A Blog, Revisited
I was never one of the college students with a clear vision for my future. I didn’t have a dream job or a ten-year plan, just the goal of a lucrative career post-graduation. I chose Illinois on a whim after being accepted to the engineering school with a scholarship that justified my move from Portland, Oregon. I had applied to colleges for engineering because I had always excelled at math and I knew an engineer’s earning potential was good but truthfully, I hadn’t really considered what exactly I would use that degree for.
Shortly into my first semester, I began to feel intimidated by my peers who seemed to have it all together and I felt like I was in over my head. Without a clear vision for my future to keep me motivated, I continued to struggle academically for my first 2 years at Illinois but was too embarrassed to ask for help because my perception at the time was that I was the only one who wasn’t grasping the concepts being taught.
By Christmas break of my sophomore year, my anxiety was at an all-time high. I was having panic-attacks 2-3 times per week from the stress of trying to balance school and work and my personal life. I had tried to pin all my failures on my social life and decided the solution was to completely isolate myself. Which was hard, considering I lived in a sorority house with 45 other people. I redesigned my schedule around this isolation – waking up around 5 to study until class (I actually tried to take 8ams), going to my job after class, straight to the gym, then home to shower and study before catching 4-6 hours of sleep and doing it all over again. Despite all of this, I continued to struggle academically and the strain of it all was not improving my mental health.
While this seems like a super long, depressing introduction, stay with me. There’s a happy ending coming. I share these things because, now that I’ve been out of that world for 2 years, I recognize that my feelings and situation were not unique. These experiences shaped me; they taught me that asking for help is okay, failure is okay, and nobody really has it all together. Most importantly, they instilled in me habits of hard-work, time-management and resilience. College is the training-wheels of adulting – a period of time where we are free to make mistakes as long as we learn from them.
After finally sharing what I was going through, my parents encouraged me to switch paths and I began my study towards an economics major and business minor at the start of my junior year. This decision was partly passion and partly practicality; some of my favorite high school courses had been AP economics and quite a few of my engineering intro credits would transfer to economics. My experience in economics was so dynamically different from engineering and I think a lot of factors played into this – mentally I was in a better place but also, (this is my opinion only) my peers were more accepting, the culture less competitive, and staff more approachable. By taking online classes during the winter and summer semesters, I completed my last credit in January 2018, five months ahead of the rest of my class.
Reflecting on my time at Illinois has helped me to appreciate all the lessons college taught me and understand how those things pushed me to where I am today. I feel compelled to mention that there is an automatic perception of increased human capital in the white-collar world when a candidate has a college degree. That said, a piece of paper doesn’t convey all that you learned (or didn’t learn) during your time at college. You will get out of the experience whatever you put into it and, trust me when I say, you can only cut corners for so long. You may be able to fake your way into a job with your crisp new degree, but it is inherently obvious to your coworkers, based on your work ethic, drive, and ability to effectively communicate ideas what you actually spent your time at college doing. The habits you build now will stick with you.
When I think about my collegiate experience, there are a few teachers who I’ll always remember. Professor Arvan was the first teacher I had who fully embraced treating students as adults. His class structure encouraged students to be accountable for their own learning, to participate when they wanted and to complete assignments at their own pace. More than most professors, he validated the pressures many students feel as they approach graduation – balancing intense course loads, jobs, internships, a social life. He designed his class so that we were allowed the freedom to prioritize these things.
I’ve been pursuing a career in data analytics for the past year and a half. While I don’t drop economics buzzwords on a daily basis, I certainly use the concepts I learned in economics as I navigate the corporate world. Understanding the dynamics of a business can provide invaluable perspective as you negotiate job offers or try to convey your message at a meeting. Even in my personal life, I recognize that economics gave me a unique perspective on problem-solving and how to view the world. College as a whole conditioned my perseverance, drive and work ethic. All of these things build the habits that will carry you throughout your life, even if you can’t picture your future right now.
Thanks for this post. I think not knowing what you want after college has to be the normal situation. How can you know what you want if you haven't yet experienced it? In retrospect, for me becoming a professor was the obvious right match. But going into my junior year in college I didn't have a sense of that. And even the first quarter or so in grad school, I wasn't sure. If you find something that seems a reasonable fit and you get some satisfaction from the work, that's quite an accomplishment.
ReplyDeleteIt's unfortunate to have to go through the type of pain you experienced your first two years in college. I'm guessing you never failed at anything important before that. That first time is a doozy. That you rebounded as you did, even if it took a while to regain your balance, is a testament to your ability and resolve.
I very much liked the point you made about habit formation as human capital and that habits formed in college will carry over into the workplace. Habits aren't completely rigid - people can change and plot a new direction thereafter. But changing habits is not easy. If the kid has been faking it in college, it will be harder when in the workforce. On the flip side of this, some people are pretty intense as their more or less normal disposition. (I am in that category, on occasion.) While being self-critical would be a virtue for that kid who was faking it, perhaps it's a vice for the intense kid who needs to lighten up some. I think the real goal is balance, rather than a corner solution.
I made a point in the previous paragraph to refer to students as kids, as a way to contrast with what you said about my treating students as adults. Because the U of I is very large and is a public university, it has its bureaucratic side. My recollection of own undergrad at private universities (first MIT, then Cornell) is that there was much less of the rules driven approach. (For example, I believe you could drop a class right before the final exam.) So some of what I do in the class that way simply mimics my own experience. There is then the real learning question, how do students learn to be responsible? I think the answer is learning by doing, which requires a situation where the students control their own behavior and don't simply follow rules. If I were a student now, I would want the freedom to do that. In any event, if students aren't yet fully responsible for themselves, so make a variety of immature judgments that lead to actions they might regret later, they aren't yet fully adults in my book. They are on the path to getting there. (Also, many adults make immature judgments from time to time. We can all improve in this area.)
Data analytics seems to be a hot area now. I expect you'll have a lot of learning in that as that field grows and your skills need to grow along with that. At some point, however, in 5 or 10 years, you'll likely find management is beckoning for you. The economics you learned, if not entirely forgotten by then, might serve you well. That is a message I will be telling this class, as I believe I told yours.