Selecting friends
College friends have the most influence on each other because you will become more like the people you spend the most time with. As student, you should select your friends carefully because they can affect your learning, your grade, and consequently how success or failure you will become. To achieve your educational goals, you need to surround yourself with friends who are there to study, who have clear career goals. This is also true for boyfriend or girl friend in romantic relationships.
First year college students often do not know how to select friends carefully. They find friends via their interests rather than something else. If they like videogames, they find friends who play videogames; if they like movies, they find friends who like movies or know something about movies stars; if they like to party, they find friends who also like to go to party etc. Young people often get easily distracted by these interests and forget that they go to college to get educated, to learn and building a career for the future. To find someone who can help you to study, to share your dream with, and to encourage each other to achieve the education goals than you will need to be more selective because these people are hard to find.
The goal of having good friends in school is to help you to improve your learning. Being with friends who are studious allows you to develop the same skills that make them successful. The change happens through exchange of ideas, sharing information and study habit as you admire them for their determination, for their knowledge and skills, for the ethics that they live by, and for their efforts to achieve success not only in school, but also in their life.
It is important to look for people who are proactive by having a career plan, someone who know what they want in life, and someone who set goals to work toward and find a way to accomplish them. These are signs of maturity and determination which are rare among young people. You may want to look for people who are passionate about certain area, people who are constantly exploring and learning, who have many interests and enjoy sharing what they have learned with others. These are signs of people who would achieve great things. You may want to look for people who love to read, especially having a broad knowledge about technology trends as they can help you on your career advice, help you set your direction and achieve your goals. Spending more time with these kinds of people will not only provide you with a better way to achieve your educational goals but it will help you to establish a good relationship that may last beyond college and could be friends for life.
Sources
- Blogs of Prof. John Vu, Carnegie Mellon University