I ’m roughly five months into a life sentence and, I gotta tell ya folks, I don’t think I’m cut out for it.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s quite wonderful not cramming for a final or pulling an all-nighter to finish the insanely long paper you procrastinated for weeks on, but in real life there are real deadlines. Real craziness. Real crap.

I’m not saying you didn’t work your way through college; I’m not saying you didn’t have a home life with a spouse or a kid. I’m simply saying something changes once you graduate college.

Plus, the institution of higher learning doesn’t teach things like how to deal with making an a** of yourself in front of important people, or botching an interview or slopping food on yourself while at a lunch meeting.

Sure, I’m glad I learned about the history of ancient civilizations, the importance of a well-balanced meal and how to compute basic accounting formulas (ok, that last one is a lie. A business degree? What was I thinking? Thank God for that change of major form.), but where was the class on “recovering from saying something totally stupid during the staff meeting” or the one for “not losing your mind when you’ve already explained the task 15 times but your coworker doesn’t get it.”

Those would have been helpful.

And people expect you to full adult after you graduate. Like, right away. Are you kidding me?

I’m still trying to decide if I prefer Lucky Charms over Reese’s Puffs (who am I kidding? Reese’s Puffs, no contest.) How can I be responsible for myself? Things you didn’t even think were things suddenly become things (gah, that hurt to write). But it’s true.

There’s no lead in, or at least there wasn’t for me. And while I may have already had a child and been married while enrolled in college, the idea of being forced out into life on such short notice wasn’t what I had in mind.

I have friends at graduate school; I have friends still enrolled as undergrads, and I have friends who are in the workforce. And we all concur: This is not what we signed up for.

Most of us are second-guessing our choices. We should have moved. We shouldn’t have moved. We should have gone to grad school. We should drop of out of grad school. We shouldn’t have taken the first job offer. We totally should have jumped at that first offer.

I regret not looking into things more seriously as they approached, but most of all, I’m kicking myself for getting as much sleep as I did those last few months – and that wasn’t a whole lot.

I should have been out howling at the moon with some of the best people I’ve ever had the opportunity to spend time with. I should have read more … I should still be reading more. I should have spent more time getting crap done so I had more time to actually do something fun.

I would be lying if I told you I was completely at peace with where I am in life. I’m not… and for the most part it’s because I’m too indecisive to actually pick what I want to do with my life. But I did get my foot in the door with a good company not far from home.

And those friends of mine are just as great as they’ve always been, even if we only see each other once a month. My job pays the bills … even those ever-loving student loans.

So I suppose I can say that the education I received has paid off, well, not paid off, but paid … well not paid, not yet anyway, but break even maybe?