Autumn McAlpin - Real World 101: A Survival Guide to Life After High School

Theres a good chance someone fed you Cheerios and dressed you in OshKosh BGosh during your Sesame Street years. When you went to your first sleepover, Mommy packed the bag. When you had a sniffle, Daddy took you to the doctor. What a life! The problem isyoure seventeen now, and you still dont know where they keep the luggage or how to look up the doctors phone number!

But who needs to know how to do such things with Mom and Dad around? Guess whatas you are thrust from the commencement stage into the Real World, pampering parents are a thing of the past. Youre going to have to learn a few things, and youre going to want to know them fast! How do I balance a checkbook? How do I make spaghetti? How do I get the barbecue stains out of my roommates sweater? Aaaagh!

Dont stressI understand. I used to be just like you. After a few years of figuring things out through trial and error (and several hundred phone calls home), Ive learned the basics to surviving the chaos of the Real World, and believe me, its much more challenging than some MTV reality show.

My eighteen-year-old brother recently moved to my town to attend a local community college. Two thousand miles away, our very worried mom asked me to help him get settled. I spent a couple of hours driving him around to sign an apartment rental agreement, get groceries, set up a bank account, and do other getting-settled-type things. Because I had already been living on my own for several years, I had forgotten how difficult doing these things can be for the first time. My brother quickly reminded me. Following are the highlights of our conversation as we sat in the car outside of the bank:

Brother: What do I do?

Me: Go in and set up an account.

Brother: What do I say?

Me: That you need to set up a checking and savings account.

Brother (blank look): How much does that cost?

Me: It should be free; banks handle your money, they dont usually charge you money. Your checks might cost a fee, but you could just get an ATM card instead.

Brother: Thats the same thing as a credit card, right?

Me: No, a credit card sends you a bill and an ATM card deducts money straight out of your checking account.

Brother: How much money is in my checking account?

Me (exasperated): However much money you put in it!

Brother: But, I dont have any money.

Okay, so unfortunately most high schools dont offer a class called Real World 101. But whether youre going to college or just moving out on your own, when you leave home for the first time, there will be many basic things you will not have a clue how to do. While doting parents mean well, their Ill take care of it techniques somewhat hinder their children when they enter the Real World. The Real World will not care that you never learned how to change a tire on the freeway; it will just be mad at you for blocking traffic. The bank will not care that you forgot to reconcile your account; they will happily charge you thirty-five bucks every time you bounce a check. Your roommates will not care that you dont know the difference between laundry detergent and fabric softener; they will just want you to stop smelling up the apartment after wearing the same socks for three weeks.

This book is meant to be a guide to handling some of the basics of grown-up life. It is written by a formerly clueless girl who encountered and endured reality without a survival guide. And here is what I learned.