I’m not even five months out of college, and the word “adult” seems to have taken on an entirely new meaning. It appears that the idea of being an adult is boggling post-grads, such as myself, night and day – even over mundane things. Facebook status updates don’t lie, especially when recent grads are excited to update the world about their climb into adulthood:

“I just cooked dinner for myself, and I didn’t even wish it was dining hall food.”
“I’m paying my bills on time this month – like a real adult!”
“I’m turning into my mother now that I’m out of college.”
“How adult of me! I went to a job interview!”

I can’t lie; I’m guilty of putting this idea of being an adult on some kind of pedestal. In fact, if my vocabulary was monitored like songs played on iTunes, it definitely would have the phrase “how adult of me” or just the word “adult” on the top of the charts. Here I am, dabbling with my big toe (not even my whole foot) into whatever adulthood really is, and I’m making a big stink about it.

For example, when I wear heels to my internship (hello – it’s not even a job!), I check myself out in the elevator door reflection and think to myself “How fashionably adult of you.” Funny enough, when I take the heels off after a long red carpet outing, I make fun of my old-college self, “Oh look at you, switching into your trusty Rainbows – the ones that accompanied you to nearly every class senior year.”

And trust me; you don’t even want to hear my adult-o-meter going off when I do household things, especially cooking. Whenever I make dinner for myself, I toot my horn like I just climbed the Mt. Everest of Italian cooking. In fact, I get so worked up over being this LSAT student by day, intern by choice, and wannabe chef by night, I spend hours searching for new recipes and I make out grocery lists ahead of time, so I can continue to evolve into a ‘real’ adult in the kitchen. Read More »

Time flies when you're eating ramen and working 9-6.

A year ago I was packing up my college apartment, saving my most memorable theme party costumes (sexy dining hall worker didn’t go over as well as I thought it would), and crying in the most unattractive wipe-your-snot-on-your-sleeve fashion. As far as I knew it my life was completely over. I was jobless, destitute, and way too close to sober.

The only thing I had to look forward to was forcing my family to sit through Powerpoint presentations I made titled, “The top ten nights I should have died from alcohol poisoning,” “Nine reasons showing up to class drunk is only fun in the movies,” and “Any sibling that doesn’t get me a graduation gift shouldn’t act surprised when I ruin their wedding 10 years down the road.” I truly believed there was no reason to keep on living. And that was only reinforced when I was forced to sit next to a morbidly obese woman who took up half my seat on the plane ride home from Syracuse.

But yet I’m still here and alive an entire year later. And turns out, despite my best efforts to get a homeless man to push me in front of a bus last summer, life does go on after you graduate. Read More »

Working in the real world is harder than I ever thought. I remember older friends telling me that they would come home exhausted and barely have the energy to pull together a dinner sandwich. But I blew them off and just assumed that for some reason their jobs involved intensive physical labor that made them so tired. And since I was never on the construction job track I figured that I would end my days full of energy and zest.

Turns out I was wrong. I’m so dead by the end of the day that I can barely keep my eyes open when I crawl into bed at sunset. Truth be told, I cannot figure out why. I possibly have the least physically demanding job in the entire world. As a freelance blogger I spend half my days in bed on the computer and half my days on a couch on the computer. Sure my fingers are getting a work-out (ever seen a thumb with biceps?) but the rest of me might as well be sold off for spare parts. If anyone knows how much legs (partially shaved) are going for these days, please leave me a message below.

And it’s not only the exhaustion that’s taking a toll on me. It’s also being responsible for the work that I do everyday. In the past I’ve had part time jobs doing things like working at an ice cream store. But if I didn’t bring my A-game to work it wasn’t that big of a deal. All it meant was that some kid had an allergic reaction because I wasn’t paying attention when his mother asked if nuttybutter-walnut ice cream had nuts in it. Same with internships. I could make a million mistakes and then shrug my shoulders and be like “sorry, I’m just an intern, I didn’t know that pressing backspace would delete a year’s worth of work.” Read More »

As I write this very post I am curled up in my bed feeling the effects of an 8-hour drinking binge on a Sunday afternoon. I can’t see straight, my head hurts, and I haven’t had the strength to put on a bra. Or pants. I tell you this not because I want your sympathy (unless it comes in the form of a bottle of Gatorade…), but because it is moments like this that are a large part of your life after graduation.

I know it may seem obvious to many of you, but life in the real world is very different from life in college. And by “different,” I mean “sucky.” There are a lot of things you can enjoy in college that just won’t cut it out here. We’ve already touched on the obvious, but here are a few nuggets of wisdom from a seasoned real-world veteran: the 3 most important things you need to know as you begin your life as a mature adult (relatively speaking): Read More »