Non-Academic Accomplishments To Be Scored Before Graduation
We live in a highly developed world, which means that information is more accessible than ever. Even if you choose to drop out of university or simply pursue another path than an academic one, you can still access online tutorials that will teach you whatever you choose to learn about. Besides that, social media is also becoming a predominant part of the modern human’s life. Those factors have led to a loss of attention on useful accomplishments that we should try to achieve before going into the labor market.
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Character development
Your character continues to develop and change throughout your life, but it’s really important to get in touch with it in every phase of your journey in order to know what goals to set and what to expect of yourself. You can do so by constantly going out of your comfort zone, and trying out new activities or going to an unfamiliar event when you get invited to one. It is hard to get used to doing stuff that you are not totally familiar with at first, but you can train yourself to detach personal feelings from thinking rationally about potential outcomes. No matter what the outcome is, negative or positive, it will either advance your personal development to the better or teach you a lesson on what to avoid in the future. With that being said, all outcomes will probably guide you to discover what you like and don’t like which will eventually benefit your personal journey to develop a character.
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Becoming an expert with the 21st century skills
Whether you know what professional occupations you would like to get a chance to explore or not, learning the basics of the 21st century skills is highly important to acquire. Like I mentioned before, social media is a big part of our lives now and we simply cannot ignore the fact that having those skills will favor us in both personal and professional fields. You have to learn everything from how to send appropriate emails to knowing how to operate a computer. Even learning a new language can be extremely useful and look impressive on your resumé. While you can learn skills like these at university, it is worth signing up for extracurricular courses that teach email etiquette, or why not take a computer programming course? If you are not able to sign up for courses that require you paying a tuition fee, you can always turn to learn from good old Youtuber experts. Trust that you have an unlocked potential within you and inspiration will follow.
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Social skills
Maybe one of most important skills is being able to master social skills. In a technological world, social skills are slowly fading away. But it is important to balance technological skills as well as in person- social skills. To become successful at life, whether personal, academic or professional, you have to be able to connect with people on a deeper level than just nodding and agreeing with everything they ask and say. Interacting with people can become an expertise of yours by surrounding yourself with various kinds of people as much as you can. The perfect opportunity to do that is while studying at university since you are going to meet a lot of different people and you are responsible to go out of your comfort zone and take that first step to introduce yourself and get to know them. When it comes to this rarely found skill nowadays, confidence is key so my tip is to fake it until you make it.
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Soft skills
Last but not least, remember that any skill that you learn along your journey, big or small, is important. “Soft” skills does not mean weak skills. In fact, there are soft skills out there that are so powerful that they can influence your entire life. One of those important skills is the basics of professionalism. Being smart, educated and having a character are all great characteristics but have you ever thought about how your manners can influence your life? While being punctual and obeying social conversions is critical but so is dressing properly. How you present yourself externally can influence how people judge you internally, which is unfair sometimes, but that is just how life works. With that in mind, be careful how you present yourself online as that will also allow people to judge your offline persona. So remember to be yourself both online and offline to match these two different worlds to your unique personality.
Text by
Yasmina Kouweik