College is a special time in our lives.
We get to live by ourselves for the first time with our friends, minimal rules, and surrounded by fun and parties. During college, we live in a bubble where the game of life is played a little bit differently, and our social worlds encompass norms that do not correspond to those of the real world.
A lot of the things we do regularly in college are often frowned upon outside its community. We tend to forget this while we are within the bubble, only to be reminded of how different everything is outside of it once we leave its boundaries.
Here are 17 things that are only acceptable in college:
1. Sleeping through the afternoon daily
It’s nearly impossible to get away with doing so once you’ve got a job with set hours that will likely require you to be awake before 8 AM.
2. Eating easy mac for breakfast
Yes, easy mac is easy, cheap, convenient, and yummy, but hardly contains any of the nutrients needed to give your day the proper start. I’m telling you this now so no one else does if you show up to work eating Velveeta at 8:30 AM.
3. Spending no time alone
We eat, sleep, and do everything else in between with our friends right by our sides. However, when everyone has different jobs in different areas, and you’re not all bound together within the realms of a college town, you’re going to realize that getting everyone together is a lot more difficult.
4. Pulling all-nighters
In college, it may be no big deal to spend all night finishing a presentation or studying for a text that ensues the next morning and still prosper. Try pulling that in the real world, and you’ll be screwed.
5. Going out three or more nights a week
We push ourselves to our limits by partying Thursday through Saturday night, day drinking, and going out on random weeknights when college bars tend to offer special deals. Unfortunately, this lifestyle is no match for the real world, where you’ll probably find yourself often going out no more than one or two nights a week.
6. Eating pizza like it’s a food group
Pizza is a way of life when you’re in college. It’s eaten for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and serves as the ultimate drunk food. I would be highly hesitant to believe any 30-year old that told me he or she still eats pizza as often as in college.
7. Wearing sweats all the time
Why waste the time and energy to put together real outfits when you can just throw on sweatpants and a sweatshirt? This attitude may settle as normal in college, but is far from it in the world outside, where you actually need to look presentable with real clothes.
8. Taking naps in the middle of every day
That daily nap or two may get you through a day of college classes so that you’ve still got enough energy to go out at night, but good luck finding the time to sleep in between a real workday.
9. Stealing from frat houses
It’s common knowledge that stealing is wrong, but in college, no one thinks twice when sorority girls steal from frat houses. In fact, it’s pretty much expected. Just remember that when you’re older, it will no longer be acceptable to just go to people’s houses, steal things, and put them on display in your kitchen.
10. Dust that has been on your floor for weeks
We get away with ignoring the accumulating dust and often only sweeping when it gets really bad (or not even doing it at all), but it’s okay because we’re lazy college kids.
11. Wearing hoodies over your outfit every night you go out
We wear our frackets (frat-jackets) when it’s cold outside and throw them into people’s rooms once we get into the actual frat house. However, college is the only time it is customary to wear a sweatshirt over your outfit when you go to a party. In the real world, people actually wear jackets (gasp), sometimes even needing to place them at a coat check—I know, foreign concept.
12. Wearing more of your friends’ clothes than your own
Living in the same vicinity, it is only expected that you and your friends will swap clothes so many times that you've lost track of whose clothes are whose and that you put together outfits from multiple of each other's closets. After all, what are college friends for, if not for the supplementary closets?
13. Running for your life every time you hear the words “free food”
Yell these words at an elementary school and at a university, and I promise the college students will be more excited than the children. Ultimately, you’re going to have to put this habit behind you once you leave the college bubble, when running for food at the office table or a party buffet will be met with whispers and weird looks.
14. Pretending to take notes when you’re really taking BuzzFeed quizzes
It’s easy to get away with this when you’re sitting in a lecture hall filled with hundreds of other students, but not so much when you’re working at your desk or sitting at a meeting surrounded by your colleagues.
15. Turning everything into a drinking game
It’s practically second nature to try of fun, cool, new drinking games, so why not turn everything into one?—the thought process that ensues as normal solely throughout these unique four years of life.
16. Sleeping in a twin-sized bed with 1-2 other people
It’s one thing if you ask me to share your twin bed during a sleepover in college, but a completely different situation if you’re asking me to share a twin bed with you anywhere else. In fact, if you ask me to share a twin-sized bed with you in my hometown, I will simply laugh and walk away.
17. Watching Netflix for hours at a time
Enjoy this time period, where it is easier to procrastinate, blow off responsibilities, and spend hours laying in bed binge-watching TV shows than it ever will be again.
Clearly, this is the time of our lives where we can do the fun stuff without anyone’s judgment, which is why it’s important to live it up while we can! Before we know it, we’ll be back in the real world . . . where we may need to adjust a few of these habits (scariest thought).
