Top Tips for Graduates

As a continuation from my wildly successful post on How to Write an English Essay, I have composed a list of my top tips for those of you who are about to graduate this year. It is a list of things I wish people had told me, or things I tried to ignore as the impending doom of 'real life' slowly approached. But you can ignore it no longer...

1. Graduating is expensive. Never mind the fact that you've had to fork out thousands of pounds for just under nine hours of actual teaching a week, you'll have to fork out at least £40 for a cap and gown that you will only ever wear once. And it will constantly slip off your shoulders and/or strangle you.

Then there's the extra tickets for your siblings and aunties and grandparents and cousins who want to see the reward of three years hard graft, but didn't really know how to help you when you were having a nervous breakdown over the last 1,000 words of your dissertation with just empty chocolate wrappers for friends.

Glory hunters, the lot of them.

On top of that there's a graduation dress or suit and then photos and then a meal and then a hotel room. Graduation is definitely a real money spinner. I might start my own business in ripping off future grads...

2. On graduation day you'll see lots of people from your course who you thought had dropped out in first year. 'How the hell did THAT guy pass?'. You'll also meet lots of tutors from your department who you never knew existed and they will all want to shake your hand. 'Hello person who I've never met.'

I genuinely have no idea who this person was, but I was very happy to see her. Maybe it was Professor Trelawney?

3. It will probably rain.

4. No one will be able to get the 'throw your caps up in the air' picture right.

5. Upon graduating you'll realise just how much spare time you wasted during university. Or you'll have even more free time because you're unemployed. Hello Lost boxset!

6. Nobody actually cares about the in's and out's of all the essays you had to toil over to get that tiny slip of paper at the end. Even if some of them probably removed years from your life with the amount of energy drinks / pro plus / pizza you consumed just to get through to the end.

7. Once you're no longer a student or a graduate, you'll just fade into the grey area of being a 'twenty-something'. Full price cinema tickets have never been so expensive...

8. Freshers have never looked so young.

9. Despite numerous promises to meet up with old course mates, you probably won't see 80% of them outside your Facebook newsfeed. Unless you've all stayed in the same city.

Let's end on a happy note!

10. Never again will you be forced to spend £40 on a book you'll only use once. No more essays! Nor more blagging your way through seminars! No more all-nighters! No more footnotes!

Happy Graduating!