<p>before school began I posted with some tips about succeeding at ucla in both the short and long term. The post is at <a href="http://tinyurl.com/cru8w%5B/url%5D">http://tinyurl.com/cru8w</a> Now that finals are wrapping up I thought I'd repost the suggestions about the long-term things you should be doing.</p>
<p>As you probably noticed, the quarter system is like running a 100-meter dash. A dozen sprints and you're done, and believe me it comes sooner than you think! The problem is that it's easy to lose sight of the bigger picture while you're in the middle of sprinting. How do you make the best of your college years?</p>
<p>Now that you're going home exhausted (and hopefully happy with 1 quarter under your belt) here are some tips to mull over on vacation. You've mastered the day-to-day things, now's the time to make sure that you're also doing the things over the course of the academic year that make the best of your time in college.</p>
<p>1) Take charge of your life. ucla can be a large impersonal school, so you need to get involved to make it an enjoyable place. There are an almost uncountable number of options. Whether you participate in the greek system, student government, join some clubs, write for the Daily Bruin, work as a tutor or volunteer, go with friends to concerts or to watch teams compete, there are just so many ways to be active. But there is one key thing. Nobody is going to call you and ask/beg you to join their group. If you're the person who waits for someone else to make the first move you might want to consider changing this approach, because it just won't work for you at ucla. The opportunities are there galore, but you have to take the first step to discover them.</p>
<p>2) Reach out for help when needed. For better or worse, you are attending a large state U. You just aren't going to get the personal attention and focus that comes as part of the package at a small LAC. There are resources out there that can help (profs, counselors, tutors, advisors, etc) but you're going to have to go to them. People care, really they do, but they don't go around stopping people at random on bruin walk and asking how they can help. You have to go to them. You don't have to be obnoxious (this isn't NYC!), but you do have to be persistent and a self-starter. If you have questions, figure out who can help you answer them and then go see that person. If you don't know who can help you answer them, start by finding <em>that</em> answer. Your RA is a good source of advice on pointing you in the right direction. So for example if you're not sure of what you want to do when you graduate, the folks at the career center are happy to help but you can wait until a usc diploma is worth a nickel for them to call you (in other words, ain't gonna happen).</p>
<p>3) get to know some of your profs. For one thing you may need recs for grad school or an employer, and they help more if the person actually knows more about you than just the grade you got in their class. Once again, profs aren't going to invite you to stop by for a chat or to come over to dinner the way they might at a LAC. But they hold office hours, and you'd be surprised how many people NEVER go except to argue about the grading on a midterm. Plus a prof who's seen students come and go can be a good source of advice in choosing a major, preparing for a career, choosing a graduate school and getting in (they have friends from <em>their</em> grad school days at other U's), etc.</p>
<p>**4) its never too early to start thinking about what you'll do after ucla. **Sure, plenty of people <em>think</em> they know what they want. But stats show that only about 1/2 of the people who enter as engineers, for example, end up getting an engineering degree. Most students who enter college with the idea of being a pre-med don't go to med school. And sometimes people enter a field with little knowledge of what they're getting into and regret it; for example Forbes reported that 38% of the lawyers they surveyed regretted their career choice. So if you think you know what you want to do start testing that idea right away, and if you don't begin exploring some areas. You can take career testing, talk with alums in the field, get a part-time job or volunteer, do an internship, to name just a few ways. ucla has lots of resources to help you do all of this, but (have you heard this before?) you're going to have to make the effort to investigate.</p>
<p>5) get an internship. This is probably the single most important thing you can do to prepare yourself for a job after college! Yes, you read that correctly. Internships leap out at companies reviewing resumes because you have real-world experience in the area and know what you're getting into. Even in the tightest job market, a company that is hiring at all will almost always extend offers to those who have worked as interns. Think of it this way: if you interview on campus and then at the company, you've spent maybe 10 hours tops with them. An intern spends a month or a summer. Who do they know better, who do they want to take a chance on? In a tight job market you'd probably have better luck finding a job with a 3.2GPA and an internship than a 3.7 with nothing on your resume but a list of classes. There's another book I recommend -- its called Major in Success by Patrick Combs. Written in a casual tone, it offers example after example of how students parlayed internships and volunteer work into great jobs.</p>
<p>**6) approach school (and life) with an optimistic attitude. **Studies have shown that the best predictor of success in so many fields is attitude. This is based on the work by Seligman and others, names you will learn in psych classes. Want to predict which new salespeople will do best? Which 1st-year students at the US Army Military Academy will survive plebe year? An optimistic attitude is the key, and the good news is you can change yours if it isn't one of optimism. See, for example, <a href="http://www.ihhp.com/positive_think.htm%5B/url%5D">http://www.ihhp.com/positive_think.htm</a> At a large school like ucla you're going to have the same disappoinments at college students anywhere, but without the tight-knit community you might find at a smaller college. Help is out there if you look for it, but you can do a lot yourself by monitoring how you handle bad (and good) news.</p>