Chelsea: Hi guys, I'm Chelsea

Lauren: And I'm Lauren

Both: And we are the financial diet.

Chelsea: Today we are here to talk about the college habits that you absolutely have to leave behind when you start working in the
professional world. When you do it right, college is a great place to get good skills, networks, and just to learn how to learn, but it can also give you certain habits that proved to be more obstacles than building blocks when it comes time to start your career. It's up to you to figure out which are the habits you really need to leave behind. But for us, these are the biggest eleven culprits. 

Number one is talking things out via text, Gchat message, etc. It's easy when you're a student to get kind of terrified of making an actual phone call and to have all of your biggest conversations and resolutions happen through basically a touchscreen keyboard. But this has to go at the workplace because in general at work all of your biggest, you know, meetings, conversations, conflict resolutions, etc should be happening in person or on the phone. It's faster, there's way more nuance, and you don't risk misunderstanding each other's tone. Not every big conversation will have to happen with your voice, but being afraid of the phone at work is not okay.

Lauren: Number two is eating super heavy meals during the day.

So a big part of college is having those unlimited meal swipe cards that you just go into the dining hall and use, but that pigging out mentality cannot translate into the workplace. Having super heavy meals during the day means two things: feeling sluggish and fighting the urge to sleep at your desk. This makes it really hard to get work done, and there's no such thing as in between class naps at work.

Chelsea: Number three is treating opinions as something that should always be shared. College tends to really create the spirit of like, "All opinions are valid, everything should be a debate, no one should be afraid to speak up when they want to," and that's true in some cases, but it's definitely not true in the average workplace. Learning to tell when is the appropriate time to give an opinion by asking yourself such questions as like, "Is this opinion informed?", "Am I contradicting my boss?", "Did anyone ask for it?", is the key from going to the kid who just came out of college to a seasoned adult. Any good entry-level employee is listening about five times more than he or she is speaking.

Lauren: Number four is cramming and pulling all-nighters. So all-nighters in the professional world should really only have under urgent or unusual situations. A terrible college habit of cramming everything into the night before staying up till 5:00 a.m., and then passing out right after your 8:00 a.m. class just does not fly in the workplace. In the office, you have to be well-rested and at your best throughout the entire day, especially the day of a big presentation.

Chelsea: Number five is being default friends with the people who happen to be at your office. Now, of course you should always
be friendly with your coworkers, and sometimes you will find people in your office that you really connect with on a human level and you'll become true friends. But it's easy to fall into a pattern as an adult that you fell into when you were at school, which is like, "well these are the people around me I guess they're also my friend group." And when you slip into that routine of "my colleagues are my friends," you really run into two problems. One, you tend to obsess over work and talk about it all the time even in your off time, and two, you never give yourself the chance to branch out and find other friends who are based on other parts of your personality or interests.

Lauren: Number six is partying on a weekday. So of course, you can go out after work for a happy hour and have one or two drinks but if you're out partying during the week, and then show up at work hungover or call out because you're too sick to come in that is just not a good look. If you're going to go hard on a Tuesday night as a working professional, you better have a good reason, or at least be able to cover up the next day at work on occasion.

Chelsea: Number seven is using a lot of verbal filler. Like I like feel like in like college, it's like, I don't know it's like acceptable to talk like this like people can I don't know like you can just talk like this if you want to instill it get your ideas out like you're in a class and you're like this is what I think about this but um you know I'm not like an expert or anything. And you can just talk like that and still get good grades if you'd like do all your work and like you can even say declarative statements that sound like questions? And people will still take them seriously?

You cannot do this at work in the workplace. You can take the same idea, and in one case express it in a really concise articulate way, and in the other case, express it with a lot of likes and umms and up speak and all of that stuff, and the exact same idea will be received completely differently. You can have an ideal resume, but it would be really hard to convince an employer that someone who speaks like this in front of a client and doesn't like sound sure like at all, of what they're saying is going to be someone that they can rely on. And for the record, we don't think that someone who speaks with a lot of verbal filler is necessarily not intelligent - of course they can be intelligent - it just makes you sound like you're not confident in your ideas.

Lauren: Number eight is expressing yourself through your appearance. So the vibe in college is that it's really okay to use your appearance, your clothing, your hair, your makeup as a way to express yourself and to kind of experiment a little bit. But when you transition into the professional working world, this is usually not the case. Of course, you might get lucky and snag a job where you can have like a pastel hair, but that's usually an exception. So if you want to get ahead and succeed in the professional world, you'll have to concentrate on looking a little bit more put together.

Chelsea: And also learn not to take it personally. There are other ways to express yourself A) and B) the company's not trying to ruin your vibe specifically, it's just trying to create a neutral work environment.

Lauren: Remember, your septum piercing is not who you are as a person.

Chelsea: Number nine is talking about sensitive subjects. We all are in college that politics, sex, religion, and everything else that would be taboo in a corporate break room is fair game. But you have to remind yourself all the time that not talking about these sensitive subjects is only in your best interest because none of us know where other people's boundaries are, or what they might be offended by, and even if you have one or two people that you become close with and can talk about more serious issues, assuming that it's okay to talk about these topics at work is pretty much the fastest way to end up with a really stern talking-to from your HR department.

Lauren: Number ten is emailing your boss a sob story. In college, it was perfectly fine to email your professor your sob story about why you couldn't finish a homework assignment or why you wouldn't be in class one day or why you couldn't sit for an exam. Rambling personal emails to your boss are generally not a great idea all you to do is just send something short, concise, and simple.

Chelsea: Long story short, if there's some element of work you're not going to be able to do, A) you better have a completely tangible reason including possibly a doctor's note, and B) you have to let them know before the missed work, not after it in desperation.

Chelsea: Number eleven is possibly the biggest one which is focusing on the idea rather than the details. College teaches us all to use our imaginations every day to think of the biggest ideas we can to come up with a new one every day and to push the boundaries of how we think. These things are great, but all pretty much useless in the workplace unless you also have the follow-through and pay attention to the detail and the execution. Most hiring managers would tell you that they'll always take someone who is detail-oriented, focused, and completes tasks way more than they would take someone who comes up with great ideas but doesn't follow through. And often, the bigger we're taught to dream at our individual college, the harder it is to bring those dreams back to reality in the context of a workplace.

The truth about most workplaces is that big ideas are going to have to happen as a team, and they're going to have to happen slowly. Once you've got the imagination part nailed down, it's time to focus on the patience and the execution.

Lauren: Of course no one's going to come out of college as the perfect working professional, but we feel like if you focus on these key habits you'll be way ahead of the curve.

Chelsea: So as always, thank you for watching and don't forget to hit the subscribe button and to go to thefinancialdiet.com for more.

Both: Bye!