- Hey everyone.
My name is Brad Carney and I graduated this last spring
from Dartmouth college,
where I was fortunate enough to have the opportunity
to major in my favorite topic philosophy.
Since I filmed my day in the life video
with Crimson education,
I have moved to South Carolina
where I am able to play a lot of beach volleyball.
Unfortunately, I love beach volleyball.
I love volleyball in general.
Unfortunately I'm only five nine.
And so I am not the peak volleyball player
but I still have fun.
I also have started to learn how to play chess
because in our socially distance world where
there's a virus spreading,
I've had to kind of realign myself.
I'm usually a very social person outgoing.
And so trying to switch my mind
to being a little bit more comfortable being alone
has been a challenge but it's been a good challenge.
And I've think I've met that challenge.
I've also had the time to read, finally read Dostoevsky
and I've read a couple of his things.
And so most recently, "Crime and Punishment"
and "The Brothers Karamazov" really great books.
And I'm really glad I got the time to read them.
And I've also, I applied for and won a senior law prize.
So that money is going to be able to help me to
in terms of law school applications and law school costs.
So that's really great.
I'm also still bodybuilding.
If you notice from the last video,
I'm not as healthy as I was
I was kind of in my bulking phase before the competition
and about five weeks out from my competition
it got canceled because of the whole virus situation.
And so I didn't get to compete, but I still was proud
of my achievements and everything like that.
So it's still okay, I'm still doing it.
I don't know if I'm gonna compete again
but I'm excited for the future.
So there's one word for academia in 2020,
and that's just going to be zoom
or maybe online video conferencing software,
whatever software that your particular school uses.
But in so far as everyone is doing this
there's going to be a lot of new challenges
and a lot of challenges that students already have come to
grips with, or they're going to come to grips with
this, this upcoming fall.
So things like living at home
presents a different set of stressors
than living on campus with your fellow classmates
maybe neither is better or worse.
I think more people would probably prefer to be on campus
and away from their parents
but it's just a different environment
because you're at home,
you're at the place that you kind of chill out.
And now that turns into a work environment.
And then also
there's a philosophical conversation going on right now
I think in academia and outside of academia
about the value of being in the classroom
or in doing classes online right?
And so there there's questions about,
what am I paying for and am I getting this full value
and really interesting conversation
obviously I'm not gonna go into it,
but it's just really great conversation to have.
And it's about time that we have that conversation.
And then I also am excited about the new innovations
that will come out of this situation and it's not all bad.
And so I'm excited to see what schools kind of figure out,
especially with things, STEM topics, where they have labs.
And so how do you learn online with labs
and make it just as good
or if not better than when you were at the lab at school?
So I'm very fortunate to have my future plans
kind of lined up with my ideas
I had when I first filmed my day in the life video
with Crimson.
So I have secured an internship
with the New Hampshire adult parole board.
Where I will be doing the research to understand
and help implement the best evidence based practices
for New Hampshire in particular.
But I'll also be looking at other States
to see what they have done
and that research might continue into the fall.
And in a year, I hope to be able to say
that I'm moving into apartment
or have at least signed for an apartment
where my law school will be located.
To that end I'm looking for a place that
is a little bit different than Dartmouth,
but not necessarily.
So, Dartmouth, very small campus
kind of in the middle of nowhere in New Hampshire.
And so I'm looking at schools that are in
at least medium sized cities, so Boston
or Philadelphia, or even New York,
but I'm also not counting out places like UVA where
it's still a small town feeling but I think
both would be good but I wouldn't mind to change.
So I have some great advice for myself two years ago
which was sophomores
it was like rising sophomore, junior, Brad whatever,
it doesn't matter, right?
One thing I would say the
first thing I would say take more pictures.
I did not take enough pictures.
And now that it's kind of over,
I'm like, oh crap, I don't have enough pictures.
I don't have pictures of all these people
that I wanted to take pictures with it.
And it's not even like, you have to get all dressed up to
and take some elaborate picture.
It's just like oh no, the people that are in your classes
or the people that you just generally like hanging around
or even some, a cafeteria worker
that you particularly bonded with just take a picture
with them and you'll have that forever instead of
wishing that you had it.
And it's kind of too late.
Another piece of advice I would give myself is
if I hadn't already kind of meditate
or think about brainstorm what it is
that I want to do and who it is that I want to be.
And so that doesn't have to be super serious.
It doesn't have to be a perfect plan
where everything has to line up 100% or your life is ruined.
It's more like a flexible fun,
introspective thing where you're just thinking about
like, who do I wanna be?
And what do I wanna do? And you can change jobs 18 times
but you have an idea of the path that you want to do.
And maybe the people that have already done
gone along that path.
And so you have a kind of roadmap to
at least imagine your life by.
And then I think the last thing I would say is that
if there's something on your college bucket list
whatever that is, just go do it.
So I think this current situation
with all the social distancing
and people had to go home from school
it showed everyone that you can't take your time for college
for granted, and you never know what might happen.
And so if there's something that you've been wanting to do
but you're just like, oh, I'm kind of lazy.
Or I don't really feel like it, or I'll do it later
and you have time just go do it.
So if there's a club that you wanted to join
you're like, oh, I'll just join next term.
Well, if you have time, just go do it now.
Or if there's like some painting in wherever,
across campus you're just like,
wow, that's really far though I don't wanna go
walk that far.
Just go walk that far or take the bus or ride a bike,
take a friend
just go do it because you never know when it's going to
be over.
And so you just don't wanna lose out
on those opportunities.
If you're a college student heading to school in the fall
my first rule of advice would be to be flexible.
We have seen that depending on your college or university,
the policies can change.
And I don't think there's any reason to think
that they can't change in the middle of the term right.
And so I just think that going in
and knowing that you have this flexibility,
you know some things might change,
some things will stay the same
will allow your mental state to be more at ease
and to allow for more learning,
which is one of the key goals in college,
it's not having anxiety about what will happen
in the future.
The second thing I think is to make sure
before you go to school to read up on the policies
that your specific college or university
will be implementing
with respect to all the social distancing mask,
things like that.
I think it's really important
just because there some colleges sound really really strict
and you don't wanna go into school not knowing these things
and then end up in trouble or something
over something that is very preventable.
And then the third thing I would say is to make sure
that you have the
or rather you don't have incorrect expectations
about what's going to happen.
So I know at Dartmouth in the fall,
we always have a huge bonfire.
All the alumni come from out of town.
It's just a huge party.
It's awesome, but that's probably not going to happen.
And so as long as you don't expect that to happen
or something like that to happen,
then you won't be as disappointed.
'Cause that's where disappointment comes from.
Is these incorrect assumptions or expectations.
So just making sure you're
again, that flexibility will allow you to
not have such wrong expectations about what's going on.
And then the last thing is just to maintain openness
around social distancing and mask wearing.
College is going to look a little bit different
even if you're on campus,
all the students might not be on campus,
or you might do some remote learning
some in classroom stuff.
And so just to be open to that experience, be open,
and still, staying open to what it is that you want to do.
Don't get this anxiety about, oh my gosh,
the job market's not gonna be great when I get out,
so I need to now switch my major to math or engineering.
And so I can just, I will have a job when I'm done.
It's okay.
It'll be okay.
Still explore your academic interests and be brave
take different classes and see what your college
or university has to offer.
The LSAT is going great.
I get my score back tomorrow actually,
it's the end of June for the June test.
And I'm going to take the July test here in two weeks or so.
And I want to go to law school
and either be on the law review or on the mock trial team
or both, but I've heard at least one L year is
one heck of a ride and you don't have a lot of time
to do a whole bunch of other stuff.
And then after law school
I hope to go into some type of litigation position.
That's after talking with numerous
Dartmouth alumni who are also lawyers.
That's what I think I wanna do,
but I'm not steadfast in that opinion
just because I'm not even a law student yet.
So my mind is open to different possibilities.
So obviously Lawyers do a lot of reading and writing.
And so I think it follows that when people think about
how did philosophy helped me, I did a lot of reading
and a lot of writing
just like a lot of liberal arts students.
But one of the things I think is perhaps unique
about philosophy is that
or it gives one the ability to kind of create, refine
and address arguments in a very deep manner.
And this can be on empirical issues
and non empirical issues,
which I think is unique to philosophy
that not empirical stuff, where
to make, a point, you might need a couple of pages
because there is nothing you can just point to
to say, look, this is just true and you should believe it.
You have to actually explain the mechanism of their system,
by which whatever you're proposing is going to work.
And then philosophy has given me
the tools to separate out noise from signals.
And that is extremely important when reading and writing.
And then finally the best takeaway I have
from my philosophy major is the ability to
ask better questions in my life and in research.
And hopefully in my future career
I have found that the ability to ask better questions
get you better answers.
And it leads to new discoveries depending
on what your doing or what I'm doing.
And that is it seems extremely trivial
to just ask better questions
but I think it's a skill.
And I think that philosophy homes that skill
because of all the things I went over previously
about philosophy.
My extracurriculars did have to change
after we filmed the first time.
So as Christmas rolled around
I was getting ready for my competition
which was going to be in the spring time.
And so I had to start cutting weight
to be on stage for that body building competition.
And so I started not eating as much food
still getting all the nutrients I need, but just less food.
We're not trying to bulk, we're trying to cut.
And then I had to spend more time doing cardio.
And so I just didn't have that many hours in the day
to do all those extra things like maybe go out at night
and just kind of hang out.
I had to kind of refocus my life for this competition.
And so the other important thing to me was this
that I gave a lot of my effort to my residents as a UGA.
So I was a UGA my entire senior year.
And I was just so grateful that I could learn and live
with my residents because they meant the world to me.
And it really did define my time at school
because I don't think I've ever had the opportunity
to kind of take 30 residents
and kind of mentor them and lead them through
their lives, at least their first life at college.
And some of them I'm glad to call friends even now
after I'm no longer their UGA.
And so it was just a really great year.
The spring time was remote.
So I did have to do remote UGA.
And so that just was like video calls
and talking to people over email,
but it was still a great experience
because that contact was still there with my residents.
And so I'm just so grateful
that I had the opportunity to do that.
And I'm grateful even though my body building
show was canceled that I had the opportunity
to go through that and maintained the grade point average
that I wanted at the same time.
So it it was a great year.
(upbeat music)