Your Choices In College

10/02/2020

Your Choices In College Matter More Than College Of Your Choices

The privilege of going to college is an extraordinary opportunity, so do your best to get everything possible out of it. Some students spend their college years studying for whatever exam is next on the list. Others spend the entire time alternating between friends and passing time. Both ends of the spectrum are a bit too extreme. There has to be a balance between the both, only then can you be happy and get the most out of your education.

The biggest mistake a lot of college students make is assuming college is mostly about studying or partying. While that all forms a central part, but viewing it this way means you’re definitely not getting the most value for your money. Instead, I think of it as a package of opportunities. Keeping this perspective in mind, here are some unconventional ideas that could get you the most from college.

Take Advantage of Randomness: In school all you get is a structured environment and might have missed up all the random opportunities that had come. Now is the chance to take these random opportunities like going on an exchange program to live in a different country, or hearing about a chance to work on a big extracurricular project. These aren’t the opportunities defined in the syllabus, but yes they do exist. What you need to have is discretionary energy that you can invest in these kinds of opportunities. If you have effective studying habits, it’s easy to quickly get hold of these random opportunities that come up.

Take an internship. Regardless of the requirement from the college for you to graduate, you should try your hardest to get an internship related to your major. Even if you have to take an unpaid internship, it will play a key role in deciding which students will get hired right out of college, and which will struggle to find jobs. It is a great way to increase your chances of getting hired right and make the most of your post-college life. Many companies even offer their interns full-time positions upon graduation.

Take Interesting Classes, Not Just Easy Ones: Challenging classes require more effort, but they also have more academic reward. Since easy classes don’t teach you anything important and therefore are a lot of effort for practically zero benefit. It’s not practically possible to be interested in every class you take. What matters is that the content stretches your thinking and you tend to still gain more mental models which are useful for a whole range of subjects.

Community Opportunities: when you are in college you have a chance to learn so many things while working on community projects. Take advantage of opportunities like this. Being a student can help put you in positions to do things that may be very difficult to do at a later point in life when you have a family and job commitments.

Learn To be Productive: Make your choices right .Many times you can get better grades while also doing more interesting projects, or study less and get the same results. Invest in productivity systems and learning tactics to organize your life and get more out of it than you had before, often a lot more. You can do this by scheduling your big rocks first, implementing a productivity system, and working on your creative tasks, Killing procrastination, speed reading, using metaphors, analogies and visualizations to aid learning. Cutting out on television and eliminating extra browsing and chatting. More importantly exercising regularly to increase your energy

Find your study space: The places where you sleep, relax and hang out with friends might make you feel less productive. You need to find the space in the library corners or quiet areas and department-specific study rooms. Find a study space that is ideal for your noise-free preferences and creative inspiration and make it a habit to be there. It’ll be easier for you to concentrate and you’ll retain information better.

Attend extracurricular lectures and seminars: All universities and colleges bring in guest speakers and lecturers to campus for its students. Take advantage of these unique opportunities to learn something new and maybe you can even network. While college is certainly about learning, it’s also about discovering who you are and making new friends

Keep an open mind about new things: Throughout your college years, you’ll be exposed to many new kinds of people, music, ideas and hobbies. If you remain open to trying new things, you are very likely to find new lifelong passions and interests. You might surprise yourself with the things you like and are good at if you just remain open to new experiences. You can’t like every new thing that you try, but you can at least try.

Talk to your professors during and after college: Get to know your professors during your college years for several reasons. First of all, they can be incredibly helpful when it comes to providing guidance in your courses and in life. They have the experience and can probably offer some very good advice. Secondly, they’ll influence your future. Not just with the grades you earn from them, but also with the job or recommendations they can write for you. Most professors love to hear from students they’ve taught in the past and are more than thrilled to learn of your successes and accomplishments.

Teach to Learn: If you want to understand your field better, teach others. You can understand a concept well enough if you explain it to 10 other people who all have different ways of thinking. The things you teach are the things you will remember years later. These positions could be either volunteer or paid, but they look great on your resume.

Although good grades are the key to success but today’s employers want more than that from new hires. You have to be strategic during college because the competition is fierce. Grades aren’t enough, you have to go above and beyond that and go one step ahead.