Milton S. - Class of 2020
Rate your Experience:
University of San Francisco
BS in Business Administration
The biggest lesson I learned from college is that anything can be enjoyable if it's what you want to do.
In high school can feel like a chore or something you want to avoid, but in college you're studying the thing you want to do for the rest of your life, so a long night in the library doesn't even feel like work.
What advice would you give to an incoming freshman?
Try any class that looks interesting to you, not just what you're majoring in. Maybe you'll discover a new passion, maybe you'll want to add a minor or a double major, but even if you don't, you're still going to be better off with a diversified skill set.
If you know a little bit of coding, a little bit of graphic design, a little bit of another language, and a little bit of statistics, even if those all have nothing to do with your major, you'll have more opportunities open to you than someone with none of those skills.
If you could go back in time 4 years ago, what would you tell your 18 year old self? If you could do-over, what would you do differently?
I would pay very close attention to events and deadlines. Being unaware of deadlines for applying to internships made looking for a job during senior year much more stressful, since not having an internship on my resume put me at a disadvantage.
What did you learn about yourself?
I learned that spacing things out works better for me than clumping everything together.
The best semesters for me were the ones where I had 3+ hours between classes so I could eat, exercise, and hang out with friends all before I had to get back to class.
What was the greatest challenge you faced? How did you overcome it?
For one of my classes, we had to work in groups and volunteer with a local non-profit.
The person who was meant to be our point of contact went on vacation just as we were starting, so for several weeks we were unsuccessful at setting anything up. After trying to contact someone from the organization who could help us in person, over the phone, and through email, we finally got an assignment to fill out some Excel sheets, which we had less than a week to finish.
What was the greatest challenge you faced? How did you overcome it?
Now that you have graduated, have you formulated any new short term /long term goals?
The biggest help was financial and I really would not have been able to attend a great school like UC Davis and leave with a considerably small amount in loans. Without this help and had I accepted more loans, I would be more hesitant to want to move on to grad school for the career I have now chosen. If anything it would have taken a lot longer to get there.
I also remember the check-ins from the foundation and I felt overall proud to have received this scholarship. I also felt very supported throughout my entire time in college.
One of the things I was really proud of was gaining a leadership position in a student-run clinic I was a part of where I got to interact with a diverse group of clients and help them receive our services.
I was also very proud at the end of being able to keep my GPA steady through all the ups and downs I had throughout.
Now that you have graduated, have you formulated any new short term / long term goals?
My main goal is passing the CPA exam within one year.