Madeline Bryce / Daily Nexus

Society always seems to warn against peaking in high school: “The best years of your life are still ahead of you,” “High school doesn’t define who you are.” But what are we supposed to do once we have lived through our best years, and the only thing left are years of toil and rapid aging? 

What are we supposed to do if we’re leaving college and have to confront real adulthood? The answers are too harrowing, so here are some ways to delay acknowledging the inevitable —  that you are old and washed out, and it’s no longer socially acceptable for you to be walking around in a bikini. 

1.Undeclare your degree candidacy 

This gets right to the heart of the problem. You don’t want to graduate? Don’t graduate. Log on to GOLD, undeclare your candidacy and try to eke out another one or two years from your undergraduate student status. This might be a little hard on the budget, and difficult to explain to your parents who were expecting to stop paying your tuition. But, maybe they’d understand the situation: after all, who would willingly give up the daily surfing and day drinking to work a full-time job? 

2. Drink a lot

Another solid strategy. If you can’t walk straight or think straight, you don’t have to think about the cap and gown waiting for you to walk across that graduation stage. Drinking will numb the pain, as they say, and it will also help you forget you have no job lined up. In fact, drinking will help prevent that crashout that’s been brewing since Week 3 of the quarter, and might be the only real solution to drowning your sorrows. 

3.Talk to an academic advisor and get informed your credits are invalid

Sure, you haven’t visited an academic advisor the whole time you’ve been at school, but better late than never. The academic advisor is definitely plan B, but they aren’t likely to let you down. They’ll take one look at your transcript and point out “FAMST 69: History and Culture of the Bush,” which you took during your quarter abroad and inform you that it actually isn’t applicable to your degree. Just like that, you are still a student, and the end isn’t so near. 

4.Be a squatter 

If they can’t get you to leave your college house, have you really left college? The answer, looking solely at the physical location of your body, is no. And that sometimes has to be enough. After all, your college house is the most essential part of your college experience, and who would want to let go of all the memories? All your friends might’ve decided to gracefully say goodbye and move on, but why should you accept defeat so readily? If you switch where you sleep and only move around while the new tenants are in class or running errands, you’ll likely remain undetected for a long period of time. You can keep an eye on the house and make sure that it’s being treated with the care it deserves. 

5.Continue to attend classes

The drive to learn doesn’t cease when you toss your cap at graduation, and why should it? You might not pay tuition, and your TA might not have your name on their attendance sheet, but that shouldn’t stop you from pursuing more knowledge. As you sit next to enrolled undergraduate students, you’ll of course start to feel like one of them, and the illusion will become your reality. Participate in lectures, go to office hours and let the lines between lie and truth become so blurred that even your professors won’t know what’s happening. 

Serrano Ham will be young forever and will never be afflicted with the “graduation” curse.