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Advice to College Grads from a mid-30 year old

Christopher Balkaran
6 min readJan 1, 2022

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Photo by Dom Fou on Unsplash

For students entering their final years of study, attending Alumni seminars can either be insightful or outright boring. It’s not necessarily the fault of the Alumni: most of the time, the panelists are 15–20 years deep into their careers and have obtained distinguished positions. Their academic years are far behind them, and many of their curernt practices are based on experiences in their professional lives rather than remembering what was taught in Politics100.

But what about Alumni who are less than 10 years out from university? As the transition from the academic world to the professional is still fresh in their minds, wouldn’t the advice be more relevant?

I thought to write a piece on providing advice specifically to grads while my time in university is still fresh in my own mind. I hope the following provides grads with some idea of what to expect and lessons learned from my own trials and tribulations in the workforce.

Stay Away from the Notion of Prestige.

Yep, you graduated at the top of your class and from a prestigious university. It’s an accomplishment, for which you, and you alone, should be proud of. Over the past few years in university, you have honed specific skills that are transferrable in the professional sector: analysis and presentation…

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Christopher Balkaran
Christopher Balkaran

Written by Christopher Balkaran

Christopher is a firm believer in balanced political discourse, which can lead to a better world. Creator of the Strong and Free Podcast.

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