Quotes & Sayings About College Experience

The mortal experience ... is not like a college course which we can passively audit. Instead, we are taking life's course for credit and there are no summers off - not even semester breaks. — Neal A. Maxwell

I'd had the quintessential liberal arts experience, and I came out of college not having a clue of what to do. — John Wesley

Look into companies that have work-study programs. Many companies offer to pay for school and have struck tuition deals with local colleges to attract a labor force. UPS, for instance, has a program in many cities where you can work twenty hours per week sorting boxes at night, and they will pay your tuition for school during the day. Plus, they tend to pay you very well for part-time work. That is just one example of many. This type of program is for someone who wants the knowledge, not to go to school just for the college experience, — Dave Ramsey

I think day care is terrific. Kids get to be around other kids, and they're playing, and they're teaching each other. When I was in college, my summer job was being a preschool teacher. I loved it, and after that experience, I said I can't wait to put my kid in day care because I could see how much they loved it. — Jessica Valenti

Education is not confined to books, and the finest characters often graduate from no college, but make experience their master, and life their book. [Some care] only for the mental culture, and [are] in danger of over-studying, under the delusion ... that learning must be had at all costs, forgetting that health and real wisdom are better. — Louisa May Alcott

I went to college and law school with the help of the GI Bill. That experience moved me so much, I dedicated the rest of my life to serving this great country and helping others succeed. — Charles B. Rangel

I would consider it the greatest experience of my life, it's the experience that made me a man, that taught me so many life lessons that you get from sport, ones that I've been able to pass down. (It was) invaluable, beyond words, got me through school, high school, and college, it was the greatest gift I gave myself. — Ted McGinley

When I went to college, I met a new group of friends and looked back on my high-school experience and realized how much time I had wasted on trying to make myself something I wasn't. — Katherine Schwarzenegger

At 17, I signed a recording contract right out of high school, so I started touring and traveling the world. I sort of missed out on the college experience. — Tommy Lee

I took all the courses you would need to be able to go to law school. But my experience in college with football made me want to go into coaching. — Marv Levy

While this experience may sound great, it was terrifying for me as a parent. What if I'm wrong? What if busy and exhausted is what it takes? What if she doesn't get to go to the college of her choice because she doesn't play the violin and speak Mandarin and French and she doesn't play six sports? What — Brene Brown

If I had known how much I would miss these sensations I might have experienced them differently, recognized their shabby glamour, respected the ticking clock that defined this entire experience. I would have put aside my resentment, dropped my defenses. I might have a basic understanding of European history or economics. More abstractly, I might feel I had truly been somewhere, open and porous and hungry to learn. Because being a student was an enviable identity and one I can only reclaim by attending community college late in life for a bookmaking class or something. — Lena Dunham

African American children can't be educationally disadvantaged for 12 years and then experience a miracle cure when it comes time for admission into college. — Chaka Fattah

I have wanted to "make books" since around the sixth grade, and I published my first book when I was in my late thirties. My point is that the time in between was not wasted - submarine service, marriage, college, bringing up three kids, starting a school for them, and so forth. This kind of life experience is not distracting you from your appointed task of writing. It is, rather, the roundabout blessing of giving you something to say. — Douglas Wilson

Football is my profession now. I'm getting married in August ... It's a new experience for me as someone just getting out of college. I still have the same attitude about football I always had. I play hard. I enjoy practice. I'd rather be throwing in passing drills than sitting around and watching TV. — Doug Flutie

We hear a great deal of lamentation these days about writers having all taken themselves to the colleges and universities where they live decorously instead of going out and getting firsthand information about life. The fact is that anybody who has survived his childhood has enough information about life to last him the rest of his days. If you can't make something out of a little experience, you probably won't be able to make it out of a lot. The writer's business is to contemplate experience, not to be merged in it. — Flannery O'Connor

My sons served excellent missions, and returned to participate in college athletics. In their letters home, and even now that they have been back for some time, they frequently mention that the experiences in the mission field were the choicest and most gratifying of their lives. You young men, begin to prepare yourselves now for this marvelous experience. — LaVell Edwards

I loved the college experience of studying. — Bradley Cooper

In no way did any of this discourage or deter Wilbur and Orville Wright, any more than the fact that they had had no college education, no formal technical training, no experience working with anyone other than themselves, no friends in high places, no financial backers, no government subsidies, and little money of their own. Or — David McCullough

John Shook's experience shows just how important problemsolving is at Toyota - it comes before any other job skill for the graduate intake. When I joined Toyota in Toyota City (where for a time I was the only American) in late 1983, every newly hired college graduate employee began learning his job by being coached [ ... ] — Martin Burns

The two most important things about people on a revolutionary team are their ability and passion. Their educational level or work experience is meaningless
most of the engineers who did ground-breaking work of the Macintosh design didn't even graduate from college. — Guy Kawasaki

I have very fond memories of the Eagles from my experience with 'Invincible' and my college days in Philadelphia. But I am a Massachusetts girl and a Pats fan. — Elizabeth Banks

The experience she gained should be invaluable to her continued growth and contribution to our team. In reality, compared to American players, she would just be finishing her college career. — Mike Thibault

In college I lost the capacity for heartfelt, extemporized prayer. I would have considered it gauche to pray spontaneously aloud with other college sophomores. I had also left behind my love the church's Scriptures, prayers, and especially its hymns, but I always knew they would be there if I went back to find them. — Thomas C. Oden

I went to college because my father thought that I should learn engineering, because he wanted to go into the heating business with me. There, I realized I wanted to be a physicist. I had to tell him, which was a somewhat traumatic experience. — Leonard Susskind

The reality that we were growing up in was very young and vibrant, and nobody was capturing that part of India. I started to backpack after getting out of college. I hiked and did a lot of things nobody was capturing in art at all in India, so I wrote my first novel. It was a very, trippy, experience-filled novel, and it ended up doing very well in India because nobody was writing about that at that point. — Karan Bajaj

I think school is very important and I personally had a great experience at North Carolina, which helped shape me as a basketball player and a person. Every once in a while, you will have a player who can make the jump and have an immediate impact on the professional level, but most of the players who come out would absolutely benefit from going to college. — Michael Jordan

If you do not share the universities' values, it could be a big mistake to send your children to college before they are intellectually and morally prepared for the indoctrination-rather-than-education they will receive there. Therefore, prepare them morally and intellectually and, if possible, do not send them to college right after high school. Let them work for a year, or perhaps travel (for example, given the antipathy to Israel on campuses, a trip to Israel would be both morally clarifying and maturing). The younger the student, the less life experience and maturity they have, the more they are likely to embrace the rejection of your values. — Dennis Prager

Sometimes - more often than not - he thought that Rachel and her classmates were just playing at being caring and open-minded, at noticing that there was a world wider than them, their college, their peers. They'd experience poverty in two-hour chunks twice a month. like it was a movie they were going to see or a TV show they were watching, something they'd click off or walk out of when it was done, something they sat through just so they could talk about it with everyone else who'd seen it and had something to say. — Jennifer Weiner

To maximize what you get out of your college experience, I want your friends to look at your semester schedule and say "this is the weirdest schedule I've ever seen!"
Trust me on this one. If you want to be an engineer, take Engineering 101, and a crash course in philosophical literature. then take Engineering 102, and art appreciation. then Engineering 103, and Intro to Women's Rights.
You will expand your knowledge and ways of looking at the world, and become a more powerful person for it. Because that way, when you encounter difficulties, you won't only tackle the problem from the point of view of an engineer. Anybody can do that. You will be able to look at it as a scientist, a philosopher, an artist, and choose the best course of action from there. — Anonymous

But are you glad you went to college? Was it a good experience?"
I suppose it was. Althought I can't remember a single thing I learned. Except for Latin, and that's only because the nuns literally beat it into us and I use it sometimes for the crossword."
There were nuns at Radcliffe?"
Yes, it was all nuns."
Are you sure? At Radcliffe?"
Maybe it was high school."
But you aren't Catholic," I said. "I don't think you ever went to a parochial school."
Well, I distinctly remember nuns with sticks walking up and down the aisles as we recited Latin. Maybe it was a show I was in, but I doubt it because nuns don't beat children in musicals. — Peter Cameron

So most of my acting experience came in college when I was living away from them. I acted in various independent films, and I got some commercial work and stuff like that. — Maria Menounos

The most experience I had in the criminology field is playing a thug as an actor. That was my first paid job. The police academy at the college was paying people to reenact the calls that potential cops would get. So I got to play thugs and people who were unruly. — Jeremy Renner

I go back to Oberlin in the dead of winter to give a "convocation speech" in Finney Chapel, the largest and most historic of campus structures. In a subconscious nod to my college experience I forget to pack both tights and underwear and have to spend the weekend going commando in a wool skirt and knee socks. I am toured around the school like a stranger by a girl who didn't even go here. We stop at a glossy new cafe for tea and scones. She asks if I want a tour of the dormitories- no, I just want to wander around alone and maybe cry. — Lena Dunham

Socrates refused to neatly define the self he had in mind, just as Buddha refused to use a word like "God." Their reasons were the same: it defeats the truth to use words, since words imply that you know what you are looking for. Instead, truth is an experience. It cannot be anticipated, any more than one can anticipate, at age five, what it will be like to go to college, get married, have children. Experience is fresh and new (or should be); thus truth is fresh and new. From there, it's a small step to demanding that God be fresh and new. — Deepak Chopra

College is not the only chance to learn to think, but it is the best. One thing is certain: If you haven't started by the time you finish your B.A., there's little likelihood you'll do it later. That is why an undergraduate experience devoted exclusively to career preparation is four years largely wasted. — Anonymous

I went to Northwestern because I had gone to a really nontraditional high school. I was like, 'It'd be cool to have a traditional college experience.' Then I was like, 'Oh, but none of these people understand what's cool about me. My specialness is not appreciated in this place.' — Zooey Deschanel

Gately's snapped to the fact that people of a certain age and level of like life-experience believe they're immortal: college students and alcoholics/addicts are the worst: they deep-down believe they're exempt from the laws of physics and statistics that ironly govern everybody else. — David Foster Wallace

He fell in with the quiet revolutionaries on campus - those who felt that the disenfranchisement of half the population was ridiculous, those who did not accept that rights were predicated on skin tone - partly because he couldn't bring himself to avoid tempting trouble. He agreed with all their points, but understood that they were freer to make them purely because they had the money to build a wall around their experiences. That was what people did, wasn't it? Ignore the majority of experience and actively disengage from those telling them otherwise. — Thomm Quackenbush

College is something you complete. Life is something you experience. So don't worry about your grade, or the results or success. Success is defined in myriad ways, and you will find it, and people will no longer be grading you, but it will come from your own internal sense of decency. — Jon Stewart

Experience teaches sense. You can't learn it in a college course. — L.M. Montgomery

I am suggesting that you take as many opportunities as possible in college to step away from whatever specialized program of study you have decided to pursue and have the kind of experience that the humanities can give you. — William Deresiewicz

Of course, I was a head coach at high school for 15 years, so as far as on the field stuff it's the same but for college football it's off the field experience you got to get used to. It was a great learning experience for me, I learned a lot and I feel very prepared coming in here. — Gus Malzahn

My first vegetable garden was in a hard-packed dirt driveway in Boulder, Colorado. I was living in a basement apartment there, having jumped at the chance to come out West with a friend in his Volkswagen Bug, fleeing college and inner-city Philadelphia. I was twenty, hungry for experience, and fully intending to be a ski bum in my new life. But it didn't turn out that way. — Jane Shellenberger

I got quite the college experience. — Ryan Cabrera

My professional apprenticeship at Iowa State College from 1930 to 1943 could not have been better; the Great Depression made it so, and the talented younger economists at Ames during that period made it an exciting and profitable intellectual experience. — Theodore Schultz

In college, my wife did a study abroad in Nairobi, and I did the exact same program in Cape Town. For me, the experience of being in that other culture really set up a longing. When I'm traveling, things seem really sharp. You learn things ten times faster. — Rosecrans Baldwin

There are some things you can't learn at any university, except for one, the University of Life ... the only college where everyone is a permanent student. — E.A. Bucchianeri

College was an experience I'll always cherish. Now I fund a scholarship at my alma mater in my late father's name - he'd laugh to know that it's a science scholarship, when I can barely do math! I also fund a nursing scholarship at the Oglala Lakota College in Kyle, South Dakota, in the name of my mother, who was a nurse. — Diana Palmer

When I first joined the Secret Service in 1983, I was right out of college, having spent the last two or three years of my college experience working as a police officer for the city of Orlando, Florida. — Julia Pierson

I think college is something I want to experience just to have the experience, really. I think about going to college all the time. — Jacob Latimore

I even lived on campus to get the college experience. I had five roommates and I still keep in touch with them while I'm on the road. — Tatyana Ali

When I bought 'The New York Observer,' my experience in journalism was limited to a single article I had written for a college magazine. — Jared Kushner

One of the many disservices done to young people by our schools and colleges is giving them the puffed up notion that they are in a position to pass sweeping judgments on a world that they have barely begun to experience. — Thomas Sowell

I mean the most important thing you can have as an actor, writer, director, or whatever you are, poet or whatever it is, is life experience. Life experience doesn't mean you have to live 50 years to have it. I mean you know a lot of people have huge life experience by the time they're in college. — Billy Bob Thornton

I had been interested in science from when I was very young, but after a disastrous summer lab experience in which every experiment I tried failed, I decided on graduating from college that I was not cut out to be a scientist. — Martin Chalfie

I've been lucky enough to play on NBA teams I really enjoy, teams where I've liked everybody and had fun, and had that college kind of experience with an NBA team. When you have that, and I don't know that everyone does, but when I've had it, that's what it's all about. — Steve Nash

I really missed going to college. I missed not having that education and that experience. — Brooklyn Decker

To defend my fear of sudden change, I chose to believe that life was incremental, that the tiny decisions you make every day determine your fate, that your job is to captain an enormous ship subtly into ever-clearer waters. But that's not how it works at all. Life occurs in moments. You get into college. You propose. You get the job. You get cancer. You get fired. She leaves you ... Because I was born in a stable country at a stable time, I falsely extrapolated that change is incremental. But if you zoom out just a little bit, you see that life is soccer, not basketball. It's revolution, invention, war. It's big bangs, exploding stars, asteroids killing the dinosaurs. Which means that all the action is in the risk taking, whether I want it to be or not. — Joel Stein

I got expelled from high school, and then did my exams from home. I decided, through that experience, that I was going to expediate my plan and didn't go to university. Instead, I went to a community college and studied the theory and history of film with the idea that I wanted to write and direct. — Charlie Hunnam

From the beginning, I've told journalists that I planned to write better than any writer of my era who graduated from an Ivy League college. It sounds boastful and it is. But The Citadel taught me that I was a man of courage when I survived that merciless crucible of a four-year test that is the measure of The Citadel experience. I'm the kind of writer I am because of The Citadel. — Pat Conroy

If you get someone right out of college - and I meet a lot of them - you're not going to get a lot of experience at all, so you have to feel the ambition and desire, which is based on a lot of factors. — Mickey Drexler

I wanted to go to a liberal arts college, I wanted to have that experience. — Mandy Patinkin

I was very precocious when I was young. I went to college at 16, and I graduated at 20. I wanted to be a writer, but I was more interested in experience than in applying myself intellectually. — Rachel Kushner

Churches that are filled with self-righteous, exclusive, insecure, angry, moralistic people are extremely unattractive. Their public pronouncements are often highly judgmental, while internally such churches experience many bitter conflicts, splits, and divisions. When one of their leaders has a moral lapse, the churches either rationalize it and denounce the leader's critics, or else they scapegoat him. Millions of people raised in or near these kinds of churches reject Christianity at an early age or in college largely because of their experience. For the rest of their lives, then, they are inoculated against Christianity. If you are a person who has been disillusioned by such churches, anytime anyone recommends Christianity to you, you assume they are calling you to adopt "religion." Pharisees and their unattractive lives leave many people confused about the real nature of Christianity. — Timothy Keller

A college education is not a quantitative body of memorized knowledge salted away in a card file. It is a taste for knowledge, a taste for philosophy, if you will; a capacity to explore, to question to perceive relationships, between fields of knowledge and experience. — Alfred Whitney Griswold

Many of our nation's great leaders began their careers at a service academy. I encourage anyone interested in a rewarding college experience or military career to apply as soon as possible. — Chris Cannon

Fully 57 percent of American college students are women. Life insurance companies sell more policies to women than to men. As women continue to draw on experience and education, they're accelerating their numbers in upper management, too. — Suzanne Fields

A lot of parents today are terrified that something they say to their children might make them 'feel bad.' But, hey, if they've done something wrong, they should feel bad. Kids with a sense of responsibility, not entitlement, who know when to experience gratitude and humility, will be better at navigating the social shoals of college. — Amy Chua

I didn't know what to expect coming to college. High school was pretty easy and I guess I expected college to be along the same route. It was just an overwhelming experience. — Chase Utley

I had a good experience in college, but I don't think interdisciplinary education is something that's stressed very much at all. It's generally considered to be something of a bad idea. — Peter Thiel

I think college is a lot like childbirth. I've never pushed a baby out myself, but I hear it's comparable to doing squats over a pile of flaming swords. Even after that remarkable sensation, mothers all over the world go back for more. It's not that they don't remember the flaming swords; they just choose to focus on the more rewarding aspects of the experience. — Lindsey Stirling

Personally, I like to think my brother is having a college experience like they do in the movies. I don't mean the big fraternity party kind of movie. More like the movie where the guy meets a smart girl who wears a lot of sweaters and drinks cocoa. They talk about books and issues and kiss in the rain. I think something like that would be very good for him, especially if the girl were unconventionally beautiful. They are the best kind of girls, I think. I personally find 'super models' strange. I don't know why this is. — Stephen Chbosky

I got that experience through dating dozens of men for six years after college, getting an entry level magazine job at 21, working in the fiction department at Good Housekeeping and then working as a fashion editor there as well as writing many articles for the magazine. — Judith Krantz

I actually didn't really go to college. I enrolled and never showed up. Being on a college campus where we shot some of the scenes in 'The Goodwin Games' ... it did make me wish that was an experience that I had. — Adam Rodriguez

My parents, neither one of them went to college. That wasn't available to them. But, you know, we had a wonderful life. You know, it - you know, we lived in what would now be considered poverty, but, you know, it didn't feel like poverty when I was living it. I had a great time and got a - had a great experience. I went to Catholic school through high school. I had a wonderful education. — Tad Devine

To convert college sports into professional sports would be tantamount to converting it into minor league sports. And we know that in the U.S., minor league sports aren't very successful either for fan support or for the fan experience. — Mark Emmert

She went on to Seishin University, the famous women's private college, and studied abroad in France for two years. A couple of years after she got back I had a chance to see her, and when I did, I was floored. I'm not sure how to put it, but she seemed faded. Like something that's been exposed to strong sunlight for a long time and the color fades. She looked much the same as before. Still beautiful, still with a nice figure ... but she seemed paler, fainter than before. It made me feel like I should grab the TV remote to ramp up the color intensity. It was a weird experience. It was hard to imagine that someone could, in the space of just a few years, visibly diminish like that. — Haruki Murakami

I'm going to Columbia University but I'm trying to keep that low-profile because I don't want weird people following me there. I want the experience of normal college life. — Julia Stiles

My father is a college professor and that's about the extent of my college experience. I'm sort of a professional student forever. I think just as human beings we always have a student who is alive in us and is waiting to pop up and make us feel like we are 16 years-old again. — Gabriel Mann

You've always lived here, right?" Sarah asked.
"Except for the years I went to college."
"Didn't you ever want to move away? To experience something new?"
"Like bistros?"
She nudged him playfully with her elbow. "No, not just that. Cities have a vibrancy, a sense of excitement that you can't find in a small town."
"I don't doubt it. But to be honest, I've never been interested in things like that. I don't need those things to make me happy. A nice quiet place to unwind at the end of the day, beautiful views, a few good friends. What else is there? — Nicholas Sparks

I prefer older people to college kids [as audience] for the most part. I want people with life experience, people that understand where I'm coming from. — Joe Rogan

Today was the end of freedom. High school had fallen behind; college loomed ahead. Tomorrow he traded freedom and Arizona for Colorado and discipline. — Tony Taylor

My writing derived from the conviction I conceived during my college years: one should lead one's life as if one were the protagonist of an epic novel, with the outcome predetermined and chapter after chapter of edifying, traumatic, and exhilarating events to be suffered through. Since the end is known in advance, one must try to experience as much as possible in the brief time allotted. Writing is a way of ensuring that you pay enough attention along the way to understand what you see. — Jeffrey Tayler

College is a magic time. Yes, you're young and fickle, but you want to be part of this college experience ... Then you graduate from that. You have your first job, moving to a new city. — David Sze

Coach's Rule: never admit a lack of experience or knowledge. Carry on at all times as though you've guided a hundred champion crews. Honesty is not the best policy when leading a bunch of college rowers. They are looking for strong, disciplined leadership and not a kinder, gentler coach. Once you've established a certain attitude and demeanor, it's nearly impossible to change to a difference mode in mid-season. — Brad Alan Lewis

Colleges don't teach economics properly. Unfortunately we learn little from the experience of the past. An economist must know, besides his subject, ethics, logic, philosophy, the humanities and sociology, in fact everything that is part of how we live and react to one another. — Bernard Baruch

It's bewildering to me how you can just start chatting with a complete stranger on Facebook, and - next thing you know - it seems as if there's some intense connection with the person - or at least you feel that closeness and hope it's mutual — Zack Love

For me, the desire exists less to get myself a degree than to just go and have the whole college experience, and throw myself into the brain pool and see if I can swim. — Joshua Jackson

Jack Travis was a novelty in my experience, an old-fashioned man's man. None of the boys I had gone to college with had been anything more than that, just boys trying to figure out who they were and what their place in the world was. Dane and his friends were sensitive, environmentally aware guys who rode bikes and had Facebook accounts. I couldn't imagine Jack Travis ever blogging or worrying about finding himself, and it was pretty certain that he didn't give a damn about whether or not his clothes were sustainably produced. — Lisa Kleypas

I loved teaching and I did a lot of work as a teacher's assistant in college, and my favorite experience was basically getting a laugh from a bunch of people because they had just understood something. — Joss Whedon

I tended to find lines of poetry beautiful only when I encountered them quoted in prose, in the essays my professors had assigned in college, where the line breaks were replaced with slashes, so that what was communicated was less a particular poem than the echo of poetic possibility. Insofar as I was interested in the arts, I was interested in the disconnect between my experience of actual artworks and the claims made on their behalf; the closest I'd come to having a profound experience of art was probably the experience of this distance, a profound experience of the absence of profundity. — Ben Lerner

My personal beliefs were shaped more by experience and by watching the news when I was young: images of angelic-looking college students in Mississippi crying like the world was ending because black people were being allowed on their campus; the slow mounting horror of Vietnam on the evening news every night; sitting with my parents in front of the TV and being appalled at the way the Chicago police were treating the protesters during the '68 Democratic convention. Being eyed with suspicion because of my age and the way I wore my hair. — James Vance

'Acting as if ... ' I decided, ridiculously in retrospect, that my experience covering women's volleyball for my college newspaper was sufficient for me to at least try to become a war correspondent. — Samantha Power

I'm in Delta Delta Delta, otherwise known as Tri-Delta. I've developed some great friendships, and it's enabled me to have a little bit more of a normal college experience. — Meryl Davis

What government supports, government controls. This is an ancient axiom repeatedly ratified by experience ... Indeed, as is well known, acceptance of tax aid has led to the secularization of many church-related colleges and universities. — Edd Doerr

I was very lucky. I left college, and Richard Eyre was in charge of the National Theatre. I was offered the lead in 'The Seagull' with no experience and went on to do five plays there. — Helen McCrory

I did a play in high school, then one in college. My first professional experience was off-off-Broadway. I'm conveniently blocking the title. I'm sure I was terrible. — Peter Riegert

Paradoxically, the more Michael kept me at a distance, the more I trusted him - perhaps because he was always willing to help me with tips and introductions even though he wanted absolutely nothing from me (and never reciprocated my nosiness with personal questions of his own with me). — Zack Love

When I think about what part of my college experience came back in my work experience, I feel like it was learning how to read deeper, learning how to keep filling the movie up with more and more resonance. — Jodie Foster