College May Teach You A Lot, But These Lessons You Have To Learn Yourself

By Samantha Weller on April 25, 2016

College is undeniably the wonderful world where young adults thrive and discover their intellectual identity, while being offered numerous opportunities to expand their skills and interests. College teaches us to be open-minded, to multi-task, to be resourceful and to work with others.

It really prepares us to be independent workers, but there are many things that, despite the number of things we get out of college, we ultimately have to shape ourselves in order to excel not only in college but also the real world.

When we get overwhelmed with college, we have to consider that, although college teaches us many things, there are many parts to it we need to assemble ourselves, while we have the assets that test us on new skills, in order to really get the most out of college.  Here are some skills we need to prepare while in college:

Making an effort

From the, at times, seemingly insurmountable work in college, we will all find ourselves having to do a little extra work — especially the more devoted we are towards working on ourselves and our careers — and in turn go out of our way more than we imagined, and in different ways than intended. How well we handle this extra work is tested by our ability to go the extra distance, finding the most effective strategies to incorporate extra tasks into our schedule.

Balancing everything

Any college student knows it isn’t anything compared to high school. In college, we face the dilemma of balancing social life, family, sleep, school, sometimes work, the newly obtained freedom we didn’t have in high school, and the normal adult responsibilities that come with being on our own.

We are in charge of ourselves; we aren’t living with our parents anymore, we have to do all the shopping for food and household items, and we have to clean and take care of our stuff ourselves. Parent-teacher conferences don’t exist in college for a good reason, and it’s up to us to discuss everything with our professors, make appointments, ask questions and address any concerns we have about classes.

Organization

With learning to balance each aspect of our life, we might also find ourselves having to organize the heap of responsibilities we have. Organization is an essential to surviving college, and while professors emphasize obtaining this skill, and our grades let us know, sometimes mournfully, if we need to organize classwork better, we are the only ones that can help ourselves find the motivation and strategy that works best for us to stay organized.

Learning to like everyone

Sure, high school has it’s “cliques,” but they collapse and turn into much more meaningful communities and groups at college. From this, people are more inclined to be themselves instead of being someone else, and as a result, they are more likely to meet a divine and vast amount of unique people, besides the fact that there is a much larger population.

We will meet all kinds of people, people that shape us. The ones we don’t like, or who don’t like us, we have to take as a normal part of life that can be a lesson on how to adapt to interacting with someone we don’t pertain to.

Being professional 

A few classes enforce adapting to adjusting yourself at the appropriate times to being more professional, but you really have to teach yourself how to be professional for interviews, meetings, future jobs and ultimately the real world. In order to do so, it’s important to practice sending professional emails, being professional with teachers and in meetings, approaching tough situations in a more professional manner, and even turning your back on the young and if so immature habits we sometimes still possess.

This skill helps us to not only get a job and maintain one, but also make our college careers easier, communicating more efficiently to everyone. It’s important to develop professional skills from everything to sending emails, to meeting new people.

Exploring your interests

In college, you have two options: do the work you need to do and get out, or take care of your responsibilities while taking advantage of all the additional learning and entertainment possibilities you have by them. I went into college with one interest, and am finishing it with a completely different interest, because I challenged my abilities in ways from the broad spectrum of college assets and went towards new interests I didn’t know I had.

It’s up to us how much of a sense of connection we want to have with our school and its environment, along with ourselves. Our main focus will be distinct or apart, and exploring the opportunities college offers can greatly expand our interests, sometimes in ways we never imagined.

Motivating yourself

For everyone, we are driven by different circumstances that we come to find as the empowerment for our endeavor. We cannot move forward easily without having some kind of motivation to keep us moving forward before the real world. Even if it’s something mundane like being able to relax at the end of the week on the weekend, find something to keep yourself not just going, but thriving to put forth your maximum effort all the time. Motivation is the most important fundamental value, as it inspires us to meet all the aforesaid dynamics of college that we need to teach ourselves in the process of becoming an adult.

Every single one of us has a unique motivational purpose. Find something outside of the box, beyond just wanting to find a job so we don’t have to live with our parents; think of an aspect that will make us know it will all be worthwhile, whether by family, friends, or shaping the world; there’s something out there for every one of us that can keep us going.

College offers us many opportunities that challenge each and every one of these abilities. Along the way, it is also vital to be around the right people that encourage you to obtain each one. We have to learn each skill one way or another if we want to thrive in the real world, and college is a great place, and for most young adults perhaps the best place, that allows us to develop them.

In exploring opportunities, we will grow into the bigger person and learn how to discover ourselves, which is another challenge all young adults face and don’t always know how to fully accomplish in the workload of school. College should never make us feel oriented to the main purpose and expectations it has to primarily learn and get a diploma, and it shouldn’t obstruct new tasks we make for ourselves. It should be a place where we do new things with an open-minded sense of working on ourselves and using the tools we have to develop new factors we can get from college.

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