10 Absolutely True Ways Guys Change from College to Their Mid-20s

Well, way to steal my idea, Zuckerberg. I was getting there?

But seriously, I think the writer wrote a legitimately funny and accurate article, so instead of starting an East Coast/East Coast blog war, I’m just going to expand on her post with some less obvious ones she may have overlooked.1 Let’s start with a couple that are semi-related to her inclusions and then go completely rando from there.

Having Girlfriends

And by girlfriends I don’t mean those girls who you live with and who smack you when you Like Ashley Sky pics on Instagram. I literally mean friends who happen to be girls. In college, a guy has zero use for a platonic female friend. “Wait, you guys hang out and you don’t even hook up? What are you gay, bro?”

For a mid-20’s guy, having female friends is crucial. As Samantha pointed out, mid 20’s bros show emotion and have feelings and shit. We need someone to talk to when we can’t figure out why the girl we’ve been seeing broke it off after three dates, or whether or not a girl will talk to me if I wear this particular shirt.

If you ask your mid-20’s guy friends for relationship and fashion advice, they’re just gonna find new friends.

What We Drink

It’s common knowledge that mid-20’s guys step up their drink game from college. There are two reasons why. First, you don't get any girls if you still order shitty light beer at the bar. Remember, these are mid-20’s girls we’re trying to get here—the ones who are 43% more likely to go home with you if order an expensive glass of scotch instead of Cat Piss Lite. Also, most of us have jobs in our mid-20’s so we can afford to buy beers that don’t taste like the bathroom floor at the Meadowlands.

Waking Up Early

A college bro can sleep through an entire semester if nobody ever comes into their room. There were plenty of Saturday nights in college where I’d drunk set my fantasy football lineups at, like, 3 a.m. when I got home from the bar because I knew I wouldn’t be up before the 1 p.m. games started the next day.

Guys in their mid-20’s wake up early regardless of how hard they go the night before. I’m not even talking about getting up for work. I’m talking weekends, holidays, whenever. Once we hit 26, something gets engrained in our DNA that says we have to be up by 8 a.m. no matter what we have to do the next day. The only difference between mid-20’s bros and their dads is that our dads get up and do responsible shit like mow the lawn and chop wood. We get up early, eat an ENORMOUS bowl of cereal, and then kinda just sit there for 3-4 hours until mid-day nappy time rolls around.

Sports We Play

College bros will play any sport at any time. Pickup soccer, roller hockey, fuckin’ wiffle ball, you name it. If there’s an activity going down, a college bro is there.

Guys in their mid 20’s skate to one song and one song only. Golf. OK, maybe softball too, but then I wouldn’t have been able to make that Will Ferrell reference. The point is, if a sport requires enough physical demand to where you can’t get shitfaced while playing, a mid-20’s guy wants no part of it.  Plus, for the competitive mid-20’s dudes, golf is probably the only sport you can legitimately improve at as you get older. You’re not gonna dunk a basketball for the first time at 25.

How We Watch Sports

While we’re on the subject, how a college guy watches a sporting event greatly differs from the way a mid-20’s guy watches that same event. College bros all gather in the same place, get as drunk as humanly possible, and scream at the TV for four straight hours until they don’t even know what they’re yelling about anymore. If their team loses, shit will get broken.

A dude in his mid-20’s is probably watching the game by himself with a beer in one hand and a slice of pizza in the other, cherishing the fact that his girlfriend left the apartment for a few hours so he can watch the game in peace and jerk off during halftime. He may clap once or twice when something exciting happens.

If his team loses, the only thing that gets broken is his spirit.

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Playing Video Games

It seems odd because we’re right at the height of the GTA V craze so girls reading this are probably thinking, “My boyfriend hasn’t returned a text in a week because of this fucking game and he’s 26,” but, on the whole, guys in their mid-20’s spend wayyyyyy less time playing video games than guys in college. In college, you give a guy a copy of the latest 1st-person shooter, a headset, and a case of Easy Mac, and he won’t leave his dorm for anything short of the final exam in his Blow Jobs From Models 101 class.

You give a bro in his mid 20’s the same three items, he’ll come out in 20 minutes looking for more Easy Mac.

Getting Into Fights

College bros are still in the who’s-tougher-than-who phase of their lives, so 70% of arguments will lead to some sort of physical altercation. 90% if alcohol is involved.

The majority of guys in their mid-20’s realize that fighting is literally the stupidest fucking thing in the world and accomplishes absolutely nothing besides earning a police record and getting blood on the first shirt you ever bought with your own money. The only guys who get into fights in their mid-20’s are the meatheads who still watch their own high school football tapes.

Dancing

College guys will at least make an effort on the dance floor because they know that college girls on dance floors are usually too shitfaced to notice how bad you are at dancing, so it’s a low-risk play. Either she’ll make out with you right then and there, she’ll dance with you for a couple songs and give you a half chub, or she might puke on you. Even if she pukes on you, it’s still better than having your moves judged or being made to feel creepy.

Dudes in their mid-20’s stay the fuck away from the dance floor because, as incredible as it seems, some of the girls out there are actually sober. I’m serious. There are girls in their mid-20’s who like to go out just to dance with their friends. Unless you’re black, gay, or Justin Timberlake, stay away from those ladies if you don’t want to be humiliated.

Stay in your comfort zone, lean against the bar, and offer to buy her a drink when she comes over instead of freaking her out with your twist on the Cupid Shuffle.

Hairstyle

College bros don’t have hairstyles because they don’t need hairstyles. Every college guy rolls out of bed with Gosling hair and it just stays that way for years.

If you’re a college bro reading this, I’m about to depress the fuck out of you. By the time you hit your mid-20’s, every time you brush your hair it’s gonna look like pube city in the sink. A couple hundred little hairs will fall out every day until you wake up on your 27th birthday looking like LeBron and you wonder, “What the fuck just happened?” Because of this, most mid-20’s guys use the side-comb job in the front to try and mask their receding hairline, because it only makes one side look bad as opposed to both. This is also known as “the Sudeikis.”

Quick anecdote: I used to rock the Sudeikis in middle school until a girl in my class asked, “Why do you wear your hair like that? What are you, a good boy or something?” I realized, then and there, that I had to quickly shed this “good boy” reputation if I wanted to get with any girls by the time I got to high school, so I started going with the white-kid-in-1999 front flip like a heterosexual Lance Bass.

After a 12-year run with the white-kid-gets-his-haircut-in-a-black-barbershop hair, I’m trending back towards “good boy.”

Condoms

The summer before a guy goes to college, he’ll get it drilled into his head that he has to wear condoms in college, because he has no idea where these girls have been and if he gets a girl pregnant at 20, his life is basically over. College guys don’t have $40 to shell out for the morning-after pill because having $40 in college is like having $10 when you’re 7. It makes you rich. So you know what happens? College guys get scared into actually wearing condoms.

Guys in their mid-20’s don’t bother with condoms because condoms make sex infinity times worse, and we just choose to roll the dice. If we accidently cum, we’ve got 40 bucks. If we neglect the morning-after pill because we’re lazy fucks and she gets pregnant, whatever, looks like it’s time to grow up. Also, she works in an office, no chance she’s got an STD, right?2

I will however take a short moment to answer a few of her questions: Yes, I’d still get a handy in public; yes, I’d still drink in a backyard provided my lax bro pinnie was a throwback replica NBA jersey and the backpack was filled with Heineken instead of Keystone; and while I want to say I wouldn’t creep by your apartment at 3AM, judging by the thumbnail pic at the bottom of your article, I can't make any promises.

This is horrible advice. —Editor

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