Just this past week, I graduated from UNLV with my BA in Communication Studies and a minor in Sociology. So, I thought it was only fitting to talk a bit more about my experience in hopes of helping someone else who is considering college, currently going to college, or truly anyone who wants some advice on life in general.
During my time in college, there were a few tips and tricks as well as life lessons that I picked up along the way. Today, I’ll be going over my top five lessons I learned in college, so let’s get into it.
1. Create connections and befriend those around you.
This is one piece of advice that I wish I would’ve learned a little bit earlier, as I think I would have benefited from it a lot more later on.
Going into college, I tried to socialize and make friends with those around me. However, it can be really easy to get caught up in life or other responsibilities to the point where you neglect your social life.
Because of this, one of my lessons learned from college is to befriend everyone and grow your network from there. Simply being nice to someone can lead to a business opportunity, partnership, or a lifelong friend later on.
Making time to do this was something that I didn’t prioritize soon enough, and so I feel as though I missed out on a lot of relationships because of it.
2. Stop waiting until the last minute.
We all fall victim to procrastination at some point, but if there’s one thing that I learned from college, it’s to stop waiting until the last minute to do things that you have the ability to complete earlier.
Most of the time my procrastination was simply because I didn’t feel like doing the assignment right then and there. However, when I look back on those times versus the moments where I did prioritize the assignment and finished it early, the stress I experienced in relation to that class was starkly different.
When you prioritize completing tasks earlier than they need to be done, you free up that space in your mind to move on to other ideas and goals. For example, if I had an assignment that I knew was due tonight, it’s probably going to take up most of my mind and time for the rest of the night.
Not only does this lead to unneeded stress, but there’s also the chance that I won’t perform as well on the assignment.
When I started to finish my assignments a week ahead of time, the stress that I experienced in relation to school drastically decreased. Because of my experience here, I learned the lesson that finishing your work early can help you destress and produce better work at the end of the day.
3. Arriving early to a class, event, or appointment can never hurt.
I used to be the type of person who thought that arriving to class on time was all I needed to do.
I do consider myself someone who prioritizes punctuality, but a lesson that college taught me was that arriving early can never hurt.
I would put myself in situations on certain days where planning to arrive on time let me to being late. Whether it be unexpected traffic accidents or other mishaps along the way, planning to be on time caused me more stress because of the unpredictable obstacles that could always potentially come up.
In order to fix this area of my life and make my mornings a little bit less hectic, I started planning on being 15 to 20 minutes early.
Now, this may seem like a lot of time at first, but one of two things can happen. Either of those unpredictable obstacles to come up and you end up being on time, or you have 15 to 20 minutes to debrief, read, or even catch up on some of your emails while you’re waiting.
4. Find a balance between your priorities and stick to it.
When I first started college, and even into the thick of it, I struggled with balancing the different priorities in my life.
Whether it be spending too much time on schoolwork, too much time on career work, or not enough time with personal commitments or relationships, I found it extremely difficult to figure out how to establish a balance.
Eventually, I did figure out a system that worked for me and allowed me to successfully balance areas of my life between one another.
(You can expect a blog post or podcast about how I balanced my life in the near future.)
More importantly, college taught me that you need a balance in order to live a happy and healthy life.
Overwhelming yourself in one area and underwhelming yourself and another is a recipe for disaster. Either your grades will suffer, or your relationships will – your career will take off, but it’ll leave your mental health behind.
These are the decisions that we need to make early on in our lives, as it sets a precedence for how we’re going to treat ourselves for years to come.
5. Never stop learning.
The last lesson that college taught me is to never stop learning and always prioritize knowledge.
Being a student who was committed to getting good grades has always been a part of my identity. I strongly correlated myself as a person who prides themselves on their work ethic in relation to high school and into college.
Now that that part of my life is over, I don’t want to stop learning the way I did while I was in school. The effort that I would put into studying can now be the effort that’s placed into learning about self-growth and elements to my real estate business.
The idea to never stop learning is the biggest lesson that I’ve taken away from college; knowledge truly is power, and it is the one free thing that we are able to consistently grow ourselves in.
I hope this was able to give you a little bit more insight into what I learned from college! If you have any tips or tricks that you’ve learned while in school, make sure you mention them to me on my Instagram @HopeWatsonRealty so I can include them in this week’s podcast. That’s all for this week, wishing you all happy holidays and a safe rest of the year!
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