College is Supposed to be Challenging

 

You will inevitably receive several difficult phone calls from your student during their first semester. Or, if they are living at home while in college, the stressed reactions when they get home. Some of these calls will relate to roommates, others to how he or she is “fitting in,” and others about how terrible the food is or that parking is outrageous. Another call that is likely to tear at your heartstrings is the call that whatever they are studying is really hard, and your student doesn’t know if he or she is up to it. When they describe the classes themselves, sometimes “snippy” professors who don’t answer direct questions, or refuse to provide either study guides or extra credit work, you may find yourself seething about the cruel injustices being experienced by your student.

On the other hand, there is a simple reality to face here: college is supposed to be challenging. And sometimes that level of challenge may seem unreasonable to either students or their parents. But it isn’t a reason to panic.

When a student receives a degree from a college or university, they are essentially being “certified” as a reasonably educated person. Colleges have a variety of what are known as “learning outcomes,” for their students. These are the things they say a graduate should understand and be able to do. Many common learning outcomes are: critical thinking, the ability to analyze and understand things beyond the surface, Computational or math ability to understand statistics and use them to make good decisions, and oral and written communication. Others are information literacy, (the ability to find analyze and determine what information is valuable and which is not) teamwork and problem solving, ethical reasoning, intercultural knowledge and competence. Student enter higher education with only rudimentary development of these outcomes/ skills, and college is designed to help them develop in every way. College is also designed to teach self-reliance and the effective use of resources. For no other reason, consider that college classes meet for perhaps one fourth to one third the length of high schools classes, yet require even deeper knowledge on the part of student. Students need to spend more time by themselves reading and understanding material to succeed.

Think about it: if you were hiring a college graduate for your workplace (assuming that the job requires a college degree) would you be happy with someone who had the skills of a high school student? Of course not. You would want to hire someone who is head and shoulders above a high school student, somebody who has the knowledge to do the job well, someone who can solve problems without constant supervision, someone who is dependable, able to make good decisions and would be good to work with as part of a team. You also want someone who, if you asked him or her to make a presentation to your boss or write an important report, could do so successfully. To be able to do all these things requires a person who is more accomplished and able than a high school graduate and the only way they can develop those skills to be  challenged to grow and mature in ways that high school simply can’t do.

The most important single thing college students must do is change themselves into a college or university student in instead of high school students, and that’s one of the hardest changes for them to make. Here’s what University of Pittsburgh student Taylor Pecarchik said in The Pitt News in 2017.

“I couldn’t breeze through my notes anymore and still get an A on an exam. I couldn’t afford to miss school for a slight cough or sore throat. I just wasn’t a “natural” anymore. What had happened? Did my knowlege (sic) fly away to someone else?…I then realized I had to change — I needed to actually listen and participate in lectures, study in between class meetings and visit my professors at their office hours if I wanted to not only boost my GPA, but to actually learn the material I would later need for my career.”

So, when your student makes that phone call what can you do? Listen. Then listen some more. Then once they have told you what they’re worried about, ask what the professor said during their office hours, or who else the student has talked to on campus about their concerns. Ask them if they feel they need help in how to study or better ways to take notes. Another thing you could ask them is when they’ve completed their assigned reading, do they feel they could teach a lesson on the subject? If not, then they probably need to find a different way of reading and studying.

Taking control of his or her education is what your student needs to do more than anything, and taking control of something that has been mostly given to them through 12-13 years of schooling is a lot harder than they think. It’s like the first time they get behind the wheel of a car after being driven everywhere for 16 years. They may panic or feel unprepared and incredibly scared.

When our daughter was learning to drive, her driver’s education instructor asked the students and parents on the first day the following question: “How many decisions does a new driver make in one mile of driving?” My first reaction was perhaps twenty, but the real answer was two hundred. Two hundred! I would never have guessed that, but that revealed to me why our daughter was so frightened to get behind the wheel. College is the same way. Once students really begin to understand what it takes to succeed in college, they feel they’ll never master those techniques.

But that’s not true at all. They can succeed in college and take on the difficulty. Hey, they learned to drive, and how think that’s no big deal. But succeeding in college is about their taking more action and being in charge of that action than they’ve ever had to before. So give them places and ways to start taking control by contacting professors, tutoring services, their academic advisor; that’s how become a successful college student. They can thrive, but only if they are firmly in the driver’s seat.