They always say that your student days are the most beautiful days of your life. The fact whether they are beautiful or not varies greatly, but there are indeed ways to make your student life memorable.
Following are 8 ways to make the most of your university experience.
1. Make Friends As Soon As Possible
Stepping into college or university, everyone is starting their life over. People want to meet new people and make friends, so your greetings will be much appreciated. Put up with your shyness and go introduce yourself to people around, like in your neighbourhood, in the class. Do this for the first few days or weeks – after the first month has passed, things will get a bit harder.
If you feel comfortable with it, leave your room door open or stay in the joint areas if you are staying in an on-campus accommodation. Accept invitations, and invite people to go with you around (to the library, bookshop, etc.). If you are waiting for a chance, it’s very likely that others are waiting, too. Make it happen by taking the initiative.
The Best Places to Make Friends In College:
- The dorm: most people there are sharing the living experience like you do
- Through another acquaintance: practise networking right now – it will help your social and professional life later. Ask someone you’ve already known to bring you along and introduce you to people.
- Study sessions: If there are none yet, create a study session yourself and invite people.
- First classes: these are often made into assemblies and introduction for the course.
- Do what you can and make lots, lots of friends. However, keep your caution, and let only a few of them influence your decisions.
2. Get Involved in Activities
Do you know what is the number one regret of graduates? That is not getting involved on campus at all. Do it while you can. It is too easy to forget to get involved in recreation activities when you go to university. There’s so much studying to do and so many credits you need to get, but these college experiences are just as important to keep you function properly. They will help you have a rest from constant school work, calming the mind, and is an excellent way to enlarge your circle.
- Go to the club fair and join one club, or two.
- Submit an article to the magazine of the university
- Sign in to help the faculty
- Join a student society/ sports team
- Volunteer to help students around.
3. Be Open-Minded
A college is a place where cultures, ideologies, and lifestyles clash – that’s why serious misunderstandings are bound to happen. The best you can do is assuming that all people, actions, and words are well-intentioned, even if they come off like that. That will simplify the problems a lot.
4. Be Passionate and Committed To Your Study
Make your study into an interest, rather than a chore by choosing suitable subjects, which are the ones that pique your interest – not the one that is comfortable for other circumstances (for instance, the one that your friend chooses, or the one that lets you sleep in on Monday mornings). A challenging subject will help you explore your potentials better, even if it’s outside of your immediate faculty. There’s 0% chance that you will learn everything you need for real life work in school, so it won’t help a lot if you just focus on a small area. Studying challenging subjects is also a way to make your college life interesting.
5. Learn to Take Care Of Your Finance
Now that you’re an adult, budgeting, saving and balancing are things you must do in college. Here are some small, yet important tips to make your money a tool for you (and avoid you being your money’s slave)
- Guess low for income and guess high for expenses: as students often do just the opposite of this, they end up struggling when the month has yet to pass for being overly optimistic. By adjusting your estimation, you will have more wiggle room.
- List monthly savings as an expense: decide on the amount you would like to save for each month (most favourably, 10% of your income), and let that be a fixed expense in your budget. To avoid spending this money, you can set up a separate saving account, and automatically transfer the money into it every month. This saving can go into short-term goals (a new pair of shoes) or long-term goal (a house). It will also help you in emergency cases.
- Fight impulses with disciplines: As you go further in life, you will find out that motivation and inspiration are not actually as important as discipline. A little bit of overspend each day will accumulate into a significant amount, that’s why you should acknowledge any surplus and get back on your track as soon as possible.
6. Have Fun, But Not Too Much of It
College is more or less a wonderland – every day could turn into a party if you want to. The parties will never end, the mates that you go to the pub with could be your buddy for life, the alcohol is no longer prohibited (if you’re 18 or older).
However, too much partying is not good either. Everywhere you go you are flocked with people who are just freed from the restrictions of high school and eager to make friends with you. It becomes harder and harder to refuse, and all of a sudden you can’t make time for yourself or for studying anymore. Going with the flow might also end up with you being in a group that seeks adventure in illegal doings like messing with the cops or taking drugs.
The law doesn’t have a sense of humor, so steer clear from the shady business and keep tabs on yourself with the drinks. To prevent yourself from going over the limit, StudentBees suggests that you discipline yourself to finish the compulsory studying before joining any social events, and set a proper moral bar from the first week at uni.
7. Get Lucky
Luck is a core element to success, and it can be engineered. This applies to everything, from forming relationships, to work or study. By exposing yourself to the possibility of good things, your hard work will sprout when it meets an opportunity. Following are our advice while making the most of college life:
- Invest your efforts, emotion and time to those who respect you, and have your respect.
- Work hard for the things that make you grow as a person.
- Show your good virtues to people: flexibility, honesty, commitment and responsibility are all appreciated.
8. Travel a lot
As a student, you are eligible for a lot of discounts on rentals, hotels and travelling tickets to various destinations. One thing that students do to enjoy college life is going on road trips, where you get your friends and pool the resources together, renting a van and set on to a destination.
A lot of universities offer the chance to study abroad for one or two semesters. You have the chance to live and work in another place of the world when you’re still young – there are not many things more blissful than that. You should make the decision soon so that you can study the language and blend in the life of the country when you get there.
People tend to have a lot of regrets, thinking that they are somehow missing on life. By taking measures to make your student life memorable, you can save yourself from these bad feelings later in life, while enjoying yourself to the fullest. Have fun, stay safe.
Did you go anywhere far this year? Tell us in the comment!