Lionel Barzon III's Professional Blog

Although it seems like it lasts forever, college is just a transitional point between high school and a larger, more successful career. To that end, it’s important to begin transitioning your mindset from college as high school 2.0 to college as your 9-5 job. This small change in mindset and behaviors will put you far ahead of your peers and help you adopt a new focus on your studies as a means for lifelong learning, as I’ve written about before. For a full list of ways you can make college your full-time job, visit my blog at LionelBarzonIII.com

Do you remember what it was like making the transition from high school to college? If you, like about 40% of public and 60% of private school students, chose to disembark from the comfort and freedom of your parent’s room and live on campus, you  certainly  remember. Meals were no longer cooked for you around dinner time most every night. The food was probably less healthy, tasted worse, and the money came out of your pocket (either directly if you paid your own way, or indirectly via loans). You were also, of course, paying for your room–and it was probably smaller and more cramped than the one at Mom & Dad’s place. But, over time, you got accustomed to it. And then, at the end of your four (or five, or six…) years at college, things made a  drastic  switch once again. Suddenly, you’ve found yourself with a more well-paying job and a little bit more money on your hands. So what’s your first course of action when you get that first paycheck at your new office...

This post was originally featured on LionelBarzon.net . With the holiday season in the rearview mirror, college students like myself are preparing to make the trek back to school where, inevitably, we’ll be asked the same question some 30 to 40 times. “How was your break–did you do anything fun?” To some, the holiday break was just that–a break. Time to relax, cast aside responsibilities and binge watch Netflix on their parents’ couch, only standing to lumber to the fridge for another plate of Christmas leftovers. For these people, it’s satisfying to answer “it was good, uhh, I didn’t really do too much.” But for those of us who were fortunate enough to turn winter break into a vacation, that same “it was good, uhh, I didn’t really do too much,” answer is a wake up call that should signal that your vacation might have gone to waste. Far too often, that’s exactly the case. People my age are complacent to take a vacation and get little done. Fly to the Caribbean, for instance,...