Work.Retire.Die.

*Editor’s Note: We asked our Sam the Intern, the meme king from Study Party Die, some questions about what life is like in college these days. Check out more of their college related content here.

How much money do you have in your bank account at any one point?

This depends when mom and dad want to send me money since I am entirely incapable of taking care of myself. For me, that happens on the first of the month. Those first few days are always sweet – this is the wealthiest I ever am. I don’t even feel bad paying $26 for Chipotle on Uber eats. But this payment plan takes planning and foresight that I don’t have. By the end of the month my bank account is running on absolute fumes. Those Venmo requests are going to sit there until the first of the month rolls around again and I can afford to pay my friends back.  

What do you think will be the worst part of being an adult? 

Where do I start with this one? From the content of this blog it seems like just about everything. But that’s what makes it funny and can’t all be truthful. . . right?? The worst part has got to be the money. Sure, I’m nearly broke most of the time right now, but it’s not actually my money. I pay for extracurriculars myself, like if I want to go golfing or to a concert, but my rent and food are taken care of. That’ll be out the window as an adult and I’m just not sure I’m ok with that. Rent in any major city is ridiculously expensive but that’s also where the most jobs are.

I also like avocados a lot and they cost $7.50 for a 4 pack at Trader Joes. That’s nearly $15 a week on just avocados if I’m eating one a day- how much longer is that sustainable? It’s questions like these that will be the worst part of adulting.   

3.What social media app do you actively consume or post on the most? Is it weird if you see someone making lots of Tik-Tok videos?

I don’t post much on any of my personal social media accounts. This is true for most of my friends too. Most of us are once or twice a year instagram posters and don’t venture much on other socials. Facebook is completely dead for people my age. All it’s good for is planning and inviting people to larger events, or buying a used couch from Facebook marketplace. I personally use Twitter the most. It easily has the funniest/best content of any platform.

I don’t necessarily think making lots of tik tok videos is weird, but it does suck when they make it a big deal to everyone else. Yelling at me to be in your tik tok or continually announcing how many views you’re getting and how you’re going to be “famous” is wildly annoying. Please shut the fuck up.      

4. How much do you cheat in school ??

Who’s asking? I have never, nor will ever cheat. I’ll speak on behalf of the people who do cheat, which by the way I do not condone. During online school essentially everybody cheated. School honor codes are a ridiculously weak attempt at stifling cheating, too. I’m not sure how administrators thought that having a cute little saying about my honorability would actually make anyone think twice about cheating. Except me, of course.

If professors are too lazy to make their own tests and just copy all the questions from a textbook, it seems fair that people can just copy the answers too. Last thing I’ll say on this is that a lot of schools have grading policies for upper division courses. At mine, there can’t be more A’s than B’s. Hypothetically I could get an A, but enough people had a higher A than me and so I get a B. If you’re competing against your classmates for grades and they’re all cheating, you should probably cheat too.     

5. Did you learn a single thing during distance learning / zoom classes?

Nope, not a thing. Like I said above, every teacher just took their exam from a list of pre-written questions and it took 10 seconds to find the answers. Some of my teachers didn’t even have classes on zoom and instead just assigned readings and homework without ever teaching a lesson. It’s fair to say we were all lazy during that time, teachers included, and scraped bye doing even less than the bare minimum. While I didn’t learn anything, I did get some of the best grades I’ve ever gotten in school and saved my GPA. I’ll make that trade every day of the week. Knowledge may be power, but I’ve never been particularly power hungry.     

6. Why do so many people play beer die now?

It’s simply a better drinking game than beer pong. You get to play outside, it’s much more active, and a contact sport. If you shoved someone during beer pong you’d look like a real tool, but in die it’s just part of the game. I think people also like it because of the learning curve. It’s essentially impossible to be terrible at beer pong – all you have to do is throw a ball in a cup that’s five feet away. You can certainly be bad at die since it requires good hand eye coordination and just a bit of technique. It can be a great way to embarrass your uncoordinated friends. This makes the games much more competitive than other drinking games and more fun too.  

7. How many nights a week do you drink ?

Depends on the week. Syllabus week (the first week on the semester/quarter when teachers only explain their syllabus and you have no work) I’ll drink pretty much every day of the week. It’s just very easy to get away with it. As my classes progress I’ve obviously got to cut back on that, though. Big party nights at my school are Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday. Reserving two of these for drinking a lot and one for drinking in moderation is usually a good formula.

When midterm week and finals week come around, though, I’m usually on the straight and narrow. Thankfully I’ve maintained the ability to just not drink for a week when it’s crunch time and I need to be on my A (usually more like B-) game. Taking a big test or turning in a big paper is always cause to celebrate, so the days after a big week have the tendency to turn into benders. When it comes to drinking, I like to turn to my favorite adage: Everything in moderation, including moderation.   

8. If you found out one of your friends slept with a teacher would you find that cool or kind of weird 

Very cool, unless the teacher is questionably older than my friend. A lot of professors have TA’s who are just graduate students, and I count that too. Heading into office hours with a nice shirt on and bringing a small gift, like an apple, can go a long way (or so I’ve heard). It really isn’t a risk at all to the student, but the teacher could easily lose their job in the wake of a one night stand with a student. To be fair I haven’t heard of anyone at my school having done this, and there are hardly any good looking teachers anyway. Most of mine are at least 45 years old and have families and I refuse to homewreck. Cool? Yes. Realistic? No. 

9. What are you most scared about with graduating?

Going back to what I said about cheating in school and learning literally nothing over zoom, I’m definitely scared about not knowing enough at my first real job. I’ve been working off the “fake it till you make it” playbook for a very long time now and I’m just praying it doesn’t catch up to me. Technically I’ve taken 2 accounting courses, but if you asked me to make a balance sheet I wouldn’t know where to start. I’ve heard that you learn in training programs once you get a job, which makes me wonder why I even went to college in the first place. Thanks for this very expensive 4 year vacation, mom and dad. If that’s not true though, I’m more or less completely fucked. 

I hope you young to slowly approaching middle aged adults have learned something about the ins and outs of college life. Maybe it brought you back to the good old days of having the choice between buying food or beer for dinner, and choosing the latter.