Part 1: The College Part

The thing you have been told about but never told about.

Chapter 1: First Day

“First day in a new place everyone feels the same, a little bit weird.”

In this chapter we’ll cover:
* Making friends * Moving into dorms * Places to eat * Dances and parties * The crazy, weird, and religious People

How do you prepare for your first day of college? Clean shirt, shave, and a haircut- if that’s your thing. It really doesn’t matter. It’s like any other day, just in a new place. You’ll feel a bit out of place for a moment, but you will meet people with similar interests who are just as new as you, and just as eager to find new friends. Soon, you’ll get used to the new surroundings and then, before you even realize it, you’re good to go. The most important thing I learned is when I realized that the more I relaxed, the more confidence I had, the more that freed me to lose a critical, nagging voice in my head that echoed all the doubts of my past teachers and parents. And with that inner critic gone, the more I relaxed and felt in college. Just remember, free and relaxed doesn’t mean stupid.

Now the first day for most students is called “Admit Day” or something that sounds equally descriptive. If you’re lucky like me, you’ll be shown around the campus by a really cute orientation leader (this has nothing to do with orientation, you just might pay attention better if they are attractive). Admit Day is the day when most students arrive, move in and mingle. They go through orientation, the two days of get-you-acquainted-to-college frenzy, and the day you move in. It is also the week of parties before you start studying.

I don’t know if this exists in non-American Colleges but if it doesn’t, it should. In UC San Diego there are five colleges (now six). Some colleges studied and some partied; mine definitely studied, except for that first week, and that was the week to work making new friends, otherwise, it would be a tough go for the next year once people went into study mode.

About friends, if for whatever reason making friends in High School was not easy, you’re in luck, because nothing could be simpler in college. Everyone arrives with a blank slate. So be cool, be respectful, be yourself and if you still can’t find like-minded people, join some clubs. And of course, smile. People like smiles.

As I said before, at UCSD the window to make friends was limited to that first week. After that, people settled into their classes and formed into the groups they found that first week.

That first week, right before arriving at the dorms, you probably hope to have good roommates hope they are relaxed, honest and helpful, and you hope they turn out to be fun people to be around, and at the very least, know when to leave you alone. You hope that all of you can go out and have a good time that first week, meet all the girls/guys you can and make some good friends. You never know, you just might make the friend with whom you will eventually start a company as Steve Jobs did, and you’ll make millions of dollars together, or maybe you’ll meet that girl/guy you will someday marry. The probability is that you won’t, but one thing is certain, if you don’t go out there and meet people, you will have a lot less fun and have a much smaller support network.

As far as the clubs and majors go, during admit day you will have everything at your disposal. During admit day, they will show you all the departments, clubs and sports. You will get to see them and have a chance to ask questions and really open your eyes to all the available possibilities. You can go talk to professors from Cognitive Science or Humanities. You can check out the SAE (a club that builds cars) or the Koala club that writes a satire newspaper or even the DVC, a club for DJs. You can stop by the fraternity tables and see if that is right for you and they will probably give you an invite to their parties that week. See what’s there and then pick and choose. It’s about meeting as many people as possible so that you can find the ones that will make your college experience easier and more fulfilling.

On my admit day, I met a tall Sikh, Ronnie, and a girl, Natasha. I still keep in touch with them a bit today. Through them, I met other people who are still good friends with me today.

Even though I was a commuter student, those first weeks I would hang out in Ronnie’s room and we would go to parties with people in the dorms, eat together and even study together. Some of his roommates were in my classes so when I showed up to class, I felt comfortable knowing some people in the class because I had someone to sit with, exchange notes, and study.

The kids I met at the dorms would go out to eat together at the cafeterias as well as join up for parties, dances, and games. Some of their friends joined intramural teams and it really opened up options for things I could do. A lot of times we just can’t pick the activity, so we go along with what our friends are doing.

One thing I wasn’t expecting is the crazy, weird, and religious people. For instance, there was an older guy in the center of the campus wearing a suit. He would preach and yell for hours. His preaching consisted of him calling girls “whores” and shouting that all of us were going to hell. There were weird kids wearing weird clothes, sometimes bums came on campus, until after a while weird just became the new normal.

But this, in a way, was diversity. It wasn’t all bad, there were church groups and Muslim associations, and Jewish cookouts. Compared to high school, it really was a lot more than I anticipated. With 20,000 people, there was something going on for everyone all the time.

Chapter 2: Classes

“Work four years, coast forty.” -Mr. Carnevale

• Registering
• Which times are good
• Which classes are good
• How important are they

Remember the movie “Clerks”? If not, let me just tell you about the part where a guidance counselor is trying to find the perfect set of eggs. He is crouching on the floor of the mini-mart and he puts a carton of eggs through a set of ridiculous tests to find the perfect egg, as the other shoppers look at him, wondering why he’s doing all of this. One of the characters, Randall asks that if your job was as pointless as his, wouldn’t you go nuts as well?

This should be a guideline for you in terms of deciding which classes to take. Follow your gut or recommendation of other students, and forget the councilors. After listening to councilors and realizing that their advice was always wrong, I decided to never let anyone tell me which classes to take.

A lot of students, including myself, would take on a massive load of classes only to fail or drop most of them because the councilors pressured us to load up to graduate on time, or we would take the wrong classes, or even get coerced into the wrong major. Listen to yourself and believe in yourself. Take a few classes and if you do well, then challenge yourself and take more.

College is much tougher than High School, so don’t go all-in until you are ready for it and you know that you are passionate and interested in your major. There is no shame in taking the first semester easy while you get calibrated and adjusted to college life, in fact, it will put you on a much better path to success than loading up with soul-crushing basic requirements.

Classes, How important are they?

“Can you put up the circuit for an inverting amplifier and write out the equation for us please?” asked the manager. There were three other engineers in the room. They were all firing off questions one by one with various tasks for me to complete. This was my interview for a job and man was I glad that I had just gone over this question in class and paid attention.

If you put something on your resume, be ready to back up your claims that you took that course and learned something from it with concrete action. This is why you should take every course seriously, and if you can or won’t, then you are in the wrong place because you are wasting your time, your money, and your life.

All classes are useful, and the only people that say that they never use their classes are C students and teachers (sorry teachers). The people who say that are those who don’t use the classes because they never learned anything when taking them in the first place.

I use all of the classes I did well in, very often, if not daily. Because every time I watch TV, read news, read books, go to work, I use Humanities, English, Maths, Sociology and I use them in general conversations to understand people who are different than me.

If you never took Art or Acting, how do you expect to connect to an actor or an artist? You can’t (or at least not as well), and if you can’t connect to the people around you then you will not have a fulfilling life, and you will not do as well in life because it’s true, it’s not what you know but, who you know. However, to get to know people, you have to know a lot about everything.

Better grades also mean better perks (aka options)! When you finish high school, you want options. That’s why you work hard in high school, to have more colleges as options. When you finish high school it’s not the end, it’s just the beginning because you’re out of your parents’ house and now you’re free and you need options more than ever.

So if you want to pursue a good job or an additional degree, you want to be able to apply to as many places as possible. For that, you need to know a lot and get good grades! Because ultimately, grades really do matter if you want to get into good graduate schools, which will give you a lot more options in life.

These days, a bachelor’s degree is often not enough to secure a comfortable middle-class job, in many cases you need at least a Master’s degree or some sort of trade certification.

Good grades can also get you money. Not only can good grades get you scholarships, but they can also get you a better-paying job. Just think, a few years of hard work can allow you to party your head off later on if that’s what you want, working hard now, in the long run, will give you the liberty to buy a nice car or travel all you want without loans or worries about money. Imagine all the time you can spend studying instead of working to get better grades and get paid better than all those other students who sacrifice study time to work at the cafeteria.

Also, those who have better grades get front-of-the-line privileges when registering, so you’re not stressing out about your schedule and graduating faster. You can be in control of when to wake up when to study when to work and keep doing better in school.

For instance, everyone I knew who had 8 am classes, especially out of those who commuted, had difficulty making good grades in those classes. Imagine avoiding having to take those classes in the first place because you get preferential registration?

Which classes are good? Well, that depends on the professor. At UCSD we had C.A.P.E. reviews, but after I graduated we had websites as well where you could find useful information about professors. I would generally trust the A students more than C-students. C students hate most professors and blame everyone but themselves. So ask the best students you know and they will point you to the best professors and best classes.

Difficulty rating Classes are like video games, you set the difficulty rating too high and you’re not going to pass the level, set it too low and it’s a cakewalk without any true learning. Either way, it’s no fun. Forget about other students and your parent’s pride. Make sure you do well and make sure it is challenging to you but not impossible.

If it’s not challenging, then make it challenging by asking the Professor for more problems or harder problems. Don’t be a loser; learn something! And do your best to find a way to see how the class will be useful. If you hate what you’re studying, you will not learn well, you will not work well, and you will quit.

So get the worried voice of your parents out of your head and study that which you could study even if you weren’t paying for it. If you learn what you love, you will be good at it. The last thing we need is more mediocre people.

I remember some classes were required, and I struggled and that’s OK, some classes are required but I liked learning those subjects anyway. I knew it probably would come in handy even though I just didn’t seem to get it.

I knew Quantum Mechanics was necessary, even if I found it incomprehensible, but still, it was a must. When I went through my classes in Optics, I coasted because I was like a sponge, absorbing everything I could get my hands on. That’s the feeling you want to have in the classes relevant to your major, and if that’s not happening in your chosen subject/major, then for God’s sake! Get out and find something that does!!!!

Chapter 3: Studying, No One Wants To, But Some Know How-To

Why you study will determine how you study.

1. Why study?
2. Prep before
3. Review after
4. Notes during
5. Homework
6. Tests
7. Groups and distractions
8. Place of study
9. Asking for Help

There was this time that I was at an upscale bar, listening to music and watching women dance on tables. That’s when it hit me, if I didn’t have a degree, I probably wouldn’t be able to afford this bar, and neither would most other people there. Almost everyone in the bar, no matter what they did for a living, had gone to college. At the very least, education gives you the ability to afford a pretty fun life.

You got through high school and now you’re on to college; so long as you pass you’re good, right? WRONG!

Remember why you worked so hard through high school? Do you remember why you participated in ten clubs, three sports and practically killed yourself for the grades? Do you remember why you worked harder than the slackers to get into college?

I’ll remind you, you wanted a good job. You wanted to be able to live comfortably and not struggle for minimum wage. You didn’t want to sweep floors. You wanted money and a career and etc. So many of us lose sight of that fact once we get into college, taste freedom, and start to have fun.

But once in college, it is not over, you are not safe, you haven’t “arrived.” To get the job, you may need grad school, and to keep the job or to get through grad school you will definitely need a good work ethic and a solid foundation of knowledge to do well in school and secure a successful career.

So before you say, “After high school, I can relax, there’s no homework in college,” or “I’ll study right before the test,” buckle up, and get ready to study as you’ve never studied before. It may save you some bad grades, some study time, some good playtime and it may mean the difference between a dead-end job and a wide-open playing field.

Hitting the books If there is one thing you take away from this book, it should be that you have to wake up every day with the realization that you are at school to get your degree. You should always keep your goal in mind. This doesn’t mean you have to be boring and one-track mind. The hardest partying people in my fraternity were also the ones who studied the hardest. They simply prioritized things well, especially their courses.

Remember, you are there to do your best, to learn the most, to open doors, secure a comfortable future, and to have that piece of paper to show to employers and to yourself that you can do four years of intensive and hard studying and that you are up to the task at hand. However, there are easy ways and there are hard ways to go about it.

A lot of intelligent people whiz through high school and get into college without realizing the difference in what is expected of them now until their midterms or finals hit. Sometimes they never do. Old habits die hard and old thought patterns die even harder. Many times after coming home to a bad grade I thought, “Well, that sucked. I’m going to study hard for the next one. I’m not going to waste time next quarter,” only to have the same thing happen all over again the next time around. But because I never thought about why I studied, I would later just slack off and forget to take college seriously. I lost sight of the goal.

Studying is hard and unless you have a battle plan. Make a schedule of what and when and how you’re going to study because unless you create the right environment for success, you will not be successful. You have to know what you are working towards, why you are working towards it, and work every day to work towards achieving your goal.

You may be an 18-year-old, you may want to focus on the “four best years of your life” and feel that it’s all about fun, but you have to remember that that attitude will get you nowhere. College will go by and you will just have loans and debt. Instead, focus during college, study by yourself or with a small, focused group. Remember that you must earn your fun and that having fun that you’ve earned with hard work just feels so much better.

Plus, that best “four years of your life” is a lie. If you do it right, your time after graduation will be amazing. In my mid-twenties, I traveled the world, partied with friends all over the United States, went on road trips and weekend getaways. I was able to do it all with cash I earned from jobs that would have been unattainable had I not worked hard in college and finished my degree.

How to do it
Everyone has their own system, but I will tell you first the systems that do not work, no matter how much you fool yourself into thinking they do.

The first failed system is studying with your friends. Unless that group is quiet, without internet or social networks, without chatter, and with books out in front and with a solid goal of how long and how much to study. If you do not have a plan, you are not going to be productive, but will only waste valuable study and playtime. Avoid those groups.

The second path to failure is studying with the TV or Internet on, as well as most kinds of music. They are distractions. Coffee shops are distractions, especially ones which are not specifically catering to people that want to study. There you will hear other people, be constantly hungry and your focus will be constantly interrupted by gossip, phones, and the conversations around you.

If you are studying a difficult subject, find a quiet place or a place with some white noise where you can have at least fifteen minutes with zero interruptions so that you can get into study mode. After that, you will be able to study for a good while despite any small interruptions.

That’s all you need, just fifteen minutes of willpower and then momentum will carry you through the rest.

Don’t spend time “reading the chapter” Studying without a goal is absolutely a no-go. If you have homework, don’t spend time “reading the chapter.” I wasted so much time reading a paragraph over and over, with the homework sitting by the side until finally there was no more time and I just had to start answering the homework questions. At that point, I would often go through the texts and quickly find the answers I needed.

This desperation at the end led me to the most efficient path, which was to scan the text before class, scan the notes after, and then scan the text before starting the homework. This way you get the understanding of where to go in the textbook or notes to find the answers to the homework, and then you will have the time to let your creativity take you on tangents and to learn more about the subject.

Sometimes, we just don’t have enough time to learn everything, and often, we don’t actually need to. We need to learn the concepts that the teacher wants us to learn and then we need to take in only that which will help us in our future interests. It’s not about learning everything, but about learning enough to know where to go back later, and learning such that you can use the information in s useful way in the future. Concepts will stick with you long after the details have faded from memory. What often happens is that as you learn to find information easily it leads to a life with little to no stress. And life without stress is so much more enjoyable during that last week at the end of class.

The best method I managed to find was when I was doing my MBA and MS at the same time. I had a lot of work and a lot to study and little time. So I would look at the reading and homework I had for the week and I would divide them by the days I had. Usually, this meant that I would have to do 2-3 homework problems a day and about 20-30 pages of reading. This was manageable and quantifiable. It was clear when I was on track and not on track. When you instead break up the work by chapters, a long chapter can take you more than a day, and if you are not making progress you can get discouraged. If you try to do homework in one day, you may also get discouraged. So divide the work into equal chunks and it will be easier to complete.

Sometimes, you have to cram
There are tests you can cram for and there are tests you can’t. For conceptual classes, it is better to do problems and get your needed sleep to be fresh and awake when you see a problem you haven’t seen before on the test. That way instead of freaking out, you can try to figure it out starting with the basics and working backward.

For classes like history on the other hand, if you fell behind for some reason and you now have to fit three months of information then by all means: cram, cram…

My favorite way to study for those tests was to compile a list of words and concepts and find those in the book. You will end up getting a decent understanding of what happened.

Obviously, the best policy is to avoid the need for cramming by studying throughout the year. The week before finals is about consolidation of information, review of earlier material, and last little details. If you’re still learning new information the day before your exam, you’ve been studying wrong.

Don’t be a chump
Ask for help; even if it feels too late. It might mean an extra five percent in the end and an extra concept that you will learn. I know, it feels awkward and scary to look the professor in the eye and feel that look of judgment because you feel clueless and irresponsible. But hey, you probably won’t see them again after this class and he/she may have no idea that you are clueless just from one question. If you’re still embarrassed, you can phrase it in such a way that makes you feel better such as “I feel silly asking this but I keep hearing this term and I’m embarrassed to ask what it means because I still don’t get it.”

What may actually happen is that the question may not be stupid after all and it may prompt an intelligent discussion. Imagine my surprise when I found out that electrons are still an unknown substance, they have never officially been seen directly. So if a basic question about an electron isn’t trivial, your question probably isn’t trivial either.

Also, remember, you’re in college, which means you’re not an idiot unless of course, you act like one by refusing to ask for help.

A personal story about how I’ve done exactly that: I took this computational physics class. I got a D in the class before I withdrew from it twice. Every time I took it, I would come to class with a smug look at the beginning of the semester expecting to ace it, only to fall into the same routine at the end by assuming I could do it without help. It was a hard class and by the third time, I realized that I needed help.

On the third time, finally, I broke down and admitted that this was not possible for me to do on my own. I went to office hours. I got a tutor and studied with other smart kids. In the end, I did better. I was able to catch Professor’s mistakes during lecture and at the end of the quarter, I got a B. This is to show that it does not matter how the professor sees you. In the end, the only thing of import is the desire to learn and the grade you get in the class. Those are the ultimate judges.

Studying for Exams Obviously one of the toughest things about school is of course exams. They are stressful, they are long and they are difficult.

This is how I studied as an undergrad: I usually stress about it a lot and so I put it off. As I get closer to the date, I procrastinate, clean, go on social media until there is no more time. Then I cram and then I fail.

Here is how I study as a graduate student: In essence, I study the way I would prepare for a big race or a big competition. At the end of my studies, I make a study schedule. I break up the material into even chunks with a day for a practice test and some rest. I set a day for each portion of the class and I find that it is easiest to review material at night before I sleep and then complete practice problems in the morning when the brain is fresh (and also probably the time you will take the exam).

When you complete problems, either have a solution set or ask others what they got. Then go over the wrong ones and try to solve them again.

Two or three days before the test, solve a practice exam. Again go over the problems you got wrong. Try to relax the night before, maybe just go over the material lightly one more time.

Day of the exam, trust your studies. So the key to studying well is not smarts, but managing your stress and anxiety. The way to manage it is not to think of all the stuff you have to study or how you don’t understand the material but to make a plan.

Of course, this is easier in Graduate school or at schools where you have fewer courses and they are spread out. In my undergrad, we often had a week for all of the finals and usually three or four of them. This means you often have to begin a week before the final material is done. But the key is still to plan out your studies hour by the hour instead of day by day and then work the plan.

Resources Some other resources include some reading, but it’s ok, you’re in college to read and learn, so you won’t mind:

The Anxiety Toolkit: a great book on dealing with all sorts of anxiety by Alice Boyes.

Getting Things Done by David Allan on how to set a plan and work it.

Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg: how to identify a bad habit, break it and create a new one.

Chapter 4: The Filler Clubs, aka Student Organizations

• Finding the right one
• Professional
• Social
• Starting one
• Benefits

In addition to stamina, intelligence, and physical prowess, one needs other skills in life, skills that a lot of students develop while involved in one of the hundreds of student organizations that exist on college campuses. They allow you to develop your interests, social abilities, widen social networks and develop leadership abilities. The last one occurs because, over years of involvement, you are sure to become more deeply involved and to take on more and more responsibilities, and thus develop a much more meaningful experience for yourself within the organization. Many people come back to their organizations years later and keep in touch with those with who they were involved for many years.

Which One Should I Pick?
The best time to find an organization is usually that first week when they are out advertising themselves. Find ones that interest you and meet the people who run them. If you like the people and you share common interests and passions, it will be a great experience and pay off in the long run. It doesn’t matter if it is a sport, an environmental advocacy group, a church group, or a hiking club. The important part is that this will add to your major, your personal grown and it will be fun.

****If it Doesn’t Exist, Start it.** But back to the business of student orgs, I’ll explain them from my perspective and how I got into them. I was studying optics and in San Diego, there would be a conference every year where scientists and engineers doing optics from around the world would come together and present their work.

Once I realized that my school did not have a society for people interested in this field, I realized it could really use one since there was so much local research and talent in that sphere. Once I began the organization, I learned what it was to recruit people, what it was to fund-raise and what was is to work with other organizations.

It wasn’t easy. I first got a feeling for who wanted the club, so I introduced my idea in an optics class and passed around a sign-up sheet, and seeing 15 names on it, I decided to go on with it and have a meeting. Two people showed up at the meeting, but they motivated me to continue. I felt that I could accomplish a lot with this club and add value to the lives of students. This pushed me to work on getting funding, getting advisers, speakers and working with other clubs to create joint events.

When you are doing something good that benefits others, like students, the department, and people in that major, then people get on board and want to help. This was an amazing experience and it actually led me to find work once I finished college. This was one of those things that made me realize that everything you do in life will either open or close doors. So much of the networking you do in college leads determines your later opportunities in life.

When starting or joining organizations, the number one reason for doing it is because you enjoy the people you are with. The reason one does anything is because of the people, and you learn to value that when you are in a student organization. It was an invaluable lesson that was an integral part of my true education.

Dangers: There are many organizations and many people find themselves involved in more than one. In fact, you can find yourself interested in so many organizations that you over involve yourself and end up watching your academics and quality of life take a dive. So make sure to keep a balance. Just like videogames, tv, partying, and books, a little at the right time is a good thing, but too many extracurricular activities will knock you off balance and there will be consequences to pay.

Chapter 5: Sports

They walked down the Library Walk in bright jerseys, carrying numbered sports bags with jugs of water to keep themselves hydrated and in peak athletic condition. At the same time, I seemed to get skinnier and nerdier and further away from their bronzed and toned bodies every day. They seemed popular and good at school and I felt a world away. What’s funny is that I was them just the year before.

In high school, everyone was involved in some sport, and my wrestling coach planned on taping my matches for Cal Poly and UC Davis. His dreams and my parents’ nightmare came to an end when I was tackled by our 189 pounder and cracked my collar bone in two places. That season was over and next year I was splitting time between Academic Decathlon, where our physical activity consisted of racing a stuffed sheep and doing hacky-sack during study breaks and wrestling for the team as a fill-in a couple times per week.

In High School, I was with the in-crowd, but in college, the thought of doing sports did not cross my mind. I was stuck with the mentality that college is for studying and only near Olympic level athletes do sports in college. I learned my lesson by senior year. I picked up judo and then wrestling again, mostly to get in shape for studying. But I got quite good at both as a result.

You see, physical activity promotes fitness and blood flow. Blood flow allows more oxygen to reach the brain which helps us think better. At the same time, fitness allows one to have the stamina to work longer. Engaging in sports creates discipline and fosters time management skills. With a full season and workouts, most athletes find themselves completing assignments in a more efficient fashion than those who have all the time in the world and don’t have the discipline to just sit there and work on the problem until they get it right, as they would on the mat or at the track field.

To say that UCSD is not a big sports school is a major understatement. In fact, to say that UCSD is not a big sports school is an understatement. “UCSD football is undefeated” is a T-shirt proudly worn by many, but the joke is that the school has no football team. Our male sports are largely ignored while women’s sports are fairly competitive.

This atmosphere was an easy transition for me as it was essentially exactly how my high school was. This actually was great because almost anyone could get on a team, and if you couldn’t, there were a plethora of clubs. Some were good, like the squids or ultimate frisbee A team. Some were not so good but great party and social clubs, like Rugby, BOARD, Surf, and the squid B team. Some clubs were on par with our actual sports teams like the Volleyball club and some clubs which actually created Olympians, like our ping pong, sorry, table tennis team.

By my fourth year, I realized missed wrestling and I stepped on the mat in my senior year and was hooked all over again. The wrestling team is always a bunch of crazy rejects. I don’t know why, maybe it’s the close contact, maybe it’s the gay jokes making light of the close contact, or maybe we are just a few neurons short of realizing that we are fighting each other for no reason. Whatever the reason, wrestlers have been known to be an odd bunch. But once you find you are good at something, you realize that you are stuck with it, and for better or worse, you keep doing it, keep teaching it and you end up living it.

The UCSD wrestling club was actually almost shut down. No, in fact, it was shut down. I started a Facebook page to campaign to bring it back and a guy name Paul contacted me out of the blue and inquired about taking over the page and re-starting the club. I thought I’d let him, but soon I was running the club and he was gone. It was nice to give 8-10 guys on campus a place to work out every once in a while, teach them my skills, and most of all, I needed other people to work out with.

And there were the bizarre, like the inner tube water polo. Probably my biggest regret was not doing that one. It was co-ed, it was in the pool, you just need a keg in one of the tubes and you’re set.

I made a lot of friends as a result of running the wrestling club, and others on the team did as well. You could always rely on the surf team to throw a good party. The friendships we made were often forged on the long trips to competitions.

A year after graduating, as a coach, I went with three other wrestlers to Lakeland, Florida. We stayed at a motel that was constructed around a bar. The bar was owned by a large black man with a sense of humor and he employed a tiny girl with a loud southern accent. There was nothing but guys visiting this bar. Often laborers like those working on a railroad. There would be all sorts of mayhem- locking each other out of or inside bathrooms, throwing people into the pool, ice baths on customers and bar owners alike.

I was taking a video of a massive ice fight. Ice pitchers were poured on the girl, then she would get the pitcher and give it to someone and that person would pour it on someone else, and then someone else would get a pitcher from her and pour it on the owner. In the end, everyone was soaked but me. The owner looked at me and asked: “Why ain’t you wet?”
“I’m observing,” I said.
“We don’t like observers here” And he poured a pitcher of ice and water all over me.

I walked into the room at two am, drenched, cold and happy. We barely made it to the tournament on time the next day. The guys had a great time on the trip, it felt like we laughed non-stop. Perhaps we should have competed better, but the memories of that trip were better than any medals we might had.

That’s what sports are: a chance at camaraderie and physical fitness that will allow you to succeed in class and give you a chance to meet friends, meet girls/guys and have other kids in class envy your company and your grades.

Chapter 6: Picking A Major. Because Eventually, You Have To.

Being famous isn’t pretty, That doesn’t elevate us up, No need to start an archive, To shake over your writings. Aim of creating is to give one-self, Not ruckus, not success, The shame of being worthless While praised by everyone as best. — Boris Pasternak, My Sister - Life

• How to pick one.
• Double major or minor.
• What to do if you feel you need to switch.

My phone rang at nine am on a Tuesday morning, rousing me from my sleep. It was my friend and business partner’s distressed mother asking me if I could speak to her younger son. He was starting his second year of college and had no idea what he wanted to do. He called me a week later and explained that he is considering physics but wasn’t sure if he would make money at it. To me that sounded like a path to mediocrity. I asked him: what is it that you want to do? He really didn’t know, he just knew he wanted to work with other people. I gave him some suggestions on how a technical degree could come in handy and how he could do something with other people with that degree. But essentially I said, “find something that you love and pursue that, you will make far more money doing something you love than doing something you tolerate.”

How to pick one.
Few know who they are and what they want to be as they enter college. They are lucky, but they also don’t necessarily stick to it. Many of them only think they know what they want to do. Remember that many artists become writers, that many singers become actors, lawyers become sky diving instructors and engineers become motorcycle teachers. Without a lifetime goal, we become bored and move on to another calling. If you grew up with many interests, it may be difficult to decide on what you want as you enter college. But as I told Aaron, follow your passion and then find a way to make money at it.

When I entered college I had no idea what I wanted to be. I figured that an engineering major would give me options, that if I wanted to switch to something else, it would give me the necessary pre-requisites. However, what I didn’t realize is that once you start on a path, it can be very difficult to quit. The more time and effort you put into something, and especially as people believe or doubt your abilities to follow through, it may no longer be about your passion for that field, but a matter of pride. This has to be identified early on because regretting and resenting a decision ten years into a career is no way to live.

When one major isn’t enough.
Once you have your passion, look around for professions in that field and learn the requirements for those. They should direct you towards the best major. Sometimes, for some people, the major may not be a good fit because you may feel that your skills are more than adequate without further education. This is very rare. For those individuals, a complementary major might be good. For others, a double major can be a good idea, provided that it doesn’t leave you too much in debt.

That’s when it is good to look at just taking a minor instead. It’s faster and you can get two or three for the same time and fee as a major.
For instance, business is a great major to add to engineering, so is physics. For doctors, maybe a second language. For photographers, art or writing. More broad engineering is going to open your horizons, push you academically and make you better at whatever you do.

How to know if you should stick to it or not
Sticking with your major can be hard, and that may be a sign that it isn’t for you in the first place. If you start to doubt that this is what you want to do in the end, if your core classes do not give you satisfaction and pride in work, then yes, I advise that you leave your major and find something you enjoy. If what motivates you are the good grades and praise from instructors and not the art project or lab or skills you are acquiring, then move on.

However, if you are not doing well grade-wise, but you love to do what you do, and you spend many hours just to receive a bad grade for what you feel is good and pleasant work, especially in art classes, do not quit, keep going. You have found a passion that you should not give up on because even if you think you’re no good, you should continue. After all, at one point, we were all bad shoe-tiers, that didn’t mean we should have quit.

Chapter 7: Paying for College

“College, the most expensive four years of your life.”

Christine is a smart go-getter. Her parents came from Vietnam during the war. Her mother survived the war as a flower girl and when she arrived in the states she had no education and put Christine and two other daughters through high school in Baltimore. Christine was the oldest and the pride of the family having graduated at the top of the class and earned a spot at the prestigious University of Southern California.

Christine moved to the other coast and trained to become a famous architect. She took a year to study abroad in Italy to study how the masters built their masterpieces. She was a favorite of many of her professors and was offered jobs right out of college. She traveled the world and worked in South Korea for one of the top Architecture firms.

Christine traveled alone throughout the Middle East on a fellowship to study middle eastern native architecture and design. She came back to jobs waiting for her in a depressed market and within a year brought her fiancé from Tunisia to live with her. At the age of 27, she was earning good money at a good firm doing what she loves. She had many opportunities thanks to her studies and was living together with her fiancé in a studio barely big enough for a bed, a desk, and no kitchen. She has no car and sends most of the money that she makes to a bank.

Christine has a wonderful life on one hand but her future is far from comfortable at the moment. At the age where she should be able to put money away for a wedding, for a house she is barely making ends meet because she has over $200,000 in loans which she did not realize she would have or how she would payback. She told me that she does not regret her decision to go to an expensive school given the opportunities she now has but the debt obviously weighs her down considerably.

In 2011, colleges are financed through a form of predatory lending that is similar to the lending in the housing market, except it is worse. Unlike your college loan, with a house in foreclosure, you can walk away from your debt. The college loan creditors will pursue you across space and time: garnishing wages and collecting to the end. You can escape kids and spouses, but you cannot get away from college debt.

Unlike with a house or credit cards, the bank does not ask how much you make, how much the education will cost, and do not look at your major and how much you will make before saddling you with debt. The bank does not look at how much you have, how well you studied, if the college is credible, or even if you will ever make money to repay.

Tuition is the same cost regardless of the cost of that education. It is the same no matter how much professors in your department earn or how much your labs cost or what your prospects for making money and paying back that loan with your chosen major.

Schools also don’t seem to wonder that it may be predatory to ask an 18-year old that has never paid bills before to take on the responsibility of hundreds of thousands of dollars and make decisions without considering for a second if those kids know what they are doing. It is also a shame that many parents allow their kids to sign the contracts that saddle them with obligations for life without advising them better. In the end, for those without generous parents, the only way to choose less debt is to choose a less expensive school or to work and not have loans.

So now that you know that signing up for a loan is a big deal and that no one cares if you will be on a hook with a giant mortgage payment for the rest of your life, I will tell you how to make that decision of taking a loan or not through a couple stories.

Unlike Christine, I decided to go to a reputable but cheaper University. My parents were able to pay the tuition (which they still to this day remind me of), I worked for most of my living expenses even though my parents were still able to help me considerably. I graduated late but I had no debt. I was able to travel the world, buy a car, buy a house within a few years of my graduation. Having no debt and a job that paid well meant a fairly relaxed lifestyle.

Another friend Arthur who went to the same school as Christine also traveled the world but being an orphan and disabled, was unable to find a job and so had to try and escape his impossible debt or as I call it, 21st-century indentured servitude. Many people who put themselves into a poor financial situation, are unable to recover mentally. They begin to rack up credit card debt, buy houses they cannot afford.

The freedom and cheap money corrupt people and the financial institutions then charge exorbitant fees knowing full well what will happen, relying on the fact that these poor and naïve kids will make uninformed decisions at a time when they are not ready and thus profit from the misfortune of others. If banks were charlatans fooling people out of nickles and pennies in the streets, they would be in jail, but stealing millions puts them in expensive board rooms.

If this book is still relevant, and our government failed you, then I suggest, look at your finances, how much can you afford, how much will you earn in the end, what will be your debt, do you want to owe someone money for the rest of your life?

Think about these decisions hard and make the hard choice of going to a cheaper school, or going to a community college, or saving up some money before entering college. Whatever you do, remember that no one will save you or warn you except this book and that if you follow your desire without thought of how that desire will impact your life, you may come to regret your decision for the rest of your life.

So what are the other options besides debt and work?

Well, my best friend paid barely anything, he lived at home, went to community college, went to a less expensive public University, and finally attended Law School on a scholarship.

In a sense, you should always try to go where your skills and abilities permit you to go. The choice to go to an expensive school is yours and you can spend a few days per scholarship application, work, and study. The odds for those who are not mega-rich are tough. Many do not graduate due to the stress of earning money and going to school and life.

However with the goal of a better life in your sight and the belief that many people before you managed to do this and so will you, will help you overcome, graduate in a good financial position with the freedom to pick and choose the next step in your life.

I say all this with a big but! That’s because if you go to a community college, you get what you pay for. A good university has students that will push you and world-renown professors who know what they are talking about. When it came to an MBA, I had a choice of local college for $30k with fifteen students in my class and low tier program, or a top program that was $65k abroad ($200k in the US), but my class would be 500 students and the best professors in the world. I chose the higher amount because I wanted to be pushed, I wanted to have the knowledge of the best people. I also knew that I could pay off the loan, which I did.

So what about scholarships? I spent a lot of hours in high school and graduate schools applying for scholarships. I even had a dream for a little bit that wrestling will get me a full ride. For most people, this is somewhere between a pipedream and a waste of time. If you break down the time I spent on essays and application, I could have earned much more by simply finding a part-time job and saving that money.

There are scholarships like a need-based or diversity scholarship or a merit-based scholarship through your University, apply for those. But essays and other scholarships that are usually meant to reduce taxes for corporations or marketing gimmick are usually a waste of time. Paying scholarship services or consultants is a waste of time and money. So work if you have to, save your money so you have less money to borrow for life, and apply for the scholarship that gives you the best bang for your buck and for time spent.

So a list of Do’s and Don’ts

First what not to do:

Scholarships: forget about them! You will not earn $150,000 in scholarships. Few people get them and the amount it takes in writing essays and talent in choosing right places is more than a full-time job and the returns are less than working a full-time job (I wrote about this after spending a month trying, I got zero scholarships).

Don’t get an unsubsidized loan. They will kill you on the interest rate, it can never be forgiven and they are relentless in pursuing it, will even deduct money from your paycheck. So if you have to borrow more than the subsidized government loan, DON’T DO IT!

Things you should 100% Do:

Haggle with the college. If you have other options, call the financial aid office, tell them, maybe they can find a scholarship at the college. Check out alternatives abroad. Many colleges abroad are free tuition: Denmark and Germany are free even for Americans. Some graduate degrees are free abroad as well. In Israel, a Master of Science with a Thesis is paid for and you get a monthly allowance of about $1000 which is just enough to survive on.

So as last advice: know your finances, know your goals and fund your college appropriately.

Chapter 8: Time Off, Not A Completely Stupid Idea

A true sign of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.

1. Why do it?
2. What it accomplishes.
3. Fake time-off through study abroad.

It was the end of the first half of my sophomore year of college when I got my progress report: C, C-, C-. I was taking all upper-division Physics classes and things were not going well. The classes were interesting and fun, but I was doing horribly because I had no idea what I was doing there. I was unmotivated and considering whether or not to continue. What was I doing? Why was I doing this?

I was studying haphazardly, barely opening the books and barely trying with the homework. College became so difficult all of a sudden and I couldn’t answer the question of why I should put in the effort. At that moment, something clicked: I should do what my friend’s girlfriend at the time was doing.

My friend’s girlfriend was going through a difficult time and simply took some time off from school. During her time off, and just like many famous people, Steve Jobs for one, took a couple classes at a community college and traveled, in her case, it was to India. I stole her idea and didn’t enroll for the next quarter. I didn’t even go back to my job at the lab. I just took time off. I wanted to have nothing connected with my old life.

Did I travel? No. I wish I had. Instead, I took Chinese and weight training at a community college and I found a job at a MotoPhoto, which I was quickly fired from for being late four out of five days my first week (my lax schedule at the engineering lab made me forget what it’s like to have a real schedule) and after many jobs searching, I found a job at an Italian deli and later a second job as a parking lot attendant.

The deli was bad. Because I was the only one who spoke fluent English, I answered phones and chopped lettuce for the sandwich line. Just like in the movie “Coming To America,” I was promoted to making sandwiches and breakfasts. I liked the people but I hated answering to a terrible boss for minimum wage. By the time I got through my third week working 80 hours a week doing mind-numbing work, I knew I needed to go back to school.

That is what time off is about. It’s about figuring out what you want out of life and getting a little perspective so that if you know what it is that you want to learn so that you can give it your all. In all honesty, after coming back, there were some classes where I did better in and some in which I did worse. I still had to repeat some multiple times, but I was willing to do it now because I had a goal, which I did not have before taking time off.

I’m telling you this because I feel that you need to remember that option during times of spinning wheels. Don’t pick a major unless you’re sure that it is what you want to do because as long as you have doubts, you will not apply yourself and you may come to regret it later. Of course, some smart people will doubt themselves no matter what, for those people, it is important to recognize if those doubts have to do with liking what you’re doing and future prospects.

If you are not sure you will be successful, you need to remind yourself that the field you are in does not define your success, only your willingness to work does. However, if you’re not ready for school, if you’re not ready to work hard every day to learn what you need to be successful in your field, then you should not be there and you might need time off.

Maybe my reason for going to college was not the best. I didn’t want to be the best engineer, I just didn’t want to make minimum wage for the rest of my life. I didn’t want to become like some of my co-workers who worked hard without a prospect of a future. It was too hard working so many hours a week and not being able to save money. This was while I was single and with roommates. I thought about the prospect of family and the outlook became even dimmer.

By going back to school, I was able to get a much better job and have much more choices today. Because of my time off, I came back to school re-focused, refreshed, and I was no longer taking my education and job as a student for granted.

Gap Year By 2006/2007, some colleges began to offer time off before the first year of college as some do in Europe and Australia where they call it a “gap year.” Some kids who have the means will use it to travel the world, while others work to save up for tuition or volunteer. If you’re intelligent enough, you can probably do the same thing and get someone to pay for it. When the Blue brothers, (not from the movie) who came to own General Atomics, were students of Yale University in the sixties, they paid for their flight across central and south America by writing articles for travel magazines. Additionally, scholarships and fellowships exist to pay for travel and adventures.

Another choice is to volunteer in places like Guatemala. I met lots of people while traveling through Central America, however, it does often cost money to do that. I met two girls from Seattle while in Nicaragua, they were biking with two guys from San Francisco on the Island of Ometepe in the middle of Lake Nicaragua. They were there for two weeks of travel and then they were to spend two more weeks working in the fields of Nicaragua.

I met a girl who quit her fashion career in Sao Paulo to work the fields on a kibbutz in the desert of Israel. And a good friend of mine, Michael, left his job for several months to help build a school in Africa. School is work and sometimes you need to re-orient yourself, quit, and see if your compass is in the right direction. Most of the time people come back to the same thing. Partially, because what they are looking for can’t be found somewhere else, others find a new path that leads to success.

A word of caution, a gap year can be great, but too many people I met while traveling did not use their traveling to expand their mind but to escape the banality of everyday life. If there is no purpose behind your life, you are not likely to rediscover it somewhere else. Party at home, relax abroad but always push yourself out of your comfort zone to grow as a person. That’s what makes life awesome.

What you might be surprised to learn from your time abroad is that what you had back home was good, and you don’t realize how good it was until you experience something actually bad. Don’t worry, I’m not spoiling a surprise, it’s a great feeling to find out something you already knew before.

Study Abroad

One other opportunity, which I call fake time off, is Study-Abroad. You continue to take classes, but you get to experience another country and another culture. You get to travel and you don’t lose time any time. Most people who do it do not have an epiphany, do not change course, and generally have the money to afford it (or at least exploit the love and well-wishing of their parents) to finance their trip. My best friend went to Costa Rica (where he lost his virginity) another classmate of mine went to Australia, and another to Italy.

What I always heard is that it is the time of their life. While coaching wrestling I met many foreign exchange students and I even hosted some of them and some hosted me when I went to their countries. What I noticed among them all is that it is the type of strong individuals that can be far from family, be independent, and open to new experiences. If you are not that type of person, then I recommend even more that you do it.

The people who come back from a study abroad, lack timidity and the fear of traveling to faraway places. They are not afraid of language barriers, foreign customs, or even just facing the world. They are worldly and more mature people. So grow some new neurons and experience life! What else will you do with your life? Play video games?