The hardest part of life after graduating college is that there are no more graduations. Till then, each year of your life had a natural cycle. By just keeping awake and not being a complete fuck-up, you moved on to the next level. It’s like a video game where you just advance to the next level every three minutes regardless of what you’re doing. Every spring brought the end to one grade and every fall advanced you in status, responsibility and trust.

After college, everything is just life. Mondays are the beginnings of the week and Fridays are the end. Repeat pattern. Seasons have almost no inherent relevance and the passing of a full year doesn’t naturally advance you.

Without a starting point or an end point, time naturally molds itself together and starts to blur. Was it three years ago I lived in that apartment on Spring or was it five? Have I really been a vegetarian for seven years?

Fortunately, there are ways to keep the academic schedule going by attending graduate school. This looks like as good of a reason for getting a graduate degree as any. Your life becomes scheduled for a few years and then you return to the constant time loop with a degree that whispers the word, “Qualified.”

Over the past month, I’ve seen a lot of graduation pictures thanks to Myspace and Facebook. People stand in their robes with their arms around their parents, with that “this means I’m better than you,” smile. While I envy them for being able to continue a year over year structure you can only get in academia, I don’t envy them for their education. In the years since I’ve graduated college, I’ve gotten a few advanced degrees of my own.

Masters in Frat Removal

When I graduated college, I considered myself quite cultured. I knew about art, literature, music and film. Unfortunately, what I realized I knew about these was that museums would be more fun if they served beer, books are hard to read when you’re drinking beer, music and beer equal dancing and the best movie in the world involved a thirty pack in the fridge.

I wasn’t associated with any Greek letters, but I knew I was a little too frat oriented when I realized the first thing I did when seeing someone’s apartment was sizing up the kitchen table for a game of beer pong.

Masters in Chin Anthropology

You can learn a lot about how to loose a double chin when you’re too poor to eat 5 meals a day on your meal card and aren’t swallowing an extra 2,000 calories before going to bed every night.

Masters in Anatomy

It varies for most people, but at about 25 you start to think every single pain/freckle/bump/headache is cancer. Why haven’t they invented a home cancer detector yet? People would use it 5-10 times a day.

Masters in Old English

The older you get, the more you learn to adopt phrases complaining about being old. Something about saying, “I can’t eat spicy things like I used to,” gives us comfort instead of shame when you push towards 30. Other phrases that apply: “My bones hurt,” “I’m too old to stay out all night,” and “I have high blood pressure.”

Masters in Renter’s Law

When you live in a slum, you learn your rights as a renter pretty quick. You also learn the eviction laws even quicker when you stop paying rent in protest.

Masters in Convincing Behavior

When I said, “I could never settle down with one girl”, I meant, “I need some insurance I won’t die alone and that if I don’t reproduce than my life will have zero purpose.”

Masters in Advanced Prepubescent Flirtation

When I was in high school, the best thing I could say to a girl was, “Do you want to go for a ride?” In college it was, “Do you want to come over?” Now, I can blow high school AND college kids out of the water with, “Do you want to go to Vegas?”

Masters in Convincing Psychology

“This blog has a purpose. I should be writing this blog more frequently. People want to read my blog because people want to hear what I have to say”

PhD in Podcasting

I’ve learned so many things from free podcasts. I’ve learned that 1066 was a pivotal year in Western culture. I’ve learned the best way to achieve goals is to write them down and I’ve learned that Benjamin Franklin had a really annoying voice.