Is anyone else like this?
I'm currently in college but I really want to graduate already and start working. Truthfully getting wasted every weekend and doing other stupid shit in school lost it's appeal pretty quickly to me. I know some people would consider college to be the best years of their lives because of all the freedom and what not, but my view of freedom is money. I know the whole money won't make you happy shit, but it can provide you the freedom to do whatever you want pretty much. It would allow me to travel the world and pursue my hobbies, which is what makes me happy. Maybe it's because I came from nothing and so I want everything? Or maybe I'm just thinking the grass is greener on the other side..
When I was in college I got to the point where I just wanted to graduate and get it over with.
grass is greener, enjoy the time you have in college. I was tired of going out and once I got my full time offer I partied my ass off, in hindsight I could've spent more time having fun in the fall and gotten the same grades and same job, but seriously, don't be in a rush to become an independent adult. it's awesome, don't get me wrong, but you get to do it for the next (pick a number) decades of your life, college is 4 years, cherish every waking second.
Once I graduated I definitely realized that I could have gotten the exact same job even if my GPA dropped by 0.2-0.3 (I worked hard to get a 4.0 in a top 5 engineering department). So, I kind of regret spending all that time working on school stuff and not goofing off more.
//www.youtube.com/embed/rKTN5NHfwlQ
You have no idea what your talking about, take it from everyone who has gone before you. I would shoot myself in the leg right now to go back to college
It is pretty awesome seeing sloots walk around with shorts barely covering their asses, but I've got higher ambitions and goals than banging a bunch of airheads.
delete
Women is not the highlight of college, the highlight is having your biggest responsibility be doing homework or writing papers. Trying to "time manage" in college is like trying to figure out how to park two cars in an empty mall parking lot.
says the fucking guy who probably is a virgin, common sour grape syndrome manifested
Well if you were like me (academics were brutal, women were ugly, party scene was a bunch of dudes playing beer pong, struggle to come up with money, etc..) then yeah, I'd get out. I've found my freedom and the money that accompanied, to be much more enjoyable.
I'm more of a work/application person anyways, never really enjoyed academia. Even with 70+ hour work weeks, I've found more time to work on my nutrition and exercise, which helped to increase my sex appeal. I'm still friends with the people who I was closest with in college. I drive a great car vs. the dumpy truck I used to pull-through with on campus. Overall, grass was definitely greener for me, but to many people on this forum, I'd say enjoy your time in college.
If your only contention is "getting wasted every weekend is losing appeal", then I highly recommend enjoying your time while it lasts, no need to rush.
This basically. I understand totally if getting out of college seems like a step towards a better future. In my case (engineering faculty at the Universidad de Chile) the women were ugly AND prudish, the academics were brutal, the party scene was a bunch of losers who hadn't even heard of beer pong getting wasted off rotgut booze and hitting on the ugly women, nobody had any money to do anything fun on the weekends, etc. A five year program with little to redeem it socially, learning hardcore engineering math which I have never used and have forgotten almost entirely in less than 5 years.
But guess what - enjoy it while it lasts.
When you get out of college, it's going to be hotter women who are stil somehow not as hot as the women on TV/internet/victorias secrets ads/ok the sears ads, and suddenly they expect to be wined and dined and generally entertained. Instead of brutal academics you've got grueling work weeks, and the booze tastes better (because it IS better) but sitting around all saturday waiting for the hangover to end gets just as old as it did before.
Everybody has money (hey all my friends work in finance or are mining engineers and are absurdly well paid) but nobody can get their act together to travel together. So you end up traveling alone or with your girlfriend which is nice while it lasts, but eventually you come back home and have to pay the credit card off.
Those amazing trips to Cannes sipping champaign and slaying the female scions of the european aristocracy (maybe you dreamed this while you fell asleep on your TI-92 while slaving over problem sets?) Not happening. At the best you'll rent some beach house and everybody will go get drunk for a weekend. Not that different from a regular weekend but more driving and maybe you'll get some sand in your Nikes.
Looking farther down the line... children, 2nd mortgages, health plans, plastic surgery, and eventually death, among other things.
So my point is, enjoy the moment and don't get ahead of yourself. If you're like me, you'll find a reason to complain about anything, so do yourself a favor and stop complaining. Every step of your life is what it is.
Grass is greener syndrome. Enjoy what you have in front of you. I guarantee that once you are working you will miss the amount of free time you had even though you didn't necessarily have the money to enjoy it. Once you have the money, you'll have vastly less time to enjoy it. Trust me on that.
Besides, make college what you want it to be. Start an investment club, get a part time gig somewhere that will make you extra cash rather than going out and getting trashed.
I'm enjoying the shit out of college bruh
College is fun, and you should certainly enjoy this time. But there's nothing wrong with actively thinking about and seeking out a solid job. The ideal situation is having fun in college and transitioning directly into an awesome job, and it isn't impossible to do so.
Ah, one of the big first world problems: In college you have sufficient time but insufficient funds, after college you have sufficient funds but insufficient time.
Why college is so much better than working: I can't stress how much I underestimated the lack of time thing. Not only will you have very limited free time during the week, you will need a large chunk of this time to prevent getting slow and fat now that you are sitting all day every day. You enjoy travelling the world and pursuing hobbies, so do I. Personally I have found that my weekends are pretty much all completely filled with hobbies and catching-up with friends (often when I want to meet-up with someone we have to pull-out our calendars and plan it a month or more in the future). It has helped a lot to stop working-out on weekends (unless it is as part of a hobby such as mountainbiking) and to have a girlfriend that shares some important hobbies and integrate her as much with your friends as you are comfortable with. Now, that it is even necessary to think about this stuff and balance these things is absurd to my younger friends in college.
Take-away: after college you will have to start saying no to some activities due to time constraints instead of having to scale down some activities due to money constraints.
I would kill for some of those winter college days of bumming around with friends getting wasted and organizing a FIFA tournament or something silly
Why working is so much better than college: You will have plenty of money! And for most of us in finance, you have will have slightly more of it than your friends. This means that you never again have to skip an activity due to money constraints. This is brilliant and it indeed gives you another form of freedom that you sorely miss in college.
Additionally, If you are at all a procrastinator like me, working reliefs you of one college frustration: long-term deadlines for big projects (e.g. thesis) that you then completely ignore (while feeling guilty all the time) until it is almost too late. When working, you are expected to show-up every day (procrastinating online is boring), you are getting paid for it (the moral implication of which at least gives me a nudge to just suck it up and get shit done) and deadlines are shorter term and results more instant.
There is no way that college is the 'best time of your life'. I have always found that thought highly depressing. College is however a unique period in your life as you will have unlimited time AND you are sharing this situation with many friends and young willing specimens of the opposite sex AND you have a body young and strong enough to handle several day cumulative hangovers from both legal and illegal highs, competing in sporting events untrained (still drunk and without sleeping), flying too short a period after scuba diving and all the other stupid shit you will be amazed you ever could once you hit 30.
Your early years working are also a unique period, as is every period in your life. Personally, I am sure that I will also be super happy when I hit my midlife crisis and will buy an open top sportscar and a sailboat, trade my first wife for a fresh faced gold digger... you know what I mean.
I miss college so much, I think about it so vividly. During college I didnt really focus on myself. IF time is moving slow for you, use it to do something productive.
After college,
Things change gradually, my mindset, attitude, personality.
Its like you hit new stages but you dont realize it since its a slow progression.
I wish I could go back and do another 4 years, but I would do my 4 years differently. College is a stage of your life where everything is abundant; time, people, opportunities. Use it.
College sucks. It's been the biggest shitshow ever. Let's switch lives.
4 years done, 3 more to go - until I graduate with 1 degree. Jeez, I just love life!!!
I'm going to go count down the exact number of days until I graduate now. Because I have nothing better to do. I'm so productive. Somebody speed up the clock for me.
1 degree?!! well if you want a subpar gpa and a BO job then lets do it LOL
I fucking dare you to say this when something gets dropped on your desk at 6:00pm on a Friday and it's needed for 8:00am Monday.
Pulling all nighters last semester in the engineering computer lab to do lab reports or projects wasn't really fun either...
Yeah but atleast you're getting paid to put up with bullshit. That's the difference.
On the other hand, I can't even believe I pay my school the amount I do to deal with a bunch of moronic idiots. Very disappointing. And twisted.
Do you think those "moronic idiots" disappear or even become more sparse after college? Because they don’t. At your future job, you will most likely be surrounded by them, reporting to some of them, and will be completely unable to say anything about their stupidity because you will have an HR department that will be all over your a$$ the second that you do.
As others have said, enjoy college while you're there and don't live for the future. Get wasted, fornicate with random girls who think that really drunk is attractive (that ends very quickly with college) and just live for the moment. There are benefits to college and there are benefits to working but don't think you're going to get an IB type of job and all of the sudden have tons of money and time to do stuff with it. It is truly the grass is always greener.
Yes, you'll make above average money but you'll most likely be living in NYC (or SF), an ultra expensive city so a decent amount of your income is taken up just in increased COL and you won't have time to do shit. You'll work your ass off to the point that you'll wish you were just cramming for finals 2x per year because if you end up in IB/PE (or MBB or law but I don't have first hand experience in that) you'll be cramming for 2-3 years. I love to travel but I think in my first two years out of college I took a total of 7 days off. And that was primarily to travel home for Christmas with a couple of three day weekends thrown in.
The only thing I can say to the above two posts is just wait until you start working and you'll understand.
And I can't wait to get blackout drunk this Friday.
I agree, and can't find too many people with this mentality. College was fun freshman year, now I am ready to live the working life where I can pursue my hobbies, none of which I am able to do while in college.
You really need to look at @hugh Myron's posts above. While I had fun in my post college years it's not all roses. If, and this is a big if, you land in an IB/PE type of role you hardly have any time to do anything but work, sleep and eat. Hobbies can include getting to the gym a few times a week if you're lucky. I don't mean to discourage or say post college is bad but I would take full advantage of your college years. Yes, you may have more money to do things but you don't have the time. And my friends that had jobs that were more like 40-50 hours per week didn't have the money to pursue much because they made today's equivalent of $50-60k all in and had to wait tables at night to pay rent and eat. Live in the moment. Enjoy what you have. Enjoy what you will have when you have it.
I know I won't be making 6 figures and taking nice vacations right out of school, that's the end goal. However, you do raise a good point about living in the present. I am having fun right now, but I think the prime years of my life have not been lived yet. That is what makes me worry about the future a lot.
If you have a job who cares? as long as you don't fail out you will be fine. If you are sick of partying then go do something else. Go audit or sit in on some class (provided the prof says ok) where the subject matter interests you and you might learn something and meet some different people. Join a different organization or pick up a new hobby or try a bunch of things out. Pick up a new sport. Do community service. etc etc etc.
You won't have too much time in the future to literally try whatever you want and your school probably has a lot more resources than you think it does. As an example, I took a intro to music class senior year, which was a pre req to intro to electro-acoustic music production (think using protools and meta synth etc). . Trying to learn how to hear the difference between like a major 3rd and a minor 3rd and having to learn to play very basic piano pieces let me really appreciate how talented musicians are and how differently they can be wired from a square like me. It also let me know how I was most certainly tone-deaf and not musically inclined. I also met a whole lot of people and saw a side of my school that I didn't know existed. For instance, my school had these tiny little rooms kind of hidden at the basement of the arts center that had pianos. You could go in like anytime, sign in, and get a key to practice the piano for as long as you wanted, for free. Who would have thunk it?!
In other words, go explore.
Good Luck
Pretty much this. You can do plenty of travelling for next to nothing, you really only have your self to blame if you are bored
I was thinking I was about ready to graduate before my internship. Now, I am VERY happy to have another year left. Get an internship in IBD after your junior year - then you'll have the money and appreciation of college that should make you able to enjoy your senior year.
Money may equal freedom when you're in your 40s or 50s, but when you are in your early 20s money just means in those rare times when you aren't at the office you can have nicer booze/drugs when you are getting wasted and doing stupid shit. Get your head out of your ass and enjoy your freedom while you have it.
Why don't you just listen to my uncles dingdong, dicky fuld, and all the other OGs in here?
I'll sum up the fuckin thread for you:
Money: You have none. The only thing we can do is set ourselves up for a good job after graduation. Girls: You're complaining because you aren't getting any or this is all you've focused on. Betting on the former. Bust nuts accordingly. Overall health: Are you emotionally and physically healthy? Do you have good friends? Get those in check. Time: General sentiment here is that we should enjoy our time as college students.
As long as you have that mindset, you will be OK for at least a while. I understand the getting paid for it mindset, but at some point the money becomes "normal" and you just want to throw people through the window to feel satisfied again.
Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe you're just projecting your own experience onto me. Who knows. I'll wait and see what happens. Thanks for the wisdom though! :)
Maybe you are right, I should have just said be prepared to deal with them there as well. Not a problem at all.
I'm done with grad school, have been working for nearly 5 years, been married for two, and I'm in the process of buying a house.
Trust me, enjoy your time in college. I went to one of the geekiest engineering schools on the planet, with brutal academics and no women; I would kill to go back now.
College was absolutely amazing, I would go back to school in a heartbeat. Between sports events, house parties, intramural sports, going out to bars, hanging with friends and doing other stuff, I had so much fun. I made friends with a diverse group of people, gained valuable perspective from different socioeconomic/cultural/ethnic groups, and learned a ton.
Take advantage of your free time, the availability of professors who are at the forefront of their respective fields, take classes that have no applicability to your major/career progression, and try to expand your horizons. You literally don't have free time when you start working if it's in banking. I can't even have my friends/family visit me because my schedule is so unpredictable and I don't know if I'll have to work on XYZ weekend in the future.
All of you people hating on college are doing it wrong.
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