One week from now, I will no longer be a slave to academia. It feels good. But also, it feels terrifying.
10. Drinking heavily on weekdays is reserved for two kinds of people: students and weird adults who still party with students. What does one do on Thursday nights without alcohol? Does this mean I have to start watching The Mentalist?
9. Once you stop paying tuition, it’s much harder to justify being excessively cheap. This means that when you go to the bar with a Ziploc bag of quarters, people will probably tell you to your face that you are a scumbag rather than just thinking it silently to themselves.
(Also, if you thought you could still get away with carrying your credit cards in an elastic band, you can forget about it.)
8. On a similar note, people might actually assume that after obtaining a Bachelor’s degree, you are now rolling in wealth.
This may mean having to constantly explain to your friends that no, you cannot chip in for pizza because you have a degree in Medieval Studies and are virtually unemployable. Hurray!
7. After graduation, a typical student diet is deemed no longer “appropriate.” When you see a young woman buying bulk packs of Kraft Dinner and hot dog wieners you think “student”, but when you see a grown man do it, you think, “addicted to internet porn.” This is the truth of the cruel and judgmental society we live in. RIP ramen noodles.
6. Graduating means that you might have to make a LinkedIn profile, which up until recently I thought was a website for old people who want to hook-up, but can’t figure out how to use Facebook.
5. You will never have homework. Seems like a good thing? YOU’RE WRONG. You officially have no excuse to avoid hanging out with all of those people that you secretly hate. Without papers to write every weekend, it looks like you’ll have no choice but to accept that invitation from ‘Jodie’ to go to some weird bar where you have to paint a blank canvas while drinking boxed wine. She just bought a Groupon, and it seems really fun!! … Kill yourself.
4. Graduating probably means having to put on pants sometime before 11AM. In other words, graduating means entering the seventh circle of hell.
3. People will now assume that having a degree makes you learned. They will ask you questions like “So, Art History eh? What can you tell me about art?” To which you will likely answer “I don’t know sir, I spent the last days of my university career studying for a course entitled ‘Dinosaurs: A Journey through Time.’ What can you tell me about being a giant douchebag?”
2. You will also be asked by every single person you ever encounter what it is you plan to ‘do’ with the rest of your life.
(Expert tip: a good stock answer to this question is “spend more time at your mom’s house.”)
1. You will have to get a full-time job.
So… Grad school, anyone?