1. Make sure your bathroom cleaner contains bleach. After a week of sharing this small space with three other boys, your toilet is bound to look like a Petri dish experiment.
2. Learn to live on a tight budget. If your bud and beer expenses exceed your semester tuition, you’re doing it wrong.
3. Remember to eat something green every once in awhile. This does not include the mold growing on the cheesy pizza crust you tossed under your bunk bed three months ago.
4. Just because your roommates own Beemers and Mustangs doesn’t mean that you need to feel emasculated for driving your dad’s 1999 Honda Odyssey minivan with the missing hubcaps. Just be grateful that ol’ Bess still runs.
5. Use the ear swabs and toenail clippers I packed in your suitcase. Women are not attracted to Hobbit feet or men farming sweet potatoes in their ears.
6. Observe the noise ordinance rules in the dorm. In other words, don’t play rap music at such high decibels that the bass vibrations cause paint to peel from the walls.
7. I don’t care what the commercial says, Febreze is not a substitute for keeping your room clean.
8. Maintain good study habits. If you fail this semester, you cannot move back home. Your mother and I have already converted your bedroom into the “red room” from Fifty Shades of Grey.
9. Don’t try to score popularity points with your roommates by doing stupid shit on a dare. If you chug an entire bottle of hot sauce, be prepared for a methane explosion in the bathroom.
10. Keep a pack of condoms on hand at all times. Even though you haven’t had the opportunity to use them in six months, you shouldn’t advertise this fact by inflating them into wiener dogs or giraffes at your next frat party.
11. Choose your friends wisely. The ones who drag your drunk ass out of the Piggly Wiggly at 5:00 a.m. to drive you home safely are keepers.
12. If you wake one morning to find that your vehicle has been covered in Post-it Notes or bubble wrap, laugh it off. Your roommates will learn soon enough the meaning of karmic retribution.
