nothing to do. After you finish Saturday morning hockey/dance/play practice, you have little to do in terms of a social life.
You probably spent this time calling up your entire group of friends and trying to put together something (anything!), just so you could socialize.
What resulted was usually a group of 8 teenagers loitering at the mall and then having a sleepover where you did anything but sleep. You stay up all night talking, gossiping, eating massive amount of Taco Bell because you’re a 15-year-old twig, and (if you were really daring), swiping your parents wine from the fridge and getting drunk on one glass.
2. College freshmen
Oh dear, remember these days. College freshmen have everybody in the world to meet. Sophomores look sophisticated, but they’re nothing compared to the scary seniors.
You and your thirteen best friends (all of whom you met during welcome week), pack into somebody’s dorm, where you put on uncomfortable shoes, too much makeup, and tight dresses and drink too much tequila.
Before you’ve even left for the party, you’ve already lost one to the pregame who was too drunk to make it out of the dorm. The whole night is a hot mess that end with Taco Bell, crying, and probably puking on a fence outside of Pizza Hut while a girl you barely know holds your hair (that girl will go on to become your best friend for the next four years).
3. College seniors
By the time you hit this point of your college career, you’re so #OverIt. Going out still happens, but those weekends are spaced farther apart. Now, you spend your days cleaning, working on projects, and getting coffee with friends.
If you do choose to go out, you wouldn’t be caught dead in anything but jeans, and there’s no way in hell you would walk in the bitter cold to get to an overcrowded party that’s filled with Freshmen.
Your best nights happen when the party is a closed one. What begins as a quick pregame in a friend’s room, turns into a dance party with your 15 closest friends, complete with a strobe light and sneaking onto the roof of the dorm. By the end of the night, you don’t even make it to the party, because that party has little to offer compared to the people you’re closest with. These are the college nights you remember the best (mostly because you’ve learned your limits by now and you don’t need to blackout-but you do still need to make the trip to Taco Bell).
4. Post-grad life
Immediately following college, you find yourself with a slew of crazy clubs nights mixed with mellow wine nights in the bathtub. you fall on either end of a very wide spectrum with little room for the in-between.
after college, you are likely a mess and still trying to get it all together. When you go out with your friends, you go hard and you might blackout. Taco Bell still lives in your soul. It’s a hard habit to break, but these nights usually end with a nacho supreme.
And then there are those nights when you just want nothing to do with people. You spent your day doing productive things. You went grocery shopping, you cleaned, and you went to the gym. By the time night rolls around, you want to lay in the bathtub with a glass of wine and a book.
5. Mid to late twenties
By this point of your life you are actually a “real” adult. You likely have a stable job that falls in the 9-5 realm, and you have adult responsibilities.
Your weekends are filled with the chores you didn’t have time to do during the week and the activities you’re too busy to make time for. During the day, you go to yoga class and get coffee with that one college friend you still talk to.
At night, you go to dinner parties, attend a wedding, or veg-out on the couch because who has the energy to do anything anymore. If you do happen to find yourself at a bar (it’s definitely a bar and not a nightclub), you drink beer, you know your limits, and you avoid the Taco Bell splurge. You’ve finally learned your Taco Bell limits too.
[Featured Image Credit: Marc Clasfeld]