A college postmortem

As my youngest brother heads off to my alma mater and actively avoids all conversation with me regarding this major life event, I’ve been thinking (aloud, at him, unprompted) about my own experience there. With the important caveat that most advice is bad and context dependent, here’s what I wished I had figured out before my senior year.

Don’t stress about your major

The major you choose is probably less important than you think, especially at engineering school. I like to pretend that I chose ChemE because I believe energy is a foundational field, but really it was because I heard it was the hardest major on campus and that seemed like the cool thing to do. Luckily I wasn’t alone in my arrogance, and most my degree’s value came from working with those other people, not the courses themselves.

I think college ideally teaches you how to solve problems, or how to figure out how to solve them. Anything beyond that is bonus (or bullshit). Worry less about what to specialize in and more on how well you handle new and challenging ideas.

You’ll have the option to coast through most of school if you choose to because of this, but I think it’s worth choosing the more difficult routes when you can. The information you learn may prove worthless, but the systems you’ll develop are invaluable, maybe more so in the age of AI1.

A year out from school, it’s hard to tell who majored in what, even amongst the specialized groups in my office. But you can absolutely tell who put in the work to learn how to figure things out.

Socialize with reckless abandon

I mean act without fear, not without thought—do it deliberately as best you can. Hopefully you have some sense of the kind of people that you want to surround yourself with by now2, but if you’re anything like me it’s fuzzy and maybe vaguely existentially frightening.

Getting clarity on the above (which I failed at for most of college due to equal parts cowardice and global pandemic) requires stress testing your intuitions against new people in new environments. Each new relationship helps map out what it is about other people that lights you up (or doesn’t), even if it’s passing chatter in between classes.

Practically, this means talk to strangers. Join any club that sounds interesting. Find the weirdest people at parties - if there aren’t any, be the weird one. And maybe find a better party3.

You’ll probably bomb hard occasionally—I know I did. But it’s worth it. The more people you meet and learn from, the better you’ll be able to seek out the ones who’ll become lifelong friends and partners, which is the whole reason to go through this. Try not to lose sight of that in the madness.

Talk to your professors

They’re usually some of the smartest people on campus, and the most helpful if you know what to get them talking about—they'll actually be able to give good advice. Introduce yourself to them, without exception4.

Go to their office hours, do some light stalking on their research projects and bring questions about those. At a minimum you’ll make their afternoon, and you might even get better grades out of it5.

Don’t stand still. Don’t be boring

Live the next four6 years deliberately. Few other places will offer the same combination of ~ unbounded exploration and low consequences, so do your best to maximize experiences. A sense of direction helps, but keep moving forward. You'll develop your own values, but I suggest choosing the least boring option when possible. Opt for chaos over comfort.

Most importantly, don’t listen to me

Everything here is completely specific to my own experience, despite my best efforts. You will undoubtedly be able to write your own well-intentioned-if-slightly-self-indulgent college advice one day, and I’m fairly certain “Man, I wish I listened to T” won’t be a bullet point.

Try inverting some of it, or maybe all of it. Read some other7 advice. Remind yourself that nothing fucking matters, and go have the time of your life.