Me- graduated. Flanked by two beautiful, wonderful females.
I pushed away from my desk and stood up with a smile. I was in disbelief- a 4.0? That had never happened before. And yet there it was, my final semester GPA staring back at me from the silver screen. That was three weeks ago, just days before I walked across the stage of SPAC with diploma in hand.
My end-of college success affirmed something I had long recognized: College is easily the most transformational experience in most people’s lives. Unless you’ve really got yourself figured out, you’re bound to change in some of the following ways:
- Physically: As I’ve written about extensively, I started exercising (running and lifting) very regularly at the end of my Sophomore year, which had a major impact on my life. I also took up veganism, which I attribute to having dramatically clearer skin.
- Spiritually: I went from an erratic meditation practice to near-daily 60 to 90 minute meditation sessions. I also went completely clean of all substances.
- Mentally: I went from knowing nothing about organization to becoming something of an organization and goal-setting freak, fully implementing GTD and ZTD systems. I also doubled my reading speed, mastered memorization techniques well enough to forgo taking written notes in class, and even taught a workshop on these techniques at the end of my senior year.
- Emotionally: I was a bit of a wreck in this department for the first half of my college career. But by taking control of my life in all the above mentioned ways, finding a few great friends, and undertaking writing as a medium for serious self-expression, I transformed this part of my life, as well.
I may have changed more than your average Tom, but I’m certainly no superman. Let alone a Scott Young (and he’s still in school!). If I’ve had any modicum of success, it’s come from failing in just about every way imaginable. What follows are the lessons I learned from it.
5 Invaluable Lessons Learned From College
Lesson 1: Be brave- it’s even more important than being yourself.
Bravery challenges, expands and refines your sense of self. It’s the only way to move from “who you think you are” to “who you are.”
How to be brave? For starters, do whatever your heart is begging, pleading you to do. Nobody but you knows for certain what that is, but I’m sure there’s some thing, something that matters more than anything else in the world, something that would literally change everything if you just had the courage to do it. For the love of whatever deity you honor, push through fear and do the thing that scares you! Take up the sitar. Ask that girl on a date. Major in Reality TV Studies. Start your own A Cappela group. It really doesn’t matter what it is. What matters is the inner strength you build each time you face a fear.
I learned this lesson by repeatedly avoiding fear of any kind. As a result, there’s a laundry list of things I would have liked to do during college, but didn’t: take an acting class, front my own band, study art… There’s another laundry list of people I wanted to get to know, but didn’t.
Don’t end up with laundry lists like I did.
My favorite strategy for pushing through fear is to constantly remind myself that failure is the absolute best way to learn. Seriously, learn to love failure. It’s one of the most useful things you can do
Ask early on, “what do I need to do, and who do I need to become, in order to not have any regrets?” The sooner you define that criteria and work towards achieving it, the more satisfied you will be. My criteria was to make the absolute most of the $50,000/year it cost to study at one of the top liberal arts schools in the country. Once I made that decision, I hardly ever missed a class, got to know my professors on a personal basis, edited every paper several times, and studied hard for tests. After that, I never got a grade worse than an A-.
Lesson 2: Be unswervingly true to yourself.
We vastly underestimate the influence of those around us. College tends to be a fairly closed culture, and as such it has a culture unto itself. Some parts of that culture will undoubtedly support your personal and spiritual growth, other parts will impede it.
How to be unswervingly true to yourself? Know who you are in the first place.
I learned this lesson by screwing up big in the “be true to yourself” department, as I’ve expounded upon before. I found the most interesting lesson to be this: you already know, essentially, how to be true to yourself. It probably involves doing a lot of the stuff described in lesson 1. That’s no surprise, because being true to yourself is the most courageous choice of all.
My favorite strategy for self-discovery is writing, writing, writing. Free writing, in the style promulgated in Natalie Goldberg’s Writing Down the Bones (oh, look! A link in the sidebar! :)), has become one of my absolute favorite tools for self-discovery. Only in meditation have I learned as much about myself as through free writing.
Lead a life that defies a template. If you cultivate your own curiosities, you can’t help but become a unique being.
Lesson 3: Slash and burn the non-essential.
This isn’t high school, kiddies. There’s way too much going on at once for you to preside over 10 extracurriculars and expect to get anything mentionable accomplished. This concept was strongly impressed upon me by Cal Newport, and was the single most important factor in increasing my GPA from 3.2 to a senior year average of 3.9. It’s a philosophy that applies well beyond college.
How to slash and burn the non-essential? First off, you need to have a clear idea of what is essential (which starts with lesson 2 above). A fantastic way to do this is to identify a shortlist of the 4-5 most meaningful activities demanding your time and attention. Set goals in these areas. Track how much time you are actually devoting to them in a given day or week. If one of them is simply missing from your life, it’s time to seriously question what’s getting in the way. By eliminating the non-essential, you’ll definitely find room for what matters. Otherwise, expect to be perpetually inundated with responsibilities you don’t want or need.
I learned this lesson by overloading my courseload with heavy-hitting classes, then failing hopelessly to fulfill my responsibilities. It not only damaged me physically (during the worst of it, I contracted mono), it battered my GPA, too. Don’t be one of those kids. Underschedule, and you’ll always exceed expectations.
Continuously re-evaluate what is essential to you. Center your life around those things, and eliminate your commitments to the rest.
Lesson 4: Live a balanced life, mentally, physically, emotionally, spiritually.
Taking good care of the totality of your being is essential to making the many components of you work together in harmony. If you don’t adequately nourish each part, the other components will cease to work at maximum effectiveness, lowering your potential. Balance often requires going against the grain of peers who are intoxicated with freedom and become oblivious to what’s best for them. Once you’ve got lessons 1, 2, 3 and 4 down, you open up the possibility of creating a sense of balance you’ve probably never had.
How to live a balanced life? Eliminate your weaknesses: if you’re disorganized, read and apply GTD. If you’re out of shape, hit the gym. If you can’t focus, meditate. As you improve the weak links in your life, keep your sights on the passionate use of your strengths.
I learned this lesson by not understanding for a very long time what balance was- it required a level of self-awareness I didn’t develop for a long time. Once you start setting goals and reflecting on your life as a whole, you’ll begin to clearly see your areas for improvement.
True balance will give your own unique genius the room it needs to grow. So why the imbalance?
Lesson 5: Have serious fun.
No, I’m not talking about “going hard” three nights a week. I’m talking about something far more profound: structuring your life around the cultivation of your passions.
Set up your college life so that the bulk of your time is spent working on things you find deeply rewarding. The kind of stuff that addresses the to-do list of your soul. You know the stuff I’m talking about- and if you don’t, don’t worry- you”ll feel it when you find it. Whatever the case, if your biggest responsibilities aren’t a source of fun and fulfillment, something ain’t right.
It takes courage to have this kind of fun. You need to defy the mainstream notion that fun=self-abuse via drinking, drugs, and endless partying only. If you ask me, fun isn’t waking up hung over to go to a class you hate, or that’s only bearable because your friends are in it. True fun is feeling passionate and empowered while you work. When you’re having that kind of fun, you know you’re onto something good.
How to have serious fun? Take classes you think will be fun, not difficult, impressive, or resume-building. Take the same approach to choosing a major. Repeat, if possible, when selecting a professor, and certainly an advisor. For any of the above, you could substitute “fun” with “fascinating” or “exceedingly interesting.”
I learned this lesson by failing to believe that the pursuit of my dreams could actually yield them. By getting suckered into thinking that the “should’s” outweighed the “must’s.” By failing to believe in the redemptive power of failure. It took me a long time to realize that fun and achievement are no mutually exclusive- in fact, they are inextricable to the best of both.
The most common hang-up I see students make is justifying that an expensive education necessitates a practical degree. Not so! Your education (no matter the cost) should move you toward the realization of your dreams, not away from them. Any other course is just plain shortsighted.
Serious fun is what you get when you study what you love. The more you love it, the more opportunities will come your way. That’s just how academia works. Frankly, I’m not convinced the “real world” is any different.
Does having serious fun mean you can’t have “unserious” fun? Of course not! Just make sure that one comes before the other. Then we’re cool.
Got your own lessons learned? Please share, I know you’re out there!
Great insight, Travis. I had the blessing of a break between high school and college which helped me to appreciate the opportunity, and enjoy the challenge. Even so, my excessive confidence took over, and I took some courses in my first year that I really didn’t have the foundation for. I struggled and fought my way to a B, but it was HARD and left me lacking confidence. The lack of confidence combined with some personal experiences led me to transfer to a much less challenging school. This I will always regret. In my heart, I know that I missed out on an incredible opportunity to grow and learn had I stayed at my original school. I’m old enough now to know how valuable that experience would have been, and feel the loss of the connections and opportunities that might have come.
I applaud your advice.
Hey Barb,
Thanks for commenting. I think tons of smart people make the mistake of overdoing it when they first get to college, then end up needing to redouble their efforts later on. And I can certainly see the frustration in transferring to another institution that perhaps didn’t match up to the first.
Either way, you should take heart that this experience taught you something, that it internalized a new belief in taking full advantage of the opportunities for growth that came your way. Had this never happened, you might have been forced to learn this truism much later in life, or perhaps not at all. In fact, when I think about your life, I would say that you embody this belief FAR more than most. No doubt this can be partly attributed to this experience.
Failure’s great, isn’t it? At least I think so. You learn so damn much for the next time around.
Colleges or educational institutions helps a student to became a perfect human being.Only if he/she wanted to be.It can change a man/woman both physically and mentally which helps him/her to be successful in life.
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