Lesson 1: Surround yourself with the right people

I originally named this “Surround yourself with good/success-driven people” but I realized that being around the right type of people are subjective, because sometimes success-driven can cause high stress/competition/toxicity, so I changed it to “right people.”

But in all honesty, I still do believe that good/success-driven people is very important in College because if you go to a top-tier institution you’re going because you love learning, so you want to surround yourself with like-minded individuals.

This is where I came to fault when I first arrived in College. Even when you go to top university, you shouldn’t expect that everyone loves to learn. Obviously, there’s still going to be the kids who don’t and party all day or all night and never go to class or do their homework or assignments. I definitely didn’t expect this because I chose my institution because I thought that I would be surrounded by hardworking individuals, but I realized that wasn’t necessarily the case. Don’t get me wrong, the people I’ve met in this College are probably the most genuine, amazing, kind, nice, and overall awesome people I’ve ever met. I know everyone says this, but hands-down, the people here are what really makes my experience in college worth it. Although these people are absolutely amazing, when it comes to academics, they didn’t fit me.

Some background–I chose Carman as my housing/dorm and Carman is known as the “social dorm.” This means that every Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and sometimes even Sunday nights you will see groups of kids going out of the doors of Carman to go party. Yes, four nights of partying sometimes ranging from 9pm to 4am. Since it physically appears that almost everyone I knew was going out, I caught onto the 4-night partying culture and would throw off assignments just to go party. This partying habit was alright for the rest of my friends on the floor because they didn’t have class Friday or billions of assignments due because they were in Columbia College (the non engineering school), yet I had weekly quizzes Friday morning in Multivariable Calculus (my hardest class), and on top of that I often had Computer Science ProblemSets due Friday nights. The first week, I remember procrastinating till the last minute to turn in a Problem Set for Computer Science simply because I wanted so bad to go out and party so I was extremely distracted, so I ended up turning in a terribly done assignment (and at that time I didn’t know you could use late hours because guess who skipped lecture) and I received a C for it. The worst part was that after I received such a low grade, it didn’t even bother me that much and I would still go out and prioritize partying simply because it felt like the whole world was doing it simply because the ones closest to me (which were the people on my floor) were. But the thing is, it isn’t the whole world. That’s why I really emphasize hanging out with the right people. I realized that some of my SEAS friends from floor 11 didn’t go out, and worked on the assignments. Along with them, my friends from other dorms (John Jay, Wallach, Furnald) all told me that they barely go out, which was shocking for me. And in correlation, their grades were all a lot better than mine. My mother also said that in the giant WeChat groups the parents keep for Columbia, the parents  all say that their kids rarely party because they can never find parties–which is just so ironic because on my floor people are always at at least 2-3 parties which then leads to us party hopping and joining them, so I never viewed “partying” as uncommon.

After realizing that partying wasn’t the common scene, I tried to cut it back and stay in to do work, but man is it hard when you’re surrounded by your friends going out and having the time of their lives. Or at least that’s how I felt at the time. In fact, when I came out of my room the next day, people on my floor would ask me, “Jessica where were you? We had so much fun! You missed out!” or if I’ve been working throughout the week and not attending the million of social activities we have, they’ll say “Jessica where are you? It Feels like we never see you anymore.” The fomo (fear of missing out) really kills me, so more often than not I succumb to the pressure and go out with my floor again. And the thing is, being with them is the best thing ever because everyone is so kind and I have such a great time, but in the end when I come back late and get almost no sleep, and end up sleeping till 2pm the next day and also getting no work done, which then results in me almost pulling an all nighter on Sundays, that’s really no fun at all. Another  thing I struggled with is that also when I do stay in and do work, I’m not the most productive either because I just feel lonely and unmotivated because everyone’s out. It takes so much effort to really do anything when everyone you know is out. I remember thinking back to highschool when me and my friend would just go to the library everyday afterschool or even back to middle school when me and my best friend would get all our work finished afterschool at her house–homework never felt like it took so much effort? It felt like an accomplishing feat, but now it feels like so much effort and no gain (just missing out on fun and not even getting the best grade because I’m rushing it out).

So, for those going into college next year, surround yourself with the right people. Because when you don’t, trying to stay on top of your work or even being a good student in general because so much harder than it really should be.