10 Things I’ve Learned Since College

I’m 26-years-old, which means that thank to Drexel’s 5-year program I graduated from college almost 4 years ago. It really is amazing how many things I’ve learned in such a short period of time – about the world and about myself. And I can assure you that it definitely didn’t start the day after I graduated, there were two years of hot mess followed by a very slow start to figuring it out.

I need to eat. And if I’m hungry it’s best that I keep my thoughts to myself.
I am definitely somebody who gets hangry. It took me a while to figure this out, but if I don’t eat every few hours my brain starts to do some ridiculous things. I can continue to function for an hour or two, but I better be very careful about what I say and what I allow my brain to think during that time. There’s definitely some “nobody likes me, everybody hates me, guess I’m gonna go eat worms” that goes on if I haven’t eaten. What I haven’t learned yet is to constantly keep a snack with me to remedy that. Maybe that’s what my late twenties are for.

I cannot function on 7 hours of sleep (or less) more than one night in a row.
I didn’t realize exactly how important sleep was in my life until recently. I am much more productive, alert, and responsive when I have slept for 8 normal sleeping hours. While I will probably never be somebody who gets up super early this 11:00pm to 7:00am sleep schedule is definitely do-able. I have a theory that one of the reasons I was so hot-headed a few years ago has to do with significant sleep deprivation. (I think that happens when you decide to try out the college party years you never had at the same exact time you start your full-time job.)

How to drive any (automatic) vehicle.
Around the same time I started traveling for work I started renting a car every week. Every week the car was different. There were little cars, big cars, cheap cars, expensive cars – and even a huge truck one week. And I learned how to drive (and parallel park) them all. Maybe my late twenties will be for learning how to drive a manual vehicle.

How to travel in airports.
Along with the travel for work came learning to travel in airports. I no longer get nervous about packing, getting from point A to point B, or missing a connection. If it happens, it happens, and somebody will be there to help you figure out another way home. On a related note, I have no idea how parents travel with small children if they haven’t been through the consultant airport boot camp training that I have.

How important communication is in relationships.
I had been dating a boy for a year when I graduated from college and we moved in together. He’s an awesome guy. It’s just that we both graduated, started living together, began our full-time jobs, and started traveling for work at the exact same time. That would have been fine, but we didn’t actually communicate about how we were feeling about anything, what direction the world was taking us, or how we were going to make an extra effort to make the relationship work. Because of that relationship I’ve tried very hard to figure out how I’m feeling and communicate that to the other person before it becomes a problem. Honestly though, it’s completely still a work in progress. (Late twenties, anyone?)

Sometimes you call your parents because you know they want you to.
Most of the time that I call home I call because I wanted to call, but every so often loads of time has gone by that I haven’t called and then I just have to change my schedule around a bit to have time to call. Word on the street is they appreciate it.

My body knows what it’s doing.
If you’ve been reading this blog for a while you’ve probably figured out that I’m a hypochondriac. I tend to think something is wrong with my body and there are going to be dire consequences. In college I never really had the chance to figure out what my body’s status quo was. I was constantly either eating crap or dining hall food, I wasn’t sleeping very regularly, and at one point I was sharing a bathroom with over 20 girls. None of those things make for good regulation. Once I graduated and started to learn about the status quo I became much more aware of figuring out when things felt wrong. I’ve learned to trust that 95% of the time, my body will take care of anything that goes wrong, and that’s nice to know.

Wear my mouth guard
If your dentist gives you a mouth guard, there’s probably a reason for it. Wear it. It will save you days of headache and mouth soreness.

Sometimes you have to stop all the “feels”.
What do I mean by this? Well, in relationships I tend to say things in my brain like “I feel like I shouldn’t say I love you yet” or “I feel like if I talk about (this topic) that we’re going to get into a fight” or “I feel like he wouldn’t want to do this”. THESE ARE NOT REAL THINGS. Do you know how long it took me to learn that? 26 years. If you want to say I love you, say I love you. If you want to talk about religion, talk about it. If you don’t know what he wants to do, ask him.

Go big or go home.
You’ve got to go all out, balls-to-the-wall, and be yourself. This is example is best seen in choir rehearsals in my life. If I’m performing on the risers during rehearsal, I need to do all the moves 110% and sing out 110%, that way somebody can actually tell me if I’m doing something wrong rather than try to guess at it. This also works in terms of relationships, you need to be yourself 110% so that you can figure out if it ever has the chance of really working. My next step is to figure out how to incorporate this into my professional life, we’ll see how that goes.

Not a bad list so far, huh? I’m getting there, this growing up thing is a process. Other things I’m hoping to learn later on in my 20s include how to change things when you’re not happy, how to like IPAs, find my personal style, and how to keep better track of my things. No pressure, right?

What are some of the things you’ve learned since graduating college? Or high school? Or since getting married?