A Post-College Memorandum

Entering institutional academia at the height of our adolescence is the route the majority of us abide to post-high school.  It’s the path I took (and recently completed), which I assume is similar for most of us.  Although I’ve recently questioned the necessity of a formal college education, I do believe that the short period (4-6 years) after high school is when we’re most permeable to intellect growth.

Reflecting on my years in college, I’ve determined that the only rule is that there are no rules, regardless of what any authority figure will preach to you.  Education is a certainty for survival, but the choice of educational medium should be subjective.

I’ve taken a moment to look over my shoulder and piece together the wisdom I’ve learned during college, which may come off academic-based, but is cross-applicable depending on the educational platform you choose.

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Respectfully challenge individuals you aren’t supposed to.  It breeds respects. Authority is typically an illusion.  The easiest people to attack and challenge include our peers and those younger and less developed than us, which results in nothing substantial.  The battles worth fighting are with those that don’t expect it.  Academia can prove to be a very narrow focuses environment, and there’s a good chance you know things your professors don’t.  Whether you “win” or “lose” is irrelevant.  It’s the fight that counts.

The most valuable advice derives from those who don’t rely on you. The quickest people to give you advice are those that have the self-interest to do so, including your parents and close friends.  Advice is typically preliminary to a thought or action of change, and people are scared of change.  Why?  Because change can alter the power distribution in any relationship.  The best advice is unbiased advice, especially when your choice of action won’t have an immediate effect on the person who’s giving it.

Lifestyle balance is crucial, even if it doesn’t rest in the middle. The over achievers will always think the slackers don’t have enough discipline, and the slackers will always think the over achievers don’t have enough fun.  That’s completely besides the point.  A combination of both is crucial, while progress in one always stimulates the other.  To think the paradigm of work and play lies in the middle is foolish, and probably unproductive.  Choose what works for you.

Let your passion, drive or craft be your identity, not your school / major / GPA. The sooner you can introduce yourself without using the same criteria every other college student uses, the better.  The only time I was ever impressed by this is when I met the Stanford grad who double majored in physics and mathematics, which happened to be what the student lived and died for.  A college major might give you validation, but a professional hobby gives you purpose.  When you grasp that identity, you’ll standout from the condensed masses.

Justifying your hustle is subjective.  Working in between the lines is what’s differential. Everyone does their “job.”  Everyone goes to classes.  We all are creatures of habit feeling especially safe with repetitive starts and ends of the work day.  However, I’ve found that the true hustlers, strivers and leaders, are the ones who practice when the game ends.  If you’re doing it right, you won’t notice the game ever ended.  Don’t mistake hard work for intelligence, but don’t discount it either.

Benchmarking can be discouraging if it’s based solely on micro-communities. The easiest way to be discouraged is by benchmarking your own personal progress based on homogeneous micro-communities.  If you’re a college student and you engage with blogs by other college students, there’s a good chance their lives are going to seem a lot more exciting and enlightening than yours.  Remember that everyone highlights their highs and discounts their lows.  And, being interesting and worldly is often subjective.  If you start writing publicly, you’ll seem just as interesting.

Make experimentation a habit, with both people and subject matter. Routine is too easy, both with who we interact with and with the subject matter we dive into habitually.  Active curiosity allows for more experimental learning, where you’ll run into interesting people and subjects simply because it wasn’t planned.  Getting in the habit of experimentation can lead to initial discomfort, but eventually results in excitement.

Strengths and skills can prove to be temperamental.  Massage your weaknesses. A piece of advice I’ve given students is that if you’re more right brained (random, intuitive, “big picture”) to take courses that are left-brained focused (analytical, rational, “little pieces”), and vice versa.  While I believe we need both to succeed (with arguably more right-brain), we’re more likely to engage in activities outside of classes that our strengths are inclined too.  Massaging our lows, or focusing on our weak side in a more structured setting like class, is an easy way to improve.

Inspiration is unique to the individual.  Treat your craft as a working portrait. A useful exercise of mine in battling artistic blocks is to simply engage with a medium that is completely unrelated to the medium I’m working with.  If I’m having difficulty writing, I’ll look at art or music videos.  Finding inspiration to create anything can be burdensome if it’s forced.  The best way to let it flow is to not focus on it.  Inspiration is an art of its own.  Treat it like one.

Experience reigns over theory.  Simplicity reigns over complexity. The best way to learn is to do.  No amount of theoretical classroom work will ever replace actively entering a field of work (unless your field is research).  This is one arena of the formal education sector that is lacking.  Simple experience of practicality of what we learn in the actual field will always be more effective than performing complex, and often irrelevant, lab experiments

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If there is one practice that wraps all of these concepts up, it’s the ability to reflect.  No one piece of advice, including mine, will be the key to educational success.  But, the ability to reflect on your own experience, especially failures, is a stepping stone to getting there.

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