IIT Prof's advice: 5 Non-Academic Things to Remember Before Going to College
Summary
TLDRThis video script offers essential advice for new college students on managing non-academic aspects of college life. It emphasizes the importance of building meaningful friendships, maintaining health through proper diet and exercise, the significance of sleep, and engaging in extracurricular activities for holistic development. Additionally, it warns against the pitfalls of social media addiction and suggests strategies to use these platforms productively. The speaker's personal experiences and insights aim to guide freshmen towards a balanced and successful college journey.
Takeaways
- 🤝 **Building Friendships**: It's important to form strong friendships from the start, but quality is more important than quantity. Aim for a select group of friends.
- 🌐 **Diverse Connections**: Expand your social circle beyond your own region to learn from a variety of people and enrich your perspective.
- 🌟 **Special Friends**: Have at least one or two 'super best friends' who can support you in times of need, like in the middle of the night.
- 🏥 **Health First**: Prioritize health as it is critical for academic success and overall well-being. Regular meals and exercise are essential.
- 🍎 **Nutrition and Exercise**: Even if the food in the hostel isn't the most nutritious, having regular meals and cycling to classes can contribute to good health.
- 💤 **Sleep Matters**: Sleep is vital and should not be compromised. Try to sleep in 90-minute cycles for better rest.
- 🌙 **Avoid All-Nighters**: While sometimes necessary, try to avoid pulling all-nighters and maintain a healthy sleep schedule.
- 🎓 **Academics Over Extracurriculars**: Focus on academics first; extracurricular activities should supplement, not detract from, your studies.
- 🏋️ **Balanced Involvement**: Engage in at least one non-academic activity for all-around development, but don't overcommit to the point of neglecting academics.
- 📱 **Mindful Social Media Use**: Be cautious of social media addiction and use it mindfully as a tool for learning and growth, not as a time sink.
- 🛡️ **Curated Content**: Create a curated feed based on your interests to benefit from social media rather than being consumed by it.
Q & A
What is the main focus of the video script?
-The main focus of the video script is to discuss non-academic aspects that first-year college students should consider, including friendship, health, sleep, extracurricular activities, and the use of social media.
Why is it important for students to build strong friendships in college?
-It is important for students to build strong friendships in college because even though they may be surrounded by many people, they can still feel lonely. Having a select group of friends can provide support and companionship.
What is the speaker's view on friendships being like business relations?
-The speaker is not a big fan of friendships being like business relations, but emphasizes the importance of spreading connections across different sorts of people to learn various things from different individuals.
Why should students avoid limiting their friendships to their own regions?
-Students should avoid limiting their friendships to their own regions because it prevents them from experiencing diverse perspectives and learning from a variety of people, which can be enriching.
What is the significance of having at least one or two special friends in college?
-Having at least one or two special friends is significant because these are the friends who can be relied upon in times of need, such as answering a call in the middle of the night or providing support during a crisis.
Why is health considered the most important non-academic aspect in college life?
-Health is considered the most important non-academic aspect because it directly impacts academic performance and overall well-being. Good health enables students to participate fully in college life and manage stress.
What are the two main factors that contribute to maintaining good health according to the speaker?
-The two main factors that contribute to maintaining good health according to the speaker are what you put inside your body (nutrition) and what you do with your body (exercise).
How does the speaker suggest students manage their sleep in college?
-The speaker suggests that students should ensure they get sleep in cycles of 90 minutes to complete their sleep cycle, and avoid pulling all-nighters unless absolutely necessary, planning activities to minimize the need for them.
What is the role of extracurricular activities in a student's college life?
-Extracurricular activities play a secondary role in a student's college life, providing a well-rounded experience and opportunities for all-around development beyond academics. They should not interfere with academic responsibilities.
How should students approach social media use in college?
-Students should approach social media use with a conscious barrier against addiction, curating a feed based on their interests to benefit from educational content rather than mindlessly scrolling and wasting time.
What advice does the speaker give for students to avoid becoming a slave to social media?
-The speaker advises students to utilize social media as an assistant or a good friend by curating a feed with beneficial content such as archive footage, documentaries, and educational material, rather than mindlessly scrolling through feeds.
Outlines
🤝 Building Genuine Friendships in College
The speaker emphasizes the importance of forming friendships during the college years, highlighting the potential for loneliness even in a crowd. They suggest building a select group of close friends rather than a large network, advocating for organic relationships that are not transactional. The speaker also encourages students to diversify their friend circle to learn from various individuals, cautioning against limiting friendships to one's own region. They share a personal experience of the value of having a 'super best friend' who is available for support in times of need.
🏃♂️ Prioritizing Health and Regular Routines
This paragraph focuses on the significance of health, particularly during the college years when it's easy to overlook. The speaker shares personal insights on the importance of regular meals and exercise, even if the food in hostels isn't the most nutritious. They mention the benefits of hostel life's structured meal times and the incidental exercise gained from cycling around campus. Sleep is also discussed as a critical component of health, with the speaker debunking the myth of 'all-nighters' and advocating for sleep cycles that are multiples of 90 minutes for better rest.
🎓 Balancing Academics with Extracurricular Activities
The speaker advises students to prioritize their academics while engaging in extracurricular activities for a well-rounded college experience. They caution against getting involved in too many activities that could detract from academic success. The speaker stresses the importance of participating in at least one activity that doesn't contribute to grades, such as sports or arts, to foster personal growth. They also warn against the pitfalls of excessive involvement in activities that could negatively impact academic performance.
🚫 The Dangers of Social Media Addiction
In the final paragraph, the speaker discusses the rise of social media addiction and its impact on productivity and mental well-being. They share their own experiences with mindless scrolling and the subsequent negative effects on their ability to focus and be creative. The speaker suggests developing a curated feed based on personal interests to make social media a beneficial tool rather than a time-consuming distraction. They encourage students to use social media as an 'assistant' or 'good friend' that provides value, rather than allowing it to control their lives.
Mindmap
Keywords
💡Non-academic
💡Friendship
💡Health
💡Extracurricular Activities
💡Sleep
💡Social Media
💡Diversity
💡All-Nighter
💡Curation
💡Discipline
💡Mental Well-being
Highlights
The importance of building strong friendships from the start of college life, emphasizing the value of a select group of friends over a large network.
Caution against treating friendships like business relationships and the suggestion to learn from a variety of people.
The advice to avoid limiting friendships to one's own region and to embrace diversity in friendships.
The significance of having at least one or two special friends who can be relied upon in times of need.
The emphasis on health as the number one non-academic aspect, especially for college students.
The advice on maintaining a regular diet and exercise routine for good health, even within the constraints of college life.
The importance of sleep for overall health and the debunking of the myth around 'all-nighters'.
Strategies for planning sleep in 90-minute cycles for better rest quality.
The prioritization of academic activities over extracurricular ones, with a focus on a well-rounded college experience.
The warning against getting involved in too many extracurricular activities at the expense of academics.
The discussion on the dangers of social media addiction and the need for conscious barriers against it.
Advice on curating a beneficial social media feed with content that adds value to one's life.
The comparison of the current state of social media addiction with the past, highlighting the escalation of the issue.
The personal experience shared regarding the impact of mindless scrolling on productivity and mental state.
The suggestion to use social media as a tool for learning and development rather than a time sink.
An open invitation for viewers to request further discussion on additional topics of interest for future videos.
Transcripts
hello everyone in a few weeks from now
students are going to join college for
the first time and these students for
the first time in their life are going
to have to take care of many things both
academic as well as non-academic on
their own so in this video I'm going to
focus on some of the non-academic things
because everyone takes care of academic
things and probably make a separate
video on academic things later on but in
this video I'm going to focus on some of
the non-academic things spreading across
the different aspects like friendship
Health Sleep extracurricular activities
and the use of social media so first of
all friendship and my belief is that
some of the tips that I'm going to share
will be beneficial to the senior
students also in addition to the main
target the first year students so
friendship
now everyone has to realize that even
though they may be staying at a hostel
in um among a large group of people
large group of so-called friends and
batchmates it is extremely possible for
you to feel lonely so you can feel
lonely in a crowd so it is essential
that you build strong friendships right
from the start but you do not need a big
group of friends what you need is rather
a select group of friends now I'm not
going to give you advice being an
introvert myself on how to build
friendships that should come in a more
organic way on your out of your own uh
but what I would like to emphas emphasiz
here is that sometimes I've observed AC
in the current generation that people uh
tend to have friendships more like a
business relation I'm not a big fan of
that kind of a thing but at the same
time I would emphasize that trying to
build up your friendships through of uh
by spreading your connections across
different sorts of people a variety of
people so that you can actually learn
different things from different people
maybe you can learn some bits of
programming from some some of your
friends uh maybe something regarding
literary uh some of the literary aspects
some people who are extremely good at
writing or some people have the habit of
reading books maybe you can learn
different things from different people
so your friend Circle can be extremely
enriching from this point of view what I
would also like to emphasize here is
that some students have a tendency to
build friendships only from their own
regions maybe someone is coming from the
north they will only build friendships
with the northern guys uh maybe
somebody's coming from the south they'll
only F make friends with from their own
State and there are lots of students
from maybe Andhra Pradesh Tamil Nadu
things like this they'll
have a large group of friends from from
that region itself uh there's nothing
wrong with that but at the same time it
should not be limited to that for
example some of my best friends were
from absolutely different people from
different regions like Bihar madya
Pradesh uh Maharashtra uh uh uh even
from the South India Andra Pradesh one
of my best friends was from there from
Tamil Nadu from Delhi and so on and so
forth so
uh I mean spread your wings a little bit
spre open up your mentality a little bit
and build different kinds of friendship
this is extremely important one final
thing I'd like to say about this aspect
is that uh you can have a decent size
group of friend but try to have at least
one or two friends who are very very
special okay is super best friends why
I'm saying that is that these should be
the kind of friends who will answer your
call in the middle of the night for
example when I was um an undergraduate
student once what happened was that I
had uh I had some health problem and I
was not able to get up from bed right in
in the early morning and remember this
was uh in the in the middle of winter I
was just staying here for some Project
work and I just called one of my friends
and without asking a single question
okay he came from another hostel without
asking a single question took me to the
hosital uh to the hospital and took care
of me so you should have at least one or
two friends who can answer your phone
call at 4:00 a.m. without asking any
questions okay the next aspect is Health
this is the absolutely number one
non-academic aspect something which ties
into your academic life as well uh you
sometimes when you are in the pink of
your health in your late teens and early
20s you take your health for granted but
you realize the importance of Health
only when it is lost so take extremely
good care of your health uh now I'm the
health expert and I know the dangers of
giving advice regarding health uh on
social media but what I'm going to say
is from my personal experience and there
is no harm in saying that I believe so I
believe for at least a decent amount and
decent level of good health what you
need to take care is what you put inside
your body and what you do with your body
so basically the food that you take and
the exercise that you get
now sometimes in the hustle and bustle
of college life especially in your first
year when you are just trying to find
your feet in a new campus life is
difficult to I mean to to to get into
some traditionally good habits so what I
would say here is that hostel life gives
you a nice opportunity of providing
regular meals of meals at regular hours
now host hostel life the food is not
particularly nutritious but at least it
is regular so if you can come up with
the discipline of actually having your
food at those regular hours it will be a
tremendous benefit to you so this is
something which I can share from my own
personal experience even the food is not
nutritious at least it is regular and
regularity is something which really
helps your body uh in the long run so
even if you go to I mean uh go go to
sleep maybe at some une Earthly
hour but still if if there is some
regularity in it your body adjusts and
then it is in a relatively good U
situation similarly for exercise you may
not find the time to do uh proper
exercise that should be done but see
most of the campus lives um the mode of
transportation is cycle so you have to
cycle a lot now uh when you have to go
from your hostel to your classes you
have to cycle when you have to go to the
shop you have to cycle so if you
just uh stick to the discipline of going
to class every day that automatically by
default gives you some good exercise so
that was like from my personal
experience that was the only exercise
that I gave my own body
cycling and um that actually stood me in
good state so try that the next thing is
sleep which is directly tied to your
health now this is an often um
disregarded aspect of your life uh of
your hostel of your hostel life of your
college life sleep is extremely
extremely important this is something
which I realized a bit later
actually now when uh you are in your
first year and you hear many different
sorts of stories from your seniors and
whatnot and your friends you'll find
that many of them brag that they can
pull all nighters how many all nighters
they can pull all nighters means they
stay awake the whole night uh try to
understand one thing this all nighter a
real all nighter is one where you stay
awake the whole night and then you are
still functional the next day a real all
nighter does not mean that you stay
awake the whole night and then the next
day for most of the day you are sleeping
that is not an all nighter that is just
shift of origin of your starting time of
sleep so if someone is bragging like
that ask him what exactly he means by an
all night
but uh uh I would say that in the hustle
and bustle in the extremely competitive
environment of um of hostal Life of
college life it may once in a while be
necessary to pull an all nighter so your
health should be such at such a level
that you can actually pull an allnighter
it's a good I
mean uh skill so to say so for for want
of a better word I would say this it's a
good skill to have but but at the same
time try to plan your activities in such
a fashion that you don't need to pull an
all nighter in the first place so have
the ability to pull an all nighter but
avoid it
okay uh there is another aspect
regarding sleep uh this I had read a
long time ago uh in some kind of a
Science magazine that our sleep happens
uh in cycles of 90 minutes so I would
suggest you to not just take my word for
it read up on it on your own so what I
did uh especially in my third year
fourth year fifth year was that after I
came to know about this was that I tried
to plan my sleep in such a way that at
least it was in multiples of 90 minutes
so that my sleep cycle would be complete
now I don't know whether this was some
kind of a placebo effect or what it was
but it seem to kind of work so because
it is kind of better to sleep for uh 6
hours
certainly uh than 6 and 1/2 hours or
maybe it is better to sleep for 4 and
1/2 hours uh uh compared to 5 hours so
so so make your calculations but I would
suggest that don't take my word for it
read up on it and follow accordingly
okay maybe there's latest research which
debunks this kind of things uh but but I
think there is some truth to it that our
sleep happens in cycles of 90 minutes
next extracurricular activities
so uh as the name suggest these are
extra okay extra or addition to your
curricular activities so these are
always secondary in importance your main
thing your primary importance is the
curricular activities your your academic
things this is something which many
people this is a priority which many
people do not get straight and um
sometimes they get some misleading or
wrong advice from their seniors
also so this should not happen your
primary activi is academic only after
you have finish this to a to a good
decent level only after that going to
the extracurricular things at the same
time I would say that uh in order to
have a well-rounded life hostel Life
College life um a proper all-rounded
experience you need to be engaged in
some sort of an activity which does not
fetch your marks so please mark my words
carefully that which does not fetch you
marks at least one activity do something
like that so maybe may it can be related
to sports maybe it can be related to
some kind of literary activity maybe it
can be related to singing or dancing or
uh Dramatics anything but something
which does not fetch you marks this will
give you all around development but
remember that this is extra or
additional to your curricular activities
so many students fall into the Trap of
getting involved in too many activities
much more they can actually handle and
then their academics suffer they should
not actually happen now I'd still say
that this is better even if you're
getting engaged in probably a little bit
little bit too many activities probably
this is better than wasting your life
your time uh your precious time um just
sitting in your room and uh scrolling
through social media so that is the next
point that I want to discuss social
media okay so when we had started out uh
we had the very basics of social media
just starting out uh it was only
probably you know or uh I mean second
year that orot the predecessor to
Facebook it took off so many people used
to spend a lot of time on or good but
still it was not at the level the
current level of of an epidemic kind of
situation of an epidemic of of social
media addiction that people are going
through uh that used that was certainly
not there back in that time so
uh when I'm giving this advice I'm not
trying to be sanctimonious who knows
what could have would have happened to
our ation If U if social media the
penetration of social media was as much
as it is now but from whatever I have
seen and whatever I'm experiencing even
now at my age is that these algorithms
are geared to make you addicted to it so
you have to put up a conscious barrier
against that kind of an addiction so
Doom scrolling okay mindlessly scrolling
through the feed of YouTube shorts or uh
Instagram reals feed whatever you call
it uh or uh X or Twitter whatever it is
um I have seen myself I'm on those uh
I'm on X and YouTube certainly I'm on
here uh I've seen that sometimes when I
scroll through it mindlessly like half
an hour 1 hour just goes in the in the
blink of an eye uh now this is an this
is a Time sync but this is a dangerous
time sync what I mean by dangerous is
that uh on the one one hand your time
goes away but at the same time after the
time has gone away also there is it
leaves you with a with a state of mind
which is extremely frazzled and
fragmented and which leaves you
incapable of doing any kind of
productive or creative work so this has
actually happened to me also when I mind
is scru through the YouTube shorts
sometimes it has happened that I'm that
I find myself incapable of doing
anything useful after that so there is a
tremendous amount of painful recovery
time also for my mind uh and I'm sure
this can happen to the teenagers also to
you guys also so uh the the the antidote
against this toxic thing is to have some
kind of a proper interest in certain
kinds of domains and then U build up a
curated feed out of your own interest so
so my suggestion is that please do not
let your uh please please do not pay the
currency of your attention to the
coffers of the big tech companies rather
utilize the social media feeds there is
tremendous benefit to these things
archive footage uh documentaries uh and
many other beneficial things how to uh
things things to learn uh so make a
cured feed of these and uh try to get
some benefit out of the social media
rather than being a slave to it so make
it something like your assistant or uh
or or a good friend rather than being a
slave to it so these are some of the
things which I wanted to discuss about
there are I mean uh dozens and dozens of
other things which U very nuanced things
which I have not talked about uh so if
you are really interested tell me let me
know in the comments What U more you
would want me to discuss and probably
I'll discuss that and maybe in a future
video I'll talk about some of the
important academic things also so with
that note um I wish you all the very
best as you start your Jour journey of
college life and hosital life so thank
you all the very best
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