To win college you have to come to terms with you as a person. You need to figure out what you find to be important, and then you need to do it. But it’s not all that easy to figure out what your passions are, which means you have to get involved. If you have a vague interest in an organization or an extracurricular or even a lifestyle, act on it. You won’t find out if something’s meaningful to you until you’re a part of it. Getting super involved in college is probably like walking into the Mormon church off the I-5 — in reality everything’s different once you’re on the inside.
This implies that you should get outside your comfort zone and engage yourself in ways you never expected. Your college experience will be defined by what you do. So you shouldn’t limit yourself and only do one thing, even if you do it well. You’ll learn about yourself faster in a diverse range of contexts.
What’s essential here is that you do this without letting other people get under your skin. Take this as a lesson from Greek life; I’m aware I’m being judged when I walk around in letters, but I DGAF. Of course haters going to hate — if you didn’t learn anything else from this column it should be that haters shall hate. Winning at college requires that you have the confidence to not let the haters prevent you from being you.
But if you aren’t going to take hate, you shouldn’t dish it out either. Super-seniors usually get past inter-community competition and adopt an outlook from which we see our classmates without judgment; they’re intriguing people who opted to take different routes through college. I’m not bothered by people who involved themselves in different ways than myself — it’s more important that they do what they’re passionate about. That mind-set will save you from unnecessary stress and will allow you to see your peers for who they are.
The last secret to winning at college is beating the Koala’s former editor-in-chief Kris Gregorian in a beer chug-off. Work hard, but be able to let go and rage when you want to.
Of course you need maturity to come out of college successful — but that just means that winning at college comes down to having the right mentality. Find your passions and set yourself up for the future, but don’t take everything so seriously. If you be yourself and walk out of this place a more interesting, mature person who still knows how to cut loose and YOLO, then, at least in the eyes of this columnist, you spent your time here well.
