The single most important characteristic that will determine your level of success in college is how hard you are willing to work. It all comes down to how badly you want to succeed in the classroom, with internships, in your activities, with your social life and everything else that you are involved with. Get involved in as much as you can and give your absolute best to all of it – you will be glad you did!
The easy thing to do is skip class frequently, not get involved in activities, play a bunch of video games and lay around all of the time. The right thing to do, and the thing that will determine your level of success for the rest of your life, is to get off your butt and make stuff happen in your life! The quickest way to do this is by having an exceptionally strong work ethic in everything that you do.
Here is a challenge for you – make your Return on Investment for your tuition higher than anyone else’s. In other words, gain more value from your tuition dollars than anyone else on campus receives. Learn more, get involved in more, meet more people, lead more organizations, take advantage of all the programs, build relationships with your advisors and do everything else in this book. Make it a goal to look back one day and know your tuition didn’t cost a dollar because the experience you received in return was worth millions.
The Bottom Line: Your success as a college student will not be determined strictly by a grade point average. It will be measured by what you accomplished. Your success will be based on the experiences you have, the friendships you make, the relationships you build, the lessons you learn and the impact you make. The harder you work, the more you will accomplish.