College is a huge milestone in your life. You start your journey into adulthood, are experiencing a new place, new people, and new experiences. For me college let me explore different passions of mine, led me to meet amazing people, and gave me the opportunities to be where I am today. I think that I overall did a lot throughout college and I’m happy with my experience over the four years. That being said, there are some things I wish I did differently and there are things that I think everyone should definitely consider when they’re in college.
Although now I’m starting to finally face the fact that I’m no longer a college student and I have a full-time job, I really wanted to reflect on my college experience while it was still fresh in my mind and go through What I Wish I Knew When I Was In College.
Hopefully, this post will give you inspiration or make you think twice of what you want to get out of college whether you’re in school right now or about to apply for colleges.
Let me mention before I get in, it’s not like if you don’t follow any of my advice below that you won’t have an amazing time in college. I definitely did. These are just things that I wish I would have thought about sooner or done differently while I was in college. So if you’re going into college or you’re an undergrad, here are some things that maybe you should think about too.
Studying Abroad
Here’s something that I fully took advantage of while in college. If you didn’t know, I studied for a semester in Sydney, Australia. However, even though I did take advantage of the study abroad opportunities my school had, a lot of my friends didn’t.
Studying abroad for a semester, a year, or even just a couple weeks in the summer can be life-changing. It’s so important to go out and travel and see what else is out there in the world. When in college though, you have the opportunity to live in another country for a period of time and study, something that you might not have later on in life when full-time jobs, kids, bills, and other commitments start to get in the way.
Studying abroad may seem out of reach because of expenses. However, a lot of schools have partnerships with schools around the world and you can essentially go to another college in the world that partners with your home university and pay your regular tuition. I was fortunate because, with the dollar conversion rate in Australia, I actually spent less on tuition and board studying abroad than I did at my home university. Meaning…
I saved money studying abroad
A lot of schools have study abroad scholarships and if your school doesn’t specifically, there’s a lot of places online you can find them too. If studying abroad is something that interests you, I highly recommend looking into it. If not, it may be something you regret later on in life.
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Apply to Scholarships
One of the main reasons I chose the school I did was because of the scholarships and aid they were going to give me. That’s a lot of people’s reasoning behind picking where they want to go to school. However, once I got accepted into the school and had my scholarships, I didn’t think about them anymore until my last year of college.
When it was my senior year, I realized how many new scholarships I was eligible for, on top of the already existing scholarships I was already getting. Scholarships are free money to go straight to your education and minimize any college debt, something you’ll definitely be thanking yourself for in the future when you’re having to pay off your student loans.
I don’t know why I didn’t think about looking into scholarships for my first few years of college, but I definitely recommend that you stay updated on the scholarships your school has available and apply to as many as you can. I applied to quite a few, scholarships I didn’t think I even had a chance of getting and sure enough I got them! If I would have done that every year, I would have easily saved myself thousands and thousands of dollars just for writing a short essay.
Internships
The second semester of my senior year I had an internship with Warner Bros, which was the coolest work experience I’ve ever had. I was essentially getting class credit and paid to watch movies and host premiere events! Regardless if you’re internship is as fun as mine or not, internships are so important to get experience in the field you’re studying, and can also help you get a better idea of what you want to do post-graduation.
I was lucky enough that I was able to land an internship my last semester of college, but if I was to do it all again, I would have started looking for an internship my sophomore year of college. Having an internship for a year or more or multiple internships will look great on your resume and can also eventually lead to a full-time job post-grad or at least some amazing opportunities. If you’re in college now and haven’t had an internship yet, I would start looking right away. Also if you’re in your last year and feel like it’s too late, that’s not true.
Try to find one now for the rest of the semester or one for the summer after graduation. Trust me, you’ll be happy you did.
Get Involved
My senior year of college, something in my brain just switched and I realized this was my last opportunity to take advantage of everything college has to offer, one of those things is all the extracurricular. I was never into sports in college, but there’s so much more to be involved with on-campus – essentially there’s a club for everything in college.
Not only do I recommend getting involved in a sorority, club, or extracurriculars, but I recommend joining executive boards in those clubs. I was the Publicity Chair for a society and also joined a number of clubs my senior year. Not only did these clubs give me a lot of awesome experience for my resume, but it also helped me meet some really awesome people with common interests.
You’ll see later on in life that the people you meet are great to network with again in the future.
With applying for jobs post-grad, I was able to use my experience as the Publicity Chair and talk about my responsibilities and projects when applying for jobs in my field of study. Even if you don’t have “traditional work experience” for jobs you’re applying for, having some experience and involvement on campus and being able to give examples of things you’ve done, looks great in job interviews and gives you a better chance of landing the job.
Take More Time Off Work
Related Post: How to Balance Working Part-Time in College
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You’ll have your whole life to work after college, enjoying times with your roommates and your friends are what you should be doing in college. Especially with all the traveling I had to do being in a long-distance relationship, I had to work and I’m really glad I worked while I was in school. It gave me extra spending money, work experience, and meeting tons of new people. That being said, I wish I would have worked less while I was in school.
With working, having an internship, and being a full-time student at the same time, I was able to develop great time-management skills, however, I missed out on a lot of nights out with friends and other occasions that now that we’re all in different places in the world, wish I would have taken advantage of that time we had together.
Towards the end of my last semester of college, I took more and more time off and eventually left my job two weeks before graduation. I was moving back home to a completely different state which is why I was going to have to leave my job for good anyways. If you’re going to keep your job after graduating, I recommend just taking some time off throughout the year for special occasions or at least one weekend a month or more to go and spend some time with friends.
Enjoy Your Time
The most important thing is to enjoy your college years. They say that college is the best time of your life and it definitely is a great and monumental time in your life.
I hope this post gave you some insight and inspiration from a post-graduate and hopefully helped you out with things you maybe should start thinking about while being in college. If you’re a college graduate, what’s something you wish you knew when you were in college? Let me know in the comments down below!
