Life Lessons College Didn't Teach You
My life completely changed in my final year of college. After spending the first 3 years as an introvert who only really went to school to get the best grades, I started communicating more with my professors and other students in my program. I started making friends, going out more, and allowing myself to enjoy the other non-academic activities.
Reaching out and being more social paid off in a variety of ways, but by then, it was too little, too late. My academic life was pretty much over. I started thinking about what could have been had I been more social sooner. What I didn't learn in University or College from classes was that connecting with people was critical to success. I learned that from my experience outside the classroom. You can call it what you like: networking, making human connections, socializations—whatever.
However you choose to describe it, know that it will propel you forward. We tend to think the world is more of a meritocracy than it is. Yes, skill and education do play a role in where you end up, but a lot of the professional world is who you know or who you get to know. If someone is able to put a face to a bio or a resume, it has a big impact.
These are just some of the most important life lessons the college didn't teach you. We're often taught what we should learn but not how we should learn. The truth is, the reason many people suffer in school is because they haven't figured out the best way to learn for themselves. So they conclude that they're bad learners and don't absorb information well when, in reality, they just need to try a different technique.
After struggling sometimes in school, I'd turn things around by doing two key things: making physical notes and repetition during classes. I wrote out notes on a physical notepad. I stayed focused on lectures this way and could better recall what I had learned in preparation for exams. I wrote out a new set of notes to study and reviewed those notes every day for four to five days in a row. During exams, I had no trouble recalling what I'd studied, and the whole learning process stopped being any kind of stressful.
Just 24 hours after reviewing a subject, we forget about 20% of what we've been studying, but by repeating the review process, our memory improves to the point where we can basically remember almost everything we've learned. But before we can start learning anything, we have to first be open to learning itself. Our desire to learn is something we actually have some control over.
A study by Nicole Dling, a psychologist at the University of Utah, showed that by focusing on positive learning outcomes over challenges, we can motivate ourselves into starting the learning process. When we envision that brighter future, we’re more likely to take concrete steps to make it a reality. One of the problems with our education system is that it doesn't teach us how to use tools to get things done.
When in reality, that's one of the things that makes us uniquely human. In just a few years, we've gone from teachers saying we won't always have a calculator in our pockets to having full-fledged computers in our pockets. Today, we have AI, and schools are failing students for using ChatGPT to write essays instead of teaching them how to use those tools to create even better things.
If you're interested in content creation or just like to create videos for fun, then you should definitely check out this new powerful tool, Nid AI. With Nid AI, you can create high-quality videos, and I'm talking everything from scripting to voiceover and video editing, all from just one prompt. All you have to do is give it a prompt like "create a YouTube short for how far we've come when it comes to space travel," make it cheeky, and use an authoritative British male voiceover.
Then you select the persona of your potential audience, look and feel you're going for with the video, and the platform you want to upload the video. Give it a few seconds, and you get this amazing looking and sounding video. "Once upon a time, we gazed at the Moon, a mere dream. Then one fine day in 1969, we left our first footprint." If you don't like it, just regenerate it and generate a new version.
In just a few seconds, you can also use text commands to make general edits to the video, like change the VO from male to female, or even go in and make more specific changes to the script or shots in the video. "Good day, space enthusiasts! Ever wondered how far we've come in space travel? Let's take a minute to marvel." Once you're satisfied with it, export it, and that's pretty much it; your video is ready to upload.
You can get started with InVideo AI and create up to four videos for free, but with a watermark. However, if you're serious about video creation, then I highly recommend you upgrade to the paid plan, which starts as low as $20 a month and gives you access to all the AI tools, as well as millions of royalty-free stock footage clips, a human-sounding voiceover, and a video editor—all of which will cost you hundreds of dollars if you source them individually.
Back to our story: whether you're trying to have a conversation with a potential partner, trying to write a New York Times bestseller, or just making a YouTube video, being as detailed as possible is super important. Abstract language doesn't excite the imagination. When you want to give someone a compliment, it's better to say, "That dress really compliments your beautiful eyes," than to say, "You're pretty."
No one really feels anything from these general descriptions. When trying to have a conversation, go into as much detail as you can. That's how you keep a conversation going. If somebody asked you how a party was, don't just say it was no good. Instead, say stuff like the loud music hurt your ears and the sink overflowed because somebody dropped their keys down the drain.
It gives the person you're talking to more to imagine and offers insight into who you are. The most frustrating trend in conversations is abrupt two-word answers; they give the other person nothing to work with. When you're writing, telling a story, or even simply giving somebody instructions, going into as much detail as time would allow might be the difference between getting a second date and your younger sibling burning down the house because they set the oven to degrees Celsius and not degrees Fahrenheit.
When we need help, we often feel anxious, and that anxiety prevents us from getting help. It tells us there's not enough time and it threatens to intensify if we take a break from our day-to-day. But if we really do take a step back, we'll realize that help will improve everything. It'll calm our anxiety, and we'll probably speed up whatever we're doing. Help will bring clarity or at least put us on a better path.
This is true for the smaller things in life, like our temporary projects, and the bigger things, like mental health problems. One of the main things keeping us from getting help is the notion of self-reliance. We think we should be able to overcome our problems on our own. The idea of asking for outside help can feel embarrassing or shameful, but of course, it's not. The best of us ask for help and are better for it.
When you feel uncertainty in your mind, don't hesitate to ask questions. Clarity may come from your own independent exploration, but it will certainly come a lot quicker by asking another human being for answers or solutions. And there's another big benefit from asking questions: you build stronger relationships. It shows you care and keeps people engaged.
You know that good feeling you get when somebody asks you a question and you're able to give them the solution to their problems? Yeah, most of us have that too. So by asking questions, you give people the opportunity to feel good about finding a solution for you. Most of us have an image of a status-obsessed person in our minds. They keep a pristine house and buy fancy cars to impress their neighbors.
But status is often more subtly ingrained in the way we think of others and ourselves—so ingrained that we often don't notice it. Try this thought experiment: imagine someone you're in a relationship with leaves you for somebody else. Now imagine people of all different income levels becoming your ex's new lover. Do some make you feel differently than others? Does the rich person fill you with resentment? How about the person who doesn't have a stable income?
Think about someone in your field that you don't think is as skilled as you. Have you assigned them a different status in your mind? Probably, and it probably affects your interactions with them, whether you like to admit it or not. But status isn't real. Our status is in our occupation; it's just a social game that doesn't even extend beyond our work.
You're just a face, name, and number to the government worker renewing your license, not whatever role you play at your job. The more we remember the fictitious nature of status, the more we'll respect others and treat them fairly. Let's say you notice a new offer in your personal inbox while online banking. It's a special offer from a credit card company, and they're going to give you 0% interest for 6 months. It sounds great! You can borrow money for free for half a year.
Most of you are probably suspicious of this offer already. Banks make offers like this not to save you money but to squeeze more money out of you in the long run. They know that most people will charge a lot of money on their card, feeling safe with that 0% interest, and by the time the standard interest rate sets in, they've accumulated way too much debt to pay back.
Credit card holders are now being charged interest and increasing their debt at an alarming rate. Banks make money off debt; it's their main source of revenue. With a profit-driven mindset, they prey on the financially illiterate and those with bad spending habits. Take on debt carefully and be aware of predatory banking—they are not your friend.
We have a tendency to compare ourselves to others. We use them as a measuring stick for our own success, and when we're not thinking of specific people, we're appealing to specific markers as a measure of success. But all these standards aren't real. These markers and goals can be helpful in making us feel more successful, but we should always step back and recognize that they're not actually important in the grand scheme of things.
All that matters is being better than who we were yesterday. I should clarify that you don't necessarily have to have everything you need to be happy. Your basic needs should be met first, and some of us are stricken with debilitating conditions that can have a tremendous impact on happiness. But provided these needs and conditions are covered, you can pursue happiness at any point.
In what better place to focus your efforts than contentment? Most of the things we pursue in life are means to an end. Our careers, money, and entertainment are all means to find happiness in some way. So why not pursue more lasting happiness directly? Why not make it our main goal in life? One of the oddest things we do is put off enjoying the moment.
We panic and tell ourselves that we should be planning for the future. And then when that future comes, we can finally enjoy the moment. But as the philosophical author Alan Watts famously insisted, that future never comes. When the future does arrive, you'll be planning for another future, and you'll never be satisfied with the moment.
Let yourself enjoy the present. Quiet the voice telling you to anticipate the future every time you're out enjoying time with friends or just sitting doing nothing at all—and I mean literally nothing. Let your mind wander; be okay with not looking at your phone or being busy.
Mahatma Gandhi insisted on the use of nonviolent resistance in his efforts to help free India from British colonial rule. He strongly believed that violence only encouraged more violence; it could never lead to a desired state of peace. While it's important to acknowledge that violent resistance did play a part in India's liberation, Gandhi's non-violent approach played a big role and continues to inspire the world to this day.
With Gandhi, violence doesn't just mean physical violence; it includes hatred, harsh words, dishonesty, and lying. When we commit any act of violence, that doesn't just solve a problem; it continues the cycle—one that will inevitably come back to injure us. Nature isn't here for us to master; we're all a part of a natural ecosystem. We rely on it, and it depends on us not exploiting it.
Many works of fiction describe humans in opposition to nature. If we don't conquer it, it will destroy us. In Daniel Quinn's philosophical text, "Ishmael," a psychic gorilla teaches his student about the folly of this perspective of man versus nature. He describes humanity as falling off a cliff in our ongoing efforts to bend nature to our will.
It's a good lesson to keep in mind when taking care of your home, for example. If you have outdoor space, should you resist nature by maintaining perfectly cut grass, or should you consider letting the wilderness of nature take over? You could grow native wildlife that supports the ecosystem. You have options that don't pit yourself against your natural surroundings.
To know someone is to objectify them. We see them as limited sets of possibilities and can largely predict their behavior. But when we think of ourselves, we're ambiguous or capable of just about anything. When talking to others, be sure to respect their ambiguous nature. As Simone de Beauvoir describes in "The Ethics of Ambiguity," limiting others this way can negatively affect their life and potentially ruin your relationship with them.
Be encouraging and try not to limit yourself at the same time. When faced with an anxiety-inducing situation, we'll often think we'll have these uncomfortable feelings forever. But the mind adapts to exposure, and our anxiety can be reduced with repetition. This is how exposure therapy works and how we naturally adapt with experience.
You've probably noticed that the 10th time you've tried public speaking wasn't as nerve-wracking as the first, or that your last day on the job wasn't as stressful as the first. We often let anxiety dictate what we attempt to do. We shy away from experiences that will enrich our lives because we associate them with mental pain.
And while there's no denying that feeling anxious is kind of awful, it will ultimately pass. Eventually, that pain will be numbed, and you'll feel more at ease in a larger variety of stressful situations. You'll be more at home in the world.
There is one more super important life lesson that I wish I knew back in college, and that's the courage to be disliked. Watch this video next to learn all about it.