Forbes – Jason Ma
““More caffeine, please!” My inner voice craves. I stare attentively at the same macroeconomic graph with X, Y, and Z axes on the projector screen for the nth time. In class the next day, the professor provides another interpretation of her theory. “Has she any real-world work experience?” I ask myself. Once again, sitting close to the exit door of the lecture hall, I wonder how on earth we apply any of this theory. As a college student decades ago, I generally disliked overly theoretical and impractical courses without real-world references or applicability that were taught by professors with seemingly minimum experience working in the real world. I really enjoyed the more creative or practical ones taught by engaging professors who have experience outside academia. Today, on average, upper-tier college life is both more competitive but more collaborative than ever before. Success in college is commonly defined in terms of summer internships or (part-time) jobs, skills-honing extracurriculars, and ultimately the job you undertake or the graduate program you’ll go for post-college. For both early and more experienced careerists, managing time and stress and finding the right job aren’t easy, given increasingly demanding employers. Concurrently, many firms run by middle-aged executives are challenged to effectively understand Millennials’ mind-sets in today’s increasingly interconnected, sophisticated, and inundated digital age.”(more)