After my graduation in Computer Science & Engineering from IIT Bombay, I realised some things that I thought were worth writing about. I have seen myself, friends and batchmates make mistakes which costed us later.
Some of us realise these mistakes soon enough and some don’t realise it till the college days are over. To help you with that, I would like to share some of the biggest mistakes that students make in college.
1. Not Socialising
When we take admission in college, we are pretty much strangers to everyone and vice-versa. Some of us find it easy to make friends, while some of us are introverts and find it hard to socialise.
This may not appear as a problem as first. You may think, its alright! I will study all day and focus on only myself. But believe me, the first year is the most important year to socialise and make friends. This ultimately helps you in your ups and downs in the journey you are going to have in the college.
Just to be clear, I am not talking about being on the social media apps. Being social in the virtual world and the real world are completely different things. Having social interactions in the real world, specially when you are new to some place is extremely important.
2. Pursuing No hobbies
As a college student, you are supposed to be focusing on your studies and completing your projects. But that’s not all. You should not just limit yourself to studies or the college curriculum.
Instead, you should try out bunch of different things, pursue a hobby you might have or develop one. Spending some time of your day on something you love makes you a better person everyday.
There are various clubs in colleges which might help you connect with students with similar interests. Not only that, they organise various events and competitions in which you might participate to show your skills and enhance them.
Some of the hobbies you might want to pursue-
- Sketching
- Painting
- Playing Musical Instruments
- Working out
- Drama / Theatre
- Puzzle solving
- Coding
3. Bunking Lectures
At IITs, we rarely have an attendance policy for the courses. So students decide to bunk the classes. In fact, some students just come for exams and don’t ever attend any lecture.
It might be okay to bunk a couple of lectures here and there. But make no mistake, this leads you towards losing interest in the topic or the subject. You fail to understand further lectures which forces you to bunk another lecture. This creates an endless loop and students find themselves helpless at the end of the semester.
Students face difficulty when preparing for their exams and they have no one to go to since they don’t even understand the basics.
Infact if you attend your lectures daily and try to understand them in the class itself, you wont have to study them afterwards at all. So you wont be facing much pressure during examinations.
4. Partying, Clubbing & Socialising too much
This is the other extreme of the first point mentioned in this blog post. Occasionally, partying, clubbing and playing games with your friends is fine. But not at the cost of your main goal in this college.
If your fun starts affecting the purpose of college then something is not right. You might want to revisit your priority list and take measures.
If you are good in studies, then everything else is fine. Going to parties, clubs, games, movies etc are all fine if you can balance your life in such a manner where your learning is not affected and you are able to perform well in college.
5. Ignoring Health and Fitness
After diving in the sea of immense opportunities, in short, after going to college, you may find yourself lost among so many things that you might forget the most important thing in your life. Your physical and mental fitness.
Studying and working all day might seem the ideal thing as a college student. But it is not. You might want to invest some amount of time of your everyday life towards working on yourself. This is the best investment you would be doing in your life. The returns on this time investment actually changes your life.
When I talk about fitness, I don’t just mean the physical fitness. In fact mental fitness is even more important. There might be times, when you find yourself alone and stuck in a depressed state. Reaching out to your friends or concerned authorities, counsellors in your college might help in such situations.
Conclusion
I hope I have brought up few points which might give you a head start so that you may avoid these mistakes in your college life. There are various other points too that I should’ve included but I didn’t because I thought I would mention just the most important points so that the reader finds it short and useful.