College is the best and worst time of your life. It's a time to meet new people, have freedom, seize new opportunities, and make memories that last a lifetime. It's also a time to be on your own for the first time, having no money, no guidance from your parents, and figuring out how to do life in the real world.
Change is inevitable. The transition from high school to college is one of the biggest jumps in one stage of your life to the next. After 18 years spent under the roof of your mother and father, the real world hits you and many things begin to change.

1. Spending habits

When you get to college you soon realize how to "ball on a budget" and things you buy regularly at home are no longer worth the money.

2. T-Shirt Size

An unspoken rule of college life is that your clothes have to be at least a size bigger than you actually wear. Why? No one really knows.

3. The definition of "dirty"

When you're paying money to wash your clothes, wearing them one time doesn't mean they're dirty. If you didn't sweat in the them, they're good for another day.

4. Eating out

Eating out gets old. In high school, Chickfila always sounded better than the pot roast your mom made but now, as you eat your chicken nuggets, you're wishing for that home cooked meal.

5. Driving

In college, the only time driving is necessary is when you're taking a trip home as opposed to driving wherever you went in high school.

6. Average bed time

You promised yourself you would not be that college kid who stays up late every night and you would stick to going to sleep around 10 or 11. Wrong. Most events in college don't even start until these times and average bed time turns in to 2 or 3 am.

7. Waking up early

Did you take an 8:30 am class your first semester based on the logic that you got up at 6:30 am everyday of high school? Rookie mistake. Most college students have to set their alarm for an 11:45 am class.

8. Meal times

When your sleeping schedule changes, so does your eating schedule. Instead of eating breakfast at 7 am, you go straight to lunch when you wake up at 11:30 am. And if you eat dinner at 5 pm, you'll need another meal around 10 pm before you go to bed at 2 am. This is where the battle against the Freshman Fifteen is lost.

9. Grocery shopping

When you went to the grocery store with your mom, you never realized how expensive everything was and those extra snacks that look good are not going in your cart. Your grocery list of essential goods is soon minimized.

10. Clothes shopping

The worst change that occurs when you go to college. You no longer have the luxury of buying clothes just because. The only "shopping" you do now is looking through friends' closets.

11. Dating

Rather than going to the movies or going out to dinner, dates in college are getting asked to go on a sorority or fraternity's grab-a-date or formal.

12. Routines

Or lack-there-of. College doesn't have bells that dismiss you, or parents to make sure you get out of bed in the morning. The only routine is the one you make for yourself.