Warning: none of the pics in this post will correspond with anything. But I feel the need to include them because you gotta have something to look at. (Yes, in a post about the importance of college education, I just ended a sentence with a preposition. Sue me.)
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| Ok, I managed to find one college pic on the computer. |
A traditional college education serves many purposes for kids these days. Education is the obvious one, but many other skills are (hopefully!) developed along the way, such as learning to live on your own, becoming responsible for yourself and your needs, learning to socialize at an adult level, and completing the transition to adulthood. This involves a myriad of mistakes for some, that hopefully lead to lessons learned.
In a nutshell, other than education itself, this is how college prepared me for the real world:
Group Work
I hated group work in both high school and college. It didn't matter how cool the people were, I always preferred to work alone. It's not that I thought I was better and smarter than others. It's that we always seemed to work at different paces and have different ideas of how to accomplish a task and no one communicated with anyone else and it was always a huge relief just to be done.
That's some frikkin' GOOD preparation for life, for the workforce. A nice little preview. Lesson: you will always have to work in ways you don't prefer, with people who work differently from you, and it's important to figure out how to do it. And also? Try to learn something along the way.
Prioritize Tasks
In order to actually pass classes and survive college overall, learning how to prioritize tasks early in life is a good thing. The first semester of college, I had classes back-to-back on M-W-F from 7:30 to 1:30. Moron. I quickly learned to *try* to spread them out so that I could spend time after classes going through my notes and fleshing out anything I hadn't had time to address while frantically writing them down. I learned that this little Type A task was super important because it would allow me to go through my notes later and actually understand them.
Over the years in school, I developed my own studying skills and learned how to filter advice from professors and friends. One example? Writing a separate outline before starting a paper never worked for me. Ever. I would develop my papers skeleton-style (which is an outline if you stop and think of it). Afterwards, I would create a separate outline and turn it in. No one was the wiser.
I learned to prioritize tasks in two important ways: (1) to address first things first. If my English Lit test wasn't until next week but my French History paper was due this Friday, the paper obviously came first. However, (2) I eventually started to trust myself enough to know what I could concentrate on at the time. There was never a shortage of work, and there was never a surplus of time. So if I found myself "in the mood" or in a certain thought mode for the paper that wasn't due until next week, I'd take an hour and crank it out. Often, that hour was invaluable toward the completion of the project.
I would like to say I learned this in college, but I don't know. All I know, looking back, is that I was extremely focused on school, and I did have a lot of fun times with friends. So maybe that means I established a balance. I think overall I worked too hard. That said, if I had it to do over again I most likely wouldn't change much.
This is also something that, after graduation, I promptly forgot until like 2010. I entered the professional world and it just took over. It's not that I was on a direct career path or that I was a workaholic, it's that work became my identity, the thing "I did" and the thing "I became." My name is B and I am a [insert job here]. And somewhere along the way in my young life it became the focus of most of my attention. Of course this helped my work life to flourish, so I'm not exactly criticizing myself, but it also caused a lot of mental and emotional anguish before I learned to put work in its place in my own life.
The Semester Mindset
Geez I loved being able to wrap up one semester and start another one. All these years later I still operate within that mindset. I find myself thinking, it's been 11 weeks and I'm still doing this same job? Shouldn't it be over by now? I also find myself wishing I had the summer off but oh well. Every few weeks I change out pictures in my office, or re-arrange decorations in the apartment. Not just on a seasonal basis, either. It's as if my internal clock latched on to the semester concept and can't let it go. It makes for some nice changes, though.
Continuing Education
I went directly from undergrad to grad school and I'm so, so glad I did. There are many arguments against this (and I support most of them, depending upon the field) but for me, going into this Master's program gave me direction and advancement that I needed. And it gave me a couple more years to figure it all out before I entered the workforce. AND - this is important - I was lucky enough to get a scholarship, so it didn't saddle me with debt. If I owed $90,000.00 in student loans, I would be singing a different tune right now.
I see many of my coworkers and friends struggle with full-time jobs and families and master's programs. Don't get me wrong - I really admire them for it. But most of the time I want to curl up in the fetal position and nap after they regale me with their staying-up-all-night-to-finish-a-paper stories. I'm glad that I only had to juggle a part-time job with my Master's. I'm glad it was done and on my resume before real life took over.
How did college prepare you? What lessons did you learn that you still find useful?
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