8 Mistakes I Made as a Student

Key Takeaways

about a week ago I came across a video on my friend Kevin's channel med school insiders called seven regrets of my 20s and watching his video got me thinking about some of my own regrets and mistakes specifically from my college career because by no means did I have a perfect college career by and large I'm happy with how things turned out and I didn't make any huge mistakes but there are definitely some things that I would have done differently if I were magically time-warped back to my freshman eighth year now all that is unlikely to happen as I haven't angered any wizards lately I still think that detailing these mistakes and going through what I would have done differently will be useful for other people who might be finding themselves in a similar situation in the near future including possibly you that's because one of my most important beliefs is that you can learn just as much from the failures of others as you can from your own as long as you can call that little voice in your head that says yeah but that won't happen to me right then you can start to use the experiences of others to prepare yourself potential situations in your own life so today I'm gonna be sharing eight stupid mistakes that I made in college and the lessons that each one of them taught me first up in my list was a mistake I made in both my freshman and my sophomore year which was starting up the semester way too gung-ho thinking I could do literally every single reading assignment every single piece of homework everything and then fizzling out after just a few weeks I'm not gonna lie I came into college as a very ambitious student as is befitting somebody who would make an entire website on academic success and I wanted to do really well in my classes I wanted to every single test and do all the reading so when I started my semesters I told myself I'm going to read every single reading assignment and I'm gonna take notes on every single thing that I read but as you can probably guess that didn't last for very long and there's a big difference between say my first week Mis class notes which I'll show right here and well the market lack of any notes beyond that now I have to say that I did get lucky because a lot of the classes that I went to had a lot of overlap between what was presented in class and what was in the actual reading assignments in homework but if I had been in classes where a lot of crucial information was locked the textbook then that burnout that I experienced a few weeks into the semester could have really hurt mistake number two which is a bubbly fizzy and caffeinated mistake all throughout college until probably my senior year I was absolutely addicted to energy drinks and I'd like to tell myself that this wasn't because of the caffeine content it probably was caffeine is a surprisingly addictive substance but I was also addicted to energy drinks because they provided what the author Taylor Clarke calls in his book Starbucks beverage entertainment they were something that made a study session just a little bit less boring because I knew I got that colorful can of fizzy sugary liquid next to me while I went through my math assignments the lesson here for those of you who haven't already gotten addicted to energy drinks is don't let it happen because it can very well happen both for those beverage entertainment reasons and for the caffeine reasons you don't need nearly as much caffeine as you think you might as long as you are maintaining a good sleep schedule and if you do want to use caffeine or you enjoy drinks that have it maybe stick to coffee or tea instead and there are a lot healthier and if you aren't going to Starbucks and buying $4 lattes they are a lot cheaper as well so the next mistake on my list here is jumping the gun when it came to selecting an internship so this goes back to my sophomore year of college I spent the summer before that year and the very beginning of that year going as hard as I could to try to get an internship I went to every single networking session that I can learn about I went to all the career fairs I went to all the pre career fairs and the pre pre Career Fair breakfasts I met recruiters from dozens of different companies I handed out tons of different resumes and all of this work definitely paid off after the career fair season after all that kind of died down I was presented with no less than seven interview offers at seven different companies and I was pretty stoked about these but I didn't end up going to any of them because before even my first interview was scheduled I got a call from one company that said hey Thomas we really liked your resume we really liked talking with you at the career fair we think that we don't even need to interview you we would like to offer you an internship sight unseen because we think you're a great candidate and I was ecstatic when I got this call and because I was ecstatic and because I was so stoked that they had offered me an internship I had never been offered an internship before I took it right away now I don't want to say that this decision led me down the wrong path because I'm very grateful for the experiences I got at that internship but as a result of taking it right away I cancelled all seven of those other interview requests I didn't even give them the chance to see if they were gonna be a better opportunity than that first one and I remember later during that summer talking with other people who are my classmates and friends and asking them what their internship experiences were like and some of them actually ended up getting internships that paid a lot more than mine did so I think the lesson here is don't jump the gun if you get a job offer you're going to think that this is the only one that's gonna come to you you're gonna think that if you let this opportunity slip through your fingers you're making a horrible decision but it is totally okay to say thank you so much for the opportunity can I take a few days to think about it from there you start to analyze your options and since I did this internship and then I went and started my own business and haven't worked a full-time job since then I don't have the personal experience to tell you about how to do this correctly but I did come across an excellent answer on reddit about this exact same question so I'm going to link to that in the description down below and I highly recommend you give it a read in case you find yourself in this situation in the future all right mistake number four on my list is dropping my very first programming class so this goes back to my very first semester of college my freshman year I ended up taking the engineering level Java programming class and this was because even though I was a business student weirdly the business Java programming class even though it was easier than the engineering level one had a prerequisite that I wasn't going to be able to take until my second semester whereas that engineering one had no prerequisites and I was like I want to start learning Java I want to start programming this is what I came to college for so I started that class and immediately I found it really really difficult the labs are difficult the homework was difficult and I even found it difficult to follow the lecture material while I was sitting in class so and it pains me to admit this after about a couple of weeks I actually dropped that class and just resigned myself to taking the business level Java class instead and this mistake is really an echo of a mistake I made back in high school where I didn't get a very good grade in my calculus class because I shied away from the tough problems the moment problem presented itself to me and I thought I can't do that I don't even know where to begin I would disengage I would basically give up and as I've learned in the interviewing years this is not how you become a better problem-solver you can't just disengage the moment a problem seems like it's too tough to solve if you focus on it you're eventually going to find the answer and if you can't do it on your own you can ask for help I didn't do this which meant that I wasted a bunch of time during my freshman year because I dropped that class and wasted all the hours I put into it prior to the day I dropped it but it also meant that I ended up going into a Java class that was frankly too easy for me I could have done the engineering level Java class if I had really buckled down and focused on the problems but I didn't so if you find yourself in a class you feel is just too hard make sure you were actually working to solve those problems ask yourself have I really put in the time have I really focused or that I just disengage and tell myself that's too hard all right failure number five here kind of related to number four I failed to take advantage of professor office hours for a lot of my college career when I got into my junior and senior year I started to get smart and I started to use them a lot more often but freshman and sophomore year I hardly ever went to professor office hours and what's worse I remember professors actually offering completely free review sessions you know after class when people could just come and ask whatever questions they wanted in review for tests and I skipped these two these are gold mines I remember going to a couple of these during my again junior and senior year and using them to get really good grades on tests because teachers would essentially answer questions straight from the study guides I skipped these in my first couple of years of college and I skipped professor office hours which meant that again when I got stuck on tough problems I wasn't utilizing the resources that I had available to me I was just disengaging and telling myself I can't do that so if you're in college or even if you're in high school use the help you have available to you professors are there to help you not just by lecturing to you at the front of the classroom but by working one-on-one with you as well all right stake number six and this is I think the most emotional one on the list here I titled it in my list seeking companionship in the wrong places so to put a long story very short the February of my junior year I ended up breaking up with the girl I was dating at the time and for a while I was totally fine being single but as many people end up finding they start to get lonely after a while and I remember that my senior year fall started and I found myself in what I would say is the closest to a depression that I have ever been in I don't think that is it it was a true depression and I haven't really experienced what other people have experienced in that realm of things but it was a very sad and kind of down period of my life and what I tried to do to fix that I thought that I needed to go out and find someone else to date but I went about it in the wrong way I started going to bars like almost every single night and I'm not a huge drinker but I would go out there because the only solution to finding someone to date in my mind was that I had to go out to bars like where else do you meet people who actually want to get in a relationship right and this was the complete wrong approach because I would go number one put myself in an environment where I was very unlikely to find people who had similar interests and passions and values to what I had but also I psyched myself out every single time I went into a bar or nightclub because I went there with the express purpose of finding somebody and that meant I put a ton of pressure and anxiety on myself and this went on for a few months until one night on a whim I decided to go to the anime club party at my school because my roommate was the president at the time so this was just a completely fun thing to do I had absolutely no expectations from it and wouldn't you know it that's where I met Anna my girlfriend who have been with for six years and I met her there because I put no expectations on myself I didn't have any anxiety which allowed me to be myself and that's why she was attracted to me so if there is a lesson here at all I would say don't put so much pressure on yourself to find a companion go out do things with the intention of finding friends and having fun and while you're doing those things in the process you're likely to meet people who again share passion so you might be attracted to and they might be attracted to you and you're not putting turn yourself so you're gonna be yourself in those situations all right mistake number seven is not doing my due diligence when it came to the costs of college and this specifically is referring to the costs of living on campus but when I was researching what it would take to live on campus because I wanted to live in the dorms so I could meet as many people as possible and be as close to the opportunities as possible the first bit of information I found on my colleges website is that I had to pay for the dorm up front for an entire semester which I believe was about $3,500 each and every semester and I didn't look past that I said okay I don't have $3,500 so I went out and took out student loans to pay for it only later in my college career when I started to really get to know the college's website for a part-time job that I had been hired for did I learn that there was actually a month-to-month payment option for that dorm so to give you some context my original plan going into college was to get an apartment off campus so I could pay for at month to month with my part-time job earnings I didn't have parents that could pay for my college so I knew I would have to basically cover everything myself and I wanted to minimize debt but eventually I decided against the apartment idea because again I wanted to be in the thick of things I wanted to be on campus and meet as many people as possible all that good stuff but I didn't do my due diligence I didn't learn about this month-to-month option and had I done that I probably could have paid for my dorm months a month with my part-time job earnings or at least taken out far fewer dollars in student loans so the lesson here is do your due diligence don't take the first bit of information you have at face value especially if it's going to involve you taking out a large student loan dig in ask questions challenge your base assumptions and you might find something that could save you a lot of money [Music] and that brings us to our final mistake on my list which was failing to take advantage of what I call the fun opportunities and I call them the fun opportunities because I have to separate them from the professional opportunities in college I really did take advantage of professional opportunities I was in Business Council I started a blog I was in all these like academic standards committees and computer advisory committees all these things that I had done just basically that boost my resume and that may actually be another mistake that I think about when writing this list but what I put off where all the things that seemed really fun so to give you some context here my college has over 800 student organizations and clubs including things like downhill dirt-boarding Club skydiving Club all these outdoor adventure clubs and when I was a freshman I went to this thing called Club fest where everyone except these booths and it was basically this entire event designed to show the freshmen just what was available and what they could join and I remember seeing all these clubs and thinking these seem awesome I want to do all of these but I'm here for four years I can do them whenever I want I have all the time in the world so of course I let other things get in the way I let homework get in the way I let video games with friends get in the way I let all these events that I thought would build my professional presence in my resume get in the way and four years went by without me ever doing any of those things I never did the skydiving Club I never did the downhill dirt-boarding Club I didn't none of it so if you find yourself in a similar situation where there's something you want to do but you feel like you owe all the time in the world to do it you have to commit to it to find a way to set a date or commit to it with a friend so it's actually going to happen even if something seems really fun if there's a little bit of friction required to get into it or if it's gonna take some time you're always going to find something that quote-unquote comes up and makes you put it off a week and then another week and then another week until one day you find yourself on your deathbed and you really regret never going downhill dirt boarding now one potential regret that I thankfully didn't have to put on this list was failing to use my free time to work on independent learning projects because this was definitely something that I did in college while a lot of the guys in my dorm used most their free time to play video games I used the vast majority of my free time that wasn't taken up by classes or projects or part-time jobs to work independent learning projects that really interested me and that really paid off in fact all the hours that I spent in my dorm learning PHP in Photoshop video editing gave me the skills that I needed to build and refine college info geek which eventually turned into a full-time business for me so while I'm not suggesting that you never hang out with friends or never play video games because I definitely think you should do these things I do want to leave you with one parting thought whether you're in college or high school or even in the professional world make sure that you're using at least some of your free time to pursue independent learning projects that interest you don't just come home and spend all your free time on Netflix or video games or hobbies the only result in consumption learn something build something and remember that since you get to pick the project your higher level of interest in it will almost always lead to faster learning and you never know how it's gonna pay off in the future now if you want to accelerate your learning in that project even further you should also check out skill share skill shares library of over 20,000 courses taught by expert teachers and practitioners in a ton of different areas including graphic design web development story crafting and even marketing all their classes are hands-on with projects that you can immediately sink your teeth into so you're learning actively right away and there's also a chat area where you can ask questions and get feedback now one class that I want to highlight for you this week is Thomas Laurie's class I'm creating a UX design portfolio and this is partly because creating a portfolio is an essential skill for anyone doing creative work but also because the class uses a free tool called Sigma which to spoil things a little bit is a tool that I've been using to craft a brand new version of the college info geek website and this tool is amazing anybody who wants to get into the field of web design I think should start learning it so if you wanna start going through that class or check out any of the other classes in skill shares library then click link and the description down below and sign up and when you do you're also going to get a free two month unlimited trial of your service you can learn as much as you want in two months and after that a premium subscription to their service is less than ten bucks a month and you can cancel at any time so it's risk-free and honestly I think it is an awesome service I wanna give a big thanks to Skillshare for sponsoring this video of being a big supporter of this channel and as always guys thank you so much for watching if you enjoyed this video and got something out of it maybe consider leaving a like you can also subscribe right there if you don't want to miss new videos when they come out every single week you can also get a free copy of my book on how to earn better grades right over there watch one more video on this channel right around here or follow me on Instagram @tomfrankly thanks for watching guys and I will see you in the next one