5 Fundamentals They Don't Teach You in College
Embrace being a life student
It’s cringy realizing no one taught us how to navigate relationships, money management, and self-talk in college.
Sometimes I found myself dreaming about opening a school on how to deal with all of this.
I bet we can all agree that we face the world when we deal with all of these aspects of our lives. It seems frustrating when we find obstacles along the way related to those, and we wonder why no one showed us how to overcome them?
On dating, love, and sex.
Maybe you don’t know how to deal with ghosting texts, flakey behaviours, hot and cold.
Or maybe you haven’t laid for a while, and you are starting to feel unattractive.
Perhaps you have been with a toxic partner without being able to leave them. And you ask yourself, “how did I not see these red flags at the beginning of the relationship”?
Believing we aren’t in control of our dating lives is frustrating.
In college, no one taught us how to use Tinder properly, or how to approach someone at a party, or how to choose a proper partner who could fit well in our life.
What can we do about it?
- Read a book related to love attachment, such as Attached by author Amir Lavine. It can show you why you feel attracted to specific individuals and get a healthier approach to dating.
- Watch comedy shows on dating to laugh a bit and relieve burden feelings. Humour can genuinely heal us, and it can show us that sometimes our problems are not as big as they seem.
- Limit your porn intake. Porn keeps us in the comfort zone, and although it’s easy and pleasurable at the moment, it would never replace a human body. Moreover, porn keeps you from meeting new people and trying to have a better sex life.
- Go to therapy if you can afford it
- Get drunk with your friends and do therapy together (Don’t do it too often)
On job rejections, patience, and hope
Many of us left college with big hopes of finding our dream job when in reality, it isn’t a straightforward path, and it takes time to realize what you will like to do for a living.
Also, when you start searching for jobs, you will face a pack of rejections.
Meaning opening your mailbox and be okay with receiving a bunch of answers such as “Unfortunately, we felt that you weren’t quite right for this role, so we aren’t going to be progressing with your application.”
To get to the yeses, you need to deal with the nos without letting it affect your self-esteem and future hopes.
What can we do about it?
- Watch youtube videos on how to answer job interview questions; this decreases the chances of getting rejected for the subsequent interviews.
- Ask for feedback on why you got rejected( many people won’t do this out of embarrassment, but it’s an excellent way to learn what you could do better next time)
- If you are an anxious person like me who can’t keep herself waiting, keep applying for jobs.
- Relax; it will take time.
On not judging ourselves
Have you ever got a class on self-talk? Or how to be compassionate with yourself? Because I didn’t, and the older I get, it amazes me how we talk to ourselves can cause us to become incredibly depressed or a well-rounded individual with good mental health.
What can we do about it?
- Give a name to your inner critic and speak to him as if it was a separate person from you. By doing this, you separate yourself from your negative thoughts as if it another person speaking. I know it might sound like a weird exercise, but it is a cognitive-behavioural strategy use in therapy, and it works very well (I’ve used it myself)
- Write down all the negative believes you have about yourself and turn them into neutral statements.
On financial intelligence
I never had a class in college that taught me how to be good with money. Nor once. And ironically, this is one of the major problems people face in their life. How to pay the bills or how to at least save 10% of their salary. Neither they taught us about creating multiple sources of income to increase our wealth.
What can we do about it?
- Read Rich dad Poor dad.
- Understanding that being good with money is just another life skill that takes practice
- Develop skills on your passion and create multiple streamlines of income:
Do you love art? Read about digital art (NFTS) and how they are bumping up the market and try to invest in them.
Do you love writing? Take a writing course and start writing on Medium or create your blog.
Do you love comedy? Take a comedy course and throw yourself into a comedy improv show.
Do you love fashion? Why don’t you start a mini business and create cool quarantine masks?
The critical thing is to pursue something you find fun and feel passionate about and maybe find a way to monetize it along the way.
Life is messy, and there will always be one more obstacle to overcome but finding the solutions to our problems will put a smile on our faces and increase our hopes. We will always be life students.