Go to Events Where There’ll be Free Food
For those of you who are going straight to work after college, your parents will probably be reluctant to give you more money because you’ll be earning it very soon. They probably can’t wait to get rid of you so they can start spending more money on themselves, like that cruise to the Caribbean. But, this will hurt your ability to spend money on leisure activities especially when senior year is your last chance to get wild.
So in order to save money, try to focus on saving it through food expenses. Your college should have a handful of weekly events and some of them might offer free food. Go to those. Eat up and save up. Do take those deep heavy aluminum foil pans (3.75″ x 12.75″ x 10.75″) with you to get some food to go so you don’t have to buy your next meals. Don’t worry, no one is going to laugh at you or judge you. You’ll be the one judging them and laughing at them when they can’t afford to go on that trip to Costa Rica.
And if you happen to live off-campus and have to buy your own toilet paper, go number two elsewhere and save a few bucks on toilet papers.
Maintain Your Parents’ Positive Image of You
Before your parents arrive for your graduation, clean up your habitat.
Parents do not want to know what your college life is really like. They’d like to believe that their kid studied hard in college, made a lot of good friends, joined organizations that will help them in the future, rarely partied, never drank alcohol, always washed the dishes immediately after they ate and cleaned the bathroom at least once a month. They do not want to see the dirty dishes that you haven’t cleaned since the start of senior year, the weeks of dirty laundry on your bedroom floor, and unscrubbed toilets.
I’d like to have my parents arrive during the days that I’m packing so I can use the “I’m packing” excuse to cover my messiness and dirtiness. However, I still found it hard to explain the smell of beer on the floor from the beer pong parties I had.
Play as Hard as You Can
If you go to college where leisure activities are cheap (especially the ones involving liquor), take advantage of them. If you’re moving to bigger cities after graduation, these activities will not be the same price; they will only cost a lot more. Drop a class to save a few thousand dollars and spend that money on buying bottle services at nightclubs. Trust me, they are worth it.
Education < liquor
Recognize Shortcuts and Take Them
You’re going to have senioritis during your Senior Year. Well duh, you say, this is why it’s called “senioritis” and not “junior-itis.” By then, you will most likely have secured job offer(s) or graduate school admittance(s). So what’s the point of making deadlines? As long as you pass your classes, you’re still going to have a job or you’re still going to be admitted to a graduate school.
One excuse that I found extremely useful to postpone your presentation deadlines is the “throw up” excuse. Don’t show up in class on the day of your presentation. Within five minutes after the class is over, e-mail your professor immediately and explain to him/her that you just threw up and did not feel well enough to return to class to give your presentation. Then, request that you give the presentation at the next class.
If you’re not a frequent liar, this should work and buy you some time to finish the presentation. It’s better than the “I was not feeling well” excuse because it’s hard to believe that you were SO SICK to the point that you couldn’t walk to class and say a few words for a presentation. The “I didn’t feel well” excuse just sounds fishy.
Throwing up is more of an unexpected sickness and it involves disgusting items in your mouth which would hinder you from speaking. After all, no professor would want a student who just threw up to try to talk in front of the class at the risk of throwing up again.
But you just wasted a couple of minutes reading this because this excuse is probably not going to work anymore. A bunch of you will start using this excuse, and professors will then get suspicious and start googling “throw up excuse to get out of presentations” and find my site.
Or you can use the “job interview” excuse. Just say you have to miss class to fly somewhere for an urgent job interview.
And to professor Smith who may be reading this, I really did throw up during the times that I missed my presentations in your class.