THE title itself may be too daunting and on a global level but I think I got you there. I’m actually just taking into consideration certain personal challenges on how you can improve your life as a student. It is still on a global level though as education must be a continuing process through life even surpassing the age of 60 and it is not just limited for people in Salamanca or Toronto. It is for everyone even in such countries as Ghana and Uganda.

A new year brings new challenges and one of them is how to maximize one’s learning in his or her chosen field or endeavor. At Harvard Business School for example, they challenge students not to be employees of Fortune 500 companies but to become entrepreneurs themselves. The United States (where Harvard is located) has a very booming economy because this idea is practiced by students immediately after graduation. And it is not just in Harvard that they encourage students to become entrepreneurs. Even in highly technical universities such as MIT, graduates often end up being entrepreneurs themselves. Just look at the several Silicon Valley entrepreneurs nowadays. Most of them are technical graduates. Even when the dotcom phenomenon eventually fizzled out during the earlier part of this decade, many of these entrepreneurs have kept moving on. Founders of such phenomenal sites such as Google and Facebook are still in their 20s and they rake in billions of dollars every year.

It is not just in the United States that college students are taught how to become entrepreneurs. That wave is slowly catching up elsewhere. After World War II, universities in Japan have been aggressively pushing their college students to dream beyond becoming a slave to the Western corporate world and rise beyond the ashes of humiliating defeat. Thus, we now have Sony, one of the most prolific media conglomerates in the world. Still headquartered in Tokyo, Sony dominates Hollywood with a number of businesses such as Sony Pictures, AXN and a whole lot more. Robotics is slowly catching up in Britain and has not yet fully penetrated the United States market yet in Japan, it is a staple as far as technology is concerned. We can fullly grasp how industrialized Japan is just by looking across our next door high-rise neighbor whenever we are in a world-class city in the United States. Let’s have a random example – Orlando, Florida. Count how many Japanese companies there are in that city and you will be amazed. This amazing phenomenon is portrayed accurately in Michael Crichton’s novel The Rising Sun.

But as I’ve said, maximizing learning starts on a very personal level. Thus, when you are fresh out of high school, you must strive hard to pass the SAT or secondary aptitude test because this will become your entry level through college. And know your full potential and what your interests and skills are. That way, you can breeze your way in the game called life.