College Life
My undergraduate college is about to end. I see a lot my classmates posting photographs about their farewell and writing about how they will miss their friends. I felt like I should write something for those who are still in college.
The first thing which you need to understand right away is your college does not matter much. Stop cursing yourself if you aren’t in your dream college. A good college opens a world of opportunities, whether or not you get them is up to you and your abilities. My cousin brother graduating from Stanford, going on to work for LinkedIn and Uber, is a case in point. A lower rated college gives lesser opportunities but it does not matter because, ‘If opportunity does not knock, build a door’. A guy I know had a year drop (repeating a year due to backlogs) in his engineering. But, he put his time to good use and ended up getting an admit into MITx Global Entrepreneurship Bootcamp. It isn’t the end of the world if you don’t get a college of your choice. Every college is what you make of it!
This brings me to my second point. Participate in events, conferences, communities, whatever the city has to offer. Listen to people, ideas. Most of us don’t listen with an intent to understand, we listen to reply. Everyone you will ever meet knows something you don’t. Don’t be snide and turn down something just because you “feel” that you might not like it. Everything you’ve ever wanted is one step outside your comfort zone. Go ahead and give it a shot. My father forced me to enroll for a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) during my 3rd semester. I found it to be ridiculous. Who will sit and listen to a pre-recorded lecture? Fast forward 2 years and I have over 20 MOOCs under my belt. It need not always have a fairy-tale ending. You may not like it, but you will be 100% sure that it isn’t something which interests you, which is fine. At least you tried!
Find a mentor. Your mentor must be senior to you, not necessarily related to your college. An ideal mentor is someone who has a lot of industry experience and insight. Mentoring would be like talking to his/her former self. Your mentor will always provide you with an unbiased, third party view of the situation, allowing you the freedom to do mistakes, and suggest improvements. Your mentor is your safety harness, who will allow you to make mistakes without dire consequences. Use this experience and learn from your mistakes. If you are not prepared to be wrong, you’ll never come up with something original.
Stay hungry, stay foolish. Probably the most important point. Be curious, be open to learning new things. Don’t be stubborn and closed to ideas. If you do not believe something someone said, don’t assume it to be true. Just because everyone is doing it does not make it right. Before Google came into existence, all the search engines had hideous and annoying pop-up ads. Google decided to do away with them and they were a hit. They said Manchester United could “never win anything with kids”, the Class of ’92 proved them wrong.
Lastly, give back to the community. Share whatever you learn. That is how you will grow and evolve. Write an article about your learnings or talk about it with your juniors or start a small mentorship programme in your college. Spread the knowledge, it is a priceless asset to share. To paraphrase Batman’s words: “Its not what you know underneath, but what you do with the knowledge that defines you”.
While doing all this, don’t forget to enjoy your college life. Those are indeed the best days of my life!
