Why I am Creating Modern College
College has changed a lot over the years, but the advice we give college students has not.
Do a quick scan of the internet and you will find that the majority of the advice on how to approach college is grossly outdated. Most of the material is written by individuals who graduated college decades ago, during a time when the college landscape was fundamentally different than it is now. Many of these authors wrote their advice from a time before the advent of the internet, and when attending a 4-year University didn’t go hand-in-hand with serious debt. Not to mention the numerous cultural, social and large-scale economic shifts that have occurred all around the world in recent years.
As I dug deeper I found that while there was a limited supply of relevant college guidance available, there was a huge demand for it from current college students. Everywhere I searched I found forums and Facebook groups brimming with college students looking to gain advice from their peers and those who had recently cleared the obstacles that these current students were now encountering.
As I began to uncover this need, the next question I asked myself was “Why should I even care?” And for an initial period of time after I graduated, the truth was that I didn’t. I had done what I needed to do in college, which meant it was time to put this particular chapter in the rear-view and focus on life’s next adventures. For me this meant traveling across Europe for a month and a half on my own & then moving across the country to start a new job in Silicon Valley.
However, after a few months of adjusting to my new life, I continually found myself returning to those not-too-distant memories of college. In large part, this was driven by the fact that my younger brother Austin, was in the midst of his own college experience as a sophomore at UW-Madison. Our weekly texts and phone calls almost always included nuggets of advice on how to handle the different obstacles that college presents.
After a while I began to consider the fact that my guidance could be valuable to more people than just my brother, which motivated me to publish my first ever piece on Medium titled: 5 Tips to Land Internships & Jobs as a College Student.
To my surprise, the initial article received a large amount of traction, which led me to write a number of follow-up posts and eventually plant the seed for Modern College.
What is Modern College?
I) A Publication
In it’s initial form, I plan for Modern College to be a Medium publication in which current college students and recent grads can share different stories and advice on how to navigate the current college landscape.
My goal is to crowd-source content from a wide range of students and recent graduates. The reason is that my own experiences are too limited to connect to each and every individual. By expanding the number of writers, the breadth of advice presented will be applicable to a greater number of people.
II) A Book
In the mean-time, I am also working to publish my first book. While I have not committed to a title, I have decided that the content will be an organized mix of my own content and the best external content on the Modern College publication.
I will not force any writer to contribute their content to the book, however I hope that many of the writers will believe in the mission that Modern College is attempting to accomplish.
By organizing the best content around college in one place, I hope to have a cohesive guide book for those students considering or already in college. While it will not have the complete breadth of the publication, I plan for the book to be a digestible form of the most important information for college.
III) A Movement
Lastly, I hope that Modern College becomes a movement. There have been way too many social constructs built around college that no longer make sense. Many of these constructs are outdated and jeopardize the future of young individuals who have been mislead for their entire lives.
Now is the chance to transform college for the better. This type of change will not happen from within, it needs to be driven by those of us who have experienced it, graduated from the system and care enough to change it for the better.
Whether you wish to be a writer, reader or general observer of the movement, we are happy to have you on board. Those of you with stories or advice to give about college, please contact me at: writemoderncollege@gmail.com OR on twitter.
Welcome to Modern College.
