a post-college Justin

This week’s wiser today Wednesday featured blogger is Justin from The Freshest Oat. So please pull up a chair, grab a [healthy] snack and enjoy the wisdom.

Academic lessons you learned in college

• When in doubt, or when having trouble, don’t beat your head against a wall, go and ask for help!
• Time management, I stopped procrastinating altogether Freshman year
• Never trust anyone – always double check your work and verify information on your own. Unfortunately a lot of people will lie and cheat to get ahead in class.
• How to study and retain the information

Lessons you wish you had learned in college

• Networking – the only contacts I made were intradepartmental. Not helpful when job hunting.
• As stupid as it may sound, how to write a basic computer program.
• I wish I had learned something more specific and more practical for the job market. My major prepared me for a lot, but not enough depth to have any expertise.

Important life lessons you learned during college

• Have time to study, but also have time to decompress or you will slowly erode to nothing
• The value of friendship
• Hard work doesn’t always yield good results, but persistence is essential to ever moving forward
• Get help when you need it. Not just text book help, but in the case of depression, etc. Because without help your work will suffer and you will slip through the cracks.

Important life lessons you wish you had learned during college

• Success is largely based on chance, not just hard work
• How to approach an interview and the interview process
• Sometimes we have a planned out course of what is supposed to happen when, sometimes that gets derailed and we have to accept the changes and move forward with a positive attitude

To me, college was a time when the greatest lessons learned were not from a textbook or a lecture, and more-so were not recognized until after college. It was a time when you could have many friends all in close proximity – meeting up wasn’t an ordeal; maintaining friendships was as easy as showing up to lunch. College was also a time when responsibilities were at a minimum. Where I went, most people lived in dorms all four years, so there were no bills to pay, just the semesterly waiver for your student loans.

It wasn’t until after I left graduate school that I realized it’s not easy meeting people. Not out in the suburbs. I also came to the sad realization that most of what I learned is now forgotten, I would really have to refresh my memory to be able to do some of the math I was capable of doing with my eyes closed before. But one thing I have fallen back on is maintaining contact with the professors who helped me through college, as now they often email me with questions based on my experience.

So now in these days of thousand dollar per month loan repayments, car payments, rent, utilities, upkeep, etc. I look back to see just how I got here, and think of the memories tied together with college and grad school. I tend to remember the good things, but I do remember some of the bad – the stress, the insomnia, the pressure. I don’t know if I could handle that intensity anymore – I now work in a different environment, with its own stress and pressure, but I feel prepared for it. I feel prepared because of what I learned how to do best in college, which is to be able to quickly and thoroughly learn something.

Thank you Justin!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/shinealight/ / CC BY 2.0

I am proud to present yet another wiser today wednesday courtesy of Talia of T-Recs and Faux Boheme. (Busy lady!)

Sit back, enjoy the show and do not forget to email me if you are interested in being featured in wiser today Wednesdays!

Year of college graduation: 2009

Lessons learned in the classroom

1. The rule of three in storytelling and design. This might sound simplistic, but just recognizing that things – stories, patterns, composition – need to have a beginning, middle, and end has shaped  the way I see the world and the way I work. Whether I’m writing a blog post or planning a project, I now keep in mind these rules so that I have a balanced end result that feels finished and coherent.

2. How to find the right voice for the writing project at hand. Writing marketing copy is a lot different than writing on your personal blog. You don’t want to use the word “deliquesce” in a product description of a children’s toy. The variety of projects I had to write for in college – from writing copy for the film festival I worked at to crafting screenplays for student productions – taught me that it’s important to find a voice that speaks to your audience and for your subject best.

3. How to navigate New York City. While this was probably the first thing I learned in college, once I tackled that I felt like any other city would be easy to handle. As a result, I’ve been a lot more fearless about traveling on my own and seeing the world as far as my puny budget has allowed.

3 things you wish you had learned in college:

1. I wish I had taken some business or finance classes. I think it’s unhealthy to just concentrate on the creative side of things, but as I try to teach myself business concepts post-college I find myself wishing I had a professor to lead the way.

2. Physics. I’ve never taken a real physics class and I’ve always found it fascinating. Plus, maybe I’d get more of the XKCD jokes without having to Wikipedia them.

3. Spanish. It’s a useful language, especially when people assume that you know it because of your coloring anyway.

3 Important life lessons you learned during college:

1. When possible, do things the hard way. You’ll learn more and be less afraid of future challenges.

2. Just because information doesn’t have an immediate practical advantage, doesn’t mean it hasn’t shaped your thought process to make you a better thinker and decision maker. You might never need to know the results of that photosynthesis experiment again, but the scientific method will color every decision you make in the future.

3. Always carry a notebook and pen. Always.

3 Important life lessons you wish you had learned during college:

1. The cute “I’m only in college so I didn’t know better” thing won’t fly in the real world.

2. Sometimes efficiency is more important and profitable than creativity for creativity’s sake.

3. Innovation comes when you need it, not when you want it.

Thanks Talia for imparting your wisdom upon us!

my first day of college! (mum MADE me take this.)

Date of graduation: Hopefully 2011. eeeck that is too soon!

How to sing half diminished chords up and down in every inversion and every key. KILL ME ABOUT THIS. For my first two years of school, I had the craziest ear-training teacher. In fact, people started calling it fear-training.

World percussion! I’m a classical percussion major (meaning xylophones, timpani, snare drums, triangles, etc etc), but I am also exposed to so many different styles from around the world! Last week I came into my private lesson and said to my teacher, “teacher, I want to learn middle eastern drums.” And so I had a two hour lesson on the doumbek and riq. Then, today, I had conga class and learned about rhumba (did you know that rhumba and rumba are two completely different things?!) and mambo and bembé and salsa! Oh it was so fascinating. Also, a few months ago the cymbal player from the London Symphony gave a class, and I learned that London cymbal technique is about the polar opposite of American cymbal technique. I am totally dorking out right now, I’m really sorry.

Writing. I have to take one non music class per semester. My school doesn’t offer any math or science classes (I don’t know if that’s a bad thing or a good thing), but I’m in this AMAZING creative writing class. I love it. I feel sort of weird about having to write fiction, but that’s only because I’ve never done it, and it is getting more and more fun!

When in doubt, go to yoga. Self explanatory.

Things I want to learn before I graduate

How to be a girl in a male dominated field. I’m nice to the guys, they think I’m flirting. I’m mean to them, they think I’m a total bitch. I try to be one of them, I’m being too manly. WHAT GIVES?!

this is a picture of only some of the instruments used in that recital!

To play more pieces that use a lot of instruments. My sophomore year, I gave this recital that used probably around eighty different instruments- no joke! Oh, it was so much fun. I don’t know anywhere else where I could have pulled that off. Before I graduate, I really want to feel like I’ve taken full advantage of my school’s instruments and performance/rehearsal spaces.

The kicker: something I just recently learned, but am still working on sustaining- and this is one thing that I would like to pass on to everyone reading this…

No matter how much I feel liked I’ve failed in my work, or how much I feel I can to better, I will not let it affect my overall happiness. I used to really beat myself up about not doing well in auditions, or not playing my best in a concert… I would tell myself that I didn’t deserve to enjoy something because I didn’t do well in something else. And I would do silly things like reconsider my career plans because I didn’t play well in a class or something.  It was unfair and unproductive (maybe it was productive for my playing, but not productive for myself). A conversation with my friend Josh, and a Ben Folds song made me realize that if I’m always going to try to be the best at everything, I’ll never be happy with who I am or my accomplishments (that song, by the way, is called, “There’s always someone cooler than you.”). That’s not to say that I shouldn’t always try my best- but, it’s possible to do that and not let the outcomes affect my happiness.

Thank you Molly! This was absolutely enlightening, charming and entertaining. I hope to you have you back for more guest blogging soon!

-L

Christina at Lights. Camera. Drama.

(Holy. Blog. Envy.) (Love Christina’s blog like whoa!)

Year of college graduation: 2009

(Congrats on your graduation Christina!)

http://www.flickr.com/photos/cleopold73/ / CC BY 2.0

I asked some of the great bloggers at 20-something-bloggers to help me with the brainstorming and Amie handed me a perfect title for this series of guest blogs. And so, it is with great excitement that I present to you:

Wiser Today

http://www.flickr.com/photos/ektogamat/ / CC BY 2.0

Stories of what you’ve learned and what you wish you would have learned sooner. Whether you’re a college graduate, a college student or you’re just learning your lessons from life, you’re wiser today than you were yesterday and you’ll be wiser tomorrow.

If you are interested in participating, contact me as chasingeducation@gmail.com.

If you have suggestions as to how to make this series more interesting, comment!

The first post should be up in the next day or two–get excited!