The student gets to decide what college experiences are important.
Everyone tells you what you should do when you graduate, but no one tells you how to do it.
There are a thousand decisions we have to make at the end of our time here. There’s a surprising lack of useful advice but an excessive amount of useless ?advice.
OK, most of those decisions have to do with our future employment, but not all, I swear.
The end of our time at college is hectic but too often focuses our efforts on a single goal: getting a job.
Sure, getting a job is important. It is the reason we came here in the first place. Future success in the workforce is why we shell out tens of thousands of dollars per year.
The pressure to make our diploma worth the expense is understandable, but it is important to remember we came here for other ?reasons.
We all came to college to get an education, to reach higher, to aspire to be a better version of ourselves.
We all came to college to find out who we are going to be for the rest of our lives. We have more of an opportunity to affect our futures in these few years than we ever will again.
And then, suddenly, it’s over. It is a scary thought. We spend four years listening to parents, professors, advisors and friends telling us the decisions we make during college will determine our future, and so we better take it seriously.
Then sometimes, we procrastinate, we blow off studying for a party or, more often, for Netflix.
We choose to hang out with our friends instead of spending the night in the ?library cramming for an exam.
It seems odd that so often we put off the reason we came here, if it really is as important as everyone says, for things that are considerably less important.
What I think I have learned throughout my time here is that there are a lot of other important parts of college.
Yes, classes are important, but spending a night watching Netflix is OK, too. Choosing your friends over some extra studying is fine every now and then.
This is supposed to be a place where we learn, and a lot of learning can take place outside of the?classroom.
It is also important for us all to remember this isn’t the end of the road. So, for those graduating this spring, I implore you not to freak out.
Yes, it is going to be a transition into the real world. Yes, it probably is scary and full of unknowns.
But, while you may be looking back and thinking about the mistakes you made, the memories you had and how things will never be the same as they were here, just remember, with every new experience comes new opportunities.
No matter what a career adviser says, you can still determine your future after college. In fact, your story is just beginning.
thompjak@indiana.edu
