10 Things I Wish I Knew In College That I Know Now
When I graduated high school in 2014 and packed my bags for NYU London, I had no idea what the next four years would have in store for me. From what the movies and shows depicted, I thought it would be endless laughs, love, and nights spent partying. Boy oh boy was I wrong.
Here is the advice I would have given to my younger self.
Romantic relationships come and go, but friendships have the potential to stay forever. While nothing is wrong with finding a long-term partner, I wish that I had spent more time building friendships as opposed to fostering a long-term romantic relationship. If you do happen to meet The One, make sure you spend time building your own hobbies and relationships outside of the couple.
You have your entire life to work. College is the best time to figure out what your interests are and to play around! Maybe it's finding hobbies that you enjoy painting arts and crafts music. It's joining the clubs. It's making sure that you're prioritizing yourself as much as you're prioritizing the other things in life.
Your grades, GPA, and major don’t matter as much as you think they do. Sure they might be on your diploma but after you find your first job, no one will ask you again about your time in college. If there's one thing that I learned it's that your mental health and wellbeing is way more important than what's on some flimsy piece of paper.
College is just the beginning of your adventure. We put so much pressure on ourselves to figure everything out when we are still growing at that age.
Get organized, set priorities, set goals, and ask yourself: how do I wanna be spending my time during this semester? You know, do I want to be working the entire time? Do I want to be sitting at a desk? Do I wanna be like, uh, falling asleep in the library until 3:00 AM? Or do I want to be, you know, making new friends in clubs, trying out a new dance class? Do I want to, you know, explore these different parts of the city you had there? Isn't just one way to spend your time. And I think the more we can prioritize like that personal element to it, um, the easier it will be to balance planning for the future and living in the present.
Listen to your gut when it comes to saying yes to new adventures and saying no when you want to. So if you get invited somewhere and, and your gut is like, Oh, that sounds really fun. It's a little out of my comfort zone, but like I'm excited about it. Then that's a good idea to go and to push yourself, but to also listen to your gut throughout the evening and be like, if things are getting out of control, if people are trying to pressure you to drink, if it's just getting too far out of your comfort zone, then it's being able to be like, okay, I think I've had enough.
The people you surround yourself with can deeply impact your experience. So choose wisely.
Reframing your mindset is a crucial thing to having a positive college experience because we are all in our heads. So much of the time that it takes just a little bit of dialectical thinking to pull yourself out of it in order to change your entire experience.
You are the one in control of your life and you determine how you want that life to be lived. Don’t let other people's expectations dictate the way that we live our lives.
There are no rules. Everything is made up, nothing is real. You can do anything you want. Even in college, you have the freedom to make the choices that you want, and it just takes a little bit of digging.
