My dad looked at me the day before I left for college and said “Trace, you have 48 months to make the most of it, that’s almost one car lease.” I never forgot those words.
Here I am 36 months later, man does time fly. I’ll be a senior in a few days and as I look back on my long journey there are some regrets; some classes that I could have tried hard in, some girls I could have laid more game on and some friends I could have stayed in touch with better. In the end though, life is what you make of it and I sure as hell made something of it so far.
Everyone always talks about this “real world” that I’m about to enter like I’m in some far off distant place. In reality though, I am. Everything I’ve learned in college has shown me that short of failing out, it’s safe haven to breed any of my thoughts. You’re surrounded for the first time in your life by people who are driven by the same things you are and want to help you achieve your goals. Almost anything you want is at your fingertips.
There is one thing that bothers me though, the lack of preparation schools give you. You take all these classes specific to what you want to be in life but they never show you how to execute on it. We’re being taught subjects that by the time we graduate are outdated and the jobs we want didn’t exist when we started. It’s a vicious cycle that everyone has just more or less accepted.
Fortunately by working closely with my professors and the departments, I’ve learned a valuable lesson; our world is run by politics and budgets. The same can be said about any business as well. The two years that I have spent starting my own company, have been the most rewarding two years of my life. Not only have I learned things no teacher or book could have taught me, I made invaluable connections.
It also has defined what I want to do with my life. And what I want to do is to inspire people to better themselves and the world around them. There also have been so many people out there who have given hours of their time to help me and my cause, that I feel obligated to give back.
When I wake up in the morning, I don’t lie there thinking about what I did the day before, I think of what I’m going to do today that will get me closer to my goal.
Trace Cohen is a rising senior at Syracuse University and bleeds orange! He is double-majoring in Entrepreneurship and Marketing. Trace has always been fascinated with technology and how stuff works. Once he gets his hands on a new gadget, rest assured it will be taken apart and put back together in a matter of minutes. Trace is a hands-on kind of guy whose first love was video games, which he loves to this day.
