Work.Retire.Die.

Editor’s Note: Today’s column is part of our Post Grad Survival Guide Series and comes from our first guest columnist, Isaac Hobbes from Intro to Introverts blog. Check out his site for more quality content.

Congratulations on barely graduating an institution of occasional high learning! If you have achieved this milestone then you are now fully cognizant that your dream of being a TikTok influencer is dead and buried. The doomsday you have avoided for four years is here: it is time you chose a more utilitarian purpose in society.

Unfortunately, life is difficult. Some graduates will choose to fight through these difficulties and persevere to a life of unappreciated mediocrity. But not you. You are a different breed with a fresh, new strategy. So, what is the special ingredient to your secret sauce?

Giving up.

Surrender is a bold strategy. But, as Queen Latifah once infamously said, “Be bold, be brave enough to be your true self.” If your true self is a big, fat quitter, then you should embrace it!

Unfortunately, life is so challenging that even quitting requires work. Ever try to get a divorce? You will eventually, and it is a lot of paperwork. How about filing for bankruptcy? What an ironically expensive process. Wouldn’t it be great if there was an abort button for life that you could hit after college? I have great news – there is! It is called your parents.

You remember them, right? Your parents are those taskmasters whose oppressive regime you spent your entire adolescence trying to escape. Turns out they actually knew what was best for you all along. Turns out you were wrong your whole life and couldn’t identify a good idea out of a lineup if it had just beaten the crap out of you in broad daylight.

So, how do you get back in the good graces of your parents?

How to Convince Your Parents to Let You Move In

1. Introduce the idea.

The first step to moving back in with mom and dad is planting the idea seed in their minds. You can’t just blurt out that you’ve given up on life and that you want to spend the rest of your life in their basement playing Fortnite. This will initiate the parental gag reflex. Hitting your parents with the cold, hard truth of your intentions will cause such a level of revulsion that they will immediately reject the idea without further consideration.

Instead, try mentioning you moving back in as a joke. If you are having dinner with your parents and your mom asks you to pass the salt and pepper, you can respond in a jovial tone, “Hey, wouldn’t it be great if I moved back into my old room? Then I could pass you the salt and pepper every night at dinner, haha!”

2. Leave everything behind.

Women have used this tactic for centuries to circumnavigate the male taboo of moving in together. The trick here is to make up excuse to visit your parents and “accidentally” leave behind several personal belongs. This will give you an excuse to return the next day and leave behind more items. They will likely be apprehensive of your newfound presence, so occasionally do something disrespectful like kicking your feet up on the coffee table and lighting up a cigar.

When your parents scold you and demand to know where you learned such a grotesque habit, you can fire back a time-honored retort like “I learned it from you, dad! I learned it from YOU!” The resurgence of your apparent disdain for them will help alleviate suspicion of your diabolical plan to move back in with them.

3. Fake a medical emergency.

If things are moving too slowing or if your parents have begun mailing your items back to you, it is time to advance things to the next level. Faking an illness or accident can be an effective way jump start your parents’ maternal instinct for you that they have been suppressing since you left for college. Illnesses like Jaundice are non-life threatening and can be replicated with simple makeup application. It is important to reinforce that all of this is just temporary until you ‘get back on your feet’.

4. Begging and Groveling.

Things may not have gone the way you anticipated. If you reached this step, then it is time to dispose of whatever microscopic dignity you have squirreled away. When begging to move back in with your parents, it is important to maintain a high, irritating pitch to your voice.

Your goal has now transitioned from earning your parents’ acceptance to settling for their begrudged compliance. Eating a large entrée of spicy Indian Phaal Curry before speaking with your parents will do wonders for opening your sinuses and tear ducts to really sell the agony that you are feeling.

5. Take legal action.

If indulging your laziness and ineptitude is more important than cultivating lasting relationships with the people that sacrificed it all trying to raise you not to be the way you are today, then it is time for the nuclear option – filing a lawsuit. You can begin by building a case against your parents to enact squatter’s rights. This right allows you to remain in their house without their permission indefinitely. The legal hurdle you are going to have to overcome is proving proof that you acted like an owner and contributed financially to the house’s operation over the years (which is highly doubtful).

Your best course of action would be to make the case that your parents created a high level of dependency in you that stunted your independent growth and need for autonomy. Regardless of the suit’s outcome, you are going to have a lot of uncomfortable Thanksgiving Day dinners in your future.

There you have it! A fool-proof formula for getting your parents to regret having you. Hopefully, you learned a lot over the course of this guide. If you didn’t learn anything, then it was probably reminiscent of all the college electives you’ve taken, except you only wasted five minutes of your time as opposed to five months.