Since it’s graduation season and all, I figured it would be appropriate to list some things to do after graduating. No worries undergrads, most of these things can apply to you too! It’s basically things to do after a year of college. The first couple of weeks after leaving school are usually rough because you have to adjust to a new routine all over again. You’re not with your friends, you’re probably back at home, and you don’t have super bar specials to entertain you every night.

Here are some crucial things to do right after you graduate or leave school for the year…

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What are some things you’re going to do after graduation? Or if you’re still an undergrad, what are you going to do after the semester?

Caitlin is a graduate of the University of Alabama who has an obsession with cupcakes, coffee, and Harry Potter. She always has random fun facts on reserve and aspires to be a professional blogger, social media bug, and/or James Franco’s assistant. Follow her fabulous life @caitlincorsetti. You’re welcome!

[Images via We Heart It]

Isn’t that a scary thing? The “Real World”. And no, I’m not talking about the television show, although they did hold a casting in Tuscaloosa that I almost went to. I, like many of you, graduated this past weekend. Some of you have another week or two left, some of you will graduate in August or December. I was fortunate enough to finish in four years (read: the parentals said you get four years) but I tell you, I wish it wasn’t over.

I’m truly excited to start the next chapter of my life, it’s just so strange that it happened so quickly. I remember being a tiny freshman at this huge university and not knowing what to do with myself. Let me tell you all a little bit about my experience at Alabama.

My heart wasn’t set on UA when I went there. It was the best school to pursue telecommunications and broadcast journalism out of the schools I applied to. I almost went to Clemson. I was almost a cheerleader at Presbyterian College. I got a scholarship to LSU. Vanderbilt didn’t want me, and I was crushed. But it was such a blessing. I settled on Alabama because it was close to home, and they had a great program. Within my first month of college I went through a horrible breakup, was dealing with a lot of anxiety, and was overwhelmed with the hugeness of Alabama as I graduated high school with a class of 102. I started applications to transfer my second semester. My parents told me I had to stick it out for a year. Well, I almost didn’t survive after my first semester after suffering a pulmonary embolism.

I had never wanted to be at Alabama more during that week I spent in the hospital. I missed my friends and my school. I had come to terms with being there, and I loved it. I technically wasn’t supposed to go back for the semester in my condition, but I wouldn’t take no for an answer. I had to be in Tuscaloosa because it was home.

I realized how much Tuscaloosa and the university meant to me then, but that feeling of belonging was amplified during the April 27, 2011 tornado. The end of my junior year was abrupt, but the sense of community was something incredible. Walking around with my fellow students, my Alabama family and crying for our home made it all the more difficult to leave. Returning for senior year was tough because Tuscaloosa wasn’t the same. It was still missing pieces, still hurting, but being there with our community felt right.

During the thirty or so seconds that I walked across the stage, received my “we owe you a diploma” case, and did a John Bender-esque Breakfast Club fist pump to my family, my whole college career flashed before my eyes. I was filled with excitement and pride, thrilled that I completed college in four years (as a double major, too!) and had an amazing time in the process. I felt accomplished and old, but most of all, I felt ready. The University of Alabama convinced me that I am prepared for anything.

I can fight my way through any crowd after going to four years of Alabama Crimson Tide football games. I can get from point A to point B in fifteen minutes after running across the Quad to get to class. I can live on less than five hours of sleep a night after staying up to study or going out on a Wednesday. I can be patient after having to wait on the train to get to campus. I can survive physical and natural disasters after nearly dying twice. I can complete any kind of assignment after passing Media Law. I can lift a decent amount of weight after moving four times. I’m pretty sure I can do anything now.

So today when I drove home with Bryant-Denny Stadium and my sorority house in my rearview mirror, I felt good. I mean, I was sobbing and looked like a complete mess, but I felt good about my time spent there. Leaving college is sad because we’re leaving behind our best friends and our memories, but it’s a happy time too. We’re on our way to being real people in society. We’ve joined the club of esteemed college graduates which can be scary, but we’re prepared. We’re going to have jobs, be productive, and do something great with our lives. The “Real World” is about to get quite the treat.

Did you graduate this weekend? How do you feel? Are you ready for the “Real World”?

Caitlin is a graduate of the University of Alabama who has an obsession with cupcakes, coffee, and Harry Potter. She always has random fun facts on reserve and aspires to be a professional blogger, social media bug, and/or James Franco’s assistant. Follow her fabulous life @caitlincorsetti. You’re welcome!

My Facebook news feed is full of statuses about finishing finals and graduating. “Omg, last paper EVER!” “I’m done I’m done I’m done I’m done!!!!” “Graduating in THREE DAYS.”

To those people, I would like to say: congratulations. But I hate you right now. Because I still have a week of finals left, and I’m only a junior! So I’ll be doing this all over again next year. But really, seniors, congrats. You get to go out into the world and be real people! It’s so exciting. And to send you off in style, our friends over at College Fashion have put together some great tips on what to wear for graduation. Check out the post here, and enjoy your commencement ceremonies in style!

[Lead image via Stephen Coburn/Shutterstock]

I used to be a college tour guide, in which I told prospective students that they could choose from over 150 different majors at my school. Apparently, 13 or so of them are completely useless — including mine. How about yours? Is your entire collegiate career a sham of actual productivity?

Earlier this week, The Daily Beast had the nerve to publish a list that finally identifies the thirteen most useless majors that college students call their own too often. The lucky thirteen was based on the undoubtedly truthful practices of science and statistics:

“This year we started with new research (PDF) from Georgetown University — which drew from two years of census data to determine the prospects for myriad majors — to narrow down our list to more than three dozen popular college majors. We also used data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, equally weighing the following categories to determine current and future employment and earnings potential for our final ranking: Recent graduate employment, experienced graduate employment, recent graduate earnings, experienced graduate earnings, [and] projected growth in total number of jobs, 2010–2020.”

So basically, these were selected from the most popular majors in college, and then deemed “useless” when measuring how much money they haven’t earned past graduates and how many of them are still looking for jobs altogether. More importantly, these supposedly breakthrough findings are based on data collected over the past two years — you know, two of the bleakest years that our country has seen for quite a long time now.

And of course, which industries take a heavy blow throughout an economic recession? Without even looking at the list of overwhelming university uselessness just yet, it’s easy to guess that the liberal arts are, once again, deemed unfit for the blessed brains of science, math, engineering, etc.

I once defended all liberal arts majors on CollegeCandy, and I’ll do it again if I have to. I could continue my rant about how careers in the liberal arts aren’t as clear-cut as those in science-related fields, and I’d reiterate how so many people — more people than we think — don’t necessarily pursue careers in the fields they initially chose when they were 18-year-old freshmen in college. Because 18-year-olds don’t always make good decisions, and neither do 22-year-old graduates who are still somewhat confused by the direction of the rest of their lives, as well as 50-year-olds who undergo a career change after they’re flat-out disappointed in whatever they eventually chose to pursue.

However, I think it’s more important here to see how inaccurate the definitions of “useful” and “useless” are in this list’s context. These majors’ “uselessness” doesn’t matter at all because the definition of “usefulness” does not capture personal happiness, worldwide impact or cultural contribution — it only measures how fast YOU can pay off YOUR student loans by getting a high-paying job after graduation. But honestly, getting your money’s worth from a major and actually doing something useful with it are two different things. The nurse who majored in biology and spent a decade weighing patients on scales and measuring people’s blood pressure may not be as useful as the filmmaker who exposed an injustice through a documentary. Who has a bigger impact on the world? Who can be called more useful?

Even more so, “useful” majors would be nothing without the “useless” ones — what industry can function without artists to create advertising or language majors to publicize it…or even write a manual for that fancy scientific invention? And what will all those useful people do with their free time, if not veg out in front of the television, watch movies, listen to music, read the news, or enjoy some other product from a liberal arts major? Sure, science may save lives, but art makes life worth living.

See for yourself how “useless” the following 13 majors are, and how messed up our world would be if bright minds like us stopped majoring in them:

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Are there certain college majors that are more useless than others? Or does its “usefulness” really depend on what is done with it after graduation?

Ashley is a UC San Diego grad who is holding on way too tightly to a potential career in magazines and goes to Vegas all too often. She’s fascinated with celebrities and strawberry beer and doubles as a pathological texter/emailer/blogger. Feed the addiction with tweets @cashleelee. Thanks in advance.

The school year is almost over, and many of you may be graduating! At this exciting time in your life, you have lots of things to focus on — one of the most important being, of course, what you want as your graduation gift.

I’ve heard of lots of different types of graduation gifts, including trips, cars, new computers, housewares and furniture for your new apartment, suits for interviews and more. And while all of those things are great, let’s be honest. When it really comes down to it, there’s one thing that all of us want more than any iPad or trip to Europe — just old fashioned cash. Because if you had a bit of money, you’d be able to cover your first few rent checks or student loan bills and possibly still have enough leftover to buy a little somethin’ somethin’ for yourself.

This is where Deposit a Gift comes in handy. Deposit a Gift is a gift registry of sorts, similar to a wedding or baby shower registry. You can register for anything you’d like, and those you send your registry to can make monetary contributions to it. The money that your guests deposit is accessible in your personal account whenever you want.

Deposit a Gift is great if you have one big thing in mind, like a trip or a down payment for a car, but it’s also great if you just need the cash. You can even put your everyday expenses on your list, such as groceries, gas, or rent! Whatever you want or need the money for, Deposit a Gift is your answer.

Every day, I feel like I need to find SOMETHING to look forward to in order to get me through a long class or to motivate me to finish a 10-page paper. While I’m no celeb and can’t look forward to a Grammy after party or a five-course meal by a celebrity chef, I am a college student.

College students have pretty awesome lifestyles, and we have a lot of stuff to look forward to during the day, week or year. If you’re having a bad day and need some motivation, look forward to this:

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In less than a month, I will be a college graduate. It seems like four days ago rather than four years ago that I went to my college’s orientation and had a panic attack about picking my major. Now I have panic attacks every day about my impending graduation/real world life.

There are so many things about graduating that scare me. I feel like there are a lot of adult things that I don’t know about yet that I will automatically need to know about right when I walk across the stage.

Can someone please teach me about this stuff in a month? Pretty please?

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I’m a junior in college, and I’m getting really, really antsy to graduate. I didn’t think I would get sick of college, because there are so many things I love about it. But the student life is getting old. I want to be a real person with a real job! I want to get home from work and be done for the day, no homework! I want to have time on the weekends!

But I think that sometimes I get carried away imagining my glamorous post-grad life. In reality, graduation can be a really humbling experience. I’ve always had lots of older friends, and I’ve watched some of them go through some difficult (but hilarious) times after graduation. So to remind us all that things don’t always go as planned, I present Expectation vs. Reality: Graduation Edition.

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Garnet is a student at Columbia University in New York City. She is “that person” who starts dancing at a party when everyone else is standing around, and if there were a Facebook stalking Olympics, she would be a gold medalist. She also loves cheesy 90s music, and almost died of happiness when Vanilla Ice retweeted her. Once. Follow her on Twitter @garnethenderson.

[Lead image via unguryanu/Shutterstock]

The senior year of college is an emotional roller coaster that you can’t get off of until you cross the stage at graduation. (Then you enter another ride called life and I just haven’t been on that ride long enough to give you the appropriate theme park metaphor…my apologies.) As much as you love your friends and your school and your classes, you’re also freaking out about what you want to do after college and if what you want to do is right. And if you’re anything like me, you’re probably suffering from a killer case of the “what-ifs”.

What if I go to grad school?

What if I move to NYC without a job?

What if my boyfriend breaks up with me?

The what-ifs are never-ending and you’ll find them creeping up during class, while you’re at happy hour and  even while you’re hooking up. It’s a nasty sickness that’s hard to cure. Luckily CollegeFashion has a handy dandy guide to figuring it all out. Check it out here!

I got an email a few weeks ago explaining that we needed to apply for graduation before registering for the next semester. Um, what?! I don’t even know what classes I’m taking yet, and I already have to apply to graduate? Well, I did apply. And got a degree audit. And picked my final semester’s classes. Talk about scary. Thank goodness I’m not graduating in December like a lot of my friends because I still don’t even know what I want to do!

Let the freaking out about commencement commence.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m really excited to start my life in the “real world.” I imagine myself living somewhere amazing with cute decor and my dog, strutting down to the local coffee shop every morning where the hot barista will know my order and eventually write his number on my latte. A girl can dream, right? But I know that’s not the reality. I’m going to get a job, find a place that will need a lot of touching up and probably doesn’t have a doorman. I’ll work long hours and sleep less than I do now in college. I know all of that, the reality. But that’s not why I’m scared.

I’m scared to leave college behind. The past four years I’ve gained sisters and future bridesmaids. I’ve had ridiculous nights out. I’ve escaped death, twice. I’ve learned valuable life lessons from professors that had nothing to do with the class. I’ve become a writer. I’ve gone through two horrible breakups and ended up with someone who means the world to me. I’ve had all of these memories that seem so distant even now. What happens when I graduate? All of these experiences I’ve had with wonderful people will be just that. Of course, they will be treasured.

But I look back at my best friends from high school and realize that I’m only close with a handful of them today. I’m worried the same will happen. It’s so difficult when we move to different places. I see them when I go home, but it won’t be home for much longer. Soon, I’ll have my own home somewhere else. And that’s scary. It’s terrifying to think that a few short years ago, I just got here. It seems like these four years have gone by at hyperspeed, and I’m afraid that’s going to happen to the rest of my life as well. I want to enjoy the future, but if it goes by as quickly as college did, how?

I’m not scared of having a career and a place of my own or having to do my taxes or figure out my own insurance. It’s really about what I won’t have anymore once college is over. No more fro-yo runs because my sister needed a study break. No more playing Just Dance in the lounge at the sorority house. No more going out for margs on a Tuesday because a midterm kicked my butt. No more gamedays or foam parties. No more snuggling with my best friend because we had a bad day. While I can live without the cramming for exams and writing papers at the last minute, memories of all nighters with my best friends and late night coffee binges will ring in my head.

As scary as it is, I have to do it, and so does everyone else. Knowing that my friends are all feeling the same way I am makes it a little bit easier. Even though we’ll be going our separate ways, we won’t let life get in the way. What are you freaking out about?