One thing I learned in my college days that helped me immensely to quit my job and become a much better at freelancing is …
Humans have a very short memory span. When someone moves from a 9 to 5 job to freelancing, the credit goes to the recent memory of the job and not undervalue what we may learn in the past has shaped us.
College is still a short distant memory but school is a long distance away and so often the learning of school days don’t get the credit for what we are doing in business and professional life.
One thing I learned in my college days has helped me immensely when I thought of quitting my job and be a freelancer is:
Interpersonal Skills
I was a very shy person in my school days. I completed my schooling from my hometown Dhoraji in Gujarat and then moved to Kolkata for further education.
I moved from one state to other and so I had an issue communicating in the local language. Not knowing Bengali, it became tougher for me to communicate. In a couple of years time after completing my higher secondary, I was very fluent Bengali speaker. I grew in confidence in my interpersonal skills.
In college, the communication skill took off. The credit of my communication skills goes completely to my college friends.
In schools, the interaction is limited to one class we used to spend very limited time non-academically but in college, the time spent on academics isn’t as high as in schools. On top of it, we had 4 streams aka IT, Computer Science, Electrical and Electronics and it meant we had a large network for interaction which helped develop my communication skills further.
I am still more of an introvert person but being better in communication allows me to interact much more freely.
The Discovery of Real Interest
My love for programming took the right shape in college. The real interest in programming started with C programming. The concept of programming, Pascal triangles, and interactive menu drive codes were written in the college lab.
Though I didn’t learn entrepreneurship or freelancing in college, my career took the right shape once I discovered my real interest in the college labs. I started finding work online and even manage to start earning some bucks for doing homework help kind of projects on RentACoder Back then. My Elance of 2002 is still my Upwork account and Upwork is one of the best source of clients for me to date.
Final Thoughts
Doing an engineering from a private college than a government college does mean one has a lot more of ebbs than tides. Many students lose interest in the interim but wasn’t the case with me and so thanks to all my teachers, professors and mentors in college.
Read: 7 Ways College Student Can Make Money Programming
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