With this blog, we want to address the youth population of Nepal who are currently pursuing their Bachelors degree. We want to help you to navigate through your bachelors journey in a way that you don’t miss out on all the fun, but at the same time take actions that’ll prove to be very important for your career and future goals.
We would like to start by saying that college is the time of your life with the most freedom that you can ever experience. Of course, this won’t fit all the students. However, for the vast majority, you’ll only ever have to focus on getting good grades or pass the exam. We understand that there are a lot of amazing youth out there who have a responsibility to take care of themselves or their family as well. You all are amazing! As long as you do these things, you can go out, have fun, try new things, or even start a small business with their savings.
An additional disclaimer, this blog might only entirely appeal to students who study in government colleges with a lot of liberty in terms of college attendance or students who have exclusively morning classes. For the rest, we’d like to request you to try to fit in or take in as much as possible alongside your college routine.
Having said that, here is a list of things that you should do or at least try to do during your college life. Let’s go!
1. Go to places and explore with your friends:
During your college, it is no fun if you’ve never bunked your classes and went on rides and trips with your friends. Alongside this, go on weekend hikes, travel to nearby viewpoints and cheap getaways. These will be some of the most special memories in your life.
2. Join organizations and clubs:
It can be extremely important for you to volunteer in different clubs, non-profit organizations, INGOs and take leadership roles to gain valuable soft skills, personal and interpersonal skills. You can prioritize doing this in the second or third year of your college. This will not only help you gain valuable skills but also build an amazing group of colleagues and friends that could go a long way in your life.
3. Take internships:
Apply for internships, talk to your seniors and a close network of people to help you find internships that might be paid or even unpaid. This is one of the most critical steps in your career and we believe that the earlier in your college you can land an internship, the better it will be for you down the line. Network with professionals, work in a close team of people and learn from them and get the credential and knowledge for yourself. Try to do this in the first or second year of college.
4. Experiment with working at startups:
In most cases, the startups won’t be able to pay you much but you don’t really have to strive for a good pay while at college. We can attest to the fact that the learnings that you get from working at a startup, is so much more valuable than any pay you can receive from them.
5. Travel during the holidays:
Travel as much as you can. We will advise you to use most of your savings or pocket money for travel. As cool as it is to travel and explore new places, it is also extremely important to widen your perspective of life. Moreover, being born in Nepal, you can’t miss out on going to treks. Go on treks with your friends and even try going on solo treks as well. This will be some of the most adventurous times of your life.
6. Go on dates, try getting in a relationship:
This is the time where you’ll start to become mature but at the same time a little bit carefree too in relationships. You don’t immediately have to think long term, you can have fun, fall in love,, travel places together. and experience the ups and downs of love and life. Building relationships can help you develop your emotional intelligence, empathy, and communication skills. Later, after college, you might have to get a bit more serious with relationships and think critically about the kind of partner you want for life because before you know, marriage will be right around the corner.
7. Start a company:
If you have an entrepreneurial mindset, this is the time when you’ll have the most appetite to take the most amount of risk and start a company of your own. Even if you fail, you’ll just have graduated college. Hence, you’ll have your entire career in front of you; you can dive into a career in a completely unrelated field as well. Use your savings or convince your parents to invest a little in your business and give it a shot.
8. Learn new skills:
This might easily be on top of the priority list. Upskilling yourself over everything else should be your mantra while at college. Learn coding, learn a new language, learn valuable life skills like swimming and self-defense, take online courses, try all the “How to make money online” schemes and gain specific hard skills that you can deploy later in your life.
9. Network with people
You’ll never really know what kind of network might come out useful at what point of your life. Work on building your network by joining organizations, groups, clubs, going to/attending events, workshops, seminars, conferences, etc. Participate in different, local, national and international competitions and even if you don’t win, you’ll have the network of the new people who you met and this itself is a big win..
10. Workout and take care of your body:
This is important because if you create a habit of working out at this age, you’ll at least have achieved something important in your life. It can be really difficult to pick up exercise when you’ve never done it actively until you’re 30. However, if you do it, even for only 6 months, you’ll have the confidence for the rest of your life that you had done it in the past and you can do it now too. More importantly, this is the age where your body is at its prime. So, if you can take this seriously, you will see the most amazing results with your physique and performance.
11. Focus on mental health:
While at college, become conscious of your bad habits and the time you spend on social media. Read a lot of self improvement books and consume a lot of content around mental health and mental mastery. Understand that nothing is more important to you than your peace of mind. Practice mindfulness, try meditations, yoga and other forms of mental health practices so that you get to feel the changes and results yourself.
12. Read books:
Do this as much as you can. You can do this while you’re traveling, before going to bed, in your gap/leisure between classes and meetings. Reading books will not only teach your new things but also will broaden your perspective. You’ll start having different kinds of conversation and start speaking differently over time after reading a good amount of books. You’ll start noticing this and others will too. From
13. Perform decent in college:
Yes, this does not actually sound like a good statement: “Perform decent in college.” However, we do believe that it’ll be really difficult to achieve all of the things mentioned in above points while excelling at college. This is arguably the most important of all the points that we’ve written in this blog because there is no point in doing everything above if you fail and don’t complete your bachelors degree on time. Hence, this comes first and the rest should follow. We are at a time and age where a college degree and GPA doesn’t play as important of a role in your career as it used to earlier. So, hey! If performing decently gives you the opportunity to do all the above things, then why not?
We promise you that if you try to do all the things mentioned above after graduating from college, things won’t exactly be the same. There will be a lot more responsibility and you won’t have enough leverage to try out all those things at the same time. Also, your risk appetite will decrease a lot making you less likely to try out new things like starting your own business or giving it a shot at a relationship that you’re unsure of.
We hope you enjoyed this read. If you did, please share the link with your friends. 🙂
