If you put free food and college students together, what do you get? No food left! What if you add some generous alumni who offered to pay for the food? And they happened to be working in the field that the students were interested in? Then you get even better free food and a way to grow your network! That must have been the mentality behind my school’s Dinner for Anteaters program, where alumni pay for students’ dinner as a way to give back to the school. I attended as a student and while I didn’t keep in contact with anyone I met there, I did enjoy the quality of the free food, which was way better than the pizza we usually got after sitting through boring info sessions.
Now that I’ve graduated and have a real job, I wanted to give back so I co-hosted my own Dinner for Anteaters with one of my best friends recently. I was debating about picking a cheaper place since the place we settled for would put us back a few hundred dollars. Then I remembered how awesome it felt when I was a student to eat something free that wasn’t pizza so one of my best friends and I ended up choosing the same restaurant when I was a student in Dinner for Anteaters. I got there before the dinner started to make sure our reservation was in order and to skim the menu to see what we needed to order as appetizers. Can’t be spending precious preaching time trying to decide between the chicken or beef. I was really determined to give these kids the best free dinner of their lives, just like the one I had when I was in their shoes.
When it was time for the dinner, I walked over to the front door and saw their college-ness emanating from their professional dress shirts that seemed to say, ‘Hey, I’m almost able to work and dress like this every day!’ I snuck into their circle and pretended I was a college student since I look younger than I really am. They laughed and we made our way back to the table that my co-host was waiting at. We had planned out our seats so as to get the most effective talking coverage.
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Our table coverage a la football play
Although only two of the students there were the same majors as my co-host and I, the advice we gave was general enough to apply to all of them. I loved telling stories versus the vague words that alumni often muttered to me when I was student, like ‘enjoy it while you can!’ (as if we didn’t know how to enjoy college until you told us) or ‘try to get an internship so you can get a job more easily’ (ok, but how do I get an internship when my GPA isn’t that high?) I decided that stories would be a better way to pass on my college wisdom so the following are some of my stories that I think can apply to any college student:
College is like Costco…sample everything!
Costco samples are the best. Even though they end up being your appetizers before you hit up the pizza/chicken bake/hot dog at the food court later, they’re meant to entice you to buy the actual package if you like it. College is like its own Costco, where you can try out different things that you normally wouldn’t be able to. If you like the vibes of the people in that place, go with it!
I wanted to be an entomologist, a scientist that studies insects, before I came UC Irvine, The only problem was UCI didn’t have it as a major. I settled for biomedical engineering, thinking bio meant bugs and engineering meant robots, so I could learn about building bug robots. I forgot that medical meant the human body. I hated learning about the body so I began looking for a way to study bugs. I found out that a professor was giving a talk on how butterfly scales can change in color and attended her lecture. I was so interested in what she said that I asked her a bunch of questions at the end. She didn’t have enough time to answer all of them so she invited me to come into her office hours to talk more. I found her research fascinating and she gave me scientific papers to read and discuss each time we met up. I kept coming every week until she offered me a chance to conduct my own research. I ended up studying bedbugs for two years but eventually realized research wasn’t the path for me. I’m glad I tried it so I could come to the realization myself instead of always wondering, ‘what if?’. If you’ve always wanted to do something, college is the time to do it!
College is the perfect time to try new things! Will you make the effort to try new things? Or Netflix and chill instead?
“I don’t have the time! Next quarter!”
Don’t make excuses, make the time for the things that matter to you and prioritize. There will almost always be midterms and homework due but you can study for midterms and do homework way before the day of. I admit, I didn’t start pre-studying until I got into digital circuits, a class that was actually interesting to me. I liked it so much I read ahead and did the homework as soon it was assigned. Crushed the midterm because I had gone to office hours, read the textbook in the library with earplugs in and stayed ahead of the schedule for once. If I had done this for every class, regardless of my interest in them, I definitely wouldn’t be worrying about my GPA or getting internships and letting that anxiety keep me from trying all the things I wanted to do.
Gold, Silver and Bronze
When I did judo in high school, we went to a big state tournament that I ended up getting bronze in. I felt bad because bronze doesn’t sound as good as gold or silver but my coach told me that getting any medal was great. The same principle applies to your goals — focus on the top 3! In my 5th year at UCI, I wanted to get a scientific paper published with my name on it, try out technical marketing as an alternative to engineering, get into startups, learn how to program, ace a class I did badly in and get super buff. I only did the first 3. I ended up doing worse in my retake, learned nothing from my ICS classes from barely trying and got weaker than I was before. Although I didn’t do everything I wanted, I learned that I didn’t want to go into research, technical marketing or start ups. In retrospect, I shouldn’t have bothered with the last three at all since I could have done way better on the first three. Focus on your gold, silver and bronze items!
Best Buy on Crack > Going to Class
Every January, the Consumer Electronics Show is hosted in Las Vegas and the electrical engineering club I was part of, IEEE, would do a trip there for our members. The catch was we would miss a day or two of the first week of school usually. My studious friend decided not to go the first two years we went because he was worried he would miss something important in that first week of school. Because you know, important stuff in that first week…like the syllabus…and basic things we should know but probably forgot over break. Most of my other friends would go and we always had a blast at CES while our other friend learned about the syllabus. We always made fun of him for that until he finally relented and came with us the next year. First and only time I’ve been to Vegas with him and it was a blast. Even without a syllabus.
Impromptu Tour Guide > Going to Class
When I was president of IEEE, an HR rep from one of our alumni’s company emailed us asking if there was anyone who could show her around campus. The time she was gonna arrive was right smack dab in one of our classes and it was one of the ones where the professor is gonna go over what’s on the midterm so of course everybody is gonna be there. I almost didn’t do it, wanting to tell her I had an important class to go to…then I thought about how much more fun it would be to take someone from Indiana around a California campus…I said sure, begged my friends to give me their notes and took her around campus. She liked how friendly I was and offered us a tour of their offices after. We went as a club and ate their sandwiches and messed around with cubicles. Total blast. The class ended up being not so informative about the midterm and I got my first job months before graduation because of how much the HR rep liked me.
$5 Footlongs with Friends > Going to Class
My friends and I used to skip boring classes to go to the Subway’s at student center since the bio one wasn’t built yet. I was never the one to suggest these trips but my roommate somehow knew that we’d have a better time at Subway’s than some stuffy old room listening to something we didn’t care about. He was right. We had so much more fun talking about random things and eating $5 footlongs. One of them works at Amazon’s, another works at Google and I’m doing software robotics so clearly, selective ditching didn’t screw us. We still talk about how great our subway trips for $5 footlongs were to this day.
“Want to be my best friend?”
When I was in our freshman orientation the summer before school started, I was super shy and didn’t talk to anyone. Of course I didn’t have anyone to go exploring with during freetime so I had to wander around like a kid with no friends. When the orientation was about to end, we gathered in a circle and the student guide told us to look to our left, and to our right…one of those people could be your best friend! ‘Yeah right’ I told myself, ‘these people suck. Nobody said anything to me!’ The guy next to me asked me if I wanted to be his best friend. I told him, ‘sure’ because he didn’t seem like he was serious. He gave me his AIM and I never contacted him the summer after because I didn’t use AIM and I thought he was just kidding. Flash forward to when freshman year starts, when I’m walking to Pippin by myself, since I was only close to my roommates and not my dormmmates, when I pass by him and he shouts ‘hey!’. I turn around and he introduces himself to me again. I mumble an apology for not hitting him up but he doesn’t mind. We get food together and hang out more.
He ends up being my roommate for the next 3 years and one of my best friends. He never had any fear in talking to anyone, be it hot sorority girls or scary looking fraternity guys. He would just go up to them and start talking, as if he knew them already. I thought it was awkward at the time when they wouldn’t laugh or say something back right away, but he always laughed it off. His care free attitude about approaching strangers rubbed off and when I started joining clubs and meeting more people, I learned to let go of my fear of talking to strangers and just did it. Try talking to everyone…you won’t always be surrounded by 25,000 people your age. You could end up meeting your new best friend!
