Developing People Skills at College What better place to make friends and influence people, than at college? You may wonder to yourself well, isn’t college just about getting an education and taking that out to my future career. This is the way that most people go about their educational experience, but it doesn’t have to be that way. Here is an example of a kid who got much more than an education out of college. Jack Greystoke was a top notch athlete and scholar as well. He had just come back from working with the Peace Corps for over a year in Africa. While he was in Africa he realized what life was really about. It was about making friends and the man that could get around him great people was always successful. So he took this mindset to school with him, focusing mostly on friends and the relationships he felt like he needed to build. People knew him from everywhere and he soon became the most popular kid in school. His ability to win friends to his cause really influenced his decisions later on. As he got closer to graduation his peers began asking him to run for student body president. He was nervous because all of his friendships had been for the soul purpose of living up to the expectations of one elderly woman he had met in Africa. Now he was in the midst of seeming to be a cheap politician. He didn’t want to sell himself out like that.
The Meaning of Having Friends The woman that he had met in Africa was named Mazinga and she had taught him that everyone should be treated like family. This meant that they were an integral part of you and that you needed to be invested in them and if you could do this then you would be successful in the end. Her words never left his mind even when he left Africa. Now in the midst of this impending storm, Jack knew that he had to make a decision that would influence him forever and make him into the man that he became. He decided that he would run but only with the idea that he was doing it for his classmates and not himself. This was not him, as he had decided, and he knew that it would only be a semester anyway. As the semester went on he realized that he had more and more power to control the decisions of the school and that because he had spent time with people and actually cared, he was seen as a true leader.
His influence was unprecedented and he was able to change one school policy after another and realized that this was what he needed to do for his future career as well. If you go through school and forget about the people then you will miss out on half the experience. Learn from Jack’s experience and start making friends while you are there at Fort Collins College. It will be something you will never regret!
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