Merits of Going Home Alone

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Today I took the train home from school alone for the first time in maybe a month.

And while at first, this may invoke either feelings of sympathy or indifference, I’m glad that I did. You see, when going home with friends, there’s an implicit obligation to keep them company, to chat with them, or rather to acknowledge their company instead of burying your head under a book. Mind you my commute home usually takes about an hour with one transfer (from the 2/3 to the N). When going home alone, that’s an hour I could be spending planning out what I’m going to do the rest of the day at home, rehashing notes, reflecting on the day for the future, and well, blogging, things I would spend precious time later in the day to do at home anyways. So why not sacrifice an hour of subpar, unfocused, and largely obligate conversation to get some stuff done? No hard feelings.

And I find that when I am on the train alone, like I was coming home from lab earlier this year, I easily enter a hyper-focused state where I’m able to do a lot of productive, clear, and critical thinking. My theory is that this effect has two direct causes: 1) the fact that I’m stuck on the train and really, if I’m alone, have nothing better to do and 2) there isn’t someone beside me whose presence is subconsciously siphoning my attention from the task at hand.