Common real-world skills we learned at college, in or out of the classroom.
- Parallel parking: If you’re from the city this might not apply to you, or if you don’t have a car. For those of us from the suburbs or country with a car on campus, we learned to parallel park soon after arriving to college. This skill comes in handy often when travelling home, to the city, or on vacation. It also widens your parking possibilities in any situation.
- Tolerance for extreme temperatures: As the weather gets colder, we adapt to walking across campus in the cold, with the wind blowing through our layers of jackets and long-johns. We learn in our first semesters to bundle up and forget about being cute.
- Independence: Whether you were looking forward to this or not, you become more independent in college. You have to if you go to college more than about an hour away from home. You (hopefully) learn how to do your laundry, budget your money, clean your room without being prompted, and study and do homework on your own free will.
- Time management: Sometimes, it takes people their whole college careers to get this down, but everyone learns throughout their college life how important time management is. Some people know the importance of it and still choose to manage their time badly. You have to balance classes, studying, work, friends, sleep, eating, and mental health. Usually this “balance” involves giving up one or more of these things, which one depends on your priorities.
- Multi-tasking: You may have been good at this before college, but you’ll be a master by the time you graduate. Multitasking can look like many things: eating while you work, study, or walk to class, taking homework to work, or considering meeting with a study group to be hanging out with friends.
We learn a lot in college that may have nothing to do with our degrees, but these skills or pieces of knowledge are just as important as the information we learn in class. What are some skills you’ve learned in college that have become useful in real life? What are you most thankful for?