When you’re in college, it’s easy to take a lot of things for granted. Trust me, I would know. I’ve been out of school for a year and a half, and for starters, y’all don’t know how good you have it with financial aid. If you qualify for it, financial aid is basically the best thing in the world.

Free money to help you with your rent, textbooks, and transportation to and from school every day just magically appearing in your bank account?! Amazing. That is not a thing that happens after graduation.

If you’re in college, here are some things you should be taking advantage of right now while you still can:

1. Free stuff

When I was in school, people from numerous organizations were always showing up to the quad and various other parts of campus and handing out free stuff. Pencils, pens, keychains, condoms, sunglasses. You usually had to spin a prize wheel or watch a ten-second informational video in order to obtain the aforementioned free stuff, which is not a big deal. Pens are useful, and in the post-college world, free stuff isn’t easy to come by. Spin that wheel! Get that free pen!

2. Student discounts

You can find a student discount for almost anything, whether it’s a meal (like Boudin Bakery), clothes (like J.Crew and Ann Taylor), or even a flight (StudentUniverse is dope.)

Of the places that offer a discount, most ask you to present a student ID when you purchase, so get those student discounts while you still have a student ID to flash around.

3. Affordable, accessible healthcare

Many universities have a health center on campus that allows you to make same-day appointments, get seen for free, and prescribes medication and other health aids (pregnancy tests, etc.) for either free or very cheap.

After college, going to the doctor becomes a whole thing. First, once you turn 25, you have to get off your parents’ health insurance and get your own health insurance plan, and then you have to find a doctor who takes your insurance, and then you have to make an appointment that fits into your schedule. See, it’s a whole thing.

When you can just pop on over to the health center after class, it’s a lot easier. If you have a student health center on campus, and you sprained your ankle or you need crutches or you have a weird rash on your face and you don’t know why, visit your friendly student health professionals and see what’s up. That’s what they’re there for.

4. Networking opportunities

Depending on what you’re majoring in, networking will most likely be essential in getting your first “real world” job after college. A lot of fields, like politics, film, and, ahem, journalism (that’s what I studied), are almost impossible to break into if you don’t know someone. And guess what? Your 8 a.m. Tuesday and Thursday film history class? It’s filled with 50 people you don’t necessarily like, but whom you might someday wish you had known better. That kid Thomas who sits behind you and raises his hand every ten minutes? His uncle lives in Hollywood and knows a big shot TV show producer, which may someday be a connection you’d really love to have, but you’d never know unless you made an effort to talk to Thomas and became someone he’d want to help out if he could. Every class you have related to your major is essentially a room filled with potential future experts in the field. Embrace it. Make friends. It doesn’t have to be anything intense, but like, ask people if they want to study together. Ask Thomas if he wants to grab a drink after class. Smile at people. Don’t sit in the back. And if you do sit in back, make friends with the dude sitting in the back next to you. He might end up knowing a guy who knows a guy.

5. Internships

I’m currently in the process of searching for a job related to my dang field (ha ha ha), but every “writer” or “journalism” search on Indeed.com yields at least one unpaid internship. Now, when I’m more than a year out of college, have years of freelance writing experience, and need to pay rent, that’s not very useful for me. But, in college, internships were awesome! Most schools will let you take an internship, either over the summer or during the semester, instead of a class, and still get class credit. That means that if you can find an internship in your field (check Indeed, LinkedIn, WayUp, even Craigslist), you can minimize the time you spend every week sitting in a classroom, and instead spend some time actually working in the field you hope to go into, while getting credits towards graduation! I had two internships in college and I’m so glad I did. #WorthIt.

6. Clubs

College is a great time to explore all those things you think you might be interested in but you’re not sure. As a college student, you have access to a club for basically everything - French, salsa dancing, improv, chess club - you name it, there’s an on-campus organization for it. After college, classes like this can be kind of pricey, and are a huge time commitment. Check ‘em out now! See what you think!

My intention in writing this list was not to make you nervous or concerned about life after college; it was to encourage you to take advantage of all the resources you have available to you as a college student. However, if I accidentally freaked you out a little bit, just remember this: when you graduate, you will never have homework ever again. When you get home from work, all you have to do is chill. That’s definitely something to look forward to.