7 important life skills to learn after you graduate
One of the most important times in your life is when you graduate. This is a major milestone of you stepping over the border between young adulthood into the real adult world. You turn down the hard-partying lifestyle, exchange your books for resumes, and start dressing more business casual. This is a momentous time in your life, and things will be coming at you fast from now on out. You won’t be waking up at noon and hitting the quad either; you have to start relying on yourself to be more on top of your responsibilities.
This might sound like you are ditching your fun lifestyle, but it is merely an evolution of your character. You need to grow up eventually, and post-graduation is when you need to transition properly into the real world. The adult world also brings about new challenges as well, so you have to get ready for what life throws at you. Here are some of the most important skills that any new graduate needs to know to adjust to adulthood.
1. How to Properly Clean Your Home
Home or apartment, it doesn’t matter, you need to look after your domicile. Living in a pigsty may have been cool or charming in college, but it is a huge turn-off when you graduate and need to start acting like a real adult. Commit to cleaning your bathroom each week, the same with wiping down your appliances and counters. You should do a deep clean and sweep and mop the floors too because they can hide a lot of dirt. Do your laundry often, and don’t leave dishes out.
2. How to Do Your Taxes
ne of the most adult things you are going to have to learn to do is your taxes. While you don’t need to learn how to do them yourself all the time, it pays to know how they at least work, and the resource at https://taxfyle.com/income-tax-return-calculator/ can help show you how much your need job will be taxing you. Calculating your income and tax return is just one part, but there are even more things like what forms to use and how to organize the files, along with deadlines. Once you start to learn taxes, you can see how they aren’t that daunting.
3. How to Do Basic Car Maintenance
If you own a car, you know how much it can cost to get certain maintenance work done so it pays to know how to fix things on your own. No, you won’t need to know how to replace a radiator, but knowing how to change your own oil, change a tire, jumpstart a car, fill a deflated tire, and how to read their car manual. These are simple tasks to learn that go a long way in developing a better appreciation of your vehicle and being more independent.
4. How to Cook Your Own Meals
Too many students are used to the life of making microwave meals, which don’t really cut it when you’re an adult. You need to start learning how to cook your own meals and save money by making them at home. Cooking is not hard; you just need to budget for essential items like potatoes, rice, vegetables, and some kind of meat, and then focus on specialty items for spicing up a meal beyond just the basics. Learning to cook is really easy, with tons of cooking resources available out there, and again, it will save you a lot of money not ordering out, which also happens to be very unhealthy.
5. How to Mail Something
The art of sending mail is a lost one. While the internet has eliminated many traditional post-service needs with the advent of email, text, phone calls, and social media, you can’t send a physical package over email. You should figure out how to weigh a package, how to wrap it in the appropriate packaging, how to use stamps, and where to ship it. This can save you on Christmas when you need to ship a present for a relative or friend that is located far away. It might not be used all the time, but it is definitely a handy skill.
6. How to Write a Good Resume
Another great skill to have is the ability to write a good resume. Too many young people are graduating but are unsure of how to make a proper resume to apply for jobs. You should include only the relevant qualifications that you have received since entering college. The likelihood that a future job will care if you don’t include your high school jobs is slim, so you don’t need to fill this part. It is also advised that you learn to write a quality cover page that can be used for multiple applications. This will save you a lot of time and make your resume look better.
7. How to Book Their Own Vacation
Adulthood is not all work and no play; you need to be able to find time to treat yourself with some quality vacation time, which means learning how to book your own vacation. Using booking agencies can help you find interesting deals, but it will also cost you more money to do that. Knowing when to buy plane tickets and when to schedule to visit a country is a skill in itself. If you are going somewhere tropical, you want to plan to go during spring when it isn’t as hot and not during tropical storm season. Similarly, going somewhere cold like Europe is more enjoyable in spring or summer as well.
Being an adult gets a reputation as a time when you are only doing chores or responsibilities, and there isn’t much to do that is enjoyable. The reality is that adulthood is a lot more fun when you know what skills you need to handle all of life’s challenges. This list includes some of the basics that should be a must for you after you graduate.