College Do-Over

I was talking to a friend the other day about college, and what we would do differently if we could go back, knowing what we do now. Would we study more? Study less? Go out more and hit on more chicks? That kind of thing.

I've been thinking more about the subject and came up with the following list of "regrets" I have when I look back on my college experience. I say "regrets" with quotations because I guess I don't really consider them seriously as regrets. College was a great time for me, possibly the best years of my life, so it's hard for me to say I truly "regret" anything about it. And typically, I don't believe in living life with regrets about the past to begin wtih, I just try to take everything (good with the bad) as a learning experience and move forward.

Anyways, no matter what I choose to call it, here is my list of "Things I might have done differently if I were to re-live my college experience, 3 years after the fact". Who knows, maybe some high school senior or college freshman will stumble upon this and find it useful? If not, I guess it's still worthwhile to take some time and reflect a little. I haven't done that in a while, I think.

* These are in no particular order, I just started numbering them as I thought of them

1. Office hours - In 4 years of college, I think I went to office hours a total of 5 times or less. Part of it was pride in not thinking I needed to go, but a larger part was simply laziness. I guess up throughout high school, I never went to anybody for help on homework because I always understood everything or I could figure everything out myself. Now that I can look back objectively, I believe there were many times that I could have benefited from making that effort to go to office hours. Sometimes it was just not possible to learn from lecture, notes, or the book. But instead of asking for help and making sure I understood all the concepts, I usually decided to just slide by and be happy with making the grade with the bare minimum.

2. Study Abroad/Missions Trip - I had friends who went all sorts of places during college: Africa, South America, Europe, Asia, pretty much all the corners of the planet. For me, those trips always sounded so interesting, but I was afraid to step out of my comfort zone. Going to a foreign country where I knew nobody was just too scary. Plus with my family living in Taiwan it seemed like I was always spending my breaks on vacation with them, not saying that was a bad thing though. But after starting a full time job, it's become exponentially harder to commit to this kind of thing. I barely find opportunities to take even a couple days off here and there, and when I do, I don't think my body would agree to spending that time travelling to faraway lands.

3. Get to know some professors better - On the whole, there weren't a lot of ECE professors at U of I that I liked. But there were at least one or two that I thought were pretty cool. They were always offering opportunities for us to help out with their research projects and stuff, unfortunately I just never made enough effort to join. Now that I look back, I think it would be nice to have at least a professor or two that I could keep in touch with at the school. Not to mention I probably could have learned more about stuff beyond lectures and exams from being a part of those kinds of research projects.

4. Visit more churches - I remember in the first weeks as a freshman at school, I told myself that I would make it a point to check out at least a few different churches before joining one. But I never did. I'm not here to knock the church that I did join, because I really did gain a lot from being a part of it. I just wish I had taken more time to broaden my views by at least visiting other fellowships once in a while.

5. Join more organizations in general - Some people joined frats/sororities, business or engineering frats, AAA or PSA, intramural sports, res. hall associations, etc. I shot pool and played Starcraft for 4 years. Which was fun, but in the meantime I feel like I missed out on a big part of the college experience by not being more involved.

6. Take more "fun" classes - Out of all the classes I took in college, I can only remember a couple as being "fun". The one that sticks out in my mind right now was the Food Science course, when we got to taste food and write reports on it. The rest of my schedule was always stuff to fill graduation requirements, or just classes I heard were "easy A's". Maybe if I didn't focus so much on making my schedule easier, not having to wake up as early, or walk as far, I might have had many more memorable experiences, like I did with that Food Science class. In hindsight it seems pretty silly to think about how I approached registering for classes back then.

7. Internship/Co-Op - Finding an internship or co-op back in those days was tough, as the economy was in the dumps at the time. Also there were the family factors I mentioned in #2 above. So I guess I don't really blame myself that much for not doing one. Still, after working at this job for a few years, I have seen how valuable an internship or co-op can be, at least for the kids that come here. As a college student, it's purely an opportunity to learn things outside of class and see what a career in the industry is like. It's not a job where you work for a paycheck so you can save money and take care of bills. There's a big difference between the two. Also, if you choose to go on and take a full time position at the company, you're already months ahead of the other new hires who didn't have the same experience. So if I were a 2nd or 3rd year college student right now, I would definitely make it my priority to find a good internship for the summer.

So there it is, 7 things I could think of, not bad. There may be more I haven't thought of, but that probably covers the main ones.

I thought about also writing a "Things I wouldn't do differently" list, but realized that there were way too many to list. Like I said, college was a great experience and the positives I associate with it far outnumber the negatives. I have probably already written about all of the good stuff in this blog at some point or another anyways.