There’s value in conceptualizing college not just as four years (or five!) all bundled together but as discrete blocks of time that each have their own purpose and characteristics. Each year marks a new transition and requires a different kind of courage and stamina. Try to begin each year with a few central, doable, and reachable goals, and review this each semester. As a professor for over 30 years and as someone who does speaking engagements on the college experience based on my book The Complete U: Over 100 Lessons for Success In and Out of the College Classroom, I try to describe to both students and parents how it’s beneficial to think about the college timeline in this way.
Freshman Year: Arrange Your New Life and Make Yourself at Home
A beginner’s mind is often the best mindset. What is a beginner’s mind? It’s the ability to look with fresh eyes, to see what’s common and familiar in a whole new way. It requires openness and curiosity, two qualities that benefit all of us in higher education. Those who are beginners in anything bring with them more of a sense of a blank slate, a fresh canvas, and a way of seeing that is just insider and outsider enough simultaneously. Cultivating a beginner’s mind means letting the preconceived notions and judgments fall away, and it’s an openness to what is. Ripe with possibility, this mindset presents us with the opportunity to recreate ourselves every day.
- Acclimate
- Adjust
- Reframe
- Explore
- Look into student organizations, clubs, and intramurals on campus, and explore activities in the surrounding community where you might meet new people and find meaningful activities.
Sophomore Year: Stretch and Socialize
Sophomore year offers a prime opportunity to enjoy present moment awareness. You’re not in as much of a rush as you might think. I learned this during my own sophomore year. You’re not that new, yet it’s still fresh. You’ve acclimated to some aspects and have so much more to discover and learn.
Half your friends aren’t scattered across the globe for study abroad, as they might be next year. And you’re not in the middle of graduate school applications or job interviews, and, best of all, no one yet is asking you nonstop questions about what you’re going to do when you graduate. Sophomore year is the time to solidify and deepen friendships that began freshman year and to let go of the ones that didn’t serve you as well, to move out beyond the ready-made social circle of roommates and dorm friends, and to chart your own course. The friends you make in college will likely carry you all your life.
Use this year to have conversations with professors, coaches, and others who might become potential lifelong mentors. They may help you connect with like-minded people on and off-campus. Students frequently share with me intimate details of their lives, and I’m constantly connecting them to other people who have been through something similar so they feel less alone and so they can benefit from peer mentoring as well. I’ve helped students who have lost parents or siblings, those struggling with various forms of self-injury, students who are faced with a new diagnosis of any kind, etc. When people are able to connect with a sense of mutual understanding and compassion about hard issues, that can be a beautiful thing.
Hopefully, you’re more used to your surroundings, the college routine, and the rhythm of the academic year, and feel a bit more settled and grounded. That’s a great foundation from which to:
- Stretch further and take risks.
- Observe and deepen your passions.
- Cultivate a strong social network of dear friends.
- Connect with one or more mentors.
Junior Year: Focus and Fortify
Similar to junior year in high school, this is the time when things start to feel the most serious, but in fun ways. Things should gel more academically, as by this time you’ve likely completed general education requirements if those are necessary at your institution, and you’ve selected a major. During this time, the following will be front and center:
- Focus your involvement.
- Solidify your major if you haven’t yet done so.
- Consider and seize potentially transformative experiences such as internships, volunteering, leadership opportunities, study abroad, or research with a professor.
- Begin to think about all your options for work and future schooling, especially if you’re thinking you might want to start graduate work immediately after college.
Senior Year: Get Ready to Launch
You’ll be doing a new kind of individuating again, but this time hundreds or thousands of people will be doing it with you on campus as well as friends at other schools. Soon, everyone will scatter to different types of futures. Some may go after a job while others pursue graduate work, travel, or assume an internship, and to accomplish this, some may move back to their family’s home or venture somewhere entirely new. Whatever it is, it’s your launch!
Academic Problems and Skills Essential Reads
Speaking of launching, I’m reminded of something. Years ago, when I was in graduate school, I discovered the figure skater Surya Bonaly. She’s known for launching herself into the air! Bonaly is famed for her back flip, in which she lands on one foot, an illegal move in the long program. Though I’ve never in my life attempted to even get on ice skates, Bonaly’s free-spirited ways resonate deeply with me. She marched to the beat of her own drummer, defied conventional guidelines, and risked the boldest, most daring jumps to be authentic. These qualities are important to witness when you think about composing your life.
- Cultivate your network.
- Take full advantage of the community or city in which your school is situated, and tackle that bucket list before you graduate.
- Keep all your options open before making decisions.
- Connect with people in your chosen field for opportunities to gather more information, to shadow them, and gain experience.
Doesn’t this seem similar to the rhythm of a trip? The first few days are about getting adjusted; then it’s fun and relaxing, and you can just revel in being; then you realize all the things you still want to see, do, and accomplish before leaving; and then you have to plan your re-entry with your new lens on the world and a new sense of who you are because of the experiences you’ve had.
