College Tips: How Your Classes Apply to the Real World

When you’re in high school or college, it can sometimes be hard to figure out how your classes are going to apply to the “real world” when you graduate.

I mean, if you’re not going to become a mathematician, is the quadratic equation really going to matter in your future career as a librarian?

Or are the allegorical comparisons you learn to do in English Lit going to be useful if you plan on becoming a stock broker?

The truth is you may not remember every date, vocabulary word, or equation that you learn in your high school or college.

But the overarching skills and knowledge you take with you will have an impact on your future career.

Here are some tips that will help you understand how your college and high school knowledge fits into the bigger picture.

College Tip #1: Classes Teach Research Skills

Most high schools and colleges set up their requirements so students take variety of classes.

The beauty of this is that you’ll gain some familiarity with different subject and, more importantly, how to research them.

The ability to pull together information on any subject, analyze it, see trends, and draw parallels to your career or company is essential no matter where you end up working.

College Tip #2: Classes Enforce Deadlines

As annoying as they seem, the deadlines enforced by high school teachers and college professors are actually doing you a huge favor: they’re teaching you how to execute tasks on a specific timeline.

Regardless of what the actual timeline is, the deadlines for your papers and projects are teaching you how to allocate the right amount of time for each project.

This will be invaluable once you’re out in the working world and you have a variety of tasks to deal with, from long-term product projections that can take months, to quick, end-of-the-month reports that have to be turned around in mere hours.

College Tip #3: Classes Teach Perseverance

There are always some classes in high school or college that you just don’t like. No matter how hard you try, that particular subject or teacher just doesn’t work for you.

And that’s actually a good thing, because no job is perfect either.

There’s always going to be something about your career you’re not thrilled about, and learning to persevere in your high school or college classes will give you the skills you need to deal with whatever aspect of your job you don’t like.

College Tip #4: Classes Teach Writing Skills

Most high schools and colleges require their students to take a fundamental writing course.

Even if you hate writing and never plan to pick up a pen (or jump on a keyboard) after graduation, I promise, the skills you learn will come in useful.

A March 2011 article by the Wall Street Journal explains how good writing skills are needed in every industry, and how poor writing can actually hurt your career, whether it’s in a bad email or a sub-par grant proposal. So in other words, learning to write well while you’re in high school and college can make a huge difference after you graduate.