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Get Smart: 7 Things You Need to Learn in College

Learn Your Lesson

During the spring semester of my third year of college, I returned to the lot where I had parked my kickin' red 1991 Pontiac Grand Am only to find that its retractable radio antenna had 1) not retracted; and 2) been snapped off at the base, presumably by some destructive campus prankster. This was discouraging.

Being a resourceful university student, though, I rummaged through my trunk until I found a wire clothes hanger. I straightened it, then bent the wire in half and jammed it into the pinched hole where my antenna had once been. I got in the car, turned on an AM radio station, and the signal came through just fine.

I drove with the MacGyver-ed¹ hanger-antenna for the next three years.

In the process, I learned a valuable lesson: Some things don't have to be pretty to be functional. Score one for education.

And isn't that why we go to college in the first place? To get educated? Unfortunately, we often paint the concept of "education" with a narrow brush, considering it only in terms of what we learn in the pursuit of a certain degree. Business majors are there to study entrepreneurship and economics. Lit majors get educated about Shakespeare and Joseph Campbell. But what about practical living? What about the less glamorous, highly functional stuff? The truth is, there's a lot more education that needs to happen on campus than the kind tied directly to your career choice.

Here, then, are a few practical things to learn before you graduate from college, courtesy of a graduate so brilliant he once turned a cheap piece of wire into a high-tech communications device.

1. How to be a smart credit card user. According to a Nellie Mae survey released in 2005, the average college student graduates with more than $20,000 in debt. More than 15 percent of that amount comes from credit cards.² Some people will tell you that credit cards are flat-out wrong for college students and a bad idea in general, but I think those people are just being grouchy. A credit card can actually be a useful financial tool — if you use it wisely. Smart college students treat credit cards like debit cards, whipping them out only when there's enough money in the bank to cover the transaction. They're disciplined, paying their balances every month and refusing to use a credit card in place of money they don't have. They know they'll probably leave college with so much student loan debt that an extra credit card balance will only add to the nightmare. They know better than to dig the hole any deeper.



Once you've graduated and gotten a real job, every day is an 8 a.m. class. That's when the workday begins. Might as well get used to
it now.
2. How to get out of bed. We've all experienced the 8 a.m. class that was packed at the beginning of the semester but had dwindled to eight coffee-bingeing survivors by year's end. Most students schedule early-morning classes due to limited availability ("Gasp! It's only offered at 8 a.m.?!? What are we, farmers?") or well-intentioned optimism ("Of course I can wake up on time. The fresh air will be delightful!"). But it's not long before these same students ditch the class in droves because 8 a.m. is, well, really early. And if you're not disciplined enough to get up in time for class, then dropping it is a reasonable solution. Only there's one minor problem: Once you've graduated and gotten a real job, every day is an 8 a.m. class. That's when the workday begins. Might as well get used to it now.



3. How to get along with jerks. Right now, everyone you know has a bad roommate story — the dorm-mate who smelled like a diseased hyena; the guy who "borrowed" your iPod at Christmas break and never came back; that one dude who used to make out (and then some) with his girlfriend in your bed. Guess what? In a few years, everyone you know will also have a quiver full of bad coworker stories, too. And while you can just request a new roommate at college, you can't exactly request a new boss. To deal with bad seeds in the workplace, you'll need to be accommodating, humble, patient and able to keep your emotions under control. All these are things you can be working on now — around roommates, during group projects, and with that TA who just seems to have it in for you. One piece of advice: Learn to smile and at least pretend to be nice. Fighting jerkiness with jerkiness rarely works.



4. How to deal with stress. This one's a gimme, because if the university years help you prepare for anything, it's stress management. When else will you be forced to juggle unfinished lab projects, unread Hemingway stories, unwritten research papers and a neglected girlfriend, all while suffering from chronic sleep deprivation? College life is hard. The good news? You've learned to handle it. The bad news? It doesn't get much better. In the working world, you'll use the same skills you're developing now. Tackle big tasks by breaking them down into smaller ones. Prioritize. Keep distractions to a minimum. Maintain some method of organization. Speaking of …



5. How to stay organized. In the minds of most of society — by which I mean everyone other than your parents — adulthood begins once you graduate from college. And if there's one word that's synonymous with adulthood, it's responsibility. One of the best ways to gauge a person's responsibility is to observe how organized he or she is. Right now, you're learning that it's virtually impossible to get through a semester without some way to keep track of class schedules, project deadlines, study groups, and test dates. Maybe you do this on your laptop. Maybe it's all in your Blackberry or iPhone.³ Maybe you're fighting the societal decay caused by the impersonal immediacy of modern convenience and instead you scratch everything out on cuneiform tablets.⁴ Whatever the system, perfect it today so you can translate it to the workplace once your diploma's in hand. Being organized doesn't just minimize stress. It makes you a better employee.



Now's the time to learn your limits. Get it into your head that occasionally it's OK to say no, especially when it comes to your emotional health.
6. How to say "No." Despite your mad organizational skillz, there will come a time when, like a hungry retiree at Golden Corral, you simply have too much on your plate. After graduation, you'll quite possibly a) move to a new city; b) find a new place to live; c) and begin a new job. Any one of these things can be a major stressor. You'll be tempted to soften the transition by being over-eager at work and overly nice when it comes to meeting new people. The result? You'll end up trying to do too much. You'll say yes to too many things and end up overscheduled and overworked. Now's the time to learn your limits. Get it into your head that occasionally it's OK to say no, especially when it comes to your emotional health.



7. What you believe and why. A lot of people put their spiritual lives on hold during college, just because there's so much to learn and do that it's easy to let faith slip down the list of priorities. Don't. College is an ideal time to step out of the protective faith bubble — the safe, comfortable tradition passed down to you by your parents, your pastor or your childhood church — and make it your own. Ask yourself hard questions: Why do I believe this? Where does this tradition come from? What does the Bible really say about this subject? It's a little scary and not always comfortable. That's why it's a good idea to find some friends to travel that road with you. Will you ever arrive at a perfect understanding of the Gospel and the Kingdom of God? Probably not.⁵ But now is a great time to start the journey.

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Of course, there are more than just these seven things to learn while you're still an undergrad, but this should be enough to work on as you gear up for the next semester. Add these to your educational experience now, and you'll benefit from them the rest of your life.