I am officially a University of Pennsylvania graduate! Thank you, thank you! I’m accepting any and all monetary gifts to my home address, as I’m now home, unemployed, bumming around the house, not doing a damn thing, and actually loving it! A life of zero responsibilities is what I call living!
They always say that once you hit the real world, you’ll start to miss college desperately. Well, I haven’t exactly started paying bills or getting up early in the morning for a job I hate…I’m still living the life O’Riley over here, so the pangs of college nostalgia haven’t exactly kicked in yet. But I do know that being home in my pajamas all day, watching TV and reading random entries on Wikipedia is going to start getting old probably…hmm…tomorrow! HOWEVER, to make myself feel a little better about being wholly unproductive and dreading the real world, I do know there are a few things I definitely WON’T miss about college! Here goes…
1. The residents of West Philadelphia: Most Penn students sadly do not exit the Penn bubble or even know that there is a world beyond 40th street. But no worries! Because the people of 40th Street and beyond, our beloved West Philadelphian neighbors, found their way to us! From the bubble jacket wearing/Philly bearded men to the hoards of seemingly parentless 12-year-olds who populate 40th and Walnut on Friday nights to the ratchet and wreckless regulars at Drinkers, you will not be missed.
2. Seeing lovey-dovey couples everywhere: When you’re single,
3. Frat parties: I haven’t missed frat parties since I stopped going to them in sophomore year. The sticky floors, the smell of beer, the people spilling drinks all over me had its season. But for now, I’ve moved on to bigger and “better” things (i.e. rude bouncers, $18+ mixed drinks, and creepy old men hitting on me).
4. Class participation: There’s nothing worse than hearing your alarm go off in the morning, knowing you barely got any sleep, and now having to shelp across campus to class and contribute to the class discussion on readings you didn’t do on a topic you can care less about, for the sake of getting class participation points because its worth 30% of your grade!5. Locust Walk: While this is a Penn-specific aspect of college I most certainly will n
ot miss, I’m sure most people can relate to a part of their campus that by senior year, you’d mapped out ways to avoid in order to protect yourself from running into basically anyone you just don’t feel like seeing or talking to. Whether it’s the person from your class who sees you and you see them, but you both wonder whether your relationship status as “classmates” requires either of you to actually say hello. Or the guy who you had a drunken encounter with who you’d prefer never to see again, but of course the very second you step foot on Locust Walk, there he is walking right towards you. God loves to play sick jokes on people and Locust Walk was his playground. Locust Walk, you most certainly will not be missed.6. Group projects: Along with annotated bibliographies, group projects are just about the worst assignment a professor can assign. The last thing I want to do is see my inbox flooded with emails from four different group members or spend my Friday at 9pm in a seminar room working on a project because for some odd reason this is the ONLY time everyone is free. Unfortunately, I’ve heard group assignments follow you into the real world, but let’s at least hope people have developed some common sense by then.
7. Drunk munchies: I realized I was at rock bottom when Jose and Juan at Allegro’s Pizzeria became my BFFs and were providing me with doggie bags of leftover pizza to eat for breakfast. While Jose and Juan and their musings on Penn students WILL be missed, that reluctant walk into Allegros or Crackdonalds to satisfy my gluttony will not.8. Doing readings for class: I am a magazine junkie. I still subscribe to Marie Claire, Details (yes, the men’s fashion magazine), Glamour, Vanity Fair, and US Weekly. However, I barely ever found time to read any of my magazines because the readings I had to do for class NEVER ENDED! Like being forced to participate in class or work on a project with 4 other people, doing readings for class had become a painful chore by senior spring. I’m glad reading academic journals and chapters from textbooks are a thing of the past!
9. Being broke: I guess the one good thing about the real world is having a real job and making real money. My microscopic $8/hour paychecks from working at the housing assignments office barely ever made it past a weekend. Forcing myself to eat the poison at the dining hall instead of buying food in order to save money, was never fun. Moreover, in a sick and twisted way, the one thing I can really look forward to about the real world, is paying bills! Once you can afford to start paying bills, that means you’re probably making some real money. And then I can just look forward to being broke again.
10. My neighbor who lived in Harnwell 402: This year, I lived in a pretty dope single apartment with my own living room, kitchen, and bathroom. Although I lived alone, it sometimes felt like I had a roommate. Two roommates actually…them being my neighbor and his girlfriend in the apartment next door. Between the lovers quarrels consisting of his girlfriend screaming and crying pathetically to them watching TV and laughing until the wee hours of the morning, don’t let my pimped out swank single apartment fool you! Times were indeed rough when living next to these two. Let’s hope paper-thin walls are unique to Penn housing!
No comments:
Post a Comment