1. You pay rent, rather than collecting a paper check in the mail from your mother written out to Hasam Pontes, your Portuguese landlord. Now you are writing a check to another low-life immigrant that you cannot for the life of you figure out how he came to actually own property.
2. Tostitos Con queso dip no longer suffices as a full, vegetarian meal by having cheese, peppers, and corn (the salty chips that you are submerging in its delicacy). In fact if you digest this dish as just a side or a snack, you will in fact be posting up in the bathroom reading Anthony Bourdain's Kitchen Confidential for the next 3-4 hours.
3. Quoting films like Fight Club, Resevoir Dogs, 300 are no longer considered "deep." Now you have to spend hours critically watching Sanjay Gupta, reciting his speech about his thesis by heart and taking it to heart. This bores the shit out of your and everyone around you, however you come off an intellectual and well informed.
4. Dating is no longer an accidental meetup at a house party followed by unknowingly consensual sex, parting ways, and never seeing each other again. Or, seeing each other on campus but actively taking the long way to avoid physical confrontation or, at the very least, eye contact.
5. "Freelancing becomes a term used very loosely to describe your current employment status." Which of course is listed on some you Fbook profile with a shortened middle name or ancient ancestor surname followed by a scrambled last name to shield your from potential employers searching you and digging up...colorful content.
6. Gym shorts and athletic drawstring pants no longer populate your closet as "Monday-Friday" wear.
7. The gym used to be a place where you go 3-4 times a week to check out girls, talk about bands, sip aggressive supplement drinks and plan your strategy to entice a freshmen to come to the bar. Now, you go there 5-6 times a week for hours at end sweating out of pours you did not even know existed, cursing at your stomach vehemently.
8. Vacations are truly planned out, you have secured ample time off from work, and you have a hand and computer written itinerary. In college a "vacation" was getting seven dudes together with a collaborative sum of $127 dollars to take a road trip to three east coast colleges. You do not know the addresses of these schools, the people you are visiting are distant friends of friends, the car you are driving seats 3 uncomfortably, and the term shower is more foreign than fois gras.
9. Luckily parents send you money in college so you were not often too broke but you definitely have more money now. Saving now is for a new rolex, a car, a vacation, a gift for your mother. Saving in college was for 6, 30 racks and the only bottle of patron you will ever buy to be a "baller."
10. Emergency funds are for the shitty possibility of losing your job spontaneously and having to come up with rent and food money without a regular income for three months. "Emergency funds" in college were for paying off the city to drop the charges of underage possession, and for that unexpected Plan B purchase due to your decision to partake in #4.
11. Laundry is done by trained Asian professionals once a week and neatly folded in little bundles for you to put away elegantly and fashionably like Gatbsy. In college, your laundry was done once a month at your friends house in his water damaged basement. Bleach from 1994 stuck within the whirlpool filter still finds its way into your colored clothing wash making for an interesting unplanned tie die effect. Good thing fucking Bonaroo is next weekend.
12. Love. Something you are actively searching for underneath rocks, park benches, and in between lines of an Ok Cupid essay. This is your life, all your friends are getting married and you are the single butt of every joke. In college, you were actually ostracized by your group of friends for holding a relationship for longer than a winter intercession. The only thing you were doing with love was dropping the word endlessly to naive freshmen hoping they might trust your endearing eyes for one second and allow you to penetrate with a lack there of protection - simply using the "fingers-crossed method."
13. "Pulling out" now means leaving the bar early so that you can get a full night sleep and finish the last chapter of your Nelson Demille novel.
14. The only acceptable sandal to wear is one with three velcro straps, one of which wraps around your heal to keep you foot in place. This is because A) you need the ankle support and B) Sandals that can be walked around all day and then pressed to a beer bottle that you are about to put into your mouth is not considered "kosher."
15. No one is impression by your ability to shotgun a beer followed by physically eating the can and spitting out the shards of scrap metal into the air like tiny helicopters. They are equally unimpressed by your ability to "run the table." Now you trade stories about your fairly sad Fidelity accounts and your accomplishment of being told you are in relatively good shape for your age during your regularly scheduled physical.
16. You no longer blackout and celebrate it. You hide your blackouts by saying you browned out, which is supposedly better. You remember just as little, feel twice as bad, and lose the same amount of friends, potential clients, and future employment opportunities as you would if you "blacked out."
17. Sally Mae starts sending you weekly letters reminding your that no matter how much you make you have to chop that in half and hand it over in large lump sums. This results in you having less money, thus less swagger, and inevitably less sex.
18. You are trying to collect art. Nothing too expensive yet since that is out of your ballpark, relax there Mr Rembrandt. However you start to acquire an eclectic taste and get excited about a canvas painting that would look "lovely" in your 4x6 sq ft dining room. Before art was simply paper posters of Sopranos scenes devout of any sort of framing that were taped crookedly to your wall. The only reason it is up in the first place is to cover up the hole in the wall you made during a tragic flex-off accident. Good decision. Great thing your parents put down that security deposit. They have a better chance of Bob Barker coming up to them on the street and handing them a 100K check than ever receiving 13 cents of that deposit.
19. Crashing your Audi into a bank of America building while doing a routine 30 MPH reverse move to the wall ATM ripping off all axels and the front left quarter panel now results in months of bills. In college, it was the third call of the week to mom saying; "I fucked up." This of course was followed by crying. sitting Indian style and stating that if you have to pay to fix it, you will be eating Ramen noodles for the next thirty days. Fortunately your parents get you a new car, yet you still eat Ramen.
20. Going for "a run" is a seven mile trek next to the Charles River where you cough up blood and other unknown organs onto the sidewalk. Vigorously trying to shave off a few lbs because its going to be nice this weekend and you are going to the beach. It does not mean, contrary to popular college belief, that you are going to the liquor store for a larger than average purchase for a group of people.
21. Instead of collecting beer and wine bottles to "decorate the apt" you have decided to start putting them into blue bins regularly so people can come and pick them up on a weekly basis. I think that is called recycoping...IDK I will figure that one out.
22. Now you move about your overly crowded apt building asking people to turn down their TV programs because you are trying to sleep and the walls are thinner than Mary Kate Olsen's left wrist. In college you would actually have competitions with the stereo, testing out its bass ability and overall trying to shatter the eardrums of those around you. The only noise that you have asked to ever keep down was the random stranger in your bathroom who is scream vomited profusely into your bathtub since it is irritating the girl who decided to spend the night. You are trying to calm her down but simply cannot remember her first or last name.
23. You play tennis on Saturdays and trivia on Sundays instead of Beer Olympics and stressful games of who's in my mouth.
24. Asher Roth and Kayne West/Lil Wayne Lollipop no longer show up on EVERY mix tape you have. Instead your get a mixture of coldplay, the verve pipe, Michelle Branch, Creed, and all the other bands that suck infinitely more, reminding you that as you get older you completely lose your taste buds for anything good.
25. A big night out today is as follows; a meet-up with the guys at your favorite restaurant after tirelessly interviewing many other qualified restaurant candidates. This date is arranged through an extensive email chain of complaints, and I cant to that's. Finally you decide, half of the guys leave after the meal to meet up with their girlfriends, the other half chuck back six tums and a pepcic AC to help mitigate the projected acid reflux that has been spiking up more and more lately. You go to a cigar bar, exit jubilantly, but more tired, drink espresso and attend a bar that you heard was "sick." You dance, you flirt awkwardly with younger girls who are taking picture of you to send to their guy friends saying "look at this fucking old man doing the dice dance again trying to talk to Katty." You keep drinking, you "brown out," your fucking reef flip flops are all wet from the beer your boy spilled and they look worse than they already did while you were trying to look like a frat boy. You all leave the bar in one heaping pile of failure supporting each other emotionally and physically while trying to side-step and text girls who will NOT answer at 2am for a little "late night lovin." You all sleep in one guys apartment who has the most space. This is because he makes more money and thus has 1/2 as much free time to have epic nights like this, already regretting agreeing to this slumber fest.
In college your would have drank til eleven, went out without thinking about what to wear, found a gril who was barely keeping it together. You would then stumble back to your friends apartment to have sex, because it was funny, you could have easily went back to your apt or her dorm. You fall asleep, wake up, and do it again. The total amount of hours that you spent "out" is vastly lower than that of the new you, but in the latter of the two options you succeeded in your goal.
I like to thing I do have just about as much fun in college as I do not, but I sincerely can say I do pay for it much more now.
Good lord, college.
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