On October 1st, I received an email from the Hofstra Barnes and Noble Bookstore about a Dream Class that students could vote to bring to campus.

Ask me again which courses were available or which one I voted for. I honestly can’t remember, but I do remember claiming my free ticket when I read that we won the BNC127 course “Crucial Info For Surviving Your 20s.”

The first 20 students were able to snag free tickets to the event with speaker Alida Nugent, a 25 year old blogger and comedy writer from Brooklyn, NY. She is the author of Don’t Worry, It Gets Worse and the genius behind the blog The Frenemy.

Alida Nugent had quite the list of tips for us that night.

She’s very serious about helping 20somethings not screw up after college. She told us that one night, as she was typing up a paper with some alcohol in hand, she accidentally spilled it all over her computer causing her to lose all of her files.

So her first tip, of course, was backup your computer.

There were a few other tips that were worth noting from her speech:

1. Throw away some of your clothes after college. When you move into a NYC apartment, half of your clothes won’t fit, and more than half of them are no longer appropriate for your age.

2. Learn how to cook a meal under $10. “Just put sh*t on starch,” she recommends.

3. Get a plant before you get a pet and see if you can take care of it.

4. Keep a list of at least 5 phone numbers in your wallet. (She left her phone and keys in her apartment once, and ended up having to ask her boss to Facebook message her roommate to let her in. “How professional,” she joked).

5. Don’t think that being in your 20s means you can’t still be a kid sometimes. “So eat ice cream for dinner, stay on Facebook all day, and go up to the roof and scream your heart out” if you want to.

20 is just the beginning. Apparently, it gets worse!

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