33 Things You Can’t Get Away With After Graduation

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College is awesome. It’s a magical land of drinking and unfettered, bad decisions, like Heaven, but without all those pesky morality requirements to get in. Hell, if anything, college asks you to check those at the door until they give them back with your diploma. All good things must come to an end, however, and college is no different. Though the ending will be bittersweet, you’ll move on to your next big adventure. However, there are some things you just can’t get away with anymore.

1. Streaking in the quad. The police will definitely want a word with you if you do this in your new residential neighborhood.
2. Crashing random parties in your neighborhood. You look out of place in that toga and Natty Light case helmet, King Bronidas. Especially since it’s a formal event.
3. Sleeping through your first class. It’s called “work” now, and they don’t like it when you’re late, plus your boss definitely takes attendance.
4. Sleeping later than 10 a.m. in general. People expect you to be functional early in the morning for some reason once you have a degree.
5. Going to bed at 3 a.m. is now called “insomnia” and not “I was bored.”
6. Using a test bank or cheating in some other way. In the corporate world, that’s usually some kind of felony, though occasionally it makes you millions of dollars first.
7. Drinking that poor excuse for alcohol people call $9 vodka or whiskey. The second you cross the stage, it becomes liquid hellfire that you can’t keep down.
8. 2 a.m. booty calls. The local pool of drunk people looking to bang is decidedly smaller.
9. $2 drinks will no longer be something you can find anywhere, not that you really want to drink rails that cheap anyway.
10. Remember back in middle and high school when they said don’t do drugs? You should probably adopt that policy again.
11. Various forms of organizational hazing. You can’t make the interns get you a hot dog and a pack of cigs at 3 a.m. no matter how much you want them.
12. Providing alcohol to people under 21. In college, it was being a good friend. After graduation, it’s just being the dude who hangs out at the liquor store and sketchily buys high school kids alcohol.
13. Impromptu road trips. Your boss will definitely miss you, unlike your senile, half-blind, 75-year-old history professor.
14. Spring break. Take a moment to mourn it, and whatever you do, don’t try to replicate it in Vegas.
15. Drinking every day of the week. The second your hand touches a diploma, they call that “alcoholism” instead of “drinking like a college student should.”
16. Intramural sports. You might be in a league after graduation, but it just won’t be the same. You can’t have friends on the sidelines shouting profanities at the other team with kids and wives around, after all.
17. Sleeping in a dorm, unless you’re aiming to be the new campus cuddler.
18. Living with your friends still in undergrad. It’s a difficult line to walk and usually claims your sanity and sobriety very fast.
19. Hooking up with a TA. It isn’t so much frowned upon as it would be pointless after you graduate.
20. Jello wrestling in all forms. You don’t need those blackmail photos floating around the Internet once you have a real job, and no one wants a lawyer coated in lime Jello.
21. Having sex in campus buildings, because now it’s just weird and definitely a felony.
22. Pulling an all-nighter. Your body is no longer capable of that level of concentrated work because you used it all up in college.
23. Going out Thursday through Sunday. The accumulated hangover will kill you on Monday morning.
24. Going about your day still hammered from the night before. The number of authorities along the way who could notice goes from your local traffic cop all the way up to your boss. You’ve got no chance, chief.
25. Half-assing a project for a passing grade. At your job, that usually doesn’t fly very well.
26. Breaking random things and punching holes in walls. You really want your security deposit back, and there’s no reason to take that exit sign.
27. Bar selfies. They make you look like a tool anyway.
28. Blowing every cent you have on fun activities. Bills exist after college and most companies don’t usually take “…but they had $3 shots!” as an alternate form of payment.
29. Going to paint parties. Sadly, it just seems weird when you’re pushing 24.
30. Fast food for every meal. You have a real apartment with a real kitchen now. There are no excuses to not cook.
31. Date swapping at formal functions. In the real world, those people are called swingers, and you don’t want to be one of them.
32. Showing up unnecessarily drunk to charity events. As an undergrad, this is the best way to support a campus charity. As a graduate, this is how you get the most people in one place to judge you.
33. You can retake a class, but you can’t retake a drug test.

All that being said, you can also get away with a lot more after graduation–wedding crashing, impromptu weekends gambling in Atlantic City or Vegas, buying expensive shit you couldn’t afford as a student, etc. Just because we’ve graduated, it doesn’t mean the fun is over. It just means we have to find different ways to enjoy life. So get out there, buy yourself a Tesla roadster, take a trip across the country and gamble your savings away. Just have some fun. Getting older is mandatory, but growing up after college is 100% optional.

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Jack Quesinberry

Recent graduate from the University of Maryland working in the biotech industry. I like to spend my weekends in DC ensuring my future political career will be one filled with a number of great scandals and equally great Sunday brunches. My alter ego is Whiskey Ginger.

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