I cannot tell a lie: I counted down the days till college graduation since junior year.

I wanted to get out and work normal hours for the weekend, to see my paycheck inflate three fold from my summer job, to pay the bills while watching my savings account swell (ha!).

Insert laugh track here.  My student loans eat up a good portion of my paycheck and will for 10 more years.  

But in all seriousness, I thought I was ready for the real world largely because of my experience at the Courier.

I was right though. I was ready, but it started small—or as they call it in the real world, entry level. My Courier experience proved extraordinarily helpful in my first job, which, while it was not in journalism, was for a corporation that rents cars, has bragging rights as customer service champs, and airs commercials toting the line “We’ll pick you up.”

No matter what your first job is, it’s going to be a huge learning experience. All you have to relate or draw off of that is undergrad experiences.

It’s a big world outside the protective walls of college. Now that I’m out, I absolutely cannot stress enough how important it is to do something—anything—in undergrad.

There is a certain maturity you gain from joining organizations on campus. To learn how to work with someone you wouldn’t otherwise be friends with, and to strategically problem solve and meet a common goal are experiences I used at work everyday.

My first job revolved around pleasing picky customers and learning how to run a business under a manager just a tad older. Everyday I thought about a lesson I learned and all of those lessons came from my professional development at the Courier, even if it was as small as apologizing for being snotty or as major as miscommunicating important information.

Get ready people, it’s an amazing, great, fun, scary world out there—all of which you make happen yourself. What they tell you about life being what you make of it is 100 percent true.