College Success Tip – Learn How To Be Completely Independent

As a college student, you have a tremendous amount of freedom.  You are also independent and on your own, which means you need to take care of yourself.  Challenge yourself to be truly independent and manage your entire life, without being reliant on anyone else.  Some of the things you can do to be independent include:

• Paying your bills
• Managing your bank account
• Doing laundry
• Grocery shopping
• Cooking for yourself
• Cleaning up after yourself
• Creating and tracking a monthly budget
• Servicing your car
• Going to regular doctor checkups
• Building professional relationships

There are many others, but the basic idea is that you can handle everything on your own.  Does this mean you can’t have your mom do your laundry over a break?  Of course it doesn’t, but make sure you know how to do it and can take care of it yourself when your at school.

Also be an independent thinker; make the right decisions for yourself, and don’t do things because other people think you should.  This doesn’t mean you should ignore everyone else, but at the end of the day you need to make up your own mind about what is best for you and what will make you the happiest.
The Bottom Line: Put yourself in a position where you don’t need to rely on anyone else to do anything for you.  Be independent and capable of running every aspect of your life – you’ll be years ahead of many adults who still can’t manage a bank account or clean up after themselves!

College Success Tip – Balance Everything Well

Balancing everything that you are involved with as a college student sounds much easier than it actually is for many.  It is common to think that balance involves two things:  class and a social life.  The truth is, you will more than likely need to balance most or all of the following:

• School Work
• Student Activities
• Physical Activity
• Staying in Touch with Friends/Family
• Earning an Income
• Leadership Positions
• Intramural Sports
• A Significant Other
• Internships
• Attending Campus Events
• Friends
• A Social Life
• Searching for Internships/Careers
• Attending Religious Services

College is the time to do as much as possible, and do it well, but you must have a system in place to balance it all.  Make sure to prioritize what is most important and dedicate the appropriate amount of time to each of those areas.

The Bottom Line: It is easy to balance a social life and class, but as an ambitious student you will more than likely have a lot more than that on your plate.  You can balance everything as long as you have a plan in place and manage your schedule efficiently.

College Success Tip – Plan The Perfect Schedule

Part of being efficient with your time means planning out the perfect schedule.  You are allowed to take whatever classes you want, as long as the combination allows you to meet all of your requirements for graduation.  It is important to plan a schedule to fit your desires, rather than letting your schedule dictate your life.  If you want an easier schedule in the Fall, then save your harder classes for the winter.  If you plan to ski on weekends all Winter, then you may want to take a tougher class load in the Fall.

You should have a very good idea of which classes you need to take so that you can graduate.  Sit down with your academic advisor and map this out semester by semester.  Sure it may change a little along the way, but at least you will have a good idea of what you need to take and can build a schedule around the lifestyle that you want as a student.  You may also want to make your senior year easier than some of the others – you will want the extra time for student activities, a great social life and either conducting your career search or filling out applications for graduate school.

Going back to the importance of time management, make sure to strategically schedule your classes in as small of a window as possible.  For instance, take all of your classes Monday – Thursday and give yourself Friday off.  Another idea would be to make sure that you schedule all of your classes between 8am-Noon or 10am-2pm so that you are in “class mode” as little as possible.  Then you can study before or after and have the evenings for activities, relaxing and going out.

The Bottom Line: You are paying good money to attend the school of your choice – you deserve to plan the perfect schedule to fit your needs.  Condense your classes into as small of a time frame as possible, map out each semester well in advance and try to give yourself a break senior year…. you will be glad you did!

College Success Tip – Get Involved and Become a Leader

Getting involved in campus activities and organizations is not a good idea – it is a great idea and 100% essential for your success as a student, then eventually as a professional in the workplace.  Student organizations will give you the following:

• Real world experience that you cannot receive in the classroom
• A great boost to your resume
• Interesting stories to share while being interviewed for internships and careers
• Will force you to become much better at time management
• Access to organizations’ advisors and alumni
• Much more!

So what types of organizations are available?  This obviously depends on the size of your campus, but pretty much anything you can image will be available to you. Groups can be fraternities/sororities, academic advisors groups, intramural sports, student senate, the university alumni association, political groups and many others.

How do you pick the right organizations to join?  Simply figure out what you are passionate about – what do you enjoy doing?  What activities will help you learn the skills and get the experience necessary to be successful in the real world?  You may choose one activity that is really fun and another one that will focus on the field you wish to get into after school.  Make sure to get involved in multiple organizations and that they serve you in a variety of ways (such as personal and professional growth, rather than joining three organizations that are all social based).
Initially, you may not be a leader in the organization, but you need to strive to have a leadership position as quickly as possible.  If you are going to be part of an organization, you might as well be a leader and get the most you can out of the experience.  This will be a great way to separate yourself from the “average” people.  The experiences you receive from being a leader is the kind of real world stuff that will earn you a great career opportunity and give you a head start over others after college.

The Bottom Line: You are missing out on a huge opportunity if you don’t get involved in at least two organizations on campus.  You will have a great time, meet new people, add to your resume, learn and become a better person who is more capable of getting off to a fast start after graduation.

College Success Tip – Get Practical Experience

College students around the country have complained seemingly forever that nothing they learn in the classroom applies to the real world.  The good news is that if you feel that way, doing something about it is easy.  Your campus, without a doubt, will provide you with thousands of ways to get practical experience that will help you succeed in the real world.  You can do an internship on campus, be a leader in an organization or even volunteer locally.  Volunteer activities can include coaching a youth sport, tutoring kids, teaching a class or spending time with the elderly.  Any of these activities are better than simply going to class, going home and sitting in front of the television.  The more real world experience you can get, the better off you will be when you graduate.

Your grade point average means very little unless you are going to graduate school, and having a college diploma is nothing special anymore.  Having practical, real world experience while you are still in college is the best way to separate yourself from everyone else.  This experience will give you the edge that you need in order to be successful at a young age.

The Bottom Line: Everything that you do as a college student is intended to prepare you to leave campus and successfully enter the real world.  Gaining practical experience will make you smarter, build your resume, give you more interesting things to talk about during interviews, and will give you a better chance to make an immediate impact in your career.

College Success Tip – Work Harder Than Anyone Else

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.

College Success Tip – Get to Know Your Professors

Make the effort to get to know each of your professors during the first week of class each semester.  By staying after class to introduce yourself or stopping by their offices to exchange a handshake, you will instantly separate yourself from everyone else in your class. This will take you a few minutes, which are well worth it.  A couple of reasons why this is important:

• Professors are the ones who grade you, so keep them happy
• Many of them are well connected in the industries that they teach, which could help you during your career search
• They might be able to write a recommendation for you to get into an organization or graduate school, or serve as a reference when you are applying for internships/careers

Having professors on your side will never hurt you and will more than likely help you at some point.  You cannot walk into their offices when you need a favor and expect them to drop everything to do it – get to know them first, build a relationship and then use them as a resource if they can help you.

The Bottom Line:  Your professors are human and will favor the people who they like.  If you build a relationship with them, your chances at being able to re-submit a project, get a recommendation or be excused to miss class become much better.  Little things like this will make your life much easier.

College Success Tip – Have No Regrets

For the rest of your life, people will ask you where you went to college and what your experience was like.  Which response would you rather give:

A. “It was OK, I didn’t really get involved in much or meet a lot of people.”
B. “It was incredible, I loved every second of it.  I was involved with a bunch of activities, loved the campus, met some amazing people, formed lifelong friendships, had really cool professors and had more than a few late nights of partying.”

Chances are that you would much rather be a lot closer to person B’s response than to person A’s.  If you want to have an amazing experience then you’re in luck, because the choice is yours.  Your college experience will be whatever you make of it, so take advantage of every opportunity that comes your way, do it all and give it your absolute best!

Have absolutely no regrets at all – overwhelm yourself with activities, friends, a great social life, leadership opportunities, campus events and all of the other amazing things that make the college experience so wonderful and unique.

The Bottom Line: In your life, you can have a second chance at doing a lot of different things.  You only get one chance to be a young adult in college, so you have to make the absolute most out of every second of it.  You will never regret the things you do, only the things that you don’t do.  Have no regrets, make every second count, work your absolute hardest and have an incredible ride!