Are you debating picking up another major to stay in Madison for one more semester? Do you feel you lack any applicable skills? You probably do, and as I am an expert on all things college, I have compiled a list of nine ways to determine if you should graduate in 2009. Take a look and determine the answer to this question: ""Are you ready?"" Maybe the answer is clear cut, maybe you're ready to be a young urban professional who collects wine bottles, maybe you're a frat boy unable to tear himself away from the paddle you use to spank your brothers... or maybe you're somewhere in the middle, stuck with me.
Ummm... probably not ready:
1. The Asher Roth song just hasn't gotten on your nerves yet—somehow. And you still think it's appropriate to play Journey each and every time before you go out, while playing ring of fire, braw.
2. Waking up on someone's couch and trekking back to your pizza-encrusted apartment in heels is your idea of a nice, relaxing Sunday morning.
3. The last names of people in your phone are all bars: ""Jared Vintage,"" ""Pablo Paulsclub,"" ""Matt-Mondays,"" because that's where you met them.
4. You will feel immature if you read FML at a professional work place, and do not yet own a skirt you could wear anywhere besides a brothel.
5. You hear sweat pants aren't part of the dress code in that whole ""real world"" place, and start to tear up when you think about throwing out the UW sweatpants you stole from an a very suspecting friend with no evidence. You don't return his calls.
6. You dread no longer being able rip Sudoku's out of local free papers and will need to resort buying an entire book at your local Borders.
7. You are too unskilled to get a real job and yet joining the Peace Corps still seems too ""nice"" for you.
8. You truly enjoy not being able to afford heat in the winter and now own a snuggie.
9. You're still trying to find yourself—have you checked under the bed?
""Ready set go""
1. You have a permanent sunburst tattooed on your ass from sitting on the terrace all day watching the sailboats, drinking Leinie's, seeing no need to get up except to pee, buy a brat, or say something completely inappropriate to the guy in your creative writing class sitting near you about his ""I haven't eaten pancakes in 22 years"" essay.
2. You're ready to own a glass coffee table with coasters and free of streaky handprints.
3. That 60 pounds you've gained in college (15X4) by eating Five Guys, Ian's and Plaza burgers and drinking your weight in Miller products is actually starting to talk, yelling ""Set me free!"" (LaBouche reference?)
4. You've already spent $1,500 on a flight to Europe with your friends, and you're ready for the responsibility of meeting exotic, beautiful people you can't understand, eating ""Special Brownies"" in Amsterdam, shopping in Camden Market with Amy Winehouse, walking down cobbled streets in Italy, and getting mind-blowingly drunk on a beach in Barcelona. It's the grown up thing to do.
5. You've been at Madison for more semesters then you have fingers, and you're not going to be a doctor or a lawyer, or anything else remotely useful. (Hello religious studies majors!)
6. When you go out with your college friends, people ask if you are pregnant or someone's mother or father.
7. You were offered a job that doesn't offend your intelligence/ doesn't involve picking up dog poop.
8. You're no longer good at coming up with reasons you should stay in college (see Ashley Spencer).
9. You found yourself—turns out you ran into yourself at a coffee shop, and you asked yourself to sit down for a caramel latte. That was before the barista asked, with a concerned look on her face, who you were talking to, and suggested you might want to leave.
Next week is Ashley's last.column.ever. E-mail her before than about anything you might wish her to address in her goodbye at aaspencer@wisc.edu.
