How to make most out of college

Indian education system is the worst thing that happened to this society but at the same time a college could be the best thing that can happen to you.

Note that this blog is highly biased based on my experience and observations on things I worked on or wish I could have worked on to have a better life after college. Suggestions mentioned here might not be correct but it can give you a general idea about the things you should think about while you’re still in college. I believe that everyone has a lot of potential to achieve great things in life but one has to make sure that their potential energy is transformed into right-direction kinetic energy.

It’s important to mention that college is not all about how good your GPA is when you’re graduating. It’s about how much you’ve improved as a person and what values you can bring to the society, to your family, to yourself.

So here are few things that I think everyone should think about while they are in college:

1. Source of pocket Money: not your family

College is the best place to start thinking about being independent and having a source of pocket money. Earning your pocket money or even the little part of it will boost your self confidence and prepare you for the greater things to come. It’s not about the money you’re making, at this stage, it’s about the responsibility you’re taking.

There are several ways that you can earn something in college. I used to give tuition to a high school student and for me only one tuition for an hour was enough to handle my expenses for a month. Also if you think about it you’ll almost never be using your pre-college education for the rest of your life so why not give it a try when you have the chance.

Similar to that think about what are all the things you are good at and try to monetise that skill. Suppose that you watch a lot of movies or read a lot of books then you can start writing reviews over the internet and I am pretty sure someone will approach you for writing paid-reviews on their platforms. Or If you’re good at programming write tech blogs or build paid websites. And the list goes on. You get the idea.

There are lot of freelancing platforms, look at those and you’ll find something which matches your expertise.

2. Getting involved in the right clubs

First year of college will be full of seniors asking to join different clubs. Clubs are one of the most important source of learning. But being part of more than one or two clubs will lead you to nowhere. Two clubs can be ideal one based on your interests and other for learning something which will help you get a job after college.

Unfortunately, I didn’t utilise this part much but some people I know who did and there life has turned out to be good or better than mine you can say.

I always wanted to write something but I was too shy to join a club related to that, I doubted myself, I thought I was not good enough and might end up embarrassing myself. But it was not a very mature attitude from me. Always remember college is like a new home to you and no matter how stupid mistakes you do at home, it stays at home.

On the other hand I am working as a software engineer now, and there was an awesome club which used to teach how to code. Now I feel very sad to say that I was not able take much benefit from there also.

I got so busy in my own things, things which I thought were good for me based on my decisions but they turned out be really bad. One of the core importance that joining a club provides you is that it gives a place to share your ideas with people and take judgements from them.

3. Finding the mentors

With mentors I meant seniors, In most colleges seniors are more important than professors. Anything that you’re doing or planning on doing there are higher chances that a senior has already done something in that field. Find them, discuss your ideas with them, ask them to give their input from their experience, ask them about all the different things that you can explore to have a better career. Once you managed to get to be friends with good seniors they will make your life a lot easier, not only in college but they will also help you when you’re out there in the real world, by the time you’ll be graduating they will already be settled and will be having a lot of connections so they can guide you with the whole process and most probably they can also help you to land a good job.

4. Thinking about source of income: after college

One should start thinking about what job they will be doing after college as early as possible. Think about it a lot, think about what interests you, think about what you can do 8 hours a day and still not get bored. But while thinking about that, also consider what kind of payment you’ll be getting while doing the same. Will that amount satisfies your needs? Will that amount solves your family problems? Can that amount take care of your emergency health issues? Will you be able to become so good at this that in a very less time period you will be getting paid enough? If yes, then go for it. There is nothing better than getting paid for doing something you love.

But if not, there is nothing to worry about. Pick something that has high demand in the market, observe what is that something that the world is fully dependent on and in what direction the world is going, let me help you a bit here, suppose you pick computers. Now you don’t have to know everything about computers to get a good job. Pick a field of study, even now you don’t have to learn everything in that field of study to get a good job. Pick a branch, and try to learn something about that, give it 1–2 hours daily, try learning the fun stuff first, and in a month or so when you start understanding it better you’ll find yourself falling in love with it.

But yeah it will not be your first love so you might feel a bit sad from time to time. Don’t worry, here is what you can do to fill up that void.

5. Working on your dreams and interests

Not doing what you have always wanted to do could be very frustrating at times. But it is also important to really know what you’ve always wanted to do. Often our mind fools us with the misunderstanding of thinking a short term crush as a long term love. You might feel good playing cricket once in a while but that doesn’t mean you’re meant to be a cricketer. The key, what I think, to find out what you’re meant to do in life is that you feel excited about doing even the most boring part of that thing.

Once you’ve figured it out, but again if you think it would take years to make a living out it then you should not spent all of your time on this, initially. If you’re really passionate about something and have agreed on doing that thing for the rest of your life then you should learn to be patient and taking things slowly. Work on this in your free time or when you get bored. One important thing that you can do is to think about a way to combine both your interests and the market need. For example if you’re pursuing a computer science degree and you’re passionate about chess but you don’t think you could make much money out of it, then why not try building an online chess platform?

Dreams always comes at a cost but that cost should never be a miserable life for you.

6. Learning from Movies, TV Shows and Books

Movies, TV Shows and books has been a great source of learning for me. I have learned a lot from good stories over the years. Good stories have good characters and good characters could teach you a lot. Yeah, it’s true that most of the time they are fictional but they are the enhance version of a real human, they teach you to push your limits, never give up, think out of the box, never to worry, mistakes are fine-regrets are not, and a lot more, moreover they make you a more intellectual person, making you think about the broader and different aspects of life. You can try to take the good things from your favourite characters and apply it in your life whenever needed. Suppose that you’re stuck on a problem you can’t get your head around, try imagining your favourite character in that situation and think how they would deal with that.

For example from the characters of friends we could learn to deal with every difficult situations in life, happily, it’s almost never that a big deal, it’s just our worries which worsen it.

7. Utilising the Internet: right way

Internet is a vast place, you can get lost in this world for years and when you finally come out of it your degree will be over.

The real power of social media is that it gives you the possibility to share your work with people from all over the globe. Use it the right way. Don’t waste your time on scrolling through memes or watching random videos on youtube for no reason. And try only to use those platforms which suits your need better. It’s not a requirement to build your online presence everywhere, trust me it’s a very big waste of your valuable time.

Use it to connect with like minded people, people who have already achieved what you’re trying to achieve. Reach out to them, share your problems with them and ask for some advice on the things you would have to do to to have a successful career in that field.

Try to have a scheduled time to use your social media accounts only once a day, even if you just have to reply to a message, you went there and the next thing you know you end up wasting a lot more time.

8. Personality development

When you’ll be in your last semester there will be a lot of classes conducted from academics to improve your personality, so that you perform better in the college placement interviews.

But I find that as a big fat irony.

Personality development is something which can not be taught in classes. It’s a very practical thing, it’s about you growing as a person. And it starts from the time you took admission in the college. You’ll have to work on this on your own. Only you know what you’re most afraid of, if it’s a stage fear, you’ll have make yourself speak in front of people, take some idea you feel confident about and explain it to your friends, then to a small group of people and then to a larger. If it’s a language you struggle with, try to use that language as much as possible, in your daily life, listen to music in that language, watch movies in that language, talk to your friends in that language, explain your ideas in that language. If it’s not able to talk to girls, figure out a way to talk to them, force yourself to participate in activities where you can’t get around without talking to them.

Personality can only be developed by forcing yourself to be in a situation you’re most afraid of.

Personality development is not all about how you look to the outside world but also what you’re from inside, it’s a process of growing while constantly questioning your thoughts, your beliefs, as you know there is nothing certain in these times except the time which is always changing.

9. Staying healthy

While in college, learning to stay healthy is hard but very important. At this stage we don’t think of it as a priority and leave it for later. But in most cases that later never comes until we suffer a lot of time-waste because of our health issues. It’s important to consider exercise as daily requirement like brushing your teeth or having breakfast. At least 30 minutes of exercise can make your day’s productivity double.

One of the most crucial way to excel at something is consistency, and which is not possible without a good health.

10. Enjoying life as it is

College is gonna be one of the best phase of your life. And it deserves to be enjoyed to the fullest. Make good friends, hangout on birthdays and go on trips with them. Have long walks and talk to them about everything, all your ideas, all your problems, they won’t judge you, and it doesn’t matter if they have the solution or not, just talk and talk, it will put your head on ease and you’ll have beautiful memories to remember, which eventually will act like medicines later in life. Because these are the moments you’ll miss the most when you’re out there in the real world with a lot of responsibilities on your shoulder.

You don’t have to be a machine to succeed at things. It’s not an IIT entrance exam. It’s real life and you need real connections with real people.

Try not to take much stress about anything cause no matter where you’re in life you’ll always have a problem which will be the biggest problem of your life, that’s the nature of problems, you don’t have to change your nature to deal with it. Be happy and welcome each problems with happiness and it automatically becomes easy.

Try not to whine about the things which went bad in the past and try not to worry much about what future holds for you. Your future you is sum of all the present you, so if you live each moments to the fullest, today, I am sure you won’t cry tomorrow.

Again, these are just ideas which I think you should be thinking about while you’re in college, you could explore a lot of other things, and also you don’t have to be perfect at everything. My main motive of writing this blog is to get you thinking, just to put that catalyst in your mind to start the process, and I am pretty sure you can handle rest of the reaction on your own.

Good luck and thank you for reading. :)