🍞 How to Make the Most of College
Making Your Mark: Strategies for a Successful College Career
🥯 Welcome to our Guest Series on the Big Baguette! This is where we share in-depth essays authored by the Bread Crumbs community. First up is an essay by our co-founder, Luke Clancy, on how to make the most out of college. If you see yourself as a continuous learner, Luke’s essay is a must-read. His insights apply to the art of learning and excelling.
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Hey Loyal Bread Crumbs People 👋🏻,
As you read above, we are switching up the Big Baguette format. This year, we will be writing fewer posts (~1 per month). By pruning quantity, we will increase quality. Each Big Baguette will go deep on a topic we find compelling and think you’d enjoy learning about. Our goal is to have each edition improve your mental, physical, or financial fitness. These categories are guide posts, not rules. If we find a topic particularly compelling, we will write about it whether or not it hits on one of those three themes.
Our aim for the reading time is somewhere between 5-10 minutes. A quick Sunday night read to set you up for a successful week. With that, let’s jump into Luke’s essay.
How to Make the Most of College
College is one of the most formative periods in your life. And like everything else, it is also a game. That game has skilled players (and beginners). Players who understand the rules & use strategies to make the most out of it (and those who don’t). In this essay, I outline the goal of college and the strategies & traits of its best players.
The Goal
What’s the point?
Before you play any game, you need to know why you’re even playing it. Although you should define this for yourself, I believe there are 3 reasons to go to college:
Make lifelong friendships, relationships, & memories.
Build a high-powered engine for learning quickly & deeply.
Figure out what you like (stuff that fills up your cup), what you’re good at (and doubling down on those things), & who you are (emotionally, professionally, spiritually, etc).
I won’t have any of these things fully figured out when I graduate. But, they are good north stars that guide my approach to the game of college.
Best Strategies
Things I would do if I started over again.
Be intentional about friendships. As we all know, you are the average of the 5–10 people around you. So, make sure those 5–10 people are aligned with your ideal lifestyle & ambitions. If you can’t find an aligned community on campus, make your own! On that note…
Be the super-connector. In college, you meet a lot of people. When you meet someone new, learn what that person’s about and determine if they are your type of person by having meaningful conversations. If they are, get their contact info & make an effort to become better friends (this takes courage). Eventually, you’ll have a network of like-minded folks. Turn that network into a community by bringing them all together. Building a community is the most efficient way to create lifelong friendships & memories (remember: this is the #1 reason for going to college). Plus, it feels awesome when you connect two people that become great friends.
Build stuff. Work on a side project that forces you to learn about an interesting field & develop applicable skills. The side project can be basic. It doesn’t matter, you just have to be interested enough to work hard. Consistently putting in work will lead to insights, experiences, & leverage that will help your future self.
a) The insights will show you what you actually enjoy, what you’re good at, & how to build something (the #3 reason to go to college). You get paid for knowing how to do something that is hard to replace. If you figure out what you’re good at and enjoy doing (ex: connecting with people), build stuff that develops those strengths (ex: a student club), & translate those strengths into a skill that helps companies make or save more money (ex: sales), you will be paid well. Since you like doing that thing, you will work on it consistently and your growth will compound over time. Eventually, you’ll be so good they can’t ignore you (click this). That’s how you get your dream job.
b) The experiences will help you grow as a person, form memories to look back on, & develop relationships with those around you. These experiences will upgrade your learning engine & you’ll learn to move fast (the #2 reason to go to college). You’ll also walk away with lifelong memories & friendships (the #1 reason to go to college).
c) Finally, the leverage will help you access even cooler opportunities and people in the future. Leverage changes how much output you get for your input. You can grow your leverage through tools, people, money, & digital products (code & media). I’ve built my leverage through people (getting people to work with me on my projects) & digital media products (growing the # of people that see my projects & thoughts). You’d be shocked at how crazy things can get even as a full-time college student. I’ve gotten flown out to Europe for conferences, invited to all-expense paid retreats with people I admire, & offered dream jobs. All of which came because of my leverage.
Talk to people older than you. The best people to learn from are those a few steps ahead of you. Talk to upperclassmen to figure out your university’s hidden gems, clubs / frats, classes, & general structure. Talk to professionals to figure out jobs and lifestyles you would like to work towards.
Leverage the student access card. People want to help ambitious students more than almost any other class of people. If you get good at cold emailing, crazy things will start to happen. You’ll get advice from fascinating people, work at innovative companies, raise a lot of money, access awesome events/conferences, & build long-term relationships with your idols. Remember this: a closed mouth never gets fed.
Keep exploring. After your freshman year, it’s easy to settle into your lifestyle. You hang out with the same friends, go to the same places, & talk about the same stuff. This limits your growth as a person and outlook on life. You don’t even realize what you’re missing out on! By not exploring new places & new people, you are betting that your freshman self made all the right decisions. Pretty dumb bet if you ask me. If you are at UIUC, explore new places with Galleon & explore new people by mustering up 5 seconds of confidence to spark a conversation with a stranger.
Contextualize the importance of class. Far too many students think that what they study determines what they become (professionally). On top of that, too many students think that just getting good grades will lead to success. The person you become & your future success is a result of the actions you do every day. It is NOT a result of your major. Putting effort into studying will play some role in your success. But, there is an optimal level of effort. You can calibrate that optimal amount by planning out who you want to become and then reverse-engineering the actions necessary to become that person. If that future requires a good GPA or specific knowledge stemming from your major, then put school high on the priority list of actions. If not, then put other actions higher. Remember what future outcome you’re optimizing for and take the most efficient path toward that outcome (regardless of if it is class or not).
Optimal Traits
Traits that are rewarded in the game of college (and life). FYI, you can develop all of these.
Charisma & emotional intelligence. These help you better navigate college’s endless social situations (classes, bars, coffee shops, apartments, etc). It also allows you to take advantage of the potential benefits of any social situation (ex: creating memories, meeting new people, etc). For charisma, start with How To Win Friends & Influence People & Charisma on Command. For emotional intelligence, start with Brené Brown & Adam Grant.
Authenticity. Being your authentic self all the time is the ultimate form of personal freedom. Be your authentic self in-person to find people you genuinely want to be around. And, post your authentic thoughts / projects on social media to send signals to aligned people & opportunities all over the world. Being known well is better than being well known. To become more authentic, read this blog post.
Openness to change. You will inevitably make sub-optimal decisions in college. You’ll join an org you don’t like. You’ll hangout with people you don’t really want to spend time with. You’ll pursue a major that isn’t totally aligned with your future professional goals. There’s an endless list of decisions you’ll look back on & wish you did differently. Sadly, you can’t go back in time. But, you can change your current life circumstances (ex: orgs, friends, & major) to pivot into a better life. An open mind accelerates that pivot. Start changing things up by writing down what you want out of college & comparing it to what you are doing right now.
Original thinking. It is very easy to follow the crowd in college. But, making big life decisions (ex: major, friends, job, location) because of external pressure is dangerous. If you genuinely want to do consulting or join a frat, do it! But, make sure you are not doing it just because everyone else is or because people will treat you with more respect. What’s stopping you from being a scuba instructor in Bali for a semester?? Life is a collection of stories & relationships. When your 80 year-old self looks back on your life, make sure they see things that are authentic to you. Start carving your own path with this blog post.
Life gets a lot easier when you realize what game you’re playing, why you’re playing it, & how you can play it best. If you’re a student, college is one of life’s most important games. Hopefully, this essay makes you a better player.
If you want to reach out, DM me (Luke) on Twitter.
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