The 3 Things You’d Change About Your College Experience If You Had a Time Machine

Knowing what you know now about the real world and college and yourself, what are three things you would do differently if you could redo your undergraduate years of college?

My three:

  1. I would take only the classes that really interested me. I’m glad I went to Wash U. It’s a great school, the quality of education is better than most universities, and it looks good on my resume. I’m not as glad that I went with a business degree. Although I love entrepreneurship and elements of organizational behavior and marketing, I trudged through tons of other business classes that were of no interest to me simply because I thought I wanted to go into business. I much rather would have enjoyed the majority of my classes than kept my eyes open for calculus, accounting, and finance. Oh, and I’d have taken Spanish in addition to Japanese. I think languages are some of the best things you can study in college, as a complement to going abroad. I also wish I had studied graphic design and programming, things that I could teach myself at this point, but it would have been great to have a professor to guide me.
  2. I would seek internships at every opportunity. I’ve learned so much while working in the real world, and I could have started to learn some of those life lessons during college and every summer. Now, I don’t think I necessarily wasted my summers–there was a period where I wanted to open a restaurant after college, so I worked as a waiter for two summers to see if that’s something I really wanted (it turned out that it wasn’t). But I could have made so many connections and learned so much through internships.
  3. I would loosen up a lot quicker. I don’t mean that I would have started drinking sooner or gone around hooking up with every cute girl I saw. But I carried a lot of stereotypes and stigmas into college that I wish I had let go of a lot sooner. Perhaps the slow process of learning was what I needed, but I also think I could have learned things first hand (and probably made some mistakes) up front and been the better for it.

Limiting this to the top three things was tough. There are plenty of little things I’d change, but these are the big three. Overall, I had a great college experience, particularly my year abroad. But sometimes I look back and reflect upon the experience (lately this was prompted by this article and some of the links…I kind of wish I could try it all again.

What are your three?