What does "to go in the first place" mean?

Question

"I would constantly find myself missing classes to go out for drinks in the evening, or waking up too hungover to go in the first place."

In the sentence, what does the phrase "to go in the first place" mean? Please explain it to me.

Answer 1

To understand this, we need to break down the sentence into parts.

1. What is the event?

   • The Subject missing his classes, on a regular basis.

2. Why is the event happening?

   • The subject usually misses his classes as he bunks them to go out for drinks.

     or

   • The subject is caught in a bad hangover, from his drinking session from the previous day, to make it to class.

Now, what does "to go in the first place" mean in this context. The main discussion is around the event of the subject going to class. If he has a hangover, that means going to class is not something he will even consider, to start with.

Answer 2

The meaning could be roughly glossed as "even":

I would constantly find myself missing classes [in order to] go out for drinks in the evening, or waking up too hungover even [to attend classes at all].

Sometimes he missed classes in order to go out for drinks.

Sometimes he woke up in such a poor physical shape that he could not attend classes even if he wished to.

What is the basic prerequisite for attending classes? You should be in a proper physical condition to be able to physically reach the classroom. "In the first place", you should have that physical opportunity.

See Wiktionary's definition for "in the first place":