Mike Abasov

You go to school. You study. You nurture your marks and learn what you can, trying to have fun along the way.

If we look at it from a different perspective, your time in school is like an old arcade game. You make different moves, and you collect points as you play. These points are essential to your final score. 

To get more points, you can use some secret pathway like in Super Mario Bros. Or collect bananas instead of cherries like in Ms. Pacman. In the real life, you aslo can do much more than just study.

You can work part-time, and not at a coffee shop but at some small position in the industry. You can go to conferences, network, read books and blogs, make time to be in student clubs, and much much more.

You can start building your own brand.

By the time you graduate, you might grow your resume substantially. All your successes and failures add up and make a huge difference in what you become and how high you get.

It’s just like in Pacman, when you were asked to enter your 3-letter initials, and the game would place you somewhere in the Top 10. Or not place you anywhere at all.

You should look at your time in college as a game — a game you can win by simply playing it better. Moreover, you can look in the same way on your whole life, as described by Chris Brogan and Julien Smith in “Trust Agents.”

You are the only person who decides how successful you will become. I challenge you to play this game.

Will you?