Category: Stanford

I Have a Creed Instead of a Mission

What is your mission?

by Clint Korver (Stanford)

There is this lovely period when you are working on a Ph.D. after you have gotten all your coursework and tests out of the way when nobody cares what you do; it is kind of an intellectual romp all over the place.

During this time I ran across The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey. His second habit is to begin with the end in mind. He basically says that you should create a mission statement for yourself.

So I spent a month or two trying to create a mission statement and I failed utterly. I would think things like, “What if I created a company like Hewlett-Packard; that would be pretty cool.” But if I were on my deathbed looking at my life, would that do it for me? I could imagine ways of doing it that wouldn’t be very fulfilling. It was the same story for everything I came up with; it would depend on how it happened. Continue reading “I Have a Creed Instead of a Mission”

Advice to Freshmen, Prospective Freshmen, and Other Lost Souls

How do you get the most out of college?

by John Perry (Stanford)

College takes up four years of your life, at least.  These days it can mean big bucks for you and your parents, even if you don’t go to a pricey private school.  And it’s a lot of work. If you get it wrong, it’s not so easy to go back and start over.  So it’s no wonder that many college freshmen and prospective college freshmen are confused and anxious about how to plan their college years.  And frankly, there are a lot of seniors who look back and wish they had done things differently.

You have about 120 semester units, or 180 quarter units, to work with. I’ve got some suggestions for how to use them, based on teaching and advising college students, for almost fifty years, at Cornell, UCLA, Michigan, Stanford and the University of California, Riverside.

Let’s start with what you want to avoid.  First of all, you definitely want to avoid spending four or so years going to college and not graduating with a degree.  Continue reading “Advice to Freshmen, Prospective Freshmen, and Other Lost Souls”