1) Next year, you will probably be unemployed, or live in your parents’ basement, or be unemployed and live in your parents’ basement. 2) You will keep in touch with friends, but not the ones you thought. 3) When you hit a certain point in your 20s, everyone around you starts to get married, for no apparent reason and without any warning. When she wanted to start a software company, I had a job with health benefits. You will be a friend, a parent, a coach, an employee—and so on. 4) In life, no one rewards you for performing mundane tasks. 5) Regardless of anything the rampant college hookup culture has taught you, you are suddenly expected to Start Going On Dates. 6) Something strange happens to music as you age. They want what is good for you, which isn't always the same thing. Enjoy your time in the first half! Everyone will tell you that you can change the world. 8) As Cynthia Heimel says, “There is a microscopically thin line between being brilliantly creative and acting like the most gigantic idiot on earth. So what the hell, leap.” 
 
 9) You have no idea how personal finance works. There are only two things that your education should have taught you: how to deal with having money and how to deal with not having money. We know that success isn't about simply running faster than everyone else in some predetermined direction. You will do better in life if you have a second economic oar in the water. Some days will be worse than others. And if it doesn't, there is absolutely nothing wrong with being solid. 11) No one in book club has ever read the book. Related Video 
 
 Successful people are often asked to deliver a university or college's graduation speech, Here are some words of wisdom offered in commencement speeches over the last few years from President Obama, Conan O'Brien, Hillary Clinton, Stephen Colbert and Jimmy Carter.
– Wish you could ditch the inspirational commencement speech for something a bit more realistic? So does Alexandra Petri. But she wasn’t satisfied with Charles Wheelan’s recent list in the Wall Street Journal, “10 Things Your Commencement Speaker Won’t Tell You,” because she kinda remembered hearing all of the observations it contained ... in commencement speeches. So, in the Washington Post, she offers up “the 10 things they really don’t tell you at graduation.” Get ready to be unemployed and living with mom and dad. She’s not trying to be cruel, just stating facts, she explains, and she has the statistics to prove it. Here's one: "29% of 25-to-34 year-olds live in what the poll-taker was kind enough to refer to as "multi-generational living arrangements" rather than "your old room with all the anime posters and Admiral Ackbar figures carelessly splayed on every surface." Don't expect a "gold star" for doing mundane chores like cleaning your bathroom. Though TV commercials may try to convince you that "a bald man or anthropomorphic sponge will give you a high-five" once you've mopped your floor, that'll only actually happen if you "accidentally inhaled some of the cleaning product as you worked." You should really, really appreciate your youth. "Life can be divided into two sections: the years when you know that if you fall over you are unlikely to break a hip, and the years when you’re not so sure," so make sure to have fun during that first part. Your education did not teach you the most important thing. Which is: "how to deal with having money and how to deal with not having money." Since it instead taught you all about the Renaissance poets, you’ll have to learn about personal finance on your own. Click for Petri’s full, amusing list, which includes a hilarious tip about book clubs.