Your GPA Is Not Your Life

By Uloop Writer on December 22, 2011

Most of us have just recoiled from a frantic, caffeine-overdosed daze known as finals weeks. Earning good marks for your academic slavery is immensely rewarding. But not living up to your expectations for yourself is honestly heart breaking. We inevitably must face the nail-biting agony of checking our grades.

Photo from Zip250 via Flickr.com

To the heartbroken: before you beat yourself over the head with your overpriced textbook, please remember that you are a human and being a student is stressful. Its true, we’ve heard this enough from our parents, that our primary focus is to “be student.” So be a student. Be a studious, diligent adventurous student and give your college experience your everything. But remember that being a student is also about learning outside your lecture hall.

According to Forbes Magazine the #1 most desired skill in an employee is communication. Easiest thing in the world right? Wrong. When you have your face buried beneath a textbook 24 hours a day, your communication skills are primarily with an inanimate object. Objects don’t hire. People do. You are legally not obligated to share your academic standing with a future employer. And more than likely, your boss isn’t going to be the age of your peers, so getting into the regular practice of talking with adults is vital in the success of your future.

This article isn’t slamming students who are viciously dedicated to school. A well-rounded GPA is totally important when entering any type of graduate school, and it also shows you can handle many things at once. But for all of you that are constantly hurt by your lack of A’s – chill out, everyone has a sweet spot. Maybe yours isn’t academia, maybe its community service and development, or campus leadership. The most important thing that you do in your college experience is to – get some experience. Go beyond your textbook and get involved.

1. Join an organization.

Do you have a passion for leadership and thrive on change? Go Greek, join student government, or habitat for humanity. At my school there is an entire site solely dedicated to advertising every facet of student-run organizations. There are over a hundred groups that usually fit every person, in some perfect way. There is even a belly-dancing club.

2. Intern.

Interning is the best way to put what you’re studying into practice. It opens your eyes to the field you have dreamed about since you were 5 years old. It changes the way you view your career path, and it helps you understand why you’re attending 8AM lectures. Interning can really aid in solidifying what you want to do with your life. It can also help you figure what you absolutely do not want to do.

3. Do more with your summer than take college classes.

What do you do every day for 9 months out of the year? School. So, taking summer classes shows your future employers that you can… go to school some more. Put yourself out there. Study abroad programs are fantastic and allow you to travel with a group of students, take classes, and tour major parts of the world for a fraction of what it would cost otherwise. There are grants, scholarships and all sorts of funding allocated at every university specifically for the purpose of studying abroad. If you don’t want to do that, get an internship, one that you really think you would have a passion for and practice it for 3 months. Most internships offer academic hours as well.

I’m not saying “let’s all forget school and flunk out so we can have some experience!” The fine art of balancing your studies and taking advantage of the multitude of opportunities in college is a delicate task. Just remember that school should always be your priority, but don’t put some much pressure on yourself. Show up, study, get help, and let everything else fall into place.

“A lot of people in our industry haven’t had very diverse experiences. So they don’t have enough dots to connect, and they end up with very linear solutions without a broad perspective on the problem. The broader one’s understanding of the human experience, the better design we will have.” - Steve Jobs

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