Final Pod Episode (6)

The main ideas from this information are: - Advice to freshman self: enjoy the time, make friends, find balance between social life and school, start working towards career goals - It's never too late to make new friends and branch out - Take time to think about interests and invest time wisely - Get involved and join clubs to meet new people - Talk to advisors and choose classes wisely - Balance social life and academics, learn to say no - Don't worry too much, things won't matter in the long run - Make friends outside of your friend group, connect with professors and TAs - Toughest lesson: balancing social life and academics, not being perfect, setbacks are not the end, focus on yourself, learn from experiences, balance work and social life - College is about self-growth, don't beat yourself up, tests matter more in college, don't overload yourself, play the long game, professors won't hold your hand, failure doesn If you could give one piece of advice to your freshman self, what would it be? I would tell my freshman self to enjoy the time while you have it and to try and make as many friends as possible. The first people you meet don't have to be the only people you're friends with, but also work on freshman year trying to find the balance between your social life and your school life and start trying to discern what you want to do as a career after graduation and start taking tangible steps towards those goals because it'll pay off in the long run. Even if freshman year wasn't what I expected, each year that you're here gets so much better and it's definitely worth it to stick through it and you meet so many cool people. I would say that it's never too late to make new friends. Like if even the people that you're with the first two years, it's not like you should be locked into that friend group. You know, always try to be branching out, meeting new people and kind of combining new friend groups and you never know like how awesome it can be when you finally do it. I think my one piece of advice would be to know that each year you're going to meet more and more people and make more and more friends, but always make sure you can rely on those foundational friendships, but at the same time be open because you're going to meet a lot of cool people at BC. I would probably tell myself to take some time, some serious time to think about what it is that you're interested in and what you care about because it's really easy to just start choosing your classes and choosing your extracurriculars kind of haphazardly. So take the time to think about what you care about and where you want to invest your time and that'll help you understand yourself better by the time graduation rolls around. My freshman self, I'd probably say join a club or some other type of thing where you can meet new people because I was kind of locked down to like my friends in Newton, which isn't a bad thing, but I would have met more people if I had opened myself up. I would make sure to really talk to your advisor and understand the types of classes you could take just because I took some unnecessary classes that in the end I feel like I could have just replaced with something more enriching. I would definitely try and go to the library more and balance, you know, my schools with my friends. If you could give one piece of advice to your freshman self, what would it be? I would say to remember to really live every day in the present because even the tough days you're going to miss one day. I think my one piece of advice would be to not worry so much and realize that in five years none of the issues that you're going through or problems you're having are even going to matter. To not dwell on things for too long and to just live in the moment and be where your feet are because the four years goes by really fast. Make as many friends as you can freshman year and then use sophomore, junior, and senior year to kind of filter out the ones that you don't like as much and then so you can have a broad base in the beginning. It would definitely be to get more involved. A lot of things I wanted to do and didn't end up doing and if I had just taken like the first step it would have probably been better so that would be my piece of advice. The piece of advice I would give myself is that trying to find a work-life balance is just not going to be the same as it is like for everyone so you have to kind of determine what I had to like learn, what worked for myself. To make friends with the people in your class that are outside of your friend group and also become close with professors and TAs whenever possible. What is the toughest lesson you learned during your college experience? The toughest lesson I learned would be balancing your social life and your academics. I've had it go both ways where I focus too much on one or the other but it's really important to find a balance. You have to learn how to say no and by saying no it means yes to other things. I think for me it's that you're not always going to be perfect in everything that you do but just as long as you try your best that's all that matters. I think that the toughest lesson I've learned and a lesson that I've learned from a bad experience is just that even if you like fail a class or you have to withdraw or something like happens that you think is going to be the end of the world it won't be and it's never too late to like keep pushing and like making sure that you're staying on goal and so like even if you think that you have a major setback you'll never be able to catch up to others like you always will there's always options so definitely don't let that get you down. I think my toughest lesson I've learned is that you can't be so worried about how others perceive you and what you think you should be doing in order to look successful because everyone is going to go through their own like processes and whatever the job search be or like what your major is what your minor is your grade so just focus on yourself because that's all anyone's really doing. Honestly this might be kind of cheesy but it's got to be you're going to make the decisions you make and you got to live with it you're going to things are going to go how it goes and the only way you're going to you're going to figure that out is through experience so basically you're going to screw up you're going to make some wrong decisions you should do that and like the only way you're going to get through that is experiencing it so you just you're going to have to live with live with your decisions. I feel like the biggest lesson in college is probably balancing work with like social life I think that's probably one of the main reasons people go to college is to learn how to do your work but also obviously have fun at the same time. My toughest lesson was probably like overcoming my fear of putting myself out there in terms of for instance like for abroad I didn't know anyone going into the program and I really had to like force myself to make not force myself but I had to like basically start over and you know with people from all over the world so yeah so just don't be afraid to really put yourself out there and make new friends because they can end up lasting for a lifetime. I think you have to remember that college is a period of self-growth so don't beat yourself up over too many things and just keep moving forward. What is the toughest lesson you learned during your college experience? That tests matter way more in college than they do in high school. I would say my toughest lesson is to not put too much on my plate. I am involved in a lot of different things and it took a lot of thinking about to realize that there's some things I needed to let go of in order to better balance my time and prioritize what's really important to me and put as much time as I can into those things. The importance of playing the long game, patience, whether it's with school or family or relationships in general. The toughest lesson I probably learned was that my professors were not going to hold my hand and kind of get me through the grades or whatever, get me through the course. So it was definitely a bit of a learning curve to have those things with professors. The toughest lesson I learned was that failing a test, which I've done a few times, does not actually define where you'll be or what the outcome is going to be so it doesn't actually affect you as much as you think it does. Really that you need to be able to balance going out and spending money and doing school work all as one thing. It's not the end of the world if you miss one night out to study for an exam or to save some money. That's good advice.