Everything you learn in your first month as a graduate

So no-one told you life was gonna be this way

8 years ago

Graduate life is very much not what it’s cracked up to be. For the last three years hundreds of terrifying city locals have glared at you literally just for being a student while you – basically still just a soft little baby – have been insulated from the realities of life.

Within days of packing up to go home you realise why they hated you: you had it so easy. You had it so easy.

Now you have to do little things you never had to bother with at uni, like communicate regularly with your family, plan for your future, or get a new bank account you can’t recklessly plunge thousands into the red with no repercussions.

Here’s every horrible thing you learn in your first month as a graduate.

You’re already nostalgic for Graduation Day

Your graduation day – essentially your university cramming your rich parents into a room and plying them for that sweet sweet donation money – was literally only a week ago and you’ve now got reverse-graduation goggles on.

Before, you were all like: “Yeah, I’ve loved my time here at Backwater Agricultural University, but I’m just over it? I so want to get out into the real world.” Now you’re starting to see the signs of being a human in decline.

Your Instagrams will never get as many likes as they did that day, and you’ll never have as many friends. Walking through the redbrick, smiling and going “Hey” at literally everyone you’ve ever laid eyes on at uni, giving your nan the impression you’re a hybrid between lothario, party animal and man of the people, looking your nan dead in the eyes and going: “Who? Oh that’s Scott. My mate Scott.”

You haven’t spoken to Scott since he was getting creepy with those girls in Popworld, but that doesn’t matter to your poor sweet nan.

There’s no such thing as a ‘job market’

“You’re a graduate! What!? What the fuck mate!? Seriously, how have you managed that?! What the fuck?!

“Have a glass of champagne. Yeah, really, this is for you, and it is completely free. You have earned it. Have another. Go take some pictures with your friends, you deserve it. We’re so proud of you. You’ve worked so hard for three years and now you can finally claim your rewar- oh no: there’s no jobs. We’ve lost all the jobs. There’s none left. We’re so sorry.

“Please sign up to our alumni community.”

– Every Vice-Chancellor at Every Graduation Ceremony, 2016

It’s not actually normal to have thousands of pounds plonked in your account three times a year, and when you realise that’s never happening again it’s terrifying

So in general there’s three approaches to student loans, which I will outline in full here:

A) You can be a big stinky miser and eat nothing but beans and rice and drink ridiculous amounts of water to suppress your hunger and google things like “what is gruel” and “how to make gruel.”

B) “My parents will bail me out if I need it but guys come on let’s get a supermarket pizza tonight and ahh hmm I wonder if I really need iTunes and Spotify.”

C) Literally just spend the entire thing, and your overdraft, and about £40 from each of your friends on mandy then be forced to live as a pauper until the next round.

Regardless of which option you choose you will end up with precisely £17 when you graduate. There’s no such thing as budgeting.

Welcome to the real world.

People will not stop saying ‘Welcome to the real world’

Hi Mum. I’m as aware as you are that I’ve spent the last three years in my pyjamas drinking vodka Fantas in bed and reading precisely none of my course texts. Not one.

We both know I’m a waste of space, just please stop actually saying it.

Your parents have asked you to pay rent

Mum – Bev – Can I call you Bev? I’m not chipping a single penny in, Bev, until you’ve sorted out the locks on the bathroom. I don’t know what kind of lax parisien door policy you and Dad have been operating in my absence but I’ll not be having any of it.

I’ll be sleeping on this then, will I?

Much like a real bank, the Bank of Mum and Dad cares only for their own bottom line

“You’re simply not a safe investment in this economy, Emma, so no: you cannot have £3 for a meal deal.”

You have to look a friend in the eyes as they try to hold it together telling you about their unpaid internship

“They give us free beers on Friday.”

Tramps get free beers too, and they didn’t have a sweaty middle manager named Steve scream at them on Tuesday for stapling 5,000 copies of the same document together wrong.

“It’s actually not too bad, my dad’s been covering my rent so I can afford to do this for a year or so.”

Oh actually on reflection I don’t feel bad for you at all, Joel.

Masturbation

It was alright at uni, wasn’t it? It was a wank nirvana. You had a system: click the door locked at 7, shamble out for a shower at 7.30, first pint in at 8. You ran like clockwork, nothing ever went wrong. There were no surprises. The trains ran on time.

Because of this it’s a massive surprise to us all that as soon as we move back home after uni you’re popping them out like when private browsers were first invented, but with less of the vigour of youth.

Experiment: Ask any of your graduate friends about this. Pop them a WhatsApp now and say: “Are you wanking a lot recently?” They will, to a man, say: “Actually yes I am getting to know my own body incredibly well lately and as a matter of fact have been scrolling down to the categories at the bottom of the websites now just to get things going” and it’ll be six months of hard meditation and an internship at their uncle’s firm before they can wank to anything normal again.

These are ‘friends’ – you don’t really have these anymore.

There is no such thing as a graduate social life

Theory: you only make about six friends at university.

Picture everyone you met at uni stood in your living room. How many of them do you actually want there? Ed can’t sneak you free voddies in Oceana anymore. You don’t need to see Chris now you’ll never need catch-up seminar notes again. Rosie won’t suck your toes at the drop of a text now she’s back living with her dad in Glasgow.

The big WhatsApp group is dead, and your social life has gone with it.

Purging Facebook friends is the sweetest taboo

Like Lenin before us, the only way a graduate can maintain stability in their lives is by ruthlessly culling innocents from their social circles until they are left only with a mixture of close loyalists and terrified moderates.