Since I've been in the working world, I've started realizing that there were a lot of things I took for granted in college. Some things that seemed little and unimportant in college are suddenly things that I miss the most. Here are the top four things I took for granted:
1) The free time
Going from having only two or three classes to eight hours of work every day is a huge change, and not only because it's tiring. I never thought about how much of my time I would be giving up by spending half my day at work. When I get home, all I want to do is chill out, eat something, and/or actually socialize, yet I still somehow have to make time to do all the necessary stuff like work out and clean my apartment. What gives?? I only have 24 hours in a day!
2) The freedom
Much like with the free time, I never realized how free I was at any point in my day to go do literally anything I wanted. Boozy brunch on a Thursday? Sure, as long as I didn't have a test later that day. Workout at 10 am? That's the best time to go! Being in an office, your ability to get up and leave is limited, and you have to plan things more in advance to fit them into the little bit of free time you do have. Plus, you can't just skip work like you could with class.
3) The night life
Spring quarter of my senior year was filled with countless nights out to get drinks with friends. Seriously, the bouncers at World of Beer stopped carding me because they all knew me from my 2+ outings there each week. It was kind of ridiculous. (Side note: I went to graduationg with a WOB stamp on my hand and I found it really fitting.) Now, that's not really an option. I start visibly drooping by about 9:30 every night, and if I'm not in bed by 11 bad things happen. So long, WOB Wednesdays!
4) The proximity to friends
This hasn't been so much of a problem yet, since I'm still in Evanston for the time being, but I can already tell that it's going to be super weird to live half a city away from lots of my friends. Once I'm in Lakeview, pretty much anyone further than five blocks from me probably won't be seeing me much, for the time management reasons mentioned above. Seriously, living with all your closest friends is really cool and likely to never happen again outside of college.
So go out there and enjoy all the things about college that you know will change!
