Crowdsourcing: What I Wish I Knew.

Mark Twain was on to something when he said, “Don’t let schooling get in the way of your education.”

That spirit informs the annual Student Guide (see insert). It is stuffed with resources, activities and lists on everything from epic hikes to affordable food, but not much classroom learning. It echoes a theme running through the lessons that appear here: Don’t worry too much about the syllabus. Seize the experience.

The Weekly asked its bumper crop of summer interns and friends of the paper on Facebook what they wish they knew going into college – even if they haven’t been yet. Here’s what they came back with.

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Your major isn’t that important. Study what you love and what you’re good at; you learn more if you excel, no matter what the subject is and if it has “real-world” applications.

TOO MUCH partying, working and being a good student doesn’t work. If you want that great job, stick to studying, get your degree.

When given the opportunity to either study or go out with friends, choose to go out with friends. You have from 2am-8am to finish that paper. Enjoy the social element of college.

College is without a doubt the best four years of your life. ENJOY THEM! I would give anything to go back in time!

Don’t use the credit cards they send you by the boatload. If you know you’re going to work your way through school, take the time to get a certificate to put to use while you finish your first degree. That way you can work as a nail tech, dental assistant or CNA instead of at a lower-paying job like a lot of students do.

GO OUT OF YOUR COMFORT ZONE to interact with people different from yourself! You will learn more than you knew possible about the world and yourself.

I wish I had known how important it is to talk to upperclassmen! Ask them (even if you don’t know them) about classes, clubs and their favorite things to do around town.

That all of my training in the arts would prepare me for ANYTHING life threw at me. Never used chemistry or biology, but thinking outside the box and looking for creative solutions for mundane problems – priceless!

Pay off your loans.

I wish I would have traveled internationally BEFORE I went to college. I backpacked Europe after college and it opened my worldview. If I had done this before college, I would have studied harder and been more serious about choosing my major because I would have realized sooner how expansive the world is. That I could find a place that I fit. Coming from a small town and small high school, I took things for granted. I did not realize what a gift my education was. Getting out and seeing the world shows you that anything is possible. So go home and make the best choices you can. This allows you to live your life in the best possible way!

Join clubs.

Try out for an intramural sport.

DO EVERYTHING.

Don’t be in such a hurry to finish your degree that you overload yourself with 18-20 credits every semester. Having a huge course load often means you won’t get as much out of your education, and you won’t have time for the friendships that will enrich your life both socially and professionally. Also, gain practical experience in your profession(s) of interest as soon as possible. No one is impressed by a bachelor’s degree anymore, it’s your experience that will set you apart from your peers.

Reaching out to agencies and workplaces that employ students is a great way to start, as is visiting the college’s career resource center early in your college career.

Apply early for summer internships in your field of interest!

Learn to COOK AND CLEAN.

Build a network and use the time in college to build make connections that will be useful when job-seeking is a must. College is filled with opportunities to do that. This applies to introverts too; in fact, it applies especially to introverts. The earlier you start, the more comfortable with it you’ll get.

MAKE FRIENDS with people who work hard and push each other to be better.

Take time to explore the city. Get off campus more often and explore what your surroundings have to offer. Tag along with people who are doing fun things around town that you haven’t tried before.

There are a bunch of different websites to buy or rent your books rather than resorting to the school bookstore, which always tends to be excessively expensive.

If you aren’t familiar with www.bls.gov, there’s a good chance that you are wasting your money.

Make the most out of summer. Get an internship, do a summer research program. A lot of opportunities are available exclusively to undergrads, and you can’t take advantage of them after graduation. Many might even be funded or pay a stipend. Look at organizations in your field or local businesses, and ask your professors or department heads for ideas. It may prove to be invaluable after graduation when you’re entering the job market.

Keep in touch with PROFESSORS with whom you have a personal relationship.

Learn how to develop SMART (specific, measurable, action-oriented, realistic and time-bound) goals. I work at the Center for Advising, Career & Student Success at CSUMB and help students develop a plan of action for their goals, whether academic, personal or career-related!

I didn’t go, so my answer is that I wish I’d known how important it would be.

NOT EVERYONE came from a similar background or circumstance as moi.

Study abroad. If you relocate, you can collect unemployment and go to school. I was silly and found a job before I relocated. I ended up working full time and going to school full time while everyone else collected unemployment and focused on school.

I wish I had more of an idea of a CAREER DIRECTION.

There are things to do here. There’s a party scene, a music scene, an art scene. People come to CSUMB and think Monterey is boring. Show them that it’s not. The good food, the cool people, etc.

I’m not sure if it would have changed anything, but I did not know that one could go directly to a specialty school (like private law schools) without obtaining a bachelor’s degree first. I also should have talked with an academic counselor prior to registering for classes. They could have explained the little things like the distance between my courses on campus better and which classes would be best for a freshman.

SAVE MONEY FOR BEER. That s**t’s expensive when you have a limited income.

If you’re looking at the book list and you don’t think you’re going to read all the books for the class: DO NOT BUY THE BOOKS.

If you can get a part-time job in food service, do. Bartending and/or waiting tables is one of those universal skills with high income potential to “fall back on” (or help bide time before the “right” full-time position is available). The customer service skills gained will help your interactions with people from all walks of life, and will apply to any career you pursue. When I was in my first post-college management position, I was in charge of bartenders who made more money than I did! When I changed career directions, no one wanted to hire a rookie 30-year-old bartender. If I’d had the experience earlier… ? I own my own business now. But having part-time experience in tipping positions would have made periods of career transition much less difficult.

I just picked some stuff I was kinda interested in. NOTHING REALLY SPOKE TO ME as a career or long-term pursuit, and I lasted only one semester.

I wish I’d had a plan going in. I think someone committing the time and resources ought to have a goal in mind. However, I learned a lot about mind-altering substances that have served me well over the years, so there’s that.

Don’t be scared of the price tags even of the priciest schools. The more expensive schools often have more money to give, and can turn out to be as affordable (or even more affordable) than state schools.

I wish I knew having a job and going to college at the same time was a huge mistake. There’s not enough time to get the right education if you have to pay for your own food.

I really wish I’d known what $160,000 was. That it is not a joke, it is REAL MONEY, and that student loans do not go away, even if you do not pay attention to them.

I wish I knew myself. There are a litany of things I would have done differently if I had been actively checking in with who I am, what I believe, what I think and how I process information, nourishment, and stimuli. As it stands, college was an experience I nearly died from, and is an embarrassing waste of a lot of people’s time and energy including my own.

Probably knowing more about finances and economics. Being involved in a program such as the arts, college kind of dismisses those realities. Taking even a course or two in economics would have been helpful.

I wish I knew that learning to write computer code was going to become most sought-after skill in the decades to come. I also wish I knew what the Internet was, and that in some archaic form it already existed.

I would have gotten to know more of my CLASSMATES and not just my dorm/roommate friends. I was always sitting in the FRONT ROW focused on the teacher and the lesson. I wish I knew to network more in my classes with my fellow classmates.

Loans! Everyone tells you to go to college so you can get a job. But they don’t tell you if you get a loan, you’ll spend many, many, many years after you get that job to paying it off.

It took me a while to realize that the guys who had frequent dates were not necessarily more successful per attempt, but they didn’t take rejection as seriously and therefore tried to get dates more often. If your success rate is 1 in 10 and you ask 10 girls for a date in one day, you will have a date by the evening.

I wish I knew how to BUDGET. Both money and time.

I wish I would have known how to talk to women. I think it would have made the social aspects of college a lot easier.

That it doesn’t dictate what you will do later in life because you will gravitate toward what you want or need to do at the moment you want and need to do it, and not be stuck in a course decided by your 18-year-old self.

I wish I had known that it would be over far too soon. I wish I had made friends at CSUMB and maybe been a little less uptight and less focused on classes. I look back and I have a degree, but I have no friends from college. I am not even sure I made an impact on anyone (other than my teachers). I am not even sure my classmates knew I existed.

How hard it would be to go back and try to get a DEGREE that I didn’t finish when I was young. There just doesn’t ever seem to be time.

At Sonoma State I was a different person than who I was when I attended CSUMB (where I got my degree). There I took classes I was interested in, I tried out for the cheerleading squad as a mascot, I was a DJ on the campus radio station, I was a writer for the school newspaper. I knew no fear until it all came crashing down around me and I was forced to move back home. If I had it all to do over again, I wish I had known that perseverance was the key to getting the degree, and being broken by the system wasn’t, and trying to accomplish it the completely opposite way at a new school was the wrong way. I wish I had remained true to myself and made some friends.

That professors are people too, and for the most part they are people who could be doing something else for better pay, except they’ve chosen to be your teachers. Act like you feel “chosen” and you’ll be amazed at what happens.

I wish I hadn’t been so hung up on going to a popular FOUR-YEAR UNIVERSITY. There are some great COMMUNITY COLLEGES out there that will save you a ton of money and give you the opportunity to better know yourself and your interests.

Volunteer as a tutor in local schools or for underclassmen. It’s a great way to feel good, meet people, and demonstrate to potential employers your heart is in the right place and your interests extend past campus.

I wish I would have known that the rich really are different than you and me. Being a working-class kid at a wealthy school brought with it a host of issues that I never expected.

ASK questions. Ask questions. Ask…

Don’t distance yourself from your professors. Make friends and remember names for later in life. Do ask for help. Take advantage of every minute; you will never get them back.

I wish I would have known that some of the most important relationships and connections of my life were going to be made in college. I also wish I would have been better at keeping in touch with people who are no longer with us.

I wouldn’t have dropped classes just because they started at 9am.