I used to live at the end of West Nevada Street in the brutal square building across the way from Caffe Paradiso and the adjacent Jimmy John’s. This was during my sophomore year, when, for a multitude of reasons, I was spending more time alone. I was working on myself, and that meant spending a lot of nights in.

I distinctly remember getting the No. 9 Italian Night Club from Jimmy John’s and watching “Midnight in Paris” on my laptop, thinking Owen Wilson might be onto something. That’s not to say I never went out — I did. But looking back, there are more than a few nights when I thought I would’ve been better off at home, with a sandwich and a Wes Anderson-esque movie.

Indeed, the accumulation of all of these quiet nights made me a better person. They made me realize — the brochures won’t tell you this — that the entirety of college is a course on sitting with yourself. Three credits across eight semesters, all asynchronous and without discussion posts.

This class taught me how to listen to the noise in my head without needing someone else’s music to drown it out.

I am no stranger to spending time alone. I’m fond of watching movies alone, and I find reading books especially rewarding since the process of reading isn’t exactly a team effort. While discussion can enrich the experience, it’s not wholly necessary.

Allow me to illustrate: I spent the summer after my sophomore year with my least favorite person, myself, in an apartment meant for four people. I took two fairly rigorous classes, and I felt that I was learning a lot — academically and intrapersonally — without the distractions of my busy college life. 

Not to discredit the people who were around — I had people — but everyone’s on their own clock in the summer. The brutal awakening I had to reckon with was managing the stir-craziness of being alone with yourself for prolonged periods, with a lot of Adrianne Lenker. A crucial skill. 

I didn’t have an internship then, but it felt like I was doing an internship on myself: putting in the work and cultivating personal growth. I was reading hard books with complex family trees or obscure references to Soviet Russia, as if I’d made agenda items for myself to complete. 

It was a nice change of pace from what seems like near-constant “doing,” the “go-go-go” demanded of students today.

Solitude — the foundation for empathy, self-awareness and meaningful growth — is underemphasized in college. In economic terms, it’s a public good with no institutional support. And that makes sense. What’s the opportunity cost of staying in for a night versus going out? It’s hard to see the benefit in the moment — hard to spot the forest through the strobe lights.

In the following fall, I was talking to my friend and I was telling him all about it — how pleasant it was and how many books I got to read. He asked, “Well, are you going to do it again?” I responded with no. As an upperclassman, I felt that I needed to realign my next summer to emphasize my career. This made me feel a bit melancholic — when else am I going to have a meditative summer like that?

If summer is when we sit with ourselves, the semester is when we perform. Our generation parties not just for fun, but as proof that we’re doing OK. It makes sense — we live in a world that can beat you down. Everyone’s managing their loneliness in the language they know best.

You might have picked up on the headline. If you’re even loosely familiar with “indie sleaze,” you’ll at least know LCD Soundsystem’s “Dance Yrself Clean” — a behemoth of a song that, to me, is about a generation dancing away in musty basements as the world burns around them.

It’s a hypnotic siren-song about escapism — how the party scene can serve as emotional and spiritual relief. The song itself, being around 15 years old, remains a powerful allegory to me.

I’ve buried the lede here, and for that, I apologize. Here, I’ll say it plainly: You shouldn’t feel discouraged if you’re alone in college. The people who look the most put-together are escaping something, too, just with Pitbull and drinks instead of Jimmy John’s and Owen Wilson movies.

I’m not just making this up. According to the BBC, 40% of young adults globally report feeling lonely often or very often. Everyone’s managing their loneliness, and everyone at the bar is dancing themselves clean, not just to celebrate but to forget. 

The essence of LCD Soundsystem’s angst lies in the lyrics’ imagery: a musty basement lit by the warm glow of people all around you, themselves clean. We’re all acutely aware of what’s happening in the world around us — what else is there to do but dance? Sometimes, club classics are the only way to feel OK.

But that glow doesn’t last. Escapism is necessary, but it still isn’t enough. The real work happens when the music stops. It looks like sitting alone, embracing the silence. 

Amid the flux of parties, obligations and relentless doing, there’s power in staying home. In reflecting. In listening, not to drown the angst out but to let it in. To sit in it.

College will teach you a lot. Some of it happens in classrooms. The rest — the most important bits — tend to happen when you’re alone, figuring out how to be OK without an audience.

In college, you’ll learn how to dance. But you’ll also learn when it’s time to go home.

If you’re lonely, don’t panic. You’re not broken, just enrolled in one of the harder classes. And in that vein, it’s just something you get better at, one day at a time.

Raphael is a senior in ACES and is presently dancing himself clean.

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