5 Things to Tell Kids Before They Go to College
1. Before you reinvent yourself, imagine how you want to be perceived when you graduate.
In essence, everything in the beginning was created to facilitate the end. Before you do something, figure out where you want to go. As logical as this is, it is highly unpopular today for one reason: it requires you to be responsible and disciplined in achieving your long term goals at the expense of your short term ones and/or your immediate desires.
The problem is that when you live as someone you aren’t, it’s harder to shake people’s initial perception of you than you might think. “Who cares what people think of you?” you might ask. YOU do. We’re very social animals, and how people perceive us matters to all but the most socially unconscious. So imagine how you want to be when you graduate. Do you want to be a leader? Confident? Set in a path towards greatness? Above the “freshman nonsense” that so many upper classmen talk to me about? So act like that now, and you’ll find yourself becoming what you want, instead of becoming what works just for now.
2. You don’t need a boyfriend/girlfriend.
The world tells us that college is the time for young men and women to meet. Not to date per say, like we did in my day, because the youth are too cultured for that. But maybe to “hang out.” And be friends. And beneficial friends. And then have the talk. Then have more benefits. Soon the Facebook status changes from single to “discussing an exclusive contract.” It could even go to full on “exclusive.” And once the relationship is exclusive, then comes the drama. Quickly it becomes too much for one, and not enough for the other. Relationships require a crucial ingredient called commitment. If you aren’t ready to commit, you aren’t ready to date. Not because you can’t, but because you can’t be in a successful relationship (for both people…that’s implied by ‘relationship’) until you’re all in. The other person’s needs are more important than your own. What he or she wants is your OBLIGATION to oblige. Boyfriend and girlfriend imply exclusivity and commitment. Hooking up means offering what people used to pay for in commitment and nice dinners, for free. It devalues you and what you’re offering. EVEN if it’s fun for you for the moment. Being in a relationship means locking yourself into putting their needs first. For most people, that’s too much this early in life.
3. There are no substitutes, even though it looks like there are.
A body next to you doesn’t mean you’ll feel connected. A room full of people doesn’t mean you’re having fun. So-called “benefits” doesn’t mean you aren’t being used, and definitely doesn’t mean that you’re being respected. A degree in your hand doesn’t mean you’ll be proud of it if you didn’t do the work. An internship doesn’t mean you’ll have someone ready to hand you a job. And a job doesn’t mean you’ll find meaning in life. And even if you think you’ve found meaning in life, it might not be what life is all about.
College, and the lifestyle attached to it, is all about marketing. Just try to keep it in mind. Drinking gives the impression you’re having more fun than you are. Hooking up makes you think you’re more valuable in someone’s eyes than you might be. You feel like you have more worth than if you were to go home alone. Understand that marketing frames reality for the buyer. It doesn’t make it true. Value, meaning, and happiness all has to come from inside.
4. Invest in yourself now, not in your future.
If you’re always looking ahead, you’ll never take the steps you need for now. As John Lennon said 800 years ago, “Life is what happens to you when you’re busy making other plans.” We think and focus on what CAREER we want, and which INTERNSHIP we need to get. We need to live like we’ll live forever. Living forever means there are consequences to what we do. We need to live a life we’ll one day be proud to share with our kids. There’s a secret to life. You never reach an age where it is easy to do the right thing. If you don’t make a habit of doing the right thing now, you won’t do it when you’re older. Maturity is a decision, not an age.
Dreaming like you’ll die today means to dream big. Too often, we dream way too shallow. We don’t have dreams. And if we do, how big do we dream? The greatest potential we have is right now. Our future isn’t here yet, and our past is over. We can do anything now—today. We can make good choices or bad choices. Dreaming like we’ll die today means that we should dream about being great now, making the right choices now, and not thinking that somewhere down the road we’ll become great. In short, you don’t know where you want to be when you’re forty. And even if you know how you want to make your money, there’s more to life than career. To be successful in life, you have to work on YOU, not just your future income stream. And that kind of work can and should be done today.
5. Be proud of who you are, and where you come from.
College for many is a jump into a much broader world. It is exciting and fun to broaden your horizons. However, a lot of times we compare ourselves to others in this much larger pool of people. We wonder why we aren’t as smart, fit, popular, well-adjusted, fearless, etc. as the next guy. We look at our world as too small and compact, and that the broad world is so much more intelligent and cultured than ours. It’s good to broaden. But broaden doesn’t mean dumping who you are or where you come from. A fundamental teaching of Judaism is that you have all the tools you need, and the place where you find yourself in life, is exactly where you need to be In all of human history there has never been you, and in the future there will never be another you.
