So okay, the working life ain’t all glitters and rainbows but I am starting to learn a lot of things about the real world that college never really prepared me for. So here are some of the things that I have learned thus far.

1. Everything seemed funnier.

I admit that I’m easily amused. The lamest jokes tickle me but I find myself even more easily amused since I’ve started working. I’m starting to think that it’s due to the contrasting work and after work environment. The people who are your colleagues during office hours are very different people during lunch breaks and after office hours. Having to adapt to a let’s-be-serious-and-very-focused-because-we’re-dealing-with-a-very-important-client environment to would-you-date-a-girl-with-a-hairy-chest-or-hairy-armpits-trivia environment. Tell a joke during office hours and no matter how funny it is, you’ll only get a nod and a pat on the back. So all this restrained laughter will start building up and you just somehow need to let go once you step out of the office. A friend told me a joke through g-chat once while I was sitting across my manager and I could feel my heart about to explode trying to restrain myself from laughing. The torture I had to endure was unimaginable that 5 hours later, once work was done, I just burst into laughter for 5 whole minutes and by then, I couldn’t even recall the punch line of that stupid joke which put me in so much pain. So if you see me laughing at random things or at your lame jokes, it is probably partially coming from last week’s laughter.

2. You learn random facts about life.

Did you know that drinking too much coffee will reduce breasts size? Did you know that by having garlic under your armpit for a certain amount of time will give you flu symptoms? How does these facts help with life?  I’m not very sure actually. But it’s something you get out of small talks at the pantry while waiting for your coffee to brew and something to fill up the awkward silence while waiting at the photocopy machine. But yeah, apparently there is a correlation between coffee and breast size.

3. Last minute is all you got.

Whoever told you that you need to start early, never procrastinate and do not do anything last minute because it’s not a good habit to keep was trying to screw you over. In the working world, it doesn’t matter that you just graduated two hours ago, they expect you to be able to join the sprint team. Everything is usually due the next day so there’s really no time for you to take your own sweet time, have a cute scheduling book out and fill them up with your neat handwriting of what to prioritize first. If you have never done anything last minute back in college, you better start to learn on how to do that because in all seriousness, last minute is all you got.

4. When you desperately need a favor, you find yourself ready to agree to almost anything (Note the italic “almost”).

And you actually really thought that your economics professor was just kidding when he said that there are no free lunches, back when you were still a naive-over-optimistic college student? Wait till you get to the real harsh world because nothing rings truer than that phrase especially when your deliverable are very dependent on the other person’s input or knowledge. “10 bucks for that email you want” “Do fifteen jumping jacks if you really want me to tell you how to do that” “Eat this 5 day old donut if you want help with that”. With the kind of due dates they’re giving me, I notice that I am actually more than ready to  be willing to pay double the asking price, do cartwheels between jumping jacks and eat molded donuts if that’s what it takes. Only in the real world, the things people ask for in return are not necessarily materialistic or an attempt to publicly humiliate you, which I sometimes find myself preferring that it’d be that way.