750 pieces of advice for new graduates
It’s been seven long years of undergraduate studies, and your parents are finally forcing you to graduate. The real world contains no real jobs, so you’re doing your best to stay in the collegiate womb. “Prostitution is on the upswing amongst new graduates, dad. Can’t I stay in school and take creative writing and athletics coaching courses for one more year?” The charade is all for not. You’ve accumulated $4.7 billion in personal student loan debt. It’s time to spend the rest of your life working it off. Welcome to America and its modern form of slavery.
Perhaps you’d like some tips? I don’t actually have 750 of them, but I’ve seen a lot of articles offering 10 or even 24 tips for new graduates, so I figured 750 tips would impress the hell out of people. There’s your first tip: Lie about everything. You have no skills or experience. Our public school system has left you dumb and underqualified. Our society has left you selfish and unreasonably horny. Your only chance to be successful in life is to lie about everything that makes you a person. Stop playing by the rules! The 2014 workplace is a Thunderdome.
Here are some other upbeat tips that won’t depress you:
- Just breathe. Take one moment to breathe. Ha! I’m kidding, that’s ridiculous advice. That suggestion literally helps no one. If anybody ever tells you that with a straight face, spit in their eye and steal their wallet.
- Don’t get discouraged too quickly. Getting fed up and bitter about every aspect of life is something that shouldn’t happen until you’re at least 25.
- Only one thing matters in life: FYM. “Fuck You Money.” Life isn’t fair, and it never will be. Your bosses will deny you pay raises to save the company money and make themselves look good. Your employers will downgrade your health insurance to save a buck or cancel your vacation plans at the last minute when work gets busy. Your co-workers will badmouth you to the bosses to increase their own value. Your wife will bang the mail carrier and possibly your third grade science teacher. Your kids will pee in all your hats while you’re asleep. None of this is fair. But if you pay off your debt in the first 5-7 years after college and reach the age of 30 with a few grand in savings, i.e. FYM, then your prize is being able to tell your boss to eat a bag of dicks and quit terrible jobs on the spot. Get that FYM, young reader. It’s the only thing on this planet that can make you truly free.
- On that note, never bang the mail carrier. They deliver mail for a living, for God’s sake. What are you gonna get out of that? Free mail delivery? You already have it. Don’t be an idiot.
- For ladies, serial dating can be a great way to get free meals and save money. It’s easy. Go on Tinder, start talking to some loser and agree to a date. After dinner is done, tell him you feel ill, go home and never speak to him again. Rinse and repeat. For guys, um . . . I’d say don’t let women do that to you, but there’s no chance of that happening. Maybe become a drug dealer instead? Drug dealers have enough money to buy pet tigers!
- On average, it takes 4-6 years to get promoted in any job. In this economy, it may take even longer. Acting entitled will not speed up that process. If you want to run a company in ten years, start your own. Or give your boss a handy at the office Christmas party. Otherwise, shut up already. You’re not special. There are no prizes just for showing up every day. The business world ain’t a game show, fool.
- Maybe you should think about teaching English to Japanese schoolgirls. That’s a thing, right? That’s a real job? Who would I contact about that? I don’t need to know Japanese, do I? I can just be an unshaven hipster with Rivers Cuomo glasses? Awesome.
- Think about including a dick pic with your resume. The employer will be going through hundreds of resumes. It couldn’t hurt. You’re already working at McDonald’s. If the photo is tastefully done, how much worse could your life get?
- Create fake Twitter and Facebook accounts using your real name. In these accounts, pretend you’re a nice person who doesn’t drink themselves to sleep every night and use all their money on Dubstep-related drug binges. Pretend to have reasonable career goals that don’t involve DJing while living in a van. Use photos where you don’t have a weird hipster mustache.
- Stop buying so much new stuff. Go to Goodwill. Bedbugs build character.
- Keep your resume to one page. Use spellcheck. Don’t put your photo on your resume. Don’t use weird fonts. Don’t use clip art. Use spellcheck. Don’t list what you did at each job, list what you achieved. Only list clubs or hobbies that imply intelligence. USE SPELLCHECK.
- Most importantly, don’t take career advice from alt-weekly humor columnists who have spent 12 years writing columns for free.