10 things I wish I knew before graduating

In the moment, college could feel like a never-ending grind. But like a lot of people say, your time in college really does fly by — to the point where graduation can be a blindsiding event. For me, even if I had some sort of work secured, and knew the general direction I wanted to head in life, there were still many things that I had to either learn the hard way or figure out on the fly.

The first thing I wish I knew was that the finish line is not apparent and ever-changing. Up until college graduation, life is a series of shorter sprints towards a larger goal. You spend a standardized amount of time in elementary school then middle school then high school, then for most people, college. In college you’ll finish in 3-5 years for undergrad or maybe in a decade if you do additional schooling, but in the real world, there aren’t any set stops for when you’re done. You can bounce around jobs, having never been at any one job for more than a year or two, or you can stay at the same job for 50. Depending on various other factors, you can achieve everything you’ve ever wanted in just 10 years and retire at 32, or you can continue to work to achieve even more. Everyone's individual situation is different. You can ask 10 different people what their definition of success is, and you can very well get 10 different answers. What does this mean? This means that you can chart your own path, whether that's exploring working with startups, working for a larger company, or continuing more schooling. Something that I would like to emphasize here is that once you do chart your path forward, things will change during your journey through life. Be prepared to potentially steer away from that initial path in order to pursue newly found passions. You are not a failure by any means if the first path you pursue doesn't end up being the right one for you.

I wish I had thought more about the amount of decisions I’ll be able to make post-graduation, like where to work, where to live, who to spend time with, and how to spend my money. I feel as if throughout college, the objective is to find something that you can sustainably do post-graduation, and everything kinda revolved around that decision. But in reality, things were a lot more fluid than I would've ever expected, especially now in a time of remote work and regular meetings that simply happen over video calls. For example, if your job doesn't require you to come into any sort of office, where would you want to be? Closer to your family? But what if rents are too high in those areas? Closer to the actual office? But you don't know anybody in that city? 'Where to physically live' is one of many decisions that I feel as if I had always just defaulted to wherever I am working at that moment. When facing big decisions like where to live, I'd advise you to take a step back and think about the type of person that you are. Are you someone that stays mostly at home anyways? Are you someone that loves to go out consistently to meet new people? These kinds of questions for any context can really help to frame your mind when choosing between options that all seem reasonable. And when actually determining if an option is reasonable, that's when budgeting comes in.

I feel like most people agree that throughout college, you're most likely going from paycheck to paycheck with whatever sort of influx of money you receive to survive. While this may have worked when most costs are front-loaded to the beginning of every quarter or semester, real life brings on a lot of extra expenses like potential health costs, utilities, paying off any debt, and also retirement. And while this is something that I am still gaining a better grasp of, I wish that I had started to set up some sort of budgeting plan right away. It's great when you get that first substantial paycheck, but it is not so great when your bank account surprisingly gets depleted and you're worried about whether or not you can pay for rent. Luckily, we live in an age of great software tools, so there's great free money-management apps like Mint out there. There's also paid budgeting apps if you want even more detail and auto-tracking like CoPilot, which I'll link down below if you're interested. My link will get you a free month of the service to check it out. In general, tech salaries are getting fairly substantial, but on the flip-side, most of the responsibilities of saving for retirement are now put on individual employees. So if you are working and making a substantial income, make sure that you're also thinking ahead towards saving for retirement, because you don't want to be working when you're old just because you neglected to save now. Because of inflation, I actually don't recommend just setting money aside in a savings account that will most likely have really low interest rates.

Instead, I recommend investing, which is the next topic that I wish I knew more about before I graduated college. A good way to start investing today is by downloading an app like Public, which I'll also link down below so you all can get a free stock worth up to $1000. With investing, I feel as if the biggest hurdle is just getting started. Personally, I've put this off for a while, and haven't really started investing until the last couple of months. But honestly, once you start, it actually gets addicting. You'll start questioning bigger purchases and comparing those purchase to the amount of shares of S&P 500 stock you could've gotten. In the grand scheme of things, the stock market historically rises in the long run. This fact, coupled with compounding interest, means that if you start investing early, your money will passively continue to grow substantially decade after decade.

My next topic revolves around dealing with health within the context of work. I feel like during school, there's a set procedure for when health gets in the way. Teachers are human beings and can help with extensions or tutors or other resources. In a lot of cases, you can even go to one of the health departments of the school, and they can help ensure that your professors give you the time to recover. However, as I learned the hard way this year, health problems get a lot more complicated when you're dealing with them in the real world. This past March, I thought I would be missing one day of work, which was the day that I went to the emergency room. But I ultimately ended up missing a couple of weeks, where even if my mind was somewhat working, I could not physically type. And at the time, because I was working as a contractor, I didn't have any hours to log during those weeks. To make matters worse, I one of my streams of income is this channel, and I couldn't get myself to sit in front of a camera until at least I knew for sure that I wasn't going to die. Health is still the number one priority, but the harsh reality is that health care does cost a substantial amount of money, and that's not even bringing up the hospital bill aspect of things. For these reasons, I would recommend that you also ensure that you have a rainy day fund of at least a couple months of expenses. This way, if the truly unexpected happens, you won't have to put yourself into a big hole in order to make it through.

The next couple of things that I wish I knew revolved around friends. If you've been following me on Instagram, you'll know that some of my best friends from MIT came to visit me in Philly during the Fourth of July. At MIT, we'd see each other almost everyday, but now that we live in various states across the country, these meetups have to be very intentional and very planned. People naturally have different work schedules and different amounts of flexibility, so these trips have to also be planned far in advanced if you hope to have most of the people you want to actually show up. It's an instant change that happens as soon as people start moving away from one another, but those meetups are definitely possible. Be careful, however, because although you keep ties with certain people, months and years could easily go by without actually meeting up, so I'd recommend to be deliberate and intentional with any planning, in order to make these meet ups happen.

Staying on the topic of friends, there's also a likely chunk of friends that will slowly drift away. On the bright side, those connections are usually maintained for any future meetups if there wasn't any bad blood between any of you. But in everyday life, you’ll need to find new sources of support, or continue to nourish the strong relationships you currently have because those interactions will become even more concentrated than ever before. After college, your inner circle instantly shrinks, while your remaining connections are forced to get stronger. This isn't necessarily bad or good, but it just means that you'll have to put in effort to cultivate these relationships as all people involved have to deal with their own lives.

My next point has to do with staying active now that you may not have a gym in walking distance, or even classes to walk to. Staying active is still very important beyond are college years, but it's another one of those things that you really have to be deliberate with. You can very easily get caught in the routine of sitting all day at a desk and then sitting for the rest of the day on the couch. Personally, to break this up, I have recently been taking daily walks with Michelle at around lunch time to ensure that I do get up at some point midday. Then after dinner, I try to do some sort of at home workout that gets my heart rate going. I feel like I would've treasured those moments playing pickup basketball with the boys a bit more if I realized that my playing a couple times a week would turn into playing pickup a couple times a year. I definitely hope to change that in the near future, but everything just needs to be a lot more deliberate. So if it makes you more accountable, put in your calendar set times where you'll be able to go for a walk or workout in some way. Because in general, a healthy mind and body will bleed into the rest of your life in a positive way, guaranteed.

The stresses of life are much more than the stresses of college, but the lessons learned in college can translate over to help you in the future. Throughout college, you may question some of the classes you're taking, or the policies that are there to keep you accountable, but in general, a lot of the lessons I learned from school didn't directly involve any sort of lecture. In school, you learn things like how to manage your time, how to make certain adult decisions, and how to balance your social and work lives. If I knew this before, I feel as if I would've had an even more optimistic view of my college experience than I already had. It's just one of those things that if you feel like you're getting more value out of an experience, you'll work overall be happier and live more in the moment.

The last thing I'm going to talk about involves something that I thought I understood while in college, but now seeing it first hand, my understanding has gotten a lot deeper. And that's the fact that being able to shut off your mind and work responsibilities after work is a luxury in its own right. What I mean by this is that if you are working a standard 9-5 job, you won't have any assignments due at midnight or essays to write at home or exams to study for. You can simply relax and proceed to do whatever it is you want to. Having worked for both the standard 9-5 corporate job, and the almost 24/7 startup life, understanding these nuances could also help with deciding the career or academic path you choose. This is why although I love working with startups, it's definitely not for everyone. People who work in startups do have the potential to obtain prominent positions within a company fairly quickly, while on the other hand, people who work at more established companies have the benefits of paid time off, set schedules, and fairly consistent workloads. So again, this isn't any sort of knock against startups or corporate jobs, it's just a nuance that I hadn't fully grasped before.