Most of the things I didn’t experienced until college are things 80% of you probably tackled your sophomore year of high school (and you probably managed to throw sex in there too). If you’re anything like me (which we’ve established you probably are not), college is the first time you do things such as:

1. Drive a car by yourself all the way to Target 10 minutes away. Which leads to the first time you’ve shopped by yourself (excluding Online, which you do every day because it’s the only mail you get and you’re trying to fill a void).
2. Realize the opposite sex aren’t all gross and scary and actually manage to make a few great friends. Of course I didn’t manage to do this until my last month of college, but you know, at least I squeezed it in there.
3. Get druuuunk. And subsequently puke your guts out.
4. Get drunk LEGALLY at your local bar or pub or drinking establishment with a cute bartender named Dave.
5. Set up your first hair appointment at a nice salon and go through with it (but only because you get a student discount).
6. Pull not one, but constant all-nighters and still manage to function all the time. My best work happened with these last minute all-nighters actually. Probably because ALL my work happened with these last minute all-nighters.
7. Go to a professor’s after hours lecture just to go, for no credit. Of course, your roommate gets credit, but she doesn’t tell you this until you’re already there.
8. Skip school a lot either for menstrual reasons (sorry boys, you probably cannot relate), or mental reasons. Probably both. My parents skipped class in college so they could play King’s Corners all day, so I do not feel bad about this. I feel that reason is much more stupid. But a little bit awesome. And of course the conversation probably actually went:

• Dad: “Oh that’s nothing. Your mom and I used to skip class all the time to snort coc—“
• Mom: “PLAY KING’S CORNERS. Yes. What an addicting card game that is.” (yes, Mom, I know you didn’t actually snort cocaine. I know you would want me to point this out).

9. You actually start thinking about what you’re doing with your life. And what you actually want to be doing with your life. And then you get really dizzy and little depressed and end up binge watching old Disney shows on Netflix.
10. Spend your nights at a library (I actually didn’t step foot in the library until senior year. I know, “but you’ve been working in a library for over two years!” Sue me. That would have involved leaving my precious Netflix and a lot of walking).
11. Have a real fight with your best friend-turned-roommate because neither of you ever had to share a room with anyone before except when you were a baby and shared what was technically the laundry room with your older brother.
12. Find yourself immersed in a variety of people from different cultures and socio-economic backgrounds. You meet people with different beliefs than your own. Like believing eating juiced carrots are better than pizza. You learn to accept these beliefs.
13. Read actual literature. And find you actually enjoy it. And then writing 15 pages about it and finding out somewhere along the 7^th page you started to hate it again.
14. Get to hear your professors swear. And tell jokes. And treat you as semi-equals. The best ones made my lectures feel more like a friendly conversation where I learned a ton of useful information (by ‘useful information’ I mean plot techniques and Shakespeare’s sexuality, and the true meaning of John Donne’s poetry. You know, things everyone finds useful in daily life).
15. Learn what you can and cannot put in a dishwasher. Usually the hard way.
16. Learn to cook beyond your blessed microwave…. To make frozen pizzas and macaroni. Otherwise, why mess with a good thing?
17. Get your first part time job while also being a student (your final semester of college. For only 10 hours a week. It helps pay for nothing).
18. Go for walks by yourself around the neighborhood (carrying your favorite knife in one pocket and your phone ready to dial 911 in the other, but hey at least you made it outside. Netflix must have been broken that day).
19. Take on your first responsibility of a living, breathing thing other than yourself (yeah, it’s a fish).
20. Watch a full season of American football… only to find out you still don’t give a shit.
21. Fail a test. But it was Philosophy of Art, so…
22. Learn you’re actually a pretty decent baker. This realization leads you to… (see below)
23. Experience intense weight fluctuation. Gaining that freshman fifteen, then losing a second semester twenty, then gaining it all back, then losing it, etc.
24. Try smoking for the first time (cigarettes, cool your jets, ma. Actually, that’s probably not better)
25. Spend your first groundhog’s day away from your family. Always a toughy. Just make sure you’re with a friend.