I was a senior in college, I had just finished the semester long, paper work heavy process of registering my university’s economics club with our student government as the founder and president. I organized meetings and drafted membership bylaws, we even went on a field trip. That same semester, I studied for the law school entrance exams and did very well on them, all while maintaining an A level GPA (nerd alert).
My point is not to brag about myself, my point is in college I learned to plan ahead and budget my time. The following semester, the spring semester of my senior year, I raced bicycles and finished applying to law schools. I found scholarships and applied for them to help buy down my law school debt. I got into a great school and immediately turned off my brain and enjoyed the last two months of college. If I had one regret from this spectacular time in my life, it would be this; I made assumptions.
I failed to think through my plan properly and I left things up to chance that I shouldn’t have. I assumed that my law school scholarship money was going to be there, probably because the scholarship coordinator was so nice to me on the phone. I assumed that I would be in law school right now, instead I’m at my parents house.
Now I can hear you, over there on the other side of that computer screen thinking “well, you didn’t have any control over whether or not they were going to give you the scholarship Chris, how can you plan for that?”
I could have made a: “what if I don’t get this scholarship money?” plan. Maybe I would have lined up student loans, maybe I would have lined up a job way earlier as a back up plan. I can’t say what I would have done because I didn’t do it.
My point is whether you’re at the top of your class spending way too much time worrying about your grades, or you’re at the other end of the spectrum begging a professor to give you a C so you can graduate, realize that you need to figure out what is coming next. You’ll save yourself a few months of wondering what happened and hanging out in your parents basement.
