In our senior year at high school all we can think about is university applications and how wonderful our lives will be the minute we graduate and fly off to live our dream lives. The reality of the situation is slightly different. Here is a list of things that no one tells you about life after high school.

HOW NOT GLAMOROUS UNIVERSITY LIFE IS

University life is not all what it’s chalked up to be. It’s not as glorified as it is made in the movies. If you’re expecting a meet cute with your soulmate, it’s not happening. In fact, you’re going to be lucky if you can make a good group of friends at university.

Why is that, you ask? Because university has the tendency of sucking the life out of you. Assignments, midterm one, midterm two, finals, projects, group projects—must I go on?

If you thought high school was hard, you’re in for a ride. The worst is yet to come.

EARNING YOUR OWN IS HARD

You are now at an age where you have to start earning for yourself and it’s not as easy as you may have thought it would be. The first difficult task is to look for a job that’ll pay well after which you will want to make sure the job is one you can enjoy because who wants to do something that’ll ultimately make them miserable.

You start to realize the just how costly it can be to live a comfortable life and start to thank your parents for it.

TIME MANAGEMENT IS DIFFICULT

After high school we start to realise that there’s much more to manage than just studies and a decent social life. Many of us get jobs and start working towards our dreams. We worry about our possible career options and start to work towards building something. But we can’t just work on our careers because we do have to earn some sort of a living. Through all of this we also need to try and maintain the little bit of a social life that we have left.

But no matter how many times we plan and re-plan a routine that we promise to stick by, there are never enough hours in a day.

THERE ARE TONS OF DECISIONS TO MAKE

Choosing your major and your university isn’t where the major decision-making stops. It is only just the beginning. You have to decide which of your dreams and goals you want to work towards, you have to decide whether you will spend the next weekend trying to rebuild your dying social life, or catching up on the papers that you need to write. You need to decide whether you want to ditch classes to recover from your flu, or power through and attend the class while you feel terrible.

You have to carefully decide when you want to take a day off because you barely get any.

These are just the small ones, and as you go through life things will come up that’ll change your idea of how things would go. Things don’t go according to plan and you need to make changes accordingly.

No one may have told you about these things but you’ll do fine. We all figure it out on the way and that’s the best way to learn. Make mistakes and learn from them and prepare to face a new set of challenges that may give you a new perspective on life. This is what will help you survive the rest of your life, by preparing you to adapt to any situation that’s thrown at you.

Syeda Erum Noor is dangerously oblivious and has no sense of time. Send help at erum.noor1998@gmail.com