This post is not titled “Things You Should Do,” because these aren’t (necessarily) things you should do. Many people should not do many of the items on this list, and some of the items are exclusive, contradictory, or downright the reverse of what you should do. If your reaction to something is “I think that’s a bad idea,” then it probably is, and you probably shouldn’t do it.
- classes & professors
- attend classes you haven’t signed up for because you find them interesting
- attend classes even if the waitlist is full
- ask the professor to waive a prerequisite
- ask the professor to join a class even if its full
- drop a class that you don’t like
- take a class because you really liked the professor, even if you’re not sure about the content of the class
- cold email professors you don’t know, just asking to chat
- show up to office hours for classes you aren’t a part of, just to chat with the professor
- ask the professor questions about the things you’re not sure of
- skip class(es) for great opportunities elsewhere
- ask the professor if you can help them with anything in the class (grading, setting up assignments, editing papers, etc). professors have a long list of tasks, are perpetually behind, and encounter fairly correlated problems; if you track what problems your professors have, you can quite quickly become unreasonably useful for them
- ask professors at the beginning of the semester what things would be most important to memorize, then throw their answers into an Anki deck
- take non-credit courses or workshops in things like pottery, coding, or creative writing
- studying
- at places outside of your university:
- coffeeshops
- public libraries
- coworking spaces
- random offices, cold email them
- start a study group for the class
- ask the professor if you can announce that you’re starting a study group for the class in the class
- start a group chat to ask questions about the class. this is one that everyone loves to be added to, and sometimes it just… doesn’t happen, because nobody took the initiative to create it
- use Anki to study the things your professor said would be most important to memorize after you asked them at the beginning of the semester
- learn the content of a class by using materials that the professor doesn’t point you toward (e.g. online textbooks/videos/tutors/etc)
- hire a tutor
- hire multiple tutors
- hire a tutor purely so that you have to study for some class you hate — you might not need help, but if you're paying someone $x/h for their time, you'd better be studying
- become a tutor in a subject you want to brush up on
- use ChatGPT as a tutor
- cowork
- at places outside of your university:
- clubs
- join clubs
- join many clubs
- join many different types of clubs. shortlist: sports clubs (even intramural), art clubs, research clubs, project-based clubs, religious/cultural clubs, community service clubs, pre-professional clubs, music clubs
- show up at a club’s meeting that you’re not a part of
- stop going to a club's meetings
- completely stop without telling anyone
- tell the club leaders why you’re stopping, and what changes would make you stay
- tell the club leaders you’re considering stopping, and what changes would make you leave or stay
- ask if you can help out at the next club event
- ask this multiple times in a row
- ask what’s preventing them from letting you help out yet
- start your own club. notably, schools will often throw hundreds or even thousands of dollars of funding at you to start a club with a few friends, and you can do a lot of cool things by saying “hey, I run [x] club, could you [ask]?” (h/t Joey)
- join clubs
- career capital
- evaluate not just “will this be good for my career” but “is this among the best options given the limited resources (time, money, energy, etc) that i have” — and also “is there something else i can do with these resources that’d give me more career capital” or alternatively “is doing this in line with following rules that i endorse upon reflection?”
- actually utilize the alumni center — you can find alumni in ~any industry, and most major companies, and many are happy & eager to chat with you
- find events oriented to the career you want to go into
- attend them
- volunteer for them
- offer to run or help out at the next one
- organize events for undergrads interested in your career — the bar for “casual meetup for pre-____ students!” is pretty low, and you can probably get some money from the relevant department for food & drink
- money
- apply to random grants and fellowship programs (1, 2)
- get a job
- get a weekend job
- get a part time job
- get a job that means you rub shoulders with the types of people you want to be rubbing shoulders with — e.g. working at a golf course, or at the registration desk of a google office
- ask the people doing the job that you want to do if you can also do that job right now
- get a paid internship
- friends
- stay in your room 24/7 and make no friends
- make friends with the first people you meet, even if you don’t like them, and then never find new friends (h/t Joey)
- call your old friends out of the blue, especially the ones from high school that you haven’t talked to for a while. imagine if they called you out of the blue, you’d love it. you can just… do that to them.
- have 1-1s with friends
- join a frat
- don’t join a frat
- offer a friend to swap dorms for a weekend
- offer a friend who goes to a different school to swap dorms for a weekend
- offer a friend who goes to a different school to have them stay at your dorm for one weekend, then you’ll stay at their dorm for another
- misc
- optimize for:
- your degree
- making friends
- finding (a) partner(s)
- career capital
- take time off
- seriously, you can just… take a semester off, or a year off, or more. this is much more common than you realize, since there’s a huge amount of selection bias: you never see the students who take time off, because they’re not going to be campus.
- drop out entirely
- decorate your dorm rationally
- use the gym — there will be ~no other time in your life during which you’ll have free access to a great gym whenever you want
- optimize for:
- intentionally & rapidly try out tons of various life improvements — you have a fairly regimented environment that, by default, controls for a number of confounding variables
- leave campus (h/t Joey)
- stay on campus
- create art — this is one of the few times in your life you have access to kilns, or high-quality paints, or a glass-blowing shop, etc (h/t Joey)
- write a thesis under an advisor (h/t Joey)
- get involved with school admin — not just student union, but you can, e.g., do informal, independent research and make recommendations about dining, sustainability, etc. also, there are sometimes grants within schools, like sustainability grants from the administration. (h/t Joey)
- most universities have pretty great art available for free
- travel to random places on a weekend, stay with a friend/relative
- make a personal website
- start a blog
Inspired by this post and this post. Some other classic posts on college: What I Wish I Knew in College, College advice for people who are exactly like me, 17-20: a Retrospective on Four Years in College, Fury and Freedom: Four Years at Amherst College, Escaping High School (that one’s about high school, but much of it applies to college).
Note: there are a few things you can do in college that I don’t feel comfortable writing about publicly. Namely, drugs (including alcohol) and dating.
Use it to identify and direct strategies / interventions / training / accommodation you may be able to make use of; and if you get a diagnosis, as ammunition in advocating for accommodations. Gain awareness of your strengths and limitations so that you can tailor your course load to reasonable expectations, and ask the appropriate staff for any accommodations you think would be helpful and reasonable: some examples include stepping out of class for short breaks, having some object like a computer or book that is helpful, assistance with the 'group' part of group projects, additional written rules for classroom etiquette and logistics, allowance to record or record/transcribe lectures for personal use and review, extra time if you need it for physically written tests, a typing device to replace physical writing in some circumstances, or whatever you personally could use.
Some of the communication skills that help and you may find are missing, relative to the general population, can be trained, but the people they come naturally to don't necessarily know they exist, so you might not have identified "what was missing" earlier. Likewise, knowing what of your communication skills don't automatically "translate" outside the people who get you. Networking specifically with people who "get you" may let you work the double empathy problem more to your benefit also; some fields do have a high concentration of ASD. (Computer science, engineering both come to mind, but certainly not just those.) But you'll still likely want to learn to work with companies with non-expert protective membranes when you are actually looking for a job in the field.
If you have sensory issues, understanding them can help with adjusting your environment to ease up on your stress levels. If mind/body connection is making you clumsy, taking up occupational therapy, sports, martial arts or similar physical coordination practice might help and help in other areas.
Try to avoid treating the wrong thing. This is a bit trial and error, but for example, I had basically no useful response to prescribed antidepressants, and neither some of my peers. Treating tension from being at heightened alertness, and therefore stress, to the world is much more effective.
If your communication difficulties include something like selective mutism, learning to utilize augmented and alternative communication effectively can help keep you conversing even when your literal voice is not available. You may not recognize this difficulty immediately if you can usually talk with effort. I did not recognize it fully myself until working 8-hour cashier shifts and finding my voice simply did not do anything eventually, but in hindsight, often feeling like you're wading through increasingly thick molasses to converse and not being able to say something in stressful situations ...
Losing language entirely is a bit more extreme than that, and not something I am too familiar with, though obviously I wouldn't be writing much if I'm shut down or in a more panicked meltdown. That's more a matter of priorities, though, and needing to decompress before doing literally anything. If you happen to have this issue check for advice from someone who is sometimes nonverbal (as in, losing language, not losing voice like the mutism I mentioned earlier) if there's something helpful to do about it.
... I have no idea what would have stopped me from something like self-sabotaging by underreporting the work I contributed on a group project; but having allied advocates who could speak up for me when I stopped being able to say anything directly was very helpful there. Making use of the services of a counselor can also help with getting past those kind of mental blocks, and the university will often make those services available, though of course not all mental health service providers have equal skill and familiarity with whatever you're working on. It can help just to push in the direction of solving problems; if you don't get good results that's an update at least.