Print This
Email ThisIf you could go back and tell your college self one thing, what would it be? About work, about life, about love, about career, about anything?
I’m speaking to a summer PR undergrad course, and though I’ve spoken to classes many times before, the professor for this class was so open with where she wanted me to go, I basically have free reign over all my beloved areas of expertise. So I’ve been thinking, what’s the most important thing I can tell these students? What would I want to tell my college self, about all these things I’ve learned since then. Everything? Anything? Nothing at all? Here are some ideas I’ve had so far:
About college.
Get experience. Get opportunities you can put on your resume under “work history,” whether you were paid to do them or not. If you can’t get someone to hire you to do cool things, volunteer at a non-profit, and make cool things up to do that are awesome experience in your field.
Broaden your horizons. Work in lots of different environments, industries, business models. Be an extreme job hopper. Travel to different countries or cities. Live somewhere else for a semester or two. Test your own ability to grow by ridding yourself of familiar places and people; force yourself to experience what it will be like to move away from home while you still have the option of returning back there. That way, when the decision to move across country for a killer job comes, you will know you can handle it, and you can make the decision more easily.
Build relationships. A great college experience is not all work and no play. I learned that the hard way, but I know it’s possible to do well in school and also be social and active and get experience. So, don’t get so busy you forget to build relationships. Most college students get their first job through a friend of a parent or a parent of a friend. So make sure you make lots of them, from lots of different places, with lots of different interests.
About the web.
Explore it. I started a blog my senior year, and it wasn’t award-winning by any means. But I learned a lot about the web, the shoulds and shouldn’ts of blogging and how it can impact your life. This experience helped me navigate into something bigger later on.
Get connected. I didn’t know then the amazing networking power of the web in the professional world. Now I know of student bloggers who get great job offers right out of school because of who they know – online.
Make real friends. Connect to as many people – in real ways – as you can. Making friends online, though, does not mean simply amassing thousands of Facebook or MySpace friends. Making real friends online takes a lot of time and work, so create a small working network of five to fifteen professionals, because these are the relationships hat will really help your career.
About work.
Get a job. Get and keep whatever job you can as soon as you graduate, even an internship. Don’t be picky, don’t hesitate, and don’t turn down offers because you think you deserve more money. Maybe you do, but someone else who’s being interviewed and is just as qualified as you doesn’t care about money, because they’re still living at home with their parents, and you have to compete with that. The longer you wait to get a job out of school, the worse you will feel and the longer you’ll have to keep waiting to get one. You can always get another job later.
Do amazing work every day. Settle for nothing less than being remarkable, even on the stupidest assignments. Find ways to make every project you work on better. If your boss doesn’t assign you amazing work, do the stupid work fast, and then come up with amazing assignments for yourself and get them all done in record time. If your boss isn’t impressed, start looking for another job somewhere else, because someone will appreciate the initiative.
Make your own ladder. There are some places where the career ladder is dead. There are others where it’s not. Who cares? Make your own career ladder based on your wildest dreams. Whether that means job hopping until you find something or someplace you love or whether it means having a braided career, a patchwork of working, traveling, starting your own business, freelancing, doing what you love. Before you have a family to provide for and a mortgage to pay, focus on finding your ladder, and climb it however you’d like.
About life.
Be a good friend. Stay in touch with your friends from college, the ones who are far and the ones who are near. But also, make new friends, and balance exploring new relationships with preserving old ones.
Love. Whether it’s someone or something, make sure you always have love in your life. It could be a hobby or a pet or a friend or a romantic relationship, as long as it gives you the love you need to be happy, motivated, and satisfied.
Make happiness your top priority. Money won’t make you happy, in fact, research shows that once you reach the $40,000 a year mark, your basic needs are met and more money simply won’t increase happiness (across socioeconomic and geographic locations). But love will, and friendships, and things you’re passionate about, so organize your time and your efforts to put a priority on these things first.
I’d love to hear your ideas as well, so tell me:
What would you tell your college self now? About the things that matter to you? About getting where you are now, or avoiding those places you wish you’d never gone?
For more timely, relevant, and engaging articles, subscribe to Brazen Careerist.
1) don’t take yourself so seriously.
2) it will take a lot longer than you think to get your career where you want it.
3)Your late 20s are more fun than your early 20s.
4) don’t take yoursefl so seriously.
There are so many things I’d tell my college self….my college years were rough. There were some things I did well, like volunteering(by choice), and I already had a great work history behind me while I was still in college and never had problems getting a job. And fortunately, I knew the power of the web early on.
1. Get out now. Do not stay. You’ve been here a year and you hate it. Don’t wait until you potentially find a better option. Leave now and then worry about finding a better fit. You’ll be much happier.
2. Study abroad. You think you can’t afford it, and you can’t, but you can find a way. Do it now because it’ll be much harder to do it after college. [still haven’t done it]
3. Change your major. Don’t stick with Comm out of a sense of obligation. Swap to sociology or global studies. They’ll hold your attention because you’re passionate about them.
4. Learn how to develop quiet time for yourself each day. Learn it now, especially while your schedule is flexible. Then it will be easy as pie, like second nature, when you’re part of the working world and running around like a nut. Think of it as a preventative treatment.
5. Make sure you keep in touch with that handful of professors you had in 4 years that actually had a positive impact on you.
6. You already have friends that aren’t connected to your school in any way, but make more, a lot more. You’re more likely to keep in touch with them when the college days are done.
About College:
1. I agree with Alaia, study abroad.
2. Learn time management freshman year
3. Only take on a leadership position in an organization if you are willing to give up your life for that organization.
4. Go the to the events career services puts on, even if you think they are lame.
5. Your professional persona can begin when you are in college, take advantage of that and the various opportunities presented because of student status, like job shadowing.
6. Don’t try and win the sponge award at the local bar, it’s a cool title but your GPA will suffer and you liver will hate you. Just because other people are going to the bar and you stay in and study doesn’t mean you’re a nerd, you have to take care of yourself first.
7. Get involved with an organization that can become a second family.
http://theofficenewb.wordpress.com/2008/06/11/office-butt-and-other-things-to-look-forward-to/
1. HAVE FUN- You can always re-take a class, you can never re-take a party.
2. Work hard. Play Hard. Be balanced!
3. The bigger the class, the easier it is to find a place to sleep.
4. If on the first day, the professor says “this will be the hardest class you take this semester” promptly stand up, walk out, and change courses.
5. Take classes all summer long at your local community college- the classes are cheaper, usually easier, and will knock out your core credits.
6. Always take basic business/marketing classes for electives. They will always help you in the long run.
7. If you’re heading into the corporate world after college, also take golf as an elective. Lots of deals happen on the golf course.
Base your degree choice(s) on your personality type. A great place to start your research is “Do What You Are” by Tieger & Tieger.
Number 2: Work hard the first 2 years so you don’t have to the next 2! It is much easier to allow a 3.5 GPA from the first 2 years slip to a 3.0 (by getting a 2.5 the next two years) than to raise a 2.5 to 3.0 (by getting a 3.5 the last 2.) Parties are more fun your senior year and as a result you’ll be less inclined to want to study as much as necessary!
1. Live a little. Let your hair down.
2. Be sure you are getting into the career field you have chosen for the right reasons.
3. Take your time in settling down. You don’t need to get married right away!
4. Find your passions - express them.
5. Live each day like it were your last.
6. Be a Daymaker to those around you.
7. Grades are not as important as you might think.
8. You are just fine being who you are. Don’t change a thing!
FS- You got me thinking…
I was a rare college student because I knew exactly what I wanted to be by my Freshman year of high school, but my friends were not as sure.
Many of them visited their career planning center and learned A LOT about their personality and interests and which careers might motivate them.
A good friend of mine just finished “What’s your Type of Career” by Donna Dunning and said she wished she’d seen this her freshman year in college.
So…take advantage of career counselors early (and often).
http://www.brazencareerist.com/2008/06/13/what-would-you-tell-your-college-self/
The biggest thing I’d tell my college self, is that, after a tour of duty in a combat zone, it’s going to make you see things differently than anyone else on campus, except for other veterans going to college. I’d tell myself not to worry about it, and that it was alright to totally disagree with fellow students and professors who did not have similar experiences.
I wouldn’t call them regrets. Just information that would have made my life even better at the time.
1) Don’t rule out something because it seems impossible. You may be surprised.
2) Test your limits. When you learn them, stick to them.
3) Study abroad. Stepping outside your routine will not cause you to miss anything. One summer is not the same as a semester.
4) Making connections is easy. Sustaining them requires much more effort.
@ All - thanks for all the honest, thoughtful responses. It’s cathartic and important to think about the things we’ve learned along the way - partly to see how far we’ve come, and partly to keep ourselves moving forward, learning from where we are now.
Have sex more often. ‘Cause once you get married, with a kid, that all goes away
These are some advice that I would give to myself & others.
1. Get involve, be in more executives in association
2. Take different courses in other subject that you are interested or curious in.
3. Try starting a business or Get a Job Stretch the last 2 year into 3 to do this, so when you graduate, you would have 3 years or full-time exp under your 4-year degree only using 5 years.
1) Your parents are lying to you. They will pay for you to go to school in California.
2) Your parents are lying to you. They will not help you move to California in exchange for graduating a year early from the school of their choice.
3) When someone offers to help you pitch your show to a network, drop everything else and put that pitch together.
4) Launch your own website, already. Do it entirely on your own. It’s the single best resume-builder there is if you do it well.
5) No matter what anyone says, it’s better to quit when you first become miserable, than wait for them to fire you: it will take five times as long to recover from the abuse.
6) Sell out early. Becoming a Hollywood assistant is a) the least effective way to break in, and b) proof of stupidity, because you haven’t recognized that you’re being drained by a vampire.
Great post, Tiffany! I would probably go back and tell myself to try an internship in addition to the job I was working. It would have been neat to try different jobs out before graduating.
1. As so many have said–study abroad
2. Travel more–being a student offers a rare opportunity to have the freedom to travel
3. Always do your best–helps gain respect of future employers, co-workers, etc
travel, study abroad -DON’T get caught up in the anti-intellectual party atmosphere that often prevails - class becomes a goal to get an A rather than learn - - have fun but don’t take easy As or fashionable classes, or ’scam’ your way through a class.
Take risks and explore what you’re interested in NOW. and if you are interested in it, work like mad on it NOW.
Ask ***** ***** out on a date
What a cool opportunity!
1. Become a life-long learner. Learn to love learning. Learning also goes beyond books, numbers and stats.
2. Learn to love people…especially when you think you can’t.
3. Ask yourself what is it that makes you, as an individual, happy. Don’t bend to what others expect of you…because after college, it all disappears, and you are left to create your own reality/own life. And it’s an exciting adventure. Graduation isn’t the end. It’s a great beginning. =)
my parents’ ever repeated advice throughout my child, “you go to school to learn, not to socialize” is completely off the mark, and my focus should have been networking and internships and friends, not getting my learn on and having deep philosophical debates with professors.
I studied abroad — in Australia. Though I wish I had kept taking French after meeting my language requirements my freshman year, because I haven’t spoken a word in a decade, and I don’t doubt it would have been a useful resume builder