Have you done more loads of laundry in June than you have for the previous 11 months combined? Have you gone into a meeting with your boss and all you can think about is how his desk would make a perfect beer pong table? Has a particular 4-letter word been noticeably absent from your vocabulary lately? If you’ve answered “yes” to any of these questions, then you are probably in the same situation as I am: a recent graduate entering the “real world” for the first time.
As I’ve discovered, this is quite a big transition. It isn’t easy to go from a world where 4 hours of class is considered a “busy day” to a reality where work from 9 am to 5 pm, at a minimum, is expected every weekday. I mean, the only time I ever did anything for 8 hours straight in college was sleep, and I even found that to be exhausting. How am I expected to get through a full workweek?
There are so many adjustments to make in this new lifestyle. For instance, for the last four years my dress had only been limited to whatever is clean, with my definition of “clean” being “two squirts of FeBreze”. Now at the office everyone expects not only for my shirt to be tucked-in and buttoned-up, but also for it to be different from the day before. In college, people respected you for how well you wielded a sniper rifle in Halo and for how much you could bench press. From what I’ve noticed about the real world so far, you gain respect by demonstrating aptitude in Excel and being clean-shaven.
Many things that defined my lifestyle in college are suddenly deemed “unacceptable” in the real word. For instance, in college our idea of a “drinking problem” was when we had less than 10 beers in the fridge and the closest liquor store was already closed. The line of what is “socially acceptable” has been blurred as well. As a student, the polite thing to do when you met someone for the first time was to send him or her a friend request on Facebook. I met many new people on my first day at work, and my mind almost exploded later that night when I discovered that almost all of them didn’t even have a Facebook account. I was slightly relieved when I found that one of my coworkers did have an account, so I performed all the necessary Facebook actions that proper manners demanded. The next day, however, I was pretty discouraged when I noticed that her cubicle had been moved from right next to mine all the way to the opposite side of the office. A good lesson to all you former students who are just now entering the workplace: do not “poke” your fellow coworkers physically or virtually.
Since I’ve graduated I have noticed that my view of a good time has changed dramatically. In college, nothing would get me more fired up more than making three cups in a row in beer pong. Now, the thing I get most excited about is making three green lights in a row on my way to work. Sure, I still celebrate my accomplishment the same way by ripping off my shirt and declaring to everyone around me that “I’m a beast at life”, but those smiling looks of approval that my roommates gave me in my dorm room have been replaced by looks of confusion and terror by passerbys on Route 1. In college, my idea of a perfect Thursday night was to pregame while playing Guitar Hero with my friends, then creep around to some bars, followed by some pizza at 2 am. Now, my idea of a perfect Thursday night is getting to bed by 11 with the comforting feeling that my work clothes for tomorrow are already ironed and that I have some fresh cold-cuts for when I pack my lunch in the morning.
Despite these adjustments that graduates must make in their transition to the real world, I still have faith that we are going to bring some good times along with us. Sure, our shirts are tucked in now and our high-fives have turned into handshakes, but that doesn’t mean we can’t inject some fun and humor into a working world that often takes itself too seriously. After all, sometimes the adult world needs a poke in the right direction.
