Being a part of three clubs on campus means, among other things, that I get to sit in on three different senior sendoffs. There’s usually a segment during which the seniors hold centerstage and share with the younger students any perspectives or advice that they may find useful.
It’s the perfect time for underclassmen to get all questions answered and doubts assuaged. My only gripe was this: no one there could give any advice to the seniors themselves. And I am being perfectly honest when I say that we are in need of critical advice the most.
And so, this post starts off with the thought “if I had to give seniors advice, what would it be?”. It’s very self-exploratory. It is by no means exhaustive at all. And I’ve approached it with a simple question:
How is “real life” different from college?
Here’s my premise for starting with this question: if the working world were exactly like college, then seniors would have no problem at all. Instead, because college is drastically different from real life, and because college graduates are ill-equipped to handle that change, they lose months of valuable time and experience.
I’ve isolated 3 major changes:
- The Disappearance of Structure
- The Loosening of Proximity
- The Switch from Client to Seller
And these major changes affect the way we approach 2 things — our life and career, and making friends — very differently.
Let me explain how I eventually came to these three points, and then we can take a look at some of my personal ways of dealing with them.
1. The Disappearance of Structure
From the moment I became an eligible pre-frosh up until now, my college experiences have been highly structured, even curated.
For example, take the Explore Program, which I was enrolled in the moment I arrived at WashU’s clocktower. It’s a mandatory 3-day series of activities specifically designed to inform international students of American cultural norms and assimilate them as easily as possible into U.S. college life. It was also where I found my first group of close friends. In other words, it was a highly structured format to introduce us to this new environment and help us make friends.
Or let’s, for a moment, take a step back, and glance at approaches you can take through college. There are only 102 majors in WashU. Degree and school requirements narrow the total set of possible combinations you can take. That means that every WashU student has a very structured set of life paths they can meander through. I came in wanting to be an engineer, and that (along with some tangential interests) narrowed my field to about 8 different combinations. I would not be surprised if 80% of WashU’s populace follows the same 20% of total possible degree approaches.
So then, what happens when we leave college?
Making friends goes from a highly facilitated process to almost nada. You’d be hard-pressed to find districts offering “Get to Know Your Neighbors!” icebreakers. Companies offer orientation programs that are sometimes done very well, but for the most part are work-oriented. Just don’t expect to make close friends from a company offsite the way you would at WashU’s LAUNCH pre-orientation program.
Your life journey also rapidly expands from a discrete set of major combinations to anything under the sun (and if you’re an entrepreneur, you’re probably forging a path that has never existed). While the variety is alluring, you can’t just talk to a 4-year advisor and hit the “Enroll” button anymore. Choosing a real life path takes serious, constant searching and reflection.
2. The Loosening of Proximity
The effect of proximity is very apparent on how we approach life and make friends in universities. It is the idea that, within the unnatural geographical confines of the campus, you can do some things a lot more easily than in real life.
One of the most formative examples in WashU is the stipulation that freshmen have to live in dorms on-campus. As a student, this means you get to greet, chat with, and live with a group that is probably more culturally and intellectually diverse than wherever you came from. It is quite an intensified cross-cultural and cross-disciplinary immersion experience. I personally got to see and learn Jewish customs first-hand from my roommate — something not many Singaporeans have the chance to do, and something that I’m incredibly grateful for.
This proximity also shapes how you approach life in college. Events like the Student Activities Fair collate and display all the special-interest groups in one place, and with 355+ clubs housed on-campus, there is something for everyone. Getting plugged in means walking 2 minutes to a group’s information session. It’s easy to find things you love, and everything seems just within arm’s reach.
How does that look in the “real world”?
The ramifications here are pretty obvious. Firstly, there’s no option to select “Random Housing” and let your college handpick the diversity of your floor for you. You typically go to a new city with people you already know and room with them. It’s very easy to come back from work, hang out, and go out with the same community for the next few years. Your proximity to fresh and interesting perspectives weakens.
Secondly, opportunities to get involved with other organizations no longer come on a silver platter. (Neither do they have meetings 5 minutes from your dorm room anymore). You have to seek them out, find out who the gatekeepers are, and make the effort to interact with them in order to get into the inner community.
3. The Switch from Client to Seller.
This reason underpins everything else we’ve talked about. At the bottomline, our 4 years in college is an experience that we paid for, in some way or another. We are shelling out a sizable chunk of $$ for the services of a structured learning journey and the right to be part of the WashU student and faculty community. And given WashU’s standing in the arena of higher learning and its long history of enabling success to its clients (read: alumni), it’s fair to say that these services are pretty worth it.
When we enter the workforce, we go from being clients to being sellers in a competitive global market. We go from 4 years of care and attention from WashU deans and nurturing learning environments to sink-or-swim situations. The change is jarring at the very least.
So what’s the best way forward?
I do not have the benefit of hindsight with me (although, having transitioned from high school to the Army as a lieutenant, I think I have some substantial experiences to draw from). What I can share are some methods I have been using to tackle these changes.
The best way I combat a loss in structure is, naturally, to inject my own structure.
Microsoft Excel for Making Friends
Adding structure to the way I meet and maintain connections may come across as cold and meticulous, but it’s a great way to reintroduce structure. I maintain a spreadsheet of sorts with two different sheets — one of old friends, and one of new connections I want to explore. The old sheet has important details like the geographical location of the person and the last time we interacted significantly.
The new sheet is bucketed more into different lifestyles or careers I want to explore. For example, if I want to get to know someone in the New York hip-hop dance scene, I create a new column labeled as such, and start tracking down YouTubers/studio instructors/celebrity choreographers — anyone whom I can potentially get in touch with.
Upkeeping a sheet like this would be useless if I didn’t act on it. Thus, I also force myself to reach out to at least 2 people a day. My preferred mode of strategy is to go on LinkedIn to see if we have any sort of similarities — maybe he/she went to WashU, or worked in Singapore for a bit. I then try to contact them through a variety of ways (to be covered in another blog post, perhaps). Doing these 2 things consistently gives me lots of opportunity to talk to new people, learn about the best way to approach life, and make new friends or mentors.
All the Mentorship in the World, Ever — On Your iPad
I also carve out about an hour of reading time a day — 30 minutes on a book or video series, 20 minutes on reading the news, and about 10 minutes reading newsletters like Medium or TechCrunch (and retweeting them). I’ve found that this practice gives me a steady source of life perspectives as well, and it’s easy to put this to practice if you’ll be commuting to/from work.
Adjust Your Approach Constantly
Lastly, I build time into my calendar, typically every month or so, where I reexamine a few things:
- What new perspectives have I come across this month?
- Has it changed what I want out of my life and career?
- If so, do the “projects” I’m working on right now advance that vision? If not, what will?
- For the projects I’m working on, did I hit the goals I wanted to hit this month? Why or why not?
- Set new goals
From a loose process like this, I’ve decided that I want to write a blog for at least a year, and work on a startup idea remotely with two really good friends from college.
Do not underestimate the effort that goes into this, but realize that once you get into a rhythm, the value you get outweighs almost anything else you can put your time to it (estimated time per day? About 1.2 hrs total)
Similarly, the best way to combat a loosening of proximity, is to inject yourself into the center of exciting groups.
Surround Yourself with People Who Care — It’s Beyond Important
I’ve recently started to look into dance studios and startup incubators in New York. That’s because I know that I want to have a dance and startup community that I can plug into.
Take the time now to do searches and reach out to the gatekeepers of the groups you’re interested in. If you like blogging, find a blog interest club that meets on Saturdays. If you want to talk real estate with people, go to real estate auctions and mingle. Be deliberate about it — for example, I plan to take classes at a different hip-hop studio every weekend for about 1–2 months. That way you give yourself options to choose the groups you vibe with the best.
On top of that, be cognizant of your location and what that may or may not bring you. Being in Manhattan is going to put you in the center of things a lot more than West New York, NJ, even if technically all you have to do is cross the river to get to events. At the end of a long day, your exhausted self will not want to make the trip back and out again to visit a TechWeek lecture and discussion.
Being a Seller is a lot more work than being a Client.
The last point I want to share is that as a Seller, nobody owes you anything; you’re fending for yourself. Personally, I’ve found that these 2 habits have helped me adapt to this new environment:
- Believing That Everything Matters. Part of the life of a Seller is that you’re constantly competing with other Sellers, and people are constantly watching. As I’ve stated in my previous post, you build a lot of loyalty by giving it your 100% all the time. For example, the amount I worked at my 2 internships vastly outstrips the work I put into school (which is already sizable), but that helped me rise up to become one of the top interns in my respective classes.
- Be Visible. Sellers are fighting for visibility, and you lose out if you don’t get seen! Of course, there are many ways to be visible, some better than others. I like to think about how I can add value to my organization above and beyond my job title. If your analyst class needs an Recruitment Chair, take it! (I know I did.) It’s important to not think of it as additional drudgery, but as more ways to demonstrate your value to the company.
Graduation is both exciting and scary. I have a million and one unanswered questions in my brain (“How crowded is LaGuardia on a Monday morning?” probably ranks close to the top). It’s a pretty wild ride.
But I’m confident that doing these 3 things — adding structure back to the way you approach life and making friends, forcing yourself to seek out communities who are exciting and who care, and above all else thinking like a Seller — will help me, and any other college grad, adapt to this new world more easily.
I’m curious to hear: What are some of the ways you are adapting to real life?
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