I have many regrets from my college years. Although it is stereotypically entertaining to talk of college in terms of all the crazy things we did on campus, I think that most people regret the things they didn’t do rather than the mistakes they made.
This is because college (as it stands today) is a unique experience in a young person’s life, and unique experience means unique opportunities. College students are capable enough to do all the things that grownups do, but lack the drag of full-time responsibility. And a college campus is a resource like no other - filled with peers, mentors, and facilities only rivalled by major metropolises.
I think there are a few reasons why it’s common to waste so much of this opportunity in college. Most people point the finger at the immaturity and lack of discipline that seems to be a hallmark of that age. This was definitely true for me, and I think unavoidable for almost all of us. Think about how much you have matured since college, or even how much you matured during college. Unfortunately, our current culture and expectations for students actually contribute to their lack of accountability.
One of the greatest marks of adulthood is fiscal responsibility - that is, working to support your lifestyle. The problem is that the cost of college education is so high at this point, it is almost impossible for a student to take on its costs singlehandedly. Either their parents pay, or they take out loans.
For me, it was a little bit of both, but in my last year my Dad started to share this burden with me, and I am grateful to him for making this push in a small but noticeable way. I forget the details of the deal, but I think I paid half my tuition and half my living costs; the effect was staggering. For the first 3 years of college, I worked the minimum number of hours at my job on campus and was taking an average of 15 credits per semester. During my senior year, I worked 20 hours a week, including a 5 PM -12 AM shift on Tuesday night followed by a 5:30 AM - 9 AM shift Wednesday morning, and I took 18 and 19 credits for my Fall and Spring semesters respectively. At the same time, I interviewed for 10 different companies and probably had more of a social life than any other year.
You may think it odd that I increased my school workload when I clearly had less free time, but I think it’s only natural. We all have encountered this phenomenon before that when you are busier, you also find more time. This is because inaction breeds more inaction and action breeds more action.
The other cause for my increased efficiency was that I felt more responsible for myself on a macro level. I felt a sense of purpose, which made the way forward clearer to me. I have very few regrets from my senior year.
Recently, I have been pursuing a graduate degree, and this time I am paying my own way. I have never been this disciplined at school or this conscious of its importance. In fact, there is still a big difference between my outlook senior year (when I was taking on part of the cost of my education) and now, and I think this is because in the back of my mind I knew there was an obvious safety net if I couldn’t come up with the money. If I had told my Dad that I was too busy to work because of my studies, he probably would have understood as would most parents.
Another reason students squander opportunity is the enormous amount of poor advice given (most time unsolicited) by authority figures. Many of these people do not have the experience and wisdom their job titles imply - guidance counselor, academic advisor, professor. Most of their advice has a negative connotation, attempting to tell students the pitfalls to avoid. More times than not, it amounts to a series of checkmarks that only give the appearance of success: good grades, a full resume, attendance at networking events, etc. None of these things actually preclude learning, which should be the number one priority of higher education. If students spend their time running around fulfilling checklists of what is expected of them, they will never learn to think for themselves.
How do we break this vicious cycle? So far, I have been pretty negative, so I am going to talk about positive mindsets that every college freshman should learn to embrace in order to make the most of their time.
Challenge Yourself Academically
If you do not feel challenged academically, then you need to rethink your education because there is a direct correlation between learning and adversity.
I was not challenged. I was a business major, and the overall impression at that school was that if you weren’t taking Accounting or Finance, an A was expected. I attended the Robert H. Smith school of Business, but we had another name for it - the Robert H. Smith school of Multiple Choice. My study time was very minimal, and my GPA numbers make me look like a genius. I’m definitely not a genius, but every test was (you guessed) multiple choice and the subject material only required you to memorize facts.
There was also a more subtle issue with the work I was doing. The business school didn’t necessarily need to water down subjects or inflate grades for my education to be devalued - some of the subjects were simply not rich in academic material.
Marketing is a good example. There is only so much you can do in a Marketing course outside of learning definitions of concepts. Of course, it is much more valuable for students to execute various group and individual projects, like an advertising campaign. But aren’t these students supposed to learn concepts before applying them? This is the conundrum that subjects like Marketing face. The truth is that every concept you need to know in Marketing you learned as a kid when you ran a lemonade stand. In college, you simply learn the names of those concepts and hear examples of how certain businesses applied them. Of course, professors do not want to tell you that their field is sparse in subject matter, so instead they serve up classes to be something more mysterious and and complicated than they actually are. This is quite hurtful to education, because it mystifies the world in the students’ eyes rather than clarifying it.
Not all majors are created equal. Anybody who tells you this is either lying or confused. This illusion (often perpetrated by those authority figures) leads many students to become agnostic about how much they are being challenged.
Of course, many counselors will tell you that some majors clearly lead to better job prospects than others, but this is really the only comparison they draw between different subjects. I never heard a counselor admit that some subjects are simply not as valuable as others from an educational viewpoint.
I once was training to become an Outdoor Excursion leader (the fact that I did not finish this training can be logged as another college regret), and one of our first assignments attempted to explain the concept of “adventure learning”.
Our teacher drew 3 concentric circles on the ground and asked us to imagine that we were leading a kayaking expedition. You take 40 novices out on this trip, and you start on the very outside circle. This represents absolutely calm waters. This may be safe and enjoyable, but the students don’t learn anything about balance or paddling techniques or how to look for signs of danger. Then you try the very inside circle. This represents the most difficult possible setting where the group is thrown into a riptide from the start. This is clearly a dangerous and terrible idea, but it is also an atmosphere detriment to learning. How can these people learn while overwhelmed by the dangers and obstacles they face?
It is true of almost all learning that there is a Goldilock zone, where one is challenged and under stress but not lost. Universities should strive for this as a formula for maximizing education in the short time their students have. This means creating an environment where it is safe to make a mistake. A C+ in a very difficult class should be valued higher than an A in Fluff 101, but I have never felt like that is the case.
Cut Your Own Path
In my experience, peer pressure is discussed most in highschool, but I think it is more important in college, where the sobering influences of family and lifelong friends are absent. The large majority of students are on campus for a free ride, and pressure others to join in on that mindset, both overtly and subconsciously. There are various programs and activities I failed to participate in; I hesitated partly because I was worried what my peers would think.
For example, I studied abroad in Rome during my junior year. I went through the program at my university which set up student housing in apartments near the Italian school with the other study abroad students. On the face of it, this seemed like a sweet deal, but one of the main reasons I studied abroad was that I wanted to become fluent in Italian. If you want to learn another language, then you should live with locals. But instead of going out on my own and securing lodging with a host family, I accepted the student housing.
Why? Partially because I was lazy. But I think it was also because 90% of my peers viewed study abroad as one long Eurotrip, and I was afraid to be the outcast with no friends in a foreign country. Luckily, I cut my own path upon arriving in Italy, spending most of my time with locals or 4-year international students. I learned so much more of the culture and language this way (which really should be the goal of study abroad), but not living with a host family is my biggest regret from my time abroad.
There are other examples I can give here, but I would rather end this section by saying that most of the really cool things happening at Universities are not happening in the mainstream. Outdoor excursions, robotics competitions, living & language programs, radio stations, writing clubs, theatre - these are all things in which less than 5% of the population participate. Sporting events, parties and bars are all great, but I suspect that some students attend these out of peer pressure rather than pure interest.
Pursue Your Passions
If you are considering a career or future in some field, the best thing for you to do is to start immediately. If you want to be a software engineer, try writing code. If you want to be a businessman, start a company. If you want to be a designer, design something. There is this myth that students need to wait until graduation to do all these things, and it is the most dangerous mindset on campus.
In fact, college is a perfect time to do these things, because there is usually a lot of free time (like summer and winter breaks), low levels of accountability and access to many resources.
Some of my passions are writing, programming, playing the piano, and learning languages. I wrote for the University of Maryland newspaper, but not enough! I should have taken on more assignments as these were awesome chances to publish for a large audience. I’m now having trouble finding a piano teacher, but if I had pursued this in college, I could have received free access to grand pianos at the school of music and cheap teachers in the form of my friends there.
The University of Maryland had this program called the language house that allowed you to apply for accommodation in a dorm where students were only allowed to speak a foreign language. There were different sectors (called “clusters”) of the building for the various cultures - Italian, Spanish, German, Persian, French, Russian and many others. I never applied, and I realized in my senior year that this was a big mistake. At the time, I felt that there would be plenty of opportunities down the road for language immersion.
Breaking the Pattern
For those of you who lament all that wasted time in college, be sure not to make the same mistake again. Think about what your future will be like in the next 5 years and ask yourself this question: what is unique about my current situation?
Do you plan on having kids soon? If so, what can you do now that you couldn’t do then? Do you already have kids? What opportunities do you have now that you won’t once they fly the coop?
It is never too late to correct your mistakes. I didn’t challenge myself enough in college, and now I am pursuing a Masters in Applied Mathematics, basically starting over with my education. Now is the best time for me to do this, since I don’t have a family or any other big responsibilities outside work.
It is all too common for us to realize the unique opportunities in our lives only after they pass.
