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    Better Than BookSmart: Undergraduate Edition
    Better Than BookSmart: Undergraduate Edition
    Better Than BookSmart: Undergraduate Edition
    Ebook141 pages1 hour

    Better Than BookSmart: Undergraduate Edition

    By A. R. Padhani

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    About this ebook

    There are tons of opportunities in college to help students stand apart, but which ones
    should you choose? How will those opportunities guide you in the right direction? And
    how can you be sure to identify opportunities as they present themselves?

    These are the questions on every success-minded college student’s mind. Better Than
    BookSmart is a resource designed to guide you through the maze. This
    conversational, straightforward book includes tips, techniques, and interviews with
    successful students. Better Than BookSmart helps identify, create, and take advantage of
    a multitude of opportunities that can help students stand above the crowd and be seen as
    great employment prospects.

    A. R. Padhani, recent college graduate and author of Better Than BookSmart, has been
    employed in areas of transportation, aeronautics, and space systems. He has experience
    with engineering, supply chain risk, and production operations. Taking advantage of
    opportunities and creating a strong network has been paramount in his success. He’s put
    together his experiences and those of his peers all over the country to help other students
    find the same success.

    Better Than BookSmart is the perfect handbook for students who want more from their
    college experience.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherA. R. Padhani
    Release dateOct 12, 2014
    ISBN9781310337482
    Better Than BookSmart: Undergraduate Edition

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      Book preview

      Better Than BookSmart - A. R. Padhani

      PREFACE

      WHO AM I? WHO IS THIS FOR? WHY AM I DOING THIS? Good questions, right? Everybody has suggestions, solutions, ideas, and unsolicited advice about how to build your career and life. One good thing about this is that it makes you ask the important questions. Who am I? Who am I doing this for? Why am I going to this college?

      Advice is good. Most times I trust those doing the advising, other times I’m adventurous enough to dribble the ball behind my back and try something different. Somewhere along the line I decided it was time to make a few decisions that fit well with the great advice I received. But I wanted to make sure those decisions gave me the right kind of space to adjust my thinking and point of view.

      We all want to be successful, duh. I’ve never met a person who said they wanted to be a failure, but this all comes with being able to define success and failure for ourselves.

      Defining success and failure is the first lesson we should all be learning. It came clear to me when I learned to ride a bike. Failure meant bloodied knees and bruises. Success meant I made it to the end of the block unscathed and happy. I wanted the unscathed and happy part every time. Looking at it in this simple way can make even the most complex experiences—like doing well in college—much more manageable. But first, you need to determine what success actually means to you.

      Let’s get back to those original questions. What am I doing? I’m presenting a few powerful tools to help you get from day one in the bicycle seat, to the end of the block and the career you want. Who am I doing this for? I’m doing this for my peers—the students who have defined success for themselves and have decided to ride toward it. Why am I doing this? Because the scrapes and bruises I got along my journey taught me a few things many of the experts won’t tell you. I’ve discovered that knowing the steps up the ladder makes it all a lot easier to get to the top. It’s not that the steps weren’t always there; they simply needed a little bright yellow paint to help follow them. These are the simple things that can make the rough road to the career you want a little easier.

      Define success for yourself and make sure you get good grades. There’s no foundation more solid than a stack of A’s. Sorry. That piece of advice doesn’t change.

      INTRODUCTION

      FROM THE MOMENT OF YOUR ORIENTATION you suspected there was more to this getting a great job and building a wonderful career thing than simply taking the right classes and getting the grades. All around you students plow through their days, some avoiding extracurricular activities to assure study time, while others slide past classes and focus on clubs and special events or parties. Who will be successful after college and who will not? After all, isn’t that the only important question?

      It might feel like a crap shoot, but there is a system that can help you accomplish all the things you care about during your student career, and get you where you want to go after graduation. And it’s far easier than you think.

      Like learning how to use the brakes on your first bike, the process of navigating through everything available to you as a student takes a little logic and some practice. Sometimes the simplest actions are the smartest, sometimes they aren’t. If you reverse your foot pressure too fast, you could fly over the handle bars. Not fun. By the same token, if you jump too far and too fast into any element of your college life, you can easily find yourself in the same wounded situation. It’s important to figure out the right pressure when braking to make a smooth stop. You start to realize that it’s a good idea to understand the terrain before riding down the road. Always take a good look around before jumping into everything you see happening around you in college. Some never climb onto the bike at all and never learn from the little bloody mistakes, but others wear a hundred bandages like a badge of honor. Neither approach is best if you want that great job after graduation.

      The right mix of friends, the right clubs to join, and the right goals to shoot for may feel random, but it’s a science that can be easily mastered. Whether you’re strictly focused on your studies, crazy for social activities that feed your likely non-major interests, or already a well rounded student, nothing is more helpful than a few simple, tried-and-true techniques that make sense for the future you want in the real world.

      This isn’t a book of tricks, it isn’t a study guide for you to read and memorize. This is a coaching handbook loaded with suggestions and how they will help you find your way to success. You’ll have to do the work. You may even have to rethink a few ideas you have about being a college student. Using these techniques to create a well rounded, balanced, and centered education will make you look great to prospective employers or a graduate school admission committee. Strap on your helmet, it’s going to be the ride of a lifetime.

      SECTION ONE: EXPANDING YOUR HORIZONS

      GET INVOLVED

      A WHEEL GETS FROM POINT A TO POINT B BECAUSE IT’S DESIGNED TO DO JUST THAT. It works the same for your education and future success. You have to design a well rounded plan to succeed.

      We’ve all had experiences that have shown us the truth about life. Wanting something and getting it are two different things. But wanting it bad enough leads to rolling our attitudes and energies toward that goal. We learn things that will take us there, adopt philosophies that connect us to that goal, and with the right amount of commitment and steam everything we want can be within our reach. Whether we want a career, a new car, or a relationship, the steps to identify, learn about, and reach for the thing we desire must happen. Call it Accomplishment 101.

      It’s really important to have this mindset and act on it in school. Even though it might seem like an environment where you’re not in control, you actually are. Shake up your ideas about student life. Realize that your destiny is in your own hands. Take a new path away from what most students do and think, and look at the whole thing with fresh eyes.

      Getting to know as many peers along with faculty and staff from all different areas of your college might seem odd. However, this small expansion in your thinking can greatly benefit you in the future. You won’t realize it right away, but many of those peers are going to help you years down the road. Some college friends are fun, others are study partners, and still others simply expand your ideas because they’re learning different things

      Understandably, it’s hard to see this when you’re focus is tomorrow’s test, but making and keeping those connections will allow you to snake your way into job positions and opportunities you never would have been able to find yourself. It’s a valuable future benefit to create strong connections now. While you’re in school, you can benefit from the social opportunities these relationships offer. Take advantage of these broadened experiences, because you never know who you’ll meet or what part they might play in your future.

      At first, with my nose deep in my books, I imagined everything outside my apartment was a dangerous distraction. But when I lifted my head and shifted my thinking, I realized that I had met a lot of people who later became successful, and in turn helped me become successful.

      While riding this high of discovery about the wider world these relationships could offer me, I learned about an opportunity to meet with major decision makers for a college of engineering project. They were looking for the student prospective and I was able to work with the dean of my college who happened to be one of the members. Just over a year later, I was able to obtain a valuable letter of recommendation

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