What is real life like?

[DAVE101]

I'm a privileged middle class youth that has yet to work hard a day in his life. Please educate me on what the real world is like.

I don't need to know what it is you do, (I don't care that you sit at a computer all day). Rather share with me your emotions, experiences, bills, roommates, women, your boss, coworkers, random BS, and anything else that's different from when you graduated/left the house. See, I want to live an amphoric lifestyle. I feel I may never experience any "normal" life, so I might as well read about it! Any tips/advice is useful!

P.S. This is not a trol

P.P.S. Sorry Amp, I needed to mention you somewhere.

[DAVE101]

From what I hear it is all down hill after you graduate. So this is my graphical representation of what I assume life is like (cuz all life can be summed up in a picture).

[Pokebis]

Here's a graphical representation of real life.

[Merk]

I don't need to know what it is you do, (I don't care that you sit at a computer all day). Rather share with me your emotions, experiences, bills, roommates, women, your boss, coworkers, random BS, and anything else that's different from when you graduated/left the house. See, I want to live an amphoric lifestyle. I feel I may never experience any "normal" life, so I might as well read about it! Any tips/advice is useful!

Your parents / friend's parents are probably the best example of what happens in the real world after college. A lot of how life ends up for you will depend on your job - most people will work in some sort of office in front of a computer but generally 45 (40 for work and 5 for lunch) hours of your week will be spent trying to make a living. Obviously blue collar work, doctors, athletes, and shit like that will have wildly different schedules.

Because work takes up a lot of time, your life and its social schedule will take a turn for the worst. Staying up late is no longer an option, drinking is exclusively a weekend activity, and your friends will become distant because they'll have their own lives to attend to. Once your friends get married and start a family then it's game over; you'll see them at barbecues and when schedules allow for it (ie not often). Errands like grocery shopping and cooking dinner will take up a lot of weekday free time and you will absolutely learn to loathe traffic and its impact on your time away from work.

Women are easier for sure. If a lady didn't cling onto a ringer in college then they will become desperate once they hit the workforce. Like I mentioned in that other thread, the sanctity of sex sort of dissolves the older you get and people do it because it feels good. Dating will be easier as long as you apply yourself.

Co-workers are hit or miss. The number one rule is that your co-workers are not your friends - they are your co-workers first and friends (if you like each other) second. You will talk about work and occasionally your hobbies if it comes up. Everyone it seems will have a family so be prepared to listen to people talk about how awesome their babies are. I found it hard to relate to a lot of my co-workers because I was younger and obviously don't have kids of my own. Your boss will probably be an older white guy that you'll hardly talk to if you're coming in at the entry-level. Get really good at small talk and making bland observations because that will be most of what you and your boss will discuss.

On the plus side you will have more money than you've ever had before. If you get an average (30k-35k) starting salary then you will be able to live very comfortably. Buying drinks for your friends on the weekend will be a financial non-issue and you can actually buy expensive things that you want. Personally I'd recommend living in a modest apartment at first and stay there until you really, really need a house. Try to keep your apartment rent somewhere in the range of 1/3 of your monthly income at the absolute most. Also know that buying a house comes with a lot of fucking expenses and all the maintenance is on your nickel. Bills will be rent and utilities for sure with student loan and car payments being optional.

There's a lot more but that'll get you started. I gosta go eat some dinner with the ladyfriend.

EDIT: I'm bad at grammar and phpBB style codes don't want to work lololol

[DAVE101]

Staying up late is no longer an option, drinking is exclusively a weekend activity, and your friends will become distant.... On the plus side you will have more money than you've ever had before.

Haha, sounds like I've already stepped into the real world. Granted, some of these compound each other (not drinking = full wallet). Some of this is really insightful though, good stuff Merkler. I always wondered how I had so much more free time in High School when I was in class 40 hours/week plus activies, now I see all those things I took for granted (i.e.parents).

Keep it cumming!

[mawx]

Some of this is really insightful though, good stuff Merkler.

I second this, and implore any other willing parties to share their real life experiences with the

privileged middle class youth

of IndyDDR.

Btw, I am also interested in what it is specifically that people do for work, in case anyone's willing to talk about it.

[Fluffyumpkins]

Public forums aren't really the best place to discuss this sort of thing. A few quick tips form someone who has worked in cubicle life for half of a decade:

1. Separate work from the rest of your life as much as possible without snubbing your colleagues. Don't go nuts decorating your cube. Some people might disagree with me on this, but your office shouldn't be an extension of you.

2. Drop bad college habits as soon as possible. Eat healthy, keep a cleaner home, don't play every video game that comes along, phase out pizza-express cups and mismatched chairs, spend less time on social networks, Goodwill clothes that don't fit.

3. Kill any credit card debt ASAP. This is ridiculously important.

4. Save up and buy dumb expensive things you've always wanted. Don't spend frivolously, but do make expensive purchases on things you have dreamed about for as long as you can remember. (Hot tubs, cars, arcade games, art stuff, cooking stuff.) You only live once.

5. Don't have a child. You have your whole life to raise a kid. Wait a few years before knocking a lady up.

6. Travel. Take quick weekend drives to nearby cities. This is a great time to visit your friends and see the good ol' USA. Hotels aren't nearly as much as you'd think they are, and your friends will usually house you for free anyway.

7. Ditch the deadbeats. You've probably made many friends in college that will remain in their college towns, sit around drinking and chasing skirt, and never really mature for the next few years. Odd are, since you aren't that kind of person, these are acquaintances more than friends. It sounds cold, but better to let these relationships fade away than try to rekindle them. College is unique in that these sorts of habits can be quickly explained away as 'dorm life,' and you never really knew what people were like before dorm days. Sad but true, many college friendships will not last.

8. Leave your college town. Merk will probably agree with me on this one since we know so many stagnant people that have not changed in years. People need a change in environment if they want to grow. Find a new city, meet some new people, and learn to live on your own in a new place. I moved from Bloomington to Indy (not far) and can't stress enough how crucial this was in helping me develop. I already knew a few people from IndyDDR who have since become some of my closest friends with the exception of Ho, WhiteDragon, BlackCat, BigBadOrc, and MonMotha who are all jerks and knuckleheads.

This post went on longer than I meant it to, but I like to think there are some nuggets of ChAdvice worth following. If you want other tips, listen to My Brother, My Brother, and Me:

http://www.maximumfun.org/shows/my-brot ... her-and-me

It's an advice podcast from a few guys in their late 20's that makes a lot of sense and is very relevant for us nerd-ish types.

Closing thought:

There are those that look at things the way they are, and ask, 'Why?' I dream of things that never were, and ask 'Why not?'

^---- this sort of bullshit will be EVERYWHERE and will always be impossible to stomach.

[Merk]

^^ That wildly varies on what career path and specific job you get tangled up in.

However, when you first start out for the most part you will do what you're told to do until your managers think you can make decisions for yourself. If your manager is a control freak then you'll lose some of your autonomy but at the same time I like to think it absolves you of some responsibility. Most companies worth a damn will have a decent method of training newcomers into working within their system - a lot of places have their own little nuances that you can only pick up by spending time there. Your first week at a job is almost always overwhelming but with practice all the little shit (working phones, people's names, lunches, customer tics, managerial style, etc) comes together.

If you want to get into specifics, I worked full-time out of college as a "Systems Administrator" which is a fancy term for "Computer Janitor" for a company in Indianapolis called Apparatus. The company's main business was doing contract work for Eli Lilly pharmaceuticals but as a side business they did tech support for a bunch of small businesses in the Indianapolis area that didn't want to shell out money for a full-time IT staffer. I was one of the people you talked to when your computer was not working right and you needed someone to look at it. Basically I would dick around at work until a problem arose and one of our customers gave us a call, at which point I would do my best to understand and fix the issue.

The main tool we used was a Systems Management program called "Kaseya" which allowed us to keep track of every machine that each client had and most importantly it allowed us to take remote control of their PC via VNC. Basically a customer would call and tell me who they work for, present a problem, I would log into Kaseya, find their PC (we had them organized by clients), remote in to their PC, have them replicate the problem, and then I would find a solution or pass it off as necessary. I would pretty much do this until the end of the day. Oftentimes a solution to their problem is not immediately obvious or we need more information from a flakey customer and it takes a few days to resolve an issue. Because of this, I would have a lot of unresolved issues that I would try to solve in my downtime. Finally, when I'm not doing that, I'm posting on IndyDDR or making the mistake of chumming it up with my co-workers.

For any job you have to learn how to talk to people and present things in layman terms. I was a pretty shy and awkward guy coming out of college but I learned really fucking quickly how to deal and work with people because I absolutely had to for my job. You will learn an incredible amount of stuff when you first hit the workplace, I was honestly surprised by how utterly inapplicable the shit I learned in college was to my job. Experience becomes invaluable and you'll realize that the dude with 5 years of experience under his belt is many times more dependable than the dude with a master's degree.

But anyway, that's the boring technical work stuff. Some other observations:

As you get older one of the first things to go is your fitness. It honestly does become a lot harder to stay in shape when you're jockeying a desk and dealing with cramming all the other stuff you need to get done in a day. Unless you make a real good effort to work out and diet then you'll gain some weight in the tummy department. A lot of companies get corporate discounts at gyms and such so take advantage of them if you don't have a wife and kids to tie you down.

Find out now (in college) what you want your hobbies to be in life. Once again, time will be at a premium for you later in life so find out now how you want to spend it. I'm pretty much doing the same shit (Street Fighter, Beet, DDR) that I've been doing for the longest time since it really does offer a nice distraction from the rat race.

The world is going to pass you by like a motherfucker. You've probably already gotten a sense of this in college, but time is going to fly by and you'll be older before you know it. Learn to really appreciate the simple pleasures in life and try to get out and do shit while you're young and able. Having a degree opens a lot of doors for you and it's never too late for a career change even if you're interested in something you never majored in. Live the life you want even if it means being a selfish asshole from time to time - you only have one life before you're done forever.

With your new found income and baller lifestyle I recommend getting out and traveling. Go to concerts, conventions, casinos, carnivals, or crap that interests you. Cherish your friends and spend your last years of youth going about and having a blast in some weird city. Long gone are the days of summer vacation and two week winter breaks. Remember how you really fucking hated going on a vacation with your family during Christmas and shit? More often than not that was the only time your parents got off work and had the time and resources to take the whole family out somewhere. The standard discretionary time-off period for entry-level people is 4 weeks (20 days) of work per year in addition to the standard holidays. Use that time to do something awesome.

[Fluffyumpkins]

With your new found income and baller lifestyle I recommend getting out and traveling. Go to concerts, conventions, casinos, carnivals, or crap that interests you. Cherish your friends and spend your last years of youth going about and having a blast in some weird city.

Yes. These will become your fondest memories. I saw some car commercial which emphasized, "nobody has visiting a website on their bucket list." Not a bad point. Get off the PC and travel.

[Fluffyumpkins]

I was coming out of the stairwell, and someone was walking down the hall way. We both did the left-right-left-right thing, then finally passed by one another. Some other guy in a suit about 10 ft away said, "Nice dance!"

I said, "That's funny." and walked away. This sort of thing is common in the world of cubicles.

[Merk]

Yeah that's the bullshit small talk I was talking about. People like to think they're fitting in by stating the obvious with their oh so witty banter thrown in.

Case in point, we had a half day at Apparatus once where we went out and did some community service. My group was assigned to paint some shit at one of the ghetto ass parks downtown. Not wanting to get my shit dirty, I dressed in some raggy pajama bottoms. My CEO, the literal owner of the company, pointed me out in our little huddle of nerds and said:

"Hey Merkler, nice pants did you forget to put your clothes on this morning?"

"Hah! I knew I forgot something!"

And then I was fired.

I hate co-workers because you literally cannot speak your mind around them lest you risk getting into some shit. Have an opinion that goes against the hivemind? Disagree with how your company works? Keep it to yourself, whistleblower, keep your head down and make the owner some money. There's an employee suggestion box over there that hasn't been emptied in a couple of years send your query over there.

But whatever I'm sure there's probably some really cool places to work out there I just have never seen 'em.

Sorry I don't want this to turn into a thread about hating your job - what other questions do you guys have about life after college?

[Riot]

Long gone are the days of summer vacation and two week winter breaks.

Speak for yourself!

Then again, the rest of the year is stressful and a huge time commitment, but it's nice to have kids come back and say how much they liked you or what they remember from your class. The responsibility is tough, but it's also kind of nice (and frightening) to know that you have one hundred kids that are looking to you for guidance. There are the good ones though that you feel really proud of when they do well.

Anyways, I pretty much go to work from 7-4, come home and either have more grading or planning to do, or worrying about what I'm doing the next day. Depending on what field you go into, your job will probably take over your life a little bit for awhile. This year is easier and I don't have as much planning to do, but that's because some of the classes I'm teaching are pretty free flowing and don't have a lot of homework.

People are right about the whole health kick thing. I did some health program with my work people and tried to get more in shape. Your gut will probably really start to get away from you Senior year of college when you "deserve that extra pizza for doing finals" and whatever else you might use to justify eating a ton of greasy college food. I still feel like a medium-fatty but I'm down 15 or so from college.

For me, I tried to keep my nerdy ways alive in spite of all the other responsibilities (job, wife, house obligations, etc.). I try to play as many games as I can because I feel like it's a bigger lie to pretend like I've outgrown it and that I need to be more "adult"-like, which is mainly the stereotype of gamers we've all grown up with, that games are kid stuff. I've always been at the point where I'm not ashamed and proudly talk about my gaming life with students and other people. Be nerdy and proud. We're making videogames in a class currently and all the kids talk smack about how I probably suck, then I beat them at all the games on the program and the ones they make. I wish kids played Marvel so I could thrash them.

Edit - Oh, the other thing is, for me, by the time I'm done dealing with kids all day and trying to tell this kid to stop talking, or this kid to stop getting out of his seat, or these two kids to stop bickering, etc. etc. I more often than not just don't really want to hang out with people or go places. So I apologize for people that are always wanting me to come places, but by the end of the week, the LAST thing I want to do is go drive somewhere or have things looming over my head. I just want to relax and be on a couch. That's the way I've always been and hate to have pre-existing responsibilities and things I have to do on my agenda. I love doing nothing.

[DAVE101]

If you ditch the deadbeats of your college town, move somewhere new, avoid your coworkers (where most of your time is spent), how does one have any friends? How do you meet new people? Especially when everyone but me is a deadbeat?

Dave "I'm not fat I'm big boned" 101

[Riot]

I disagree about the coworkers. I'm not saying be besties with them, but you have to go out of your way to be nice and inquisitive about their lives too. If you try to avoid them and dread the small talk, obviously it's going to be awkward. I try to be nice and empathetic and ask about their kiddies and issues, and it makes the workplace better. People care about you instead of making fun of your pants. I go to their little get togethers and stuff and it's nice to feel accepted as the new guy.

I naturally just phased out people that I didn't really care that much about except for an obligated friendship. It sounds harsh, but there were some people I hung around with because they were in the same organization or major as me, but beyond that I didn't really have any similarities or shared beliefs/hobbies. Keep those who you truly care about and enjoy hanging out with, and don't feel obligated to keep up appearances with people you don't feel like talking to. I am nice, don't get me wrong, but I don't go back to Bloomington for get togethers and stuff because... well, it would be awkward. I think people would know I don't really want to be there!

Moral of the story is be nice and keep up appearances and meaningful relationships will arise or make room for new people to come and sweep you off your feet. Keep an open mind! Maybe you and Amp will be besties one day!

[Pokebis]

This thread it tl;dr. I like my version of life better. You guys enjoy your WORDS life.