While I do plan on doing an e-book and releasing it as it pertains to being a bachelor after college, I wanted to take this post to address some major misconceptions. Throughout your life, you have been told that college years are the best years of your life and life after college is practically all downhill as far as fun and making friends goes. I was told this constantly how after college, “real responsibilities” start. Well, you have been told a lie. While what you were told may have been true decades ago, it is no longer true now.
Here are five of the biggest misconceptions about post-grad life.
1 – Everyone “settles down” and starts a family.
The average age of marriage has been getting older and older every year, even reaching past 30 in many states. I would not be surprised if the average age goes to 40 in a decade given how much has changed in society. All that said, most people do not marry and settle down with their college sweethearts. Most people remain unattached for at least five or so years after college to party as hard as they can and get all of the fun out of their system. Anyone who is telling you otherwise is likely a miserable loner who wishes others were miserable like them.
2 – Women go into husband hunting mode and no longer engage in casual sex with strangers.
In reality, women are even wilder and more loose after college as they move to a big city because it is easier to keep things discrete there compared to a cliquish college town. In a college town, your typical girl who was hot and somewhat popular had a lot of eyes on her and likely engaged in the status games (via Greek Life). People were in their cliques and it became a small world because no matter how big the university, you still saw the same people over and over again at bars, the classes, and in the dorms.
After college, women often get more open to hooking up because they can get away with it easily. Even more so, women become keen on getting with guys they normally would not sleep with. An example is a former sorority girl getting with a foreign guy in a big city while in college, she would have only linked up with athletes and fraternity guys. A lot of women realize that they are progressing into their twenties and will soon have to settle down so they want to experiment as much as they can since there are no more nosy friends to deal with all the time.
3 – People no longer party hard and drink for fun.
While there is a Happy Hour culture where people drink after work, the truth is that the party gets even wilder after college depending on where you end up. I have constantly heard how NYC is like college in your twenties but the parties are more fun while women are hotter, all of this from fraternity guys who went to schools like Florida St and Penn St. You will find wilder parties and a crazier bar scene in some big cities that makes college drinking look lightweight. The truth is that people in their twenties are still young and quite a few felt that they didn’t do enough in college so they compensate for it in big city life, especially as they get the money.
4 – It’s hard to make new friends.
The people who say this are the types of people who only have “friends” because people were forced to be around them in college. It is no mystery why so many of these people whine about how they lost touch with their college “friends”, the truth is that their “friends” were likely just playing nice and never wanted to be around them in the first place. The reality is that after college, people are still down for making new friends but can easily avoid the toxic deadweights that they would have had to be around in college. Through roommates or through activities, new friendships happen all the time after college. You will probably make some of your closest and most important friends after college.
5 – You have no free time anymore.
I found that I had more free time after college than during college. With remote work on the rise, you will have even more free time than you know what to do with. The one issue I had with college is that I was never really done even when I thought I was. I always had that exam looming or project needing to be done to where I couldn’t really enjoy the night out as much. After college, when I am done, I am usually done for good and can coast. You get used to the fact, in most professions, that once you are done after work, you are genuinely done with everything.
