Take these small steps in college for a big career later

Take these small steps in college for a big career later Back-to-school time isnt just about your coursework. Its also about your future. With that in mind, here are eight steps you can take at the beginning of the college year to lay the groundwork for your career. Follow them and you may just do justice to the amount of time you spend sitting in a classroom. 1. Dont stress about your major. College teaches you how to think. If youre good at thinking and learning in any given subject, youll be prepared to do the same in the workforce. You wont be an expert at anything after college thats what grad school is for. So just pick a major and get decent grades. Also realize that youre going to change careers at least three times in your life anyway, so having a major thats relevant to all your future careers is virtually impossible. 2. Recognize that law school can be a crutch. Its scary to be a good writer and good thinker and have no idea what youre going to do with your life. But that isnt necessarily a sign that you need to go to law school. A huge number of people go to law school for misguided reasons, so be sure you know precisely what you want to do with your career before pursuing that JD. Otherwise, the loans youll have taken to get it will make your second thoughts about being a lawyer a first-class financial disaster. 3. Help your parents organize their network. Sure, everyone tells you to network in order to get a great job, but who are you going to network with? Your fraternity brothers? Of course not. Their parents, however, are a different story. Everyones parents have friends, and the charm of the baby boomers is that they want to be involved in every little aspect of their kids lives. So get your parents to put all their contacts into a tool like LinkedIn. That way, you can go through the list and systematically network for your own benefit. 4. Join the cheerleading squad. Really. Cheerleaders are great salespeople. Its probably self-selecting after all, introverts dont run onto the football field at halftime and jump around. But when companies recruit at colleges, they often cater to cheerleaders in the same way that they cater to athletes. Both types are high-performers in the workplace, so join a team to do well in your career and, yes, the cheerleading squad counts as a team. 5. Make time to read Getting Things Done. True, you wont get graded on this assignment in school. But you will in life. The way to reach your goals is to keep yourself working productively toward them. Productivity is a skill, and in the adult world youll be competing with the samurais of productivity, so get started on building your skills by reading David Allens Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity. 6. Learn your strengths. One of the best ways to find meaningful, fulfilling work is to understand what your strengths are. Theres no single job thats right for you, but there is a single type of job the type that allows you to be your best self by leveraging your best traits. So use college to  discover your strengths  and practice applying them consciously. That way, when its time, matching them to a job will  be second nature to you. 7. Take a class in positive psychology. The best way to make a happy career for yourself is to know what really makes you happy. And heres a newsflash it probably isnt your career itself, but the general level of optimism you have. This is what youll learn in a  positive psychology class. If one is available at your college, itll provide you with the basis for defending your decisions to your parents about things like taking time off to travel, getting bad grades so you can start a business in your dorm room, and following your girlfriend to  Idaho  instead of going to grad school. 8. Learn to be vulnerable. When your career demands that you lead, or inspire, or even just connect with the people around you, the best way to do so is to show your vulnerabilities. Not all of them, and certainly not the most pathetic ones. But some. Because the only way to connect with people for real is to open yourself up a bit. Dont be the big man or woman on campus be someone whos approachable and authentic. Its not easy. First you have to know something about who you truly are, and then you have to project that true self to others. This is the hardest thing to learn in life, so start in college and you wont be lost later in life.