How To Be A Grown-Up: 5 Easy Ways To Make Yourself Seem Like A Grown-Up

Photo by Ben White on Unsplash


Yes, you can stay young-at-heart, but you sure cant’ stay Peter Pan forever. You have to learn how to be a grown-up sometime, even if you’re still living on your parents dime.

It’s especially true for college students making the transition to being grown-ups in the real world. And there’s no such thing as a proper college course on teaching you how to be a grown-up.

I can related to this. It’s morbid to think that I felt vastly different a semester ago. When I came back to school last fall, this town had a rare glow to it. I assumed this entire year would be nothing but day drinks, dumbness, and delirium. As soon as I came back for my last four months, though, the place immediately became colder and grimmer, consequently causing me to shrink into this melancholy ball of anxiety that’s been my form ever since.

The cold truth is that I graduate in 15 days, 2 hours, and 36 minutes. Now, I have to figure out how to do these mundane tasks on a regular basis, at least until the grace of death divebombs out of the sky and carries me aloft (or below).

Here’s my guide on how to be a grown-up, so that we may all learn from it.

Pace Yourself During Happy Hour

As a journalism major whose career prospects shrink by the microsecond, the post-grad life doesn’t look too sprightly at this point. The most I can pray for is a standard 9-5 gig that pays reasonably and doesn’t make me look for the closest overpass.

Even if I attained this mythical 9-5 job, you’re telling me I can’t get obliterated afterwards? I can only consume a REASONABLE amount of barley pops after work so as to not inhibit my super-demanding workplace duties? This will be much more difficult than I anticipated.

Use Proper Grammar/Punctuation in All Communication

Remember those primitive days when we’d hop on AIM after school? Remember chatting with your middle school girlfriend, xObballAngela98, only to have her dump you after you gave her the best three weeks of your life? Let’s pour one out for AIM, which taught us that away messages have a broad definition and creativity meant making your screen name more incoherent.

AIM laid the foundation for how we communicate on Twitter, Facebook, and beyond. But now that we’re incessantly making press releases, writing formal memos, and sending emails to coworkers, we might as well make ourselves look like intelligent human beings by incorporating this adultspeak into our most casual communication forums. This relates to my next item…

Photo by Jeremy Bishop on Unsplash


Make Compelling Arguments in Casual Conversation

Here’s a scenario: you’re at a bar during happy hour (not getting shitfaced, mind you) and you’re talking to some biology major. This dude’s a pompous chauncey, so naturally you want to make him look like a tremendous idiot. Darwin’s theory of evolution comes into the conversation; you believe in it, he doesn’t. People say all the time they believe in evolution, but how do you prove it’s a logical possibility that we are an advanced generation of apes?

The #1 answer? You actually KNOW about evolution. A general rule of thumb is if you believe in something, you should probably know how it works. This is the key to making an awesome argument that’ll pique the crowd’s interest and get them thinking. Obviously, making good arguments means being familiar with any and all curveball topics that could come your way, which somewhat leads into my NEXT adult thing…

Read More Often

My friend Bert reads more than anyone else I know. He dedicated his entire junior year to reading all the books he Sparknoted in high school. His favorite revisited novel was The Catcher in the Rye, which was a tad disconcerting given the book’s influence on a few tragedies in the past half century. He’s articulate and hilarious but also a condescending prick. Don’t be like my friend, Bert.

It doesn’t have to be the newest Chuck Palahniuk novel or a The Economist article, but reading anything past the first few sentences is a healthy habit to cultivate. Pretty much anything that appeals to more than the lowest common denominator of people. ANYTHING that will leave you of more or equal intelligence than before you started reading.

Cook More Meals At Home That Aren’t Bagel Bites

Then again, groceries are expensive. Especially healthy groceries. Nevermind; just eat your BBs with a Diet Coke. That’ll make you feel marginally better about yourself.

A-Mac is a regular columnist for BroBible. 

[Photo: Asier Romero/Shutterstock]