Author Dan Pink posted a video of his commencement address to Northwestern University graduates in which he argues that most successful people got that way by actually doing things rather than by charting one over-planned path to get there. This portion starts at about 10:20:
Try this experiment. Find someone in his or her 40’s, 50’s or 60’s who is doing something you admire, something that contributes to the world, something that you might like to do yourself one day. Then ask that person how they got there. I guarantee you 97 times out of 100, the smartest, most interesting, most dynamic, most impactful people, will answer that question like this, ‘(Sigh). It’s a long story.’ Why? Because they lived to figure it out. At some point in their lives they realized that carefully crafted plans, like meticulously outlined essays, often don’t hold up…Sometimes the only way to discover who you are or what life you should lead is to do less planning and more living, to burst the double bubble of comfort and convention and just do stuff—even if you don’t know where precisely where it’s going to lead, because you don’t know precisely where it’s going to lead. Now, this might sound risky. And you know what? It is! It’s really risky. But the greater risk is to choose false certainty over genuine ambiguity. The greater risk is to fear failure more than mediocrity. The greater risk is to pursue a path only because it’s the first path you decided to pursue.”
Put in college terms—what you do in college is more important than where you do it.
Planning absolutely has its place. Picking a school is an important decision, and you’re more likely to extract maximum value at the right school for you. But the best way to get a return on your collegiate investment of time and money is to take as much as possible from the experience while you’re there. The best way to figure out your future might not be to plan more, but to actually do more.
Here’s a past post if you need inspiration or ideas about how to get more out of your collegiate experience.