1. Your inbox is flooded with job search engine e-mails. Basically serving as constant notifications that say, “You still don’t have a job! You should probably get one!”2. Your countdown app goes from counting the days until spring break to counting the days until graduation. What once served as a way to measure the distance between you and endless margaritas now acts as the perfect way to measure the distance between you and post-grad depression!3. Every time you and your friends do something somebody says “Guys, what if this the last time…” What if this is our last real snow day? What if this is the last time we get brunch at this place? What if this is the last time all of us are wearing these exact outfits, listening to this exact song, drinking these exact flavors of iced coffee? Dramatic? Maybe. Real? All too real.4. When you’re at happy hour, people assume you are a young working professional and not a college kid. Um, excuse me, bartender, I don’t know if you noticed but I am currently wearing leggings and this eyeliner is blatantly leftover from last night, so I’m going to need you to go ahead and card me. 5. You have a well-rehearsed, knee jerk response to the question “So what are you doing next year?” You’ve had this bullshit response memorized for months and can recite it as automatically as the Pledge of Allegiance. It’s filled with vague buzzwords like “considering” and “exploring” and it lasts for several sentences while successfully communicating absolutely nothing.6. You’re suddenly envious of freshmen. Sure, they’re probably still in the middle of a dramatic saga with their high school ex and can’t get into any parties on campus, but that said their biggest concern for next year is what color scheme they’re going to use to decorate their dorm while you’re stuck Googling “What is health insurance?”7. Your post-grad friends start texting you cryptic messages about “the end.” You: Yeah, senior year has been a blast so far! Post-grad friend: That’s good. Just enjoy it while it lasts! You: Haha yeah, I plan on it J Post-grad friend: No. Seriously. Savor every last drop of freedom while you still can.8. You realize that Thirsty Thursdays are about to go extinct. And you start waking up on Friday mornings with soul-crushing hangovers and a renewed sense of anxiety about your future.9. Your dad makes you fill out your own tax return paperwork. Because he wants you to be ready for the real world and apparently this is the kind of miserable, unavoidable activity that real life adults do.10. Your parents start making jokes about being your new roommates. And this makes you actually suck it up and start reading those job search engine e-mails.11. You start becoming more concerned with where your friends are from and how far the drive is from where you live. Wait, so how many hours away is that? 8? Well, at least gas is cheap… and FaceTime is a thing.12. The thought occurs to you that maybe you should figure out things like doing laundry on a regular basis and not considering “drunk food” an actual food group. But what other category does Goldfish dunked in Nutella fall under?
This article is written by a student writer from the Her Campus at Fairfield chapter.