10 Signs It's Your Last Year of College

The dream is coming to an end.

January 22, 2014

Image via Complex Original

With the eighth semester finally under way, many of you college seniors will spend the next four months lamenting the numbered days until graduation. From bong rip fundamentals to how to use a torrent site, you've learned so much over the last four years and it's just about time to move on. The next 14 weeks will be a tear-stained tribute to the time of your life, and what better way to kick start the drunken nostalgia than with a reminder of just how far you've come? Pour a two story beer bong for these 10 Signs It's Your Last Year of College. This is going to be epic.

Written by Sean Evans (@seanseaevans)

After four year’s worth of parent weekends, your mom has a lethal beer pong stroke.

After seven semester’s worth of drinking games, mom is bouncing balls in and shoots better from the field than Stephen Curry. It’s 4 a.m. at the Pike house, and this woman’s in the basement steady running the beer pong table like Minnesota Fats in high waisted jeans. She’s come a long way since freshman year.

No occasion is too formal for sweatpants.

You know how old people give zero fucks about hitting up the grocery store in a sweat-stained muumuu and sandals with socks underneath? Well, college seniors develop that same slovenly disposition. It’s like they have the world figured out at 22-years-old and no longer feel constrained by basic levels of social grace. From the classroom to the bar, an elastic waistband is never out of place.

Basic photos are finally beginning to outnumber beer bong and keg stand action shots.

When you first go to school, each Instagram pic is a not-so-subtle way of telling the world that you can funnel boxed wine with relative impunity. From two story beer bongs to minute-long keg stands, every image communicates a celebratory message to your social network. You’re in college and you’re having an awesome time.

Unfortunately, senior year has you fiending for a basic ass internship or entry-level gig, which means next level privacy settings for that picture of you taking a tequila shot out of a stripper’s cleavage in Cabo San Lucas. From here on out, it’s just LinkedIn appropriate headshots and digitally filtered selfies. It’s sad, really.

It takes more than an Advil and a Bloody Mary to cure a hangover.

As a sophomore, you could rage on Friday night like a young Gary Busey and wake up in time for football block on Saturday morning. But, by senior year, those Fireball shots and molly chasers start to take their toll. By the time you’re 28, three hard ciders on a Saturday night will have you calling in sick to work on Monday morning. It's all downhill from here.

The same people are in all of your classes.

Yup, now it’s just you and the other eleven souls who thought it would be a good idea to major in Folklore and Mythology.

Review days and exams are the only reason to show up for class.

You have the pace of higher education down pat by now. Some attend college to expose themselves to new ideas and different ways of thinking. But you’ve pretty much pegged this farce as a $100,000 social filtering process and you’re content to treat it as such. For every minute you spend in class, you allot a half hour for Netflix.

You’ve curbed your propensity towards drunk texting considerably.

At 19-years-old, you couldn’t stomach a six-pack without mass-texting Drake lyrics and crying on the phone with your senior prom date. After three years of scrolling your call history in mortified disgrace, you’ve learned to keep your phone in your pocket. It’s good that this is out of your system.

You’re wildly optimistic about starting your career.

LOL. You’re excited about beginning your career because you think it’ll afford you the freedom to purchase area rugs from Crate & Barrel without the imminent threat of financial ruin. But it also means spending most of your daylight hours inside the barren, tormenting walls of a cubicle. Enjoy these last few months of freedom, kiddos, because there's no going back.

Or, you’re stressed the f*ck out about not having a job lined up.

Without an entry-level job, you’ll have no choice but to return to your summer gig at Papa John’s with six-figure’s worth of student loan debt hanging over your head. Your shift manager will throw passive-aggressive shade your way, and you’ll probably end up shamefully delivering an order of wings to that hot chick from your high school. Life kicks everyone’s ass eventually; you’re just getting an early start.

The dream is almost over, but it doesn't seem real.

During your senior year, you’ll do a lot of, “OMG this is our last time we [fill in the blank].”

You’re reminded constantly that these are the best years of your life, but in the moment they don’t seem all that extraordinary, mostly because you wake up 11:30 and watch a fuckton of Dexter. But, for the rest of your life, you’ll work incredibly hard for the opportunity to once again wake up at 11:30 a.m. and watch a fuckton of Dexter. That’s the dream, really.