Before you dive into learning and chasing after that degree, I want to highlight how important your mindset will be. The way you approach this time in your life will set the tone for your entire experience.

If you limit yourself to thinking “I just need to get this degree and get out,” you will have a vastly different experience than if you think “I will learn cool things, meet interesting people (who could turn into lifelong friends and colleagues), grow as a person, become part of a community, make a difference, and get a degree/diploma/etc.”

You can see from this example the extent of how you curate your own experience. Your mindset is one of the key aspects of your school journey. You can, and should, personalize your experience to what you want it to be. You may not always have a clear path, and sometimes plans and priorities can change, and that’s okay, but you should decide what you want to take away from your time in school above and beyond just your degree.

Remember, if you approach learning as a chore, it will be a chore.

Yes, it will be hard. Sometimes it’ll be so hard that you’ll want to give up, but you can do this. These things take time, and the only way to get it done is day by day.

One of my favourite Latin mottos is festina lente. It means to make haste slowly. It’s a reminder to keep going forward, bit by bit, and that doing things well requires time. Get in the right mindset now and curate your experience to get the most out of your time in school.