Essential Advice for Students Heading to College -- and Beyond
Every parent who sends his children off to college tries to provide a little advice. I did -- but what I said pales in comparison to what Joshua Stein, a commercial real estate attorney in New York City, wrote for his daughters Helaina and Julia.
With Joshua's permission, here it is. Feel free to share with your kids, with people you know whose kids are about to start college -- or with anyone who is starting a career or a business, since the basic principles definitely apply.
General
Advice. Just because someone gives you advice, don't assume it's right. This applies even if you have a lot of respect for the advice giver. Much advice represents nothing more than advice-givers' efforts to live their lives over again -- better the second time -- through you.Listen to what they say. It might make sense. Ask yourself whether it does, and whether it seems right for you. Weigh it with other suggestions and, above all, your own instincts. Make up your own mind. Don't feel guilty about ignoring recommendations you receive.
(Any advice from me is, of course, a total exception to this rule. You should take anything I say as absolute gospel.)
Beginnings. You already know you should listen to what people tell you. This is particularly true right at the beginning -- even on the first day of class and during your orientation program for college -- at a time when you might not yet be fully engaged or fully paying attention. Force yourself to engage and pay full attention starting the very first day. Approach the beginning of anything with "beginner's mind" -- a Zen concept for being ready for anything and open and totally receptive to whatever the world wants to tell you.
People will give you a lot of information and overview concepts, right at the beginning. Don't assume you know what they'll say, or that you're too smart to bother. Don't assume you'll figure it all out later or have another chance or you can have your friends tell you anything important. Pay attention. Take it seriously. Take notes.
Explore. If you get lost somewhere, physically or in a new area of study, or anywhere else, don't panic. Treat it as an opportunity to learn. Pay attention to what you see. The same goes for other unexpected paths that present themselves, including lectures you might have a chance to attend, rooms in the library you haven't seen, roads you haven't taken. Try them. See where they go. See what you can learn. You might like it.
Keep It in Proportion. Sometimes you will be frustrated, unhappy, pressured, sad, or whatever. Don't let it overwhelm you. Remember you live in the greatest country in the history of the world, still the land of opportunity. Whatever bothers you at some particular moment, you will get past it. Don't take it too personally. It's not that big a deal. Go on to the next thing. In the medium and long term, you will pull through.
If at any point you feel sort of depressed and overwhelmed by everything, here are four simple and quick measures that can sometimes help:
- Turn on more lights
- Open the curtains
- Drink a glass of water
- If the weather is nice, take a walk.
Learn the rules and follow them. If you can safely work around or avoid stupid rules or elements of the organization, great. If not, save your mental effort for other things. The fact that senseless rules, people, and bureaucratic procedures inhabit any large organization is not even interesting. Treat it as background noise.
One last thought: please recognize that there's some possibility that these people applying silly rules know something that you don't. They've been involved in whatever they're doing longer than you have.
Luck. It's good to get lucky. But there's no such thing as luck. There's only preparation meeting opportunity. You can build the foundation so that when the right opportunity comes along, you can know it's the right opportunity and then grab it and run with it. Without the preparation, the luck won't happen. And without keeping your eyes open for it, the luck won't happen. It's your job to create the foundation and the preparation, and then to keep your eyes open for the right opportunity. Make your own luck.
Memories. The world you take for granted today or tomorrow will, in a year, become a fond memory. Without even noticing it, you will do new things with new people and then before you know it you will look back on today or tomorrow as the distant past. Plan ahead for that.
Take photographs of your friends and your life, even the mundane details such as your desk and your dorm building. They're a great way to help you remember in a few years how you got where you're going and what your life was like. Label the photographs you take. Do it quickly. Take advantage of the fact that you can have really long filenames on your computer.
Quality. If something is worth doing, it's worth doing right. That goes for homework, term papers, friendships, travel, writing, summer jobs -- anything. If you aren't going to bother to do something right, maybe you should do something else. It's really a shame if you invest time (and money, effort, creativity, and all the rest) in doing something, if you produce a lousy result because you didn't bother to do it right.
Saving the World. Bill Gates has done more to save the world than all the employees of the United Nations. Don't assume the only way to save the world is through a career in public service. You can do at least as much by starting a business (especially if it's "scalable"), identifying and honing a valuable skill, developing new products, inventing something, or creating wealth by creating something that people want to pay for.
Many possible paths will get you there, but college is the first step for many of them.
You don't have to devote your life to helping others. If you help yourself and build your own financial strength, it will let you help others in ways that go beyond merely spending one person's time -- your own -- trying to save the world. But don't lose sight of that goal if it's important to you.
Take Care of Yourself. Don't overeat. Don't eat lousy food. Have breakfast. Eat healthy food. Don't gain weight. Do exercise. Take advantage of the athletic facilities at college. Don't do drugs. Don't abuse alcohol. But you already knew all this.
What College Is About. College is mostly about everything except college. The learning part is really important, but these are at least as important:
- making lifelong friends
- learning how to take care of yourself in the world
- figuring out how things work and how to get things done
- learning to exercise good judgment and make the right choices, or at least the best available choices under the circumstances, recognizing that no choices are perfect
- having a lot of experiences
- having fun
When Things Go Wrong. There's no law of nature that says everything you do will always go right. To the contrary, the laws of probability dictate that things will sometimes go wrong, even if you're really smart and really careful and a really good person. That's one possible outcome of whatever you do. When it happens, deal with it and get past it. Don't let it screw you up or distract you. Don't take it personally. Don't scream about it. Take it in stride and work with it and go on to the next thing.
When things do go wrong, your first instinct -- pounded into you by prevailing norms and our litigation system -- will be to try to figure out a reason that someone else actually caused the problem, so you're not to blame, someone else is. You can almost always find someone else to blame for anything bad that happens. But please recognize the possibility that it was your fault, or at least you could have tried harder to prevent it.
Your Summers. You have three college summers. Each is a treasure. Use it wisely. These may be the last big blocks of time that you can use as you wish, without pressures, without worrying about "what's going on back at the office" or wherever you are "supposed to" be.
Try to work at least two out of the three summers. The third you can travel instead. But when you work, don't just do something to earn some money. When you work, focus on having great experiences, meeting people, and helping you decide what you want to do after college. And don't assume you are limited to the "obvious" summer positions. Be creative. Look into a job in Paris. Be an editor or a forest ranger or a chef's assistant. Look into working for a bank. Think far and wide. And start early.
CLICK here for page 2: Classes >>
Photo courtesy flickr user koocbor, CC 2.0
Classes
Attendance. You can probably skip every class and somehow -- with a little help from your friends -- pull through with a semi-decent grade in most courses. But you will miss the entire point of going to class,
indeed one of the major reasons for going to college. You should enroll in any course to learn and to broaden your mind, not to figure out how little work you can possibly do to get a semi-decent grade. Even when other things come along that might seem more important, or you think you have everything covered, or a friend will take notes for you, try not to miss any classes at all. Be there. To help yourself focus, ask questions in class, assuming the other students do that.Competition. Compete with yourself, not with your classmates. If your classmates are having trouble, help them. This means sharing your notes and what you've learned, even if it's just before the final exam. The process of sharing all of that will help you learn it better, and help you make it even more "your own." It also means that when you have trouble with the material, you can count on your classmates to reciprocate. So it's a "win-win" arrangement.
Group Projects. When you work on a group project, try to lead the team. Don't lose sleep if the other group members don't carry their weight. They won't. It's their loss. Maybe you'll do more work than they will, but you will also learn more. Try to get as much as you can from the experience. When possible, though, avoid group projects. The effort of coordinating the group usually exceeds the benefits of having multiple people involved, particularly if you don't know or like them. On the other hand, it gives you a chance to meet new people and even get to like them, and great experience in organizing and leading teams.
Reach Out. Just because you're an undergraduate and don't have a degree yet, don't underestimate yourself. If you have something you would like to do on campus or someone you would like to work with (e.g., a professor for a research project, an outside professional in the workforce for an internship, etc.), reach out. Write a letter or a handwritten note. You'll shock them by taking them out of their email hell for a moment. And don't assume that "everyone else" is already far ahead of you in prospecting for this type of opportunity.
Style. Here's kind of a dumb suggestion staring you in the face: Before you start the first draft of a paper, learn what your professors want in terms of format. This suggestion also applies much more generally. If you present yourself and your work in an attractive and appealing way, that is always a great start. People can see your surface presentation immediately. It's harder for them to appreciate your substance deep down, but they assume it conforms to the surface that they see. This isn't fair, it isn't right, but it's the way it is -- kind of like a lot of other things you will encounter. So understand it, and get good at it. Whether you like it or not, it isn't going to change.
Your Professors. Get to know your professors -- and make sure your professors get to know you -- without sucking up to them or trying to appear overwhelmingly brilliant and cocky. If students hang out after class asking questions and talking with the professor, grab the opportunity to join them and learn a little something extra and add some depth to the course. You can also build a relationship with a professor by visiting them during their office hours and asking good questions or having a good conversation. They work for you. Don't think of yourself as a supplicant.
CLICK here for page 3: Time Management >>
Photo courtesy flickr user Elmira College, CC 2.0
Time Management
Not Sure Where to Start? When you're not sure what you should be doing, don't spend a lot of time feeling anxious and worried about all the different possible things you could be doing. Unless something jumps out
as being the right first priority, choose one thing -- anything -- and get going. Everything will come together fairly quickly. If it doesn't, because you took the wrong turn, you will often find out that the work you did along the way adds tremendous value once you figure out the turn you should have taken.Strategic Procrastination. You should not procrastinate. But sometimes you probably will. In those cases, at least start enough of the task quickly so that you know what the task is about and can start to think about it subconsciously. For example, if you have a major term paper due in a couple of months, figure out early on what you want to say. Think about it even if you aren't ready to start writing. Try to identify as early as possible any resources you will need for your project. The worst thing in the world is to look at an assignment for the first time the night before it is due and realize you will need to talk to three people (who are hard to reach) and find a book (that you will need to order online), before you can start work.
If you've been thinking about the assignment, chances are pretty good you will know what you want to do with it when the time comes to get the job done the night before it is due. Let's hope this advice will prove irrelevant because you will always organize your time and projects perfectly.
Taking a Break. You should manage your time, much of the time. But you should also find time to hang out and enjoy your friends -- remember they're one of the most important elements of your college experience -- and your life. Don't hesitate to take a break and catch your breath. Do it intentionally, not by procrastinating or by wasting time. When you're trying to get something accomplished, manage your time diligently and ruthlessly. Even then, give yourself some time off, especially if you've been good.
Too Much to Do. When you have too much to do, as you will, remember a few things. Stop complaining.
Don't worry about it. Get the work done. You don't have any other option. College should teach you how to manage yourself and be a more effective person. So treat the "burden" of too many tasks as an opportunity to manage yourself better.
Keep your work area clear. Don't build little piles of tasks, where they will overwhelm you and make you feel oppressed and unhappy. Instead, make lists of what you need to do. Set priorities. Keep the tasks themselves in file folders or on shelves out of the way. Work on one. Then work on the next one. Then work on the next one. Don't brood -- but also don't forget about how much remains to be done. Focus on the project in front of you. Get it done efficiently, well, and once. Before you know it, you will finish your projects.
CLICK here for page 4: How to Treat Other People >>
Photo courtesy flickr user SMBCollege, CC 2.0
How to Treat Other People
Be Nice. Treat people nicely, even if they don't "matter to you." They might turn out to matter to you. Even if
they don't, you'll be a lot happier if you go through life having pleasant interactions. If you're nice to people, they're usually nice back to you. That makes life nicer. And it helps create new friendships.In my world, "being nice" includes such things as doing little favors whether or not the other person does little favors back. It also includes such no-brainers as offering to get someone coffee or soda when you make a coffee or soda run for yourself. And it includes striking up conversations with other people and grabbing any available opportunity to be considerate and accommodating, even with someone you don't know.
It also means passing up opportunities to be offended -- and you will have plenty. Taking advantage of such opportunities may let you feel good by expressing righteous indignation and playing the victim, but mostly this doesn't tend to endear you to other people.
If someone is truly horrible, you will never make them anything else -- they don't care what you think. Your best strategy is to ignore them if you can. They have no interest in hearing from you about how they can be a better person, and you obtain no benefit by sharing those suggestions.
Complaints. People aren't always considerate. In fact, they often aren't considerate at all, because they think only about themselves. That's the way they are. Institutions are rarely perfect. Professors won't always treat you exactly as you want to be treated. Life isn't fair.
You can dwell on these problems. You can set yourself out to right every wrong, tell everyone how they've offended you, express your complaints as soon as they arise. You can treat the entire world as one huge complaint window that never closes. Or you can live with a lot of these things, and work around them or go on to the next thing. I favor the latter, unless some situation is truly egregious and you think there's a reasonable shot you can change it.
Differences. Not everyone will think like you, or agree with you, or care about the same things you do. Don't limit yourself to the people who happen to think like you, agree with you, and care about the same things you do. You may learn more from people who have a totally different world view. Don't shy away from them because they don't fit into your preconceptions of how people should be. These differences help make your world interesting and help make you a more interesting and broader person. You will hear a lot about "diversity" at most universities, but their conception of "diversity" typically has very little to do with differences of opinion or viewpoints. Try to get beyond those narrow views of "diversity" and open your mind to all different opinions, viewpoints, and experiences.
First Impressions. You never get a second chance to make a first impression. It's trite but true. Be nice to people from the very first interaction. Look them in the eye. Smile. Have a good handshake. Repeat the person's name to make sure you've caught it. This will help you remember and avoid future awkwardness.
A good first impression makes a great start. It may be "fake" and obvious at first, but before you know it the "fakery" becomes reality, another example of how style creates substance. And it makes a difference.
Staying in Touch. As you meet people and make friends, keep those friends. Stay in touch with them. Don't let them drift off your radar screen, or you off theirs. This goes for your pre-college friends and onward. As you live your life, you will do many things and go many places, and so will your friends. But the most important part of everything you do, the part that you will treasure the longest and the most, will be the people you meet and the friends you make. Keep them. Help them keep you.
I know you probably think Facebook, or whatever turns out to replace or supplement it, will help you maintain friendships. But please don't rely on machines. If you have a chance to do something worthwhile in person with someone, grab it. Turn off the cell phone and the text messaging once in a while. It's really different when you actually see another human being. It's a whole lot better.
CLICK here for page 5: Goals >>
Photo courtesy flickr user Bosdos, CC 2.0
Some Goals
Taking into account the preceding advice, here are some suggestions for goals you should try to achieve
during your first year or two of college.Family. Stay in close touch with your family -- the most important long-term group of people in your life, no matter how many new friends you make.
Friends. Try to make at least three significant really good new friends -- friends you know well enough that you could feel comfortable calling them just to talk, without advance warning, late in the evening, and who could come visit you without calling ahead. But don't forget about making lesser friends as well.
Leavening. Find time to go to concerts, art shows, musical performances, and other events. Take advantage of the breadth of experiences available to you at college, particularly where they have nothing to do with whatever you are actually studying.
Relationships. If it feels right, you should feel free to have a boyfriend or girlfriend. But don't push it. You have plenty of time. And if you have one relationship, you lose a lot of the terrific freedom that college gives you. Plus, relationships are a lot of work. You will have plenty of time for them later.
Thinking Ahead. By the end of your second year of college, start thinking about what you want to do after college. Maybe even develop your tentative plan. You will need to choose a major at some point in the process. Try to choose something that will help you fit into the working world -- not just something that is academically interesting or will prepare you for further study. You will ultimately need to support yourself after you graduate. Think about your major starting in your second semester.
I hope these suggestions help you, although of course you will need to filter, shape, or ignore each of them based on your own judgment and who you are. In all likelihood, you will eventually get it right, with or without my help, but a little help might help!
And now it's up to you.
Joshua Stein practices commercial real estate law in New York City. He first wrote this in 2006 for his daughter Helaina when she started college, after which it appeared as a chapter in Jeffrey W. Meshel's book,"The Opportunity Magnet" (Hatherleigh Press 2010). When his daughter Julia started college in 2011, he rewrote and updated his advice for Helaina. Copyright © 2011 Joshua Stein (www.joshuastein.com).
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