Dear CollegeMags,
Girlfriend, I know you’re probably walking around campus thinking you’re some super badass who owns college, but here’s some news: YOU DON’T. Sure, classes are a breeze and you can chug two 40s of Old English without puking, but there is something essential to existence that you are missing: knowledge of basic life skills.
Yes, you know how to dress yourself (sometimes) and make a mean PB & J, but there are some other essential skills most people will assume you know. Once revealed that you don’t know these skills, there is really no recovery. Don’t worry, it’s nothing you did. Sadly, you missed many of these life lessons due to you being an upper middle class bitch. Such is life.
You get a free pass freshmen year because all upper classmen look down on freshmen regardless of their skills because freshmen are always the worst at everything ever. But you really need to get some of these skills down prior to sophomore year because then you are supposed to be the one looking down at freshmen and how can you look down on people if you are terrible at life?
Here are three essential skills I want you to start working on immediately. Not to be dramatic, but if you don’t master these, well, you might as well just kill yourself.
LAUNDRY:
Please, for the love of all things holy, learn how to do your laundry. Here’s a great way to start: wait until 3AM on a wednesday night. No one will be there to see you sweating as you read the giant step-by-step directions they have on the wall for stupid college kids like you. You passed Honors Calculus. You can figure out laundry. I know part of you is scared because of that episode of Felicity when My So Called Life’s Brian Krakow messes up his laundry and turns all of his clothes pink and then becomes a date rapist. It’s OK to mess up the first few times. There’s no actual connection between messing up your laundry and becoming a date rapist. Sometimes TV lies, OK?
USING A DISHWASHER:
You don’t really need to learn this skill until you move off campus, but the sooner the better. Please save us the embarrassment of using dish soap instead of dishwashing fluid (there’s a difference, it blew my mind also) and flooding the kitchen with bubbles and then having to lie to your roommate and make her believe that she actually caused this giant mess and she should have to clean it up because you have better things to do than clean up her mess. It’s called inceptioning, it’s a thing you’ll learn about years later. Save me and Leo DiCaprio some time and just learn how to do the dishes.
WORKING A CAN OPENER:
Your roommate will have to teach you this basic skill senior year one day while you are trying to use a knife to stab open some tomato sauce. It’s pretty pathetic, but she’ll be nice about it — on the outside. On the inside you know she is totally thinking muuhahahaha, what a stupid beezey. Now if I want to run against her for president of the English Honor Society I have the perfect smear campaign “If she can’t even open cans, what else can’t she do? Probably read.” And becoming president of the English Honor Society is pretty much the only extra-curricular activity we have on our resume, so for the sake of finding employment post-graduation, please learn how to open cans.
Three small items, CollegeMags. I have faith in you. With just a little practice, you too can become a real, semi-normal human person.
xoxo,
FutureMags
