Introduction
Why should you read this book (one day it will be):
When I was twenty-two I quit school because I was tired of half trying and worked two jobs instead. I woke up at six am to slice lettuce and make sandwiches for minimum wage until two and then I would drive twenty miles to watch over a parking lot for another eight hours. I ate cup-o-noodles for 10 cents each and split a room with a student who stayed up all night playing video games. I was working seven days a week, sixteen hours a day to save money to go back to school. Before this experience, I was a bad student without motivation. After six months of working as I did, I realized that I did not want to work like this for the rest of my life. I realized that I needed an education. More importantly, now I knew why I needed an education.
If you’re reading this then I need to remind you that you are an amazingly lucky person. You are about to become one of the few in the history of the world to have a formal education. In four years you will know more and be able to do more than most people who lived on earth before you, ever imagined. You don’t have to be a genius or change the world, you will know more than past geniuses and you will change the world just by going to work everyday after graduating and maybe even before. The choices that will face you will challenge you, and making the right one or wrong one, wont matter because you will grow. I’m sure the choices already seem disorienting but by making one, and then either sticking to it or making another one, will allow you to realize yourself. You may be like me: an idealist, under a lot of parental pressure to do something that may not be right for you, but unlike me, you will have this book, to help you using my story to anticipate the challenges, to prepare for obstacles and to allow yourself to live to the fullest and to tap your fullest potential. I may not change the world, but if I can help one person be the best they can be, I will be happy with my contribution to our planet.
Why did I write this book:
As a senior in college, friends of family came to me over and over again to ask the same questions about college. They may have gone to Universities in their native countries if they are immigrants or went to college so long ago that they forgot how it used to be and can no longer give relevant advice; they are clueless as to how best to prepare their kids and how to talk to them in a way that would actually get through to them.
As many other kids today, I graduated by overcoming the many pitfalls along the way by learning from friends and from personal mistakes. So while my memory is not too rusty and my contacts have not taken their last exams, I wanted to write a little guide to college for kids and parents from the perspective of someone who did not take the traditional way there.
I begin with my story for reference sake. Feel free to skip around and read the chapters and keep it around when parts become relevant. One thing that seems always true, is that one cannot accept advice until one is ready for it. Some people however, never are.
seven year degree 