7 Things You Don't Realize You'll Miss Once You Graduate College ...

College gives you the freedom to set your own schedule. When enrolling for classes, you can choose to start your day at 8 am, 9 am, or you can choose to take all afternoon and evening classes. Flexibility works if you're not a morning person, or if you need to schedule classes around your work schedule. Unfortunately, once you graduate and get into the real world, you lose the freedom to set your own schedule — unless you own your own business.

Many college students don't appreciate three months off in the summer until after they graduate and find a full-time job. Summer isn't the only break you'll miss. You’ll also miss a month-long winter break and a spring break. Of course, you can take days off once you’re employed, but depending on the job, you might only receive one or two weeks off a year.

If you lived on campus and had a meal plan, getting your meals involved going to the student union or cafeteria and taking your pick. Now that you're out of college and on your own, food might not be as accessible. You have to learn how to prepare your own meals, and if you don't know how to cook and prefer eating out, you'll soon discover that dining out three times a day cuts heavily into your salary.

Some college students live on their own and have expenses. If you didn't have any expenses while in college, graduating and being on your own for the first time might be an adjustment. Even if you had a student loan while in school, student loan repayment doesn't usually start until six months after graduation. Therefore, it's important that you learn how to budget and manage money before leaving school, and it’s also important that you choose an apartment that’s within your means to avoid financial hardship.

Depending on the class, you might have been able to skip, get notes from a classmate and still ace your tests. Unfortunately, skipping work isn't as easy as skipping a boring lecture. The professor might not notice your absence, but an employer will.

Student discounts are a godsend for struggling college students. Whether it's an amusement park, the movies, restaurants, or a retail store, you can score discounts up to 20% just by flashing your student identification. This might not work once you graduate, especially since some colleges require students to update their identification every year, and new ID cards include the current year. Unfortunately, some retailers will only offer a discount if your student ID is up-to-date.

In college, your best friends might be sleeping in the bed next to you or living down the hall, so there’s always someone to talk to and hang with. Once you graduate college and go your separate ways, getting together with college friends might be harder than you think, especially if you live in different cities and have different work schedules.

Graduating college can be bittersweet. On one hand, you look forward to the next chapter in your life, but on the other hand, you know there’ll be things you miss about college life. What do you miss about your college days?