One Shot! How to Make the most of your College Career.

 

You only get one shot to make the most of your college career! One shot to create a lasting experience and build a lasting foundation that your entire life will be built upon. One shot to create lasting experiences that will aid you in becoming the adult you dream of. No Pressure!

Do you remember the story of the three little pigs?

There were 3 pigs that were challenged with building their own homes. As the story goes, one pig chose to build his house out of straw, another chose to build his house out of sticks, and lastly one chose to build his house out of brick.

As we know, the 3^rd pig had the hardest time with building his house. His house took lots of hard work, getting dirty, lifting heavy weights, and simply being uncomfortable.

And we also know that the third pig’s house ended up being the house that was able to withstand the big bad wolf.

What’s ironic is that the first two pigs found themselves having to live with the third pig. At record levels, more and more young adults and college students are finding themselves living with their parents after graduation and well into their 20s.

Here’s the moral of the story. If you want to build a successful future, you have to build a successful foundation, there’s no other way around it. It’s a must.

Yes, like the third pig, it will take harder work than most. It will take getting outside of your comfort zone, and it will take doing things that most people around you aren’t doing but at the end, it’s all worth it.

Below I will be sharing the essentials to building your foundation while in college. Just so you know. I went ahead and skipped all of the conventional wisdom that you know. Why? Because you know it! You know that you probably should get good grades; you know that you should network and spend time with your teachers, and the rest of the common knowledge. Below is what you may know but probably haven’t heard enough:

1. Find you. There’s no class in college called You 101. A class where you sit, listen, and the professor tells you everything that you need to know about yourself, you take a few exams, pass, and you are an expert. If there was, I certainly didn’t hear about it!

Many students graduate knowing lots of book answers, a lot about their friends and campus, how to conduct an interview, but for the most part, they are clueless about themselves.

They never got the memo that YOU 101 is an internal class. That no one will go through the process of teaching you about you except YOU.

2. Develop you. After you’ve found you. Found your strengths, weaknesses, personality tendencies, and more, then it’s time to develop. Make your strengths stronger and cancel out your weaknesses. Skills like goal setting, planning, time management, organization, communication and selling. All of these skills are intangible skills that will carry you long into your adult life.

How do you develop you? The best way is by putting yourself in situations where development is necessary. For instance, if you would like to build your speaking skills place yourself in situations where speaking is necessary. In other words, place yourself outside of your comfort zone. By doing this you position yourself to grow.

Other ways to develop you is by doing exactly what you’re doing now. Reading, listening to courses, workshops, and more.

3. Keep your dreams alive. One of the unfortunate parts about college is the death of dreams. Where college is thought to be the birth of ideas and dreams, college has become the grave of dreams. Students pass up on their dreams to find a good major or career that they found on Google.

The foundation to a happy life is living out and pursuing the dreams of your heart. The moment you begin to give up on your dreams is the moment you begin to kill your heart and soul. Determine early that you will keep your dreams alive no matter what.

4. Enjoy each moment. Being a young adult is an exciting time. Yes, it can be a struggle at times. When it becomes a struggle, simply remember to take each day at a time, to enjoy where you are on the way to where you are going. Each day is a gift, if you treat it that way. Each moment presents itself with opportunities to be happy. It’s up to you to take advantage and seize these moments.

There were many more items to add to this list but if I had to boil it down, these are the essentials. To help you further in this area I’ve created the “Why on Earth am I Here” resource. Half the battle to building a solid foundation is answering this age-old question. Simply insert your email below and I’ll send it your way along with an awesome bonus!