Four Thoughts From Four Years Of College
It feels strange but it has been almost a year since I left college. These are some extremely random thoughts from and about those years…
1) Grades Matter. And they don’t.
Learning should always be the focus in college (and life for that matter): learning, acquiring knowledge and growing our skill-set.
But for better or worse, we also need to look at our grades.
Good grades matter in somewhat the same sense as money matters. Its value is not in what it is but what it can help you to get/achieve. So, we need to optimize a bit for this metric.
While doing so, it’s important to think about the relation between the effort you put in and your grades. It is definitely too complex and whimsical to be modeled but generally, more effort equates better grades but not in a linear fashion. It sort of follows the law of diminishing returns and at some point the effort is not worth it.
The extra effort, time and motivation can be channeled to other pursuits: a side project, learning something outside the curriculum, getting a deeper understanding of the subjects that you are truly interested in, etc. Or maybe you can just focus on savoring the free time.
On the flip side — and this is where I think many are likely to err — the first of your efforts have drastic effect on your grades. Just a little hard work and you have acceptable grades! Just a little bit more and you have pretty good grades. So, don’t fail to make that effort. It will be a source of remorse. It is for me.
Bottom Line: Grades are like money. It’s not everything, but it is something. And nobody complains about having too much of it.
2) Three days are enough. And they’re not. **
It is surprising what we can do in three days. (More precisely: the last of those three days.) So many chapters, slides, movies and youtube binge sessions.
However, there’s a catch. Long-term learning and the consolidation of what’s learned requires constant revision, revisits and practice. I cannot recall most of what I learned during my college years. And though that is fine to some extent, there are still subjects, topics, ideas that I wish I had studied for the long run and not left to the mercy of last-minute cram-sessions.
Bottom line: Don’t underestimate what you can do in a short sprint. But more importantly, don’t neglect what you can do in the long run.
3) Four years is a long time. And it’s not.
This was what I was feeling when I had just graduated:
… I feel different. I feel old. The starry-eyed kid who entered college four years ago seems like a different person now. It’s strange because if you had asked me just a month ago, I’d have said that I was the same me. But not now.
Four years is plenty to turn you into a completely different person. To mold you, to mold what you know and what you think you know, and to form bonds and attachments to both the living and the inanimate.
But when you look back, four years is also a pretty short period. It flies by. Before you know it, you are not the out-of-place freshman, or the trying-to-play-it-cool sophomore. Soon enough, you are in your senior year. And then you’re not!
Bottom line: Savor every day, even the ones filled with boring lectures.
4) All drunk people are the same… Nope!
Before college, my mental model for the drunken state was something like this:
When people drink, they get to The drunken state.
Soon enough, I had to update the model.
Everyone doesn’t reach the same drunken state. When drunk, people are inclined to reach different states: some become great orators, some dancers, some sit so quiet and still that you start wondering whether Buddha himself has manifested in their body. Some become guitarists, some wrestlers, some singers and some thinkers…
But I was wrong! The model is actually something like this:
Which is to say, it cannot really be modeled.
Bottom line: Some hangovers are worth it!
** We used to have three days to prepare for each exam. Mostly wasted but just enough.
Zerone is an undergrad publication at I.O.E, Pulchowk focusing on People (their creative side, their thoughts, their lives) and Technology (the new, the old, everything).
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