What I Learned from University

过而不改，是谓过矣 — Confucius

I am currently a senior student at a university in China. Since my school doesn’t offer any courses in the final year, I am now studying on my own at home. In a sense, my college years are already coming to an end. But when I look back on the past three years, I realize that I made some mistakes—lessons, one might say.

Let me start with my situation. At university, I always attended classes diligently, completed my assignments, and took exams. My GPA ranked me in the top 10% of my year. And then? That was it. Last semester, when I went to the job market to look for an internship, I found that I had almost no opportunities. I still needed to learn many extra skills and go through several internships at smaller companies before even having a chance at a top-tier internship.

Now let me talk about my mistakes.

I had already sensed back in freshman year that standardized grades weren’t very useful, but I didn’t expect them to be almost completely meaningless. Companies don’t even pay attention to your GPA in interviews. What really matters, as I’ve come to understand, is doing projects (for example, being active in open-source communities like GitHub), publishing papers, and getting internships (very few of my classmates sought internships).

What frustrates me is that, in some ways, school courses actually got in the way of doing the things that really matter. I once tried to engage in some part-time research. But because of classes and attendance requirements, I could only work on research during class hours or after class in my spare time. I hated both options. I disliked sitting in class with the teacher talking while I tried to do my own work—it meant divided attention and I could never fully concentrate. And I didn’t like working during my free time either; my brain needs rest.

After a period of reflection and self-doubt, I realized that I could do better in some aspects moving forward.

I must make sure that what I’m doing right now is truly valuable. I need to focus on what is truly important (let standardized study go to hell), which often means facing both huge risks and huge rewards. As Taleb wrote in Skin in the Game, nothing can be achieved without “shared risk.” Take publishing papers or starting a business as examples: within a year, one might publish a Nobel-level paper or build a publicly listed company (of course, one might also fail). But a year of school study gives you nothing—other than a useless first-place ranking and the stress that comes with it. As I said above, for me right now, the useful things are publishing papers, doing projects, and finding internships.

I also need to communicate more with people three to five years older than me, listen to their advice, and learn about the pitfalls that lie ahead.

Of course, I won’t dwell on this setback forever. By my own estimation, I’m only about one semester behind the most advanced peers of my age. I will take this experience as a lesson, learn from it, and avoid making the same mistakes again.