Improve Your Soft Skills As A College Student

As I write this blog, I am currently a Junior Sophister (third-year student) at Trinity College Dublin, pursuing my undergrad in Computer Engineering.

And, in my two years of engineering, I've seen my peers dive into a rat race for technical skills.

In this era of technical roadmaps and courses, if you are someone who's looking to improve their soft skills as well, you're in the right place.

Your soft skills will help you differentiate yourselves from the crowd and move you ahead of the competition.

In this blog, I'll tell you:

1. How I've benefitted from my soft skills in college

2. How to improve and work on your soft skills

Key Soft Skills

Enough about referring to soft skills as, well, "soft skills". I'll tell you which soft skills I acquired in my two years of engineering and refer to them individually ahead.

• Communication

• Decision Making

• Time Management

• Teamwork

• Leadership

• Creativity

• Interpersonal Skills

Although the list of actual soft skills is longer, I believe that the above soft skills can be easily acquired by just being active in college.

These skills helped me develop myself as a person and made me more confident.

Importance Of Participation

Participating actively and simply being willing to do things will take you places.

If there's one thing that I thank the younger, school version of myself for, is that I have always been keen to participate in events and competitions.

Competitions

You need to get out of your comfort zone to achieve the level of soft skills that you want.

Personally, being an active participant in MUNs (Model United Nations) has helped me enhance my communication and public speaking skills a lot.

The absolute beauty of participation is its diverse nature and extreme benefits. For instance, to enhance your speaking skills along with decision-making and creative thinking, there aren't just MUNs.

There are Ideathons, Hackathons, Case Competitions and so much more.

No matter what type of competition it is, you just have to be the one to take the first step and get out of your comfort zone.

After that, things will start falling into place one after the other.

Communication

No matter how shy or introverted you have been at your school, college forces you to open up a bit.

And this is where college life has helped me as well.

I firmly believe that out of all the soft skills that there are, communication alone is one of, if not, the most important skill.

You just need to have an eye for opportunities, because college provides ample of them!

I was a member of the E-Cell of my college, and there I learnt the skills of Cold Emailing and Cold Calling.

As a member of the E-Cell, in my first year, I must've cold-emailed around 100 start-ups and CMOs (Chief Marketing Officer) and called around 150 potential sponsors.

In class 12, all I had in my mind was PCM. And right in my first year of college, I talked to the CMO of Tata, Founder of Geeks for Geeks and brought in sponsors for various events by email.

Communication is not just restricted to cold emailing and cold calling, it's everywhere!

Communication is what will help you build a good network and connections with people.

It's a skill that you use to explain complex things to people in simple and clear ways.

Again, all you can do to improve your communication skills is to be more participative.

Start taking part in random conversations. Be more active and start cold-emailing the right people to create opportunities for yourselves.

Start taking part in the societies and clubs of your college.

Societies and Clubs are the perfect place to improve teamwork, work on your decision-making skills, lead and communicate effectively.

Have Patience

You cannot expect to participate in one event, or cold email a single person and come out as a completely changed person or get a reply. Everything takes time.

Just like building muscle takes consistent effort, building soft skills takes consistent participation and willingness to improve.

Having a clear focus on the bigger goal helps in this case.

Having patience also requires you to be able to deal with rejections and failures.

There have been times when I've prepared my best for a competition and still, I've finished second.

However, taking failures as learnings and not failures helps. The ability to rise back up from setbacks is what will make you different.

Expanding Your Knowledge Base

This is an underrated advice, however, it's super useful. Having the widest knowledge base in a room full of people would always help you.

Increasing your knowledge in ANY domain you want would reap benefits for you, be it your core tech domain or anything else.

Being factually aware always gives you an upper hand in conversations.

You'll be able to engage in more conversations and simultaneously communicate better.

Being in a room with people more knowledgeable than you always helps since you get so much to learn from them.

I'm an enthusiast of tech, space missions, aeroplanes, politics and geopolitics. I make sure that I keep myself updated and learn more about them each day through news snippets or YouTube videos.

This has helped me communicate better and with more confidence!

Conclusion

College has a lot in store for you. And you need to make the most out of it if you want to come out of college as the best version of yourself.

The best outcome for you is when you have strong core fundamentals along with a solid set of soft skills.

This will set you apart from the crowd and make you stand out.

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