Movin’ Out: A Warning to All Seniors

Dear Senior,

By Lauren

Right about now you are probably rolling a keg back to your house and getting ready to celebrate your last last final. How exciting! Drink up, friend. Drink until the sun (or your lunch) comes up. Take shots, do keg stands, play a long and telling game of Never Have I Ever. Enjoy it.

You are going to need it. Once finals are over and you have tossed that over-priced cap into the air, the real work begins. Unless you, like everyone else, decide to take that 6 week trip to Europe, in which case the real work doesn’t begin until you’ve smuggled your Absinthe back into the country and unpack that over-sized backpack.

This work I speak of is not the job you will be getting post graduation; it is the apartment. The New York Times recently ran a story talking all about the infamous apartment hunt. The article is long and sort of eh, so I will recap it for you here:Finding an apartment in a big city is really f*cking hard.

The prices are ridiculous, the square footage is non-existent and the competition is fierce. Like, Christian Siriano fierce. If you are not ready to sign on the dotted line at that moment, you will lose your dream place. Even if you are prepared, there is no guarantee the owner will agree.

I am sure you have dreams of moving to New York/Chicago/L.A./Washington D.C./Miami/Anywhere that is not your parents’ basement and living the high life: sick apartment, raging parties on your private roof deck and a doorman that hand delivers your packages from mom. Ha.

The reality, as much as it hurts for me to tell you, looks a little more like this: you will go see dozens of apartments, you will cry, your back will start to hurt from the love-seat you are sleeping on until you find your own place, you will cry, you will find an apartment you love that isn’t way too expensive and you will find someone else signed on it before you could get to the rental office, you will weep and call your mom and then go get a brownie, you will eventually sign on a place that doesn’t even come close to what you had imagined. Oh, and you will pay a lot of money for it.

I am not telling you this to make you sad. I am telling you this because when I moved to New York, no one had told me. Sure, I knew NYC was expensive, but I didn’t realize that all I could afford in Manhattan was a room where I could touch all 4 walls at once or that it would take me months to find it.

I just want you, my friend, to be prepared for what is to come and to truly appreciate your life right now until it must come to an end.

Drink it up. And good luck.

Sincerely,

Lauren