4 Things You Should Do To Prepare Yourself For The Real World

Well, sh*t. The semester’s about to end, which means I’m one step closer to graduating and one step closer to a world of bills and early Friday nights.

Gone will be the days of blacking out and launching beer cans into crowded areas. No more shrugging off bad test grades.

I think if you fail a test in the real world, you get hired. Wait, no. Fired — you get fired.

Senior year is almost upon me, and I’ll continue to fight the good fight.

I'll have speakers in one hand, pencil in the other, one shoe on, one somewhere between the bar and my apartment.

But, the prospect of post-graduation life is rising from the grave like a zombie apocalypse.

We all knew it would come one day, but dammit, we’re just not as prepared as we thought we’d be!

Here are four things that I’m mixing into my everyday life so that when I hit the real world, it doesn’t eat me alive:

Learning to court girls in environments where I can see their faces and hear their voices.

Something tells me this so-called real world won’t be dimly lit with a “Budweiser” bar light.

In college, courtship takes shape in inaudible garbling fueled by Mr. Cuervo.

Unless I plan on going to the coffee shop or the gym drunk and screaming about my after-party, I should probably reform the approach.

I don’t really have a definitive answer for this one, but I think it lies somewhere between asking interesting questions, having a story or two and being outgoing.

Or maybe it has to do with owning a really cool car.

Who knows? Why are you asking me?

Cooking more than just spaghetti.

I learned to cook when I was fairly young. I can safely say I knew my way around a kitchen by high school, but once I got to college and realized that if I didn’t cook myself dinner, I would starve to death, I honed my skills.

Unfortunately, I’m also easily satisfied, and I plateaued somewhere around pasta and red sauce.

This, on a daily basis, will destroy the very thing that makes you human. And it will make you hate Italian food. Which is worse? I do not know.

What I do know is that it takes three bowls of Honey Nut Cheerios to fill me up and that I need to expand my menu.

Toss in some schnitzel or a homemade burrito, and there’s a whole culinary world of ethnicities to explore! Don’t discriminate.

Reading words on a page, then turning that page and reading the words on the next page.

The last book I read cover to cover was “Holes” in, like, third grade. I’m 21 years old.

Thankfully, I can string sentences together without sounding like a drunken toddler. Reading makes you smarter; that’s science, right?

And, if you really fancy yourself a media lover, don’t neglect an entire field just because you can’t text while consuming it.

[Attempt to] find a real job.

Sports camp counselor only looks good on a résumé for so long. I don’t think JP Morgan wants to hear about the time I threw a 10-year-old out at home plate.

The internship hunt is a colossal crapshoot. I’m competing against hundreds of other kids, and the only real difference between us all is our music taste, which can be enough sometimes.

If a recruit came into my office raving about the subtlety of Thom Yorke’s lyrics, I’d have security burn his house down.

But, some employers won’t hire you because your face reminds them of their assh*le cousin.

Some will pass you over for the boss’ son who can’t even grasp the rules of Jenga. JUST PULL THE DAMN BRICKS, BILLY!

This is, however, a part of life. Once you enter the workforce grind, you take what you can get until you’re the boss.