12 Asshole Moves You Can Only Get Away With In College

College is four years of getting away with (almost) everything. After college, not so much.

It’s not just because you’re expected to grow up after college, but because a whole new set of rules is thrust upon you as a “young adult.” Most of the crap you pulled in school isn’t going to fly in the real world.

In my book, A**holeology: The Cheat Sheet, I explain how to be an asshole in everyday situations: how to get out of being in a wedding, how to do less work while at work, how to handle a one-night stand, and even how to sell your friend’s car for money (yes, it’s possible). Unfortunately, there are some situations that you can’t asshole your way out of as easily as you did while enrolled in an institution of higher learning.

Here are 12 asshole moves you can only get away with in an atmosphere of higher learning.

Drinking All Day — In the Middle of the Week

The all-day bender is a common occurrence on just about every college campus in the country. The first beer is cracked in the early morning hours (we’re calling 10:30 am early) and the rest of the day turns to a drunken blur. Drinking all day is a staple of college life. It’s a terrible idea in the real world.

Burning a vacation day or sick time just to sit around and drink feels like a fantastic idea until you actually need that extra day off from work. The next day, when you go back in the office, you feel like a pile of cat turds. Sitting around your apartment, chugging beer and motoring through ever episode of Full House was probably worth the wasted day off. Nope. It was dumb.

Hooking Up With A Girl — And Then All Her Friends

College mating means fishing in a very small dating pool. Even if you attend a major university with thousands of students, there always tends to be some type of overlap. You could date a girl for a little while, it ends, and you end up playing horizontal hide the hambone with one of her friends the following weekend. Sure, there will be chick drama, but everyone gets over it after a couple cries in the filthy bar bathroom.

It doesn’t work like that after college. Friends are off limits. If you do end up with a friend of a former flame, it’s usually World War IV, years worth of drama and a broken friendship.

Cram For Stuff

Sure, there aren’t as many exams and term papers in the real world, but there is preparation involved with job interviews and work assignments. Pulling an all-nighter before a statistics exam might have earned you a solid C, but you can’t load up on Red Bull and java and stay up tinkering with a slide show the night before a massive presentation to the head of the company. Well, honestly, you will do all that anyway but it will also involve weeks of preparation.

Screwing With People

College is a world filled with practical jokes, sometimes on friends and sometimes on random strangers. Unless someone is harmed, it’s all in good fun. Not in real life. Pull a prank on someone after college and you could get fired, arrested or punched right in the mouth. No matter how hilarious the prank.

Sleep All Day

The last time I slept an entire day away, without moving a muscle, I had the flu. It’s the only excuse as to why you’re still in bed at 3 p.m. while the rest of the world goes about their business. In college, you can sleep all day (usually the day after an all-day bender) and no one really notices or cares. Except your roommate. He wants you to get the hell up and start cleaning up all your empties.

In the real world, you’re going to have to get stuff done. All the stuff you can’t do because you’re stuck in an office all day. You’re going to end up working harder on weekends than you do during the week.

Ditch Events

Class at 9am? Eh, not today. College allows the freedom to choose where you go and what you do every single day of the week. Sure, there are repercussions, but nothing you can’t talk your way out of (more on that in a second). In the real world, you could try and have the same attitude, but the penalties are much more severe. Losing a job and dropping a class are two very different things.

Talk Back to Authority

The way you talk to professors, resident assistants, and campus security is typical asshole behavior that’s tolerated and overlooked (unless you push it too far). Try that same bullshit with a boss, landlord, or cop and it’s not going to fly. Try anyway, let me know how it turns out. Use your one phone call from prison to call and let me know the story.

Ignore Your Health and Well Being



College is full of dumb health choices — Drinking heavily every day of the week, experimenting with drugs, eating processed crap and fast food for every meal, and putting your personal well being in danger on a daily basis. Youth makes you feel bullet proof. Well, you aren’t, and it’s all going to catch up with you some day be it liver failure, heart disease or any other health warning sign you’ve been ignoring for years.

Disappear For Days

“Where are you guys going? A road trip? For four days? Cool, can I come? Let grab some things and tell absolutely no one where the hell I’m going. No one will notice. It’s college, people come and go all the time. Is one pair of underwear enough?” The most you can disappear while in school is maybe three days before someone comes looking for you. After college, disappear for longer than 24 hours, and everyone in your life is organizing a search party. Especially with social media, cell phones, and hundreds of other way to stay in touch. You’ll be found. Speaking of people looking for you…

Avoid Family and Friends for a Long Period of Time

You haven’t talked to your parents in a few weeks and it’s because you’ve been so busy doing absolutely nothing. You’ve got zero time to pick up a phone and tell mom and dad you’re still alive. Even if you don’t move back home after graduation, the contact with family is expected at least once a day. If not, your mother will just call you every day, 10 times a day, on your cell and work phone until you take her call.

Put On and Then Lose the “Freshman Fifteen”

Of course you can put on weight after you leave school, and you can lose it, but not as easily as you did for those four years. Especially the lose it part. During school, you still had the good metabolism plus tons of time on your hands to workout (and a free gym membership). In real life, you’ll have a job, responsibilities, and eventually a family that will help pack on pounds that you may never lose.

Announce Your Every Stupid Move on Social Media

Remember how you told all your Facebook friends you got real banged up last night and pissed in your own closet right before microwaving a pair of socks because you thought they were a bean burrito? Funny stuff. Just don’t announce that stuff to the world after you collect your diploma. It could lose you a job, a friendship, or get you in a whole hell of a lot more crap than it’s worth bragging about your stupidity. Save those updates for coffee with the guys before work. Yes, that’s what guys in the real world do. They talk over coffee. It’s as boring as it sounds.

If you want to learn all the situations where it’s acceptable to be an asshole, don’t forget to check out my book A**holeology: The Cheat Sheet

Chris Illuminati avatar
Chris Illuminati is a 5-time published author and recovering a**hole who writes about running, parenting, and professional wrestling.