Stay in School

If I could share just one nugget of wisdom with an audience of bright-eyed college hopefuls and thriving coeds, I would choose this: don’t graduate. That’s it. Just don’t do it. Spare yourself the disillusionment that comes with alumnus status and an entry-level paycheck.

Change your major

This is a fairly basic way to begin your extended tenure as an undergrad, but it’s a good one nonetheless, especially if you switch from something like physics, to say, art history. The change in course prerequisites and the signatures needed to transfer from one department to another are enough to keep you in the classroom for at least an extra semester or two. Now before you head to the registrar’s office, there are a few things to consider. The goal here is to include a broader scope of interests and activities in the college years so that the length of such blessed time is longer. If you think the chances of pure, unadulterated intellectual stimulation are more available after college, think again. Unless you’re heading straight into a master’s program, you can expect to spend a good chunk of your early 20s parked in front of a computer doing data entry or the like for eight hours a day. A simple way to delay such drudgery is to be honest about what you actually find interesting. Yes, pre-med is admirable. As is pre-law, and pre-vet, and pre-dentistry and whatever other pre-paths your university offers. But exercise caution with these pre-determinations. The regimented classes and the order in which they should be taken are so calculated you’ll be on the fast track to a diploma. It’s fantastic if biomedical engineering is what you’ve wanted to do since you were 9 and now that you’re 21 you want to do it even more. By all means, go ahead—but if you have even the teeniest, tiniest curiosity about what it might be like to develop black-and-white prints in your own basement darkroom, take a photography seminar. Take several. Don’t ignore it altogether just because it’s not on the registration course slip you signed when you were 18.

Speaking of registration, one surefire way to guarantee you another spot in next year’s yearbook is to misread the graduation requirements “accidentally.” You might be so busy with the course load for your new and enthralling major that you forgot all about that second P.E. credit needed to walk on time. An academic advisor will notice this and advise you to enroll immediately in summer school, but what a perfect time to cleverly suggest forgoing the summer and simply returning in the fall? Summer in Nashville is too hot for excessive physical activity, and anyway, you’ll want to be working to help finance the extra classes you’re starting in August. For those of you about to argue that if you’re going to have to work to pay for more time in school, then why not just graduate on time, consider that the jobs you get away with while still in college are much more interesting than the jobs you may feel obligated to take after you’ve graduated. Guilt changes everything. What was excusable as a summer position when you were in school is not nearly as cute when you have nowhere to go in the fall.

Leave the country