Ten problems you only discover once you graduate

Alex Costanzoon 7 July 2015
Dog with graduation cap on

Graduating doesn't necessarily mean you know what you're doing.

So you’ve spent the last sixteen years of your life in education, and you’ve finally finished! The prospect of this is exciting for about a minute, however, until you realise that you now have no excuse to be doing absolutely nothing and you’re suddenly expected to know what you actually want to do with your life.

The leap from student life to being a ‘real adult’ is a terrifying one, bringing with it a whole host of problems which only actually occur to you once you’ve waved goodbye to your student lifestyle and you realise you’re even less prepared for graduate life than you originally thought.

You’re forced to move back in with parents who actually expect you to ‘make the most of the day’

The harsh reality begins to set in that the days of going to bed at 3 am and rising at 2 pm are gone, and 10 am is now a lie-in!

All you want to is to grab your housemates and have a duvet day... Except your housemates are now dotted across the country and replaced by mum, dad, your moody brother and the cat.

And to add insult to injury all your home friends have either somehow managed to blag themselves jobs in London or are halfway across the world making you jealous on Facebook.

Just as you’ve finally mastered Harvard Referencing, you will never use it again.

“Experience in marketing? Not exactly, but if you have some sources you need listing…”

Your parents insist you find a job, but three years and £27,000 worth of debt later you still have no idea what you want to be.

Wasn’t your life’s calling meant to hit you sometime between first and second year?

When You eventually find some jobs to apply for you realise everybody else has had the same idea.

And suddenly you see that everyone and their dog also has that 2:1 you’ve spent the last three years grafting for.

You decide you want to take a year out and travel instead, before realising that travelling is actually ridiculously expensive.

“How far can I get with £3.75 and an old bus ticket?”

Moving back home means your parents suddenly need to constantly know your whereabouts again.

Plus, they’re going to charge you rent for the honour of round-the-clock surveillance.

You have to eat at regular times.

Apparently ordering Dominos at 2 am “isn’t socially acceptable”.

If you’ve managed to get a job, weeknights are off-limits.

All you want to do is go to the pub with your friends on a Wednesday night but you have to get up at 6 am.

Everything is more expensive when you’re not a student.

You haven’t paid full price for anything in at last three years, a fact which slaps you in the face when ASOS has its 20% off day for students just as your NUS card expires. Can we go back to first year, please?

On the bright side, we did it!

Surely it only gets better from here, right?

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Alex Costanzoon 7 July 2015