Kozlowski: The most valuable lessons college can teach you

After spending all that money and taking on all that debt to attend a University, you’re… After spending all that money and taking on all that debt to attend a University, you’re probably asking yourself, “What did I really learn?”

As I descend into senioritis, I’ve started to ponder this question largely to avoid focusing on something productive. But in all seriousness, this is a good time to internalize some of the lessons I’ve learned, because they’re easy to forget later on. Aging means distancing yourself from your past experiences; I’m continually amazed by how many adults forget what they had learned when they were younger. When I’m old, I might have influence, responsibilities and a couple of teenagers I don’t understand to distract me. So I hope you’ll indulge my open letter to myself 30 years in the future, which will ensure that I don’t forget the important things I learned in college.

The lesson I most hope to retain is that teenage problems aren’t stupid. I coach speech at a high school, and I marvel at how much people worry about colleges — I, for one, turned out to be perfectly happy at a school I wasn’t initially even considering. Other miscellaneous teenage angst makes similarly little sense at first. Upon mature reflection, however, I realize I felt such angst as well. It seems pretty insignificant now, but at the time my problems were the most important things that had ever happened to me. I just hadn’t lived much of my life yet. Adolescent issues might not matter much in the cosmic scheme of things, but your average high schooler lacks the experience, perspective and hormonal control to realize that. In light of this, a lot of teenagers’ concerns are real and valid and shouldn’t be dismissed as “silly” by adults.

I also hope I don’t forget two lessons by dint of becoming more influential. After achieving something wonderful, we often glow with satisfaction and say, “I did it all by myself. I don’t owe anybody anything.” Wrong. Sure, there are some things you can accomplish completely independent of anybody else’s efforts. But when it comes to lifetime achievements, nobody ever got where they are without owing somebody. You could have phenomenal talent and a great work ethic, but it might take somebody else, be it a professor or a manager, to recognize that talent and drive and either help you develop it or direct you to someone who can. This could entail something as simple as obtaining a letter of reference or introducing yourself to someone. Yes, you can take credit for all the great things you did, but many of them were only made possible by other people.

The second lesson is that being rude to your retainers reflects poorly on you. For instance, someone who’s nice to you but rude to the waiter at a restaurant is not a nice person. I remember meeting a University official at a grip-and-grin type session, wherein this official introduced me to some student VIPs but not the nondescript assistants surrounding him, implying that the latter were background noise, no more significant than decorations. When the official departed it left us in an awkward position. Conversely, I’ve been in situations in which I was somebody’s retainer, fully aware of my own insignificance, and I always felt grateful whenever my boss introduced me to someone. I was also very impressed that the CEO of Bayer took time out of his schedule to meet with the lowly summer interns. If I do ever end up as somebody’s boss or other official, I hope I’ll remember this.

Finally, I’ve sat through a number of meetings in college during which I either didn’t understand what was going on or otherwise had a burning question that I was sure would make me look silly. And yet I’ve found that what might seem like a stupid question may in fact be a good one. Oftentimes, people develop tunnel vision, fixating on particular details but losing sight of others. Until those details are brought to their attention by a simple question that they can’t answer, they may continue to ignore them. Alternately, there might be all sorts of very specific details that don’t necessarily cohere into a bigger picture. Sometimes nobody asks anyone to do this, as it’s assumed that if you know the details, you must know the larger picture. So although it might not be a good idea to blurt out what you think is a dumb question in front of a large audience, it’s often worth asking somebody at some point. Your question might be smarter than you realize.

And by the way, all of the most valuable stuff I learned just happened to come from outside the classroom.

Write kozthought@gmail.com.