If 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?
First, let me say that I am not entirely unhappy with how things have worked out. But it would be interesting to see what might have happened if I had been told two important things:
1)I would love to tell my college self that he needs to stay the heck away from that girl who worked in the diner. Sheesh.
2)I would also like to tell my high school self to do everything possible to do that Euro-backpack thing he wanted to do before college. That would have broadened some horizons much, much sooner.
Looking forward to seeing some other folks’ ideas!
Wow – as soon as I read this, my head filled with thoughts…as Tiffany knows, this subject is near and dear to my heart!
The overall theme for the advice to my college self would be to get off the treadmill and take a step back to reflect on what I was really doing.
In college, I took the easy way out in that instead of looking more deeply into who I was and what I wanted, I took the safe route of doing what impressed others. Don’t get me wrong, I went to a wonderful school and got a great education, but it would have been an even more valuable experience if I had done if for the right reasons – a.k.a. my reasons.
Many people say we are too young at 17 to know what we want to do, and so we are told to keep our options open because, ‘You can be anything you want to be!” But that advice just overwhelms us with choice, subsequently paralyzing us to take action. So we default to the things we know others will approve of, and end up years later with ‘golden handcuffs’ and a longing for a career do-over. (Okay, so that’s my story, but at least it has a happy ending!)
In short, I would have made my college self find something that internally motivated me and then would have done what I could to leverage my passion into professional wealth. And by wealth, (I’m not referring to money), I mean valuable transferable skills that I could use for a lifetime, ultimately giving me the power to reinvent my career whenever I wanted to.
There it is – whew. Thanks Tiffany for writing such a cathartic post!
Hi Tiffany
When I look back at my college self, I can only think how incredibly naive I was, and how that led to me making so many mistakes.
However, naivety feeds into the fun of college. Experiencing things for the first time and learning from your mistakes.
I wouldn’t change anything…
@ Stephen – Thanks for sharing. It’s interesting to think about how things may have been different if you could have learned some of those lessons earlier. But, life does work out, and we learn, and that’s a good thing!
@ JT – I love how you put it – choosing things for your own reasons, even if they are the same things – still has a powerful effect, doesn’t it? I think of all the times I worried about what other people thought, all the decisions I made because of factors other than me, it’s funny, looking back, how so much stuff falls under that umbrella.
I think one of the things about the college experience is how much better you understand it all once you’re not there anymore. The clarity that comes from hindsight is incredible! So sometimes, I wonder if I was able to talk to my college self it would even make a difference, because would that person even have been able to process or really comprehend what I know now? In other words, would I have truly been able to listen and learn? I think about these things I’ve written, and looking back, various people told me variations on many of these themes back then, but I didn’t take action, they didn’t really hit home, until later. The ones I did act on, I am truly grateful for. But I think that’s sort of the whole knowledge/wisdom debate. With age, somehow, comes a whole new way of thinking about all these things.
@ Simon – I definitely relate. All the things I didn’t know simply led me to things that helped me learn these things I know now. It was worth it to learn them myself, along the way. In fact, all those people who told me so many of these things I ended up not truly “getting” until I had gone through them were important, because what they said helped me understand the whole issue after I’d gone through it, and often not before! Funny how that works, isn’t it?
The best advice I got in college was to immediately start saving for retirement at my first job. Max the 401K, open a Roth IRA… these are things I never would have thought about. You can never get the early years back and compounding is a very powerful thing. No matter what the salary, save first and then spend what’s left.
@ Amy – It’s great that you bring this up – finances drive so many decisions in our 20s, it’s easier to make decisions based on what you want when you don’t have to worry as much about beinc strapped for cash all the time. Thanks for the great insight!
The biggest things I’ve learned so far are about the importance of relationships and the importance of my own happiness. For a long time I was so driven that I never quit working to do anything fun. Now I realize that sometimes there is more value in taking an early afternoon off even when there are things I could be getting done. And of course some of the most fun things to do involve other people, hence the relationships I mentioned earlier. It’s time to lighten up!
@ Michael – I couldn’t agree more! Relationships and happiness are worth figuring out how to make room for.
I would tell myself to have more fun (I spent too much time at my job), and I would definitely think harder about life after college. I had no plan, and it’s definitely had an impact on where I am now. I’d tell myself to visit the career services office. I’d tell myself to not be intimidated and try out for an acapella group.
@ Kate – You know, thinking about it, I definitely would have told myself to sing, too, whether or not all my best girl friends were the ultimate divas at it. It took me many long years to get music back in my life after college because I felt too intimidated by all the talent around me at the time. I wish I’d had the courage to do continue pursuing it, but it’s such a gift now…
Know of any local acapella groups? Because it’s not too late to turn back the clock a little, sometimes… !
I tried to live my college life by a philosophy from Tom Petty…
You have four years to be irresponsible here. Relax. Work is for people with jobs. You’ll never remember class time, but you’ll remember time you wasted hanging out with your friends. So, stay out late. Go out on a Tuesday with your friends when you have a paper due Wednesday. Spend money you don’t have. Drink ’til sunrise. The work never ends, but college does…
He must have written that with this same perspective – the post-college reflection. I was just talking to a group of students yesterday about how glossy and gloriously we look back on our college experience, how much more time we felt like we had back then, how much broader our horizons were…
I think one of the best things I’ve gained from this exercise is the perspective that a lot of these things I would have told my college self are lessons I am still in the middle of learning and ironing out today….
So I guess I’m saying, life is always meant to be lived and learned from, while we’re in the middle of it, trying to figure it out, and wherever we are in that process, it’s important to realize that…
As many of us do in college, we surround ourselves with good friends who help us get through the difficult times such as homework, tests and projects. Well, your career will be no different. I’ve learned that surrounding yourself with a few friends that will gladly help you achieve your goals is instrumental to your ability to reach your brass rings. I would have told myself to get really good at these types of relationships and teamwork. Make great friends and stay in touch with them. When you experience an unexpected career change, you’ll wish you had.
@ Todd – I agree, relationships are so meaningful and important, first in the sense that they are fulfilling, and then as an added bonus because of the support system, the network, that they provide.
Incredible…
This is what I want and what I seek. I’m in college now and thinking how to take one steps further more than common students. But on the process I realize everything must be balanced.
Like you said, not to obsessed to money, I begin to realize that and now looking for job and seeking experience. Tiffanny, you really inspire me… Thank your for this post.
Where were you when I was in college?
I would say how sorry I am we didn’t keep the touch
You’re not fat. You’re not crazy. You’re not doing enough things that you want to do as opposed to feel you should do. Leave the country. Join the Peace Corps. Keep exercising dammit.
and most of all – RELAX. And whatever you do, don’t overthink it all so much.
Hi Tiffany!! (It’s Liz from Falls Creek/OBU/Bison dayzz). Caught a glimpse of your name in the alumni magazine and decided to see all the fancy stuff you’re up to 😉
Four things I’d say to the college me:
1. “Sweetie, you’re gay. You may as well get used to it now.” This would have saved me a LOT of anxiety. It’s actually the ONLY regret that I have — that I didn’t come to terms with it much sooner.
2. “Take those road trips now. Gas will never be this cheap again.”
3. “Take more writing classes.” I kind of got stuck in one mode of writing … plus where else do you have the opportunity for built in, regular, organized feedback on your writing? After college you have to build your own structures for that.
4. “Just be an English major. It’s what you want anyway.” I bounced around for the first three years of college. I’m not opposed to bouncing around. But I really knew what I wanted to do originally, and should have just gone with it … I would have been a little more relaxed and probably done more things I enjoyed if I’d started out in the major I wanted (and the one in which I wound up, anyway).
Hey, Liz! Great to hear from you! What have you been up to these days?
It’s funny how easy things are to see in hindsight: like, for example, how I should have stocked up on pretty much everything canned I’ll ever want before food prices got so stupid!
I love the travel one. I would have told myself to travel, every summer, take a semester off and just drive or backpack or something.
The advice that you posted is great Tiffany, but I have advice of a different nature. If I could go back, I would tell my college self “You are good enough and it is okay to ask for help”.
I dealt with (still do, but have improved) severe depression and low self-esteem throughout college. I have had low self-esteem all my life, but in college it significantly worsened. I held the mistaken belief that if you had to ask for help, that meant you weren’t smart so I tried to deal with the college transition on my own. I did not deal well with failure either. In high school I did not have to work very hard to make A’s and did extremely well. In college, it was a very different story. Therefore I did not handle the transition well and didn’t realize what mistakes I was making until MUCH later.
Fast forward 5 years later and I am finally at a place where I actually am starting to feel good about myself and I ask for help when I need it. I wish I could have learned this much sooner, but life is a journey full of growing pains and learning opportunities.
Advice to my college self:
Drop out.
well i am in high school still, and yet many of my peers tell me i act like im in my late twentys or even thirtys, one thing i regret though is a relationship that i cant break, i mean love is there but i always think of the future in example what i will be? who will i become? marriage? and things of that nature i just feel like if i wuld stop thinking bout the future id have a much smoother transition to a university or even the ivy leagues and i think relationships arent great with me(culture prohibits dating)
I think you should write a blog on goals it would be intresting to see your perspective
What would I tell my old college self??? That’s easy: NETWORK, NETWORK, NETWORK! The value of a good, solid network trumps a good GPA every time.
This could of been useful for me back in they when I went to college, but then again, I dropped out after the second semester 😉
@ Aj – Haha. Well, you know what they say about hindsight!
I would tell my college self: ‘Go live your dreams and have fun doing so’.
In fact I keep telling myself this right now. There is no reason why you should keep yourself from living.
What will you tell yourself in 10 or 20 years?
@ JV – Great perspective. I’ll have to think about that! 10 years from now, I’m sure everything will make a lot more sense than it seems today!
Great post! And great blog. I love reading about college experiences, past a present. There is a lot to be missed and a lot to be learned from that young time. A great time of life. Keep the posts coming!
Here’s a recent article I particularly enjoyed on college experiences: http://burisonthecouch.wordpress.com/2009/07/23/ten-things-we-miss-about-college/
– Mike