5 Valuable Lessons I Learned After Finishing School
Oh how I miss the endless cups of coffee, late study sessions, stressing about finals, and petitioning for classes!
Not!
Well, a little.
School was an interesting chapter of my life. I was, at best, a slightly above average student. I averaged B’s throughout high school and college.
I did that on purpose.
I wasn’t in school to get a 4.0. I didn’t care about the Dean’s list, or John’s list, or whoever’s list. I didn’t care for the praise or recognition that came with being a good student like everybody else.
I was in school to get a virtual piece of paper I could submit to high paying jobs.
The reason my GPA hovered between 3.0–3.2 was because I knew that 3.0 was the minimum threshold for most companies to even look at my resume.
My goal at the time was to have a job lined up out of college that would help me achieve both personal and professional growth while maintaining a level of work life balance. (Straight from the ol’ resume!)
It’s been almost 2 years since I graduated and now that goal seems so narrow focused. There are things the real world teaches you that school just doesn't.
Here are 5 things I learned after graduating.
1. Your Dream Job Is Not Your Dream Job.
The most common conversation I remember having was about WHAT COMPANY people wanted to work for.
Nobody talked about what they wanted to DO.
Person A: What’re you trying to do after you graduate?
Person B: I don’t know, I was at the career fair last week and shot my resume to Google and a few other companies. Hopefully I hear back..
Person A: Same here. I really liked “XYZ Company” they gave me a cool pen…
There is no dream company. There’s just an organization that gives you money for your time. The founder and/or CEO of the company had a dream and they pursued it by starting their own company. You’re helping them work towards their dream.
You will have many jobs after school, you may even start a company. You might even backpack the world for a year and decide you want to be a travel blogger.
Anything can happen after school, and to think you’ll spend your life at your “dream” company is naïve.
2. The Learning Never Stops.
A common misconception I had, and a lot of others have, is that when you graduate, you never have to “study” again.
This is so far from the truth.
There’s a quote that goes:
“The day you stop learning is the day you stop living…” — Tetsuyama-san
In a fast paced and changing world, you need to keep your skills relevant and your mind nimble. What you learned in college will most likely be outdated in a few years. You can’t forget how to learn.
3. Patience Is A Virtue.
My final year of college, I took 20+ units per quarter, which was almost double a full time student, while working 20 hours a week for an internship.
Why?
Because I wanted to graduate a year early. I changed my major a lot in college which put me roughly two years behind those who graduated the same time as me in high school.
Who f*cking cares? Why were they my rule for comparison?
I was in such a rush to get a big boy job, worried that my 30 year old counterparts would be ahead of me in the promotion ladder, that I overwhelmed myself for a year in school forgoing other opportunities.
4. You Are Not One To Judge.
Everybody is on their one unique journey in life. You don’t know the sequence of events that has shaped them into who they are and has lead them to where they are now. Why should you judge where they want to go?
I remember bright individuals in my computer information system classes playing video games throughout the entire class, all quarter long. Those individuals never volunteered, they weren’t in scholarly clubs, they had no sense of urgency as to when they were going to graduate and get a job.
That would bother me. Why? Because I was judging them.
I wasn’t on their path nor were they on mine. Letting stuff like that bother me only distracted me from my goals.
5. Embrace Your Unique Personality To The Fullest
This is the most important lesson I've learned the last two years.
If you can learn to be truly confident in your own skin, then that will radiate to everybody around you.
It will present to you opportunities you never thought possible.
It will allow you to follow your passions and your dreams.
It will allow you to build deep, meaningful relationships with the people around you.
It will allow you to be happy.
In school, everybody would sit quietly, wear the same clothes, talk about the same things, and blend in with the rest of the white sheep.
Spending time in the “real world” has allowed me to see that there’s a black sheep in everyone. Everybody is unique and different because their journey is unique to them.
When you learn to fully embrace who you are, there will be no limits to what you can accomplish.
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Thank’s for reading! :)
