Brian and I just spent our weekend in Granville, Ohio also known as the home of Dennison University. My cousin, Liz, graduated on Sunday with a degree in Biology and a minor in Chemistry. And since I’ve know taken it upon myself to market her resume, please email me if you think this bright young woman could be an asset to your team.
Of course when we arrived on campus, I got lots of questions along the lines of “Does this remind you of your college experience?” and in case you are curious, answering with a prompt “no” killed many conversations. My cousin Pete, who is much better at relating to my parents than I am, responded yes and thereby took his place as the golden boy for the weekend.
The truth is Liz’s college experience had nothing to do with mine. While the demographics for our respective institutions may appear to be very similar, our intents while in college were very different.
Liz was in college to succeed.
I was in college to learn.
I’m not saying that my cousin didn’t learn during her four years in school. I know she did. But she also made a lot of “right” decisions. She worked hard. She earned much better grades than I did. She was an All-American Soccer player (sadly, I was unable to convince her to lick Jon Stewart, who was presenting, when we went to receive her award). The most athletic thing I did in college was organize a streaking down academic row.
College served such different purposes for us. In college, I needed to rebel. In college, I needed to make really stupid decisions. I needed to make my mistakes and do things on my terms.
In college, I was able to embrace learning from my mistakes, whether those mistakes are academic or personal. And I’ve been able to use those mistakes to set myself up for professional success.
At the end of the day, your GPA isn’t printed on your diploma. No one has ever asked me in a job interview about what my grades looked like in statistics (I failed it twice). I needed to learn how to survive without my parents to make choices for me.
In college, the most important thing I learned was how to pick myself up from failure. At this point in your life, if you don’t know how to fail what do you really know?
Jemimah said...
1I waited until after graduation to make most of the big mistakes I needed to make. You can make more effective and strategic mistakes if you have a stable job and more money to spend, plus more free time to contemplate these mistakes… highly recommended, as long as you learn and move on.
05/13/08 2:59 PM | Comment Link