The first day of college my freshman year caught me completely off guard. Growing up, like most people my age, I was taken care of by my parents. Once I got on my own, I relied on my roommate, Cait. Cait has been my best friend for as long as I can remember. However, things don’t always work out. Cait dropped out and again I was left to fend for myself. I slowly stopped going to class, doing my homework, and leaving my room. This slippery slope led me to consider dropping out. However, this semester I have set out to prove others and myself wrong.
This semester I will not only pass but go on to complete my college career and earn my degree. As a college student, one needs to be able to admit failure and practice resilience in order to achieve academic success. At this moment the reader is probably asking themselves: “Why is this girl who considered dropping out last year writing about academic success?” The answer is simple, I have made my mistakes and learned from them.
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Hopefully, college students will learn what not to do from a border-line college dropout. As a college student one is required to go to class, complete all assignments, and follow all rules. Once the student has successfully completed these tasks, they will be rewarded with a degree in their chosen field. This degree is an important tool in helping one start their professional career. In order to be a college student, one must first have a high school degree, be able to admit they have failed, and be resilient. In a personal interview, Holly Sample, a former college student who graduated with a 3.5 GPA states, “[college students] are expected to go above and beyond” Sample goes on to explain, “Students must also be confident and ambitious” (2). Both of these quotes show that being a college student is not easy.
College is a full-time job, and those willing to pursue must be strong-willed and fully committed. In a speech given on Monday 11th, 2019 by Martha Saucedo titled “Just Another Teacher Story”, Saucedo told the gripping story of her past. Throughout her life, Saucedo, was always told what to do by her former teachers. However, as a stubborn adolescent she didn’t always listen. After multiple failed careers, Saucedo found herself in a position where she was unable to provide for herself or her child. It took a near-death experience for her to realize she needed to do better. In her speech, Saucedo states “Failure doesn’t mean done! It means do over!” (Saucedo, 2019)
College student are thrown into the “Adult-World”, unfortunately this world is not very forgiving. It is easy to lose oneself in the new unforgiving environment of college. Jobs, school work, and even making doctor appointments are all things many college students never really think about. These new responsibilities can be a lot for some, and many will fail in the beginning. However, it is important to understand that sometimes failure is necessary. In a 2017 TED Talk given by Cristel Carrisi, who is a self-made millionaire, Carrisi said “I shouldn’t then let the shame of failure eventually get in the way of learning a valuable lesson.” (Carrisi, 2017) College is a place of learning, which can be easy to forget. In order to learn from failures, one must first learn to admit when they don’t understand.
A 2018 study “The Benefits of Admitting When you Don’t Know” conducted by postdoctoral researcher Tenelle Porter used two different groups of college students to test whether or not intellectual humility is explicitly connected to learning out comes. After vigorous testing the study concluded that having intellectual humility is beneficial to not only one’s education, but their stance on issues as well (4). While scientific research backs up the idea of intellectual humility, society is less welcoming. Carrisi begins her speech saying, “No one likes to admit them [failures]” (2017). As humans we hate accepting the fact that failure is unavoidable, but why? College students need to break through this stigma in order to create a more accepting and productive learning environment. Saucedo decided to learn from her failures and went back to college to get her teachers certification. A decade later, her hard work finally paid off, Saucedo won the 2016 Texas Teacher of the year award. Saucedo lives by the motto “Rock bottom is a great place to start a foundation” (2019). It took a great failure to put Saucedo on the right path. Saucedo’s story can teach college students a valuable lesson: everyone fails, but it is what one does with that failure that matters. Fail, be accountable for said failure, and take advantage of the situation in order to learn from the mistake. However, be weary of self-deprecation. Remember, without failure there is no progress.
A book titled “The Ultimate College Survival Guide” by Janet Farrar Worthington and Ronald Farrar states “There’s no shame in having this problem, only in doing nothing to fix it” (128). Failure is an option as long as college students practice resilience, which leads me to my next point. So far in this essay I have talked a lot about failure and mistakes, so how one may ask do I overcome these? The answer is resilience. An online website titled Resilience 101 by Score for College describe what resilience is and how to become well versed in the subject. The article defines resilience as “the ability to bounce back and overcome adversity” (1). Once one has failed, automatically giving up is not an option. Students must be resilient in order to grow from their mistakes and move on, but how does one become resilient? Unfortunately, resilience is not a skill everyone is born with, and it is not going to come overnight.
Students must practice and learn to understand that they have a say in how their future turns out. To see this, we can look at a 2013 study titled “Development of the Inventory of College Students’ Resilience: and evaluating the measure invariance” by Yun-Chen Huang and Shu-Hui Lin. The study defines resilience as “…the positive capacity of people to cope with stress and adversity.” (Huang & Lin 471) This study decided to focus on resilience in college students instead of professional resilience. In order to test this, a group of twenty people came together to create the ICSR (Empathy and Interpersonal Interaction, Cognitive Maturity, Problem-Solving, and Hope and Optimism) scale (Huang & Lin 482). They then used this scale to test over two thousand people. After rigorous testing they concluded “… persons scoring higher on the resilience scale are likely to demonstrate better academic skills,” (Huang & Lin 483) This scientific study proves that in order to be successful in college one must be resilient. However, like I mentioned before becoming resilient is not easy. Many times, in a students’ college career they will feel bogged down with work and may begin to focus more on homework than themselves.
Many students believe extra study time is the best way to increase their grades however, this can be extremely dangerous. If a student stops taking care of themselves, they will not be able to get work done. This bad habit is something I struggled with last year and continue to struggle with every day. Like resilience, this habit will take some time to break. These changes are not going to be fixed in a blink of an eye, they take hard work and patience. To avoid this mistake, one needs to practice “self-care” or making time for oneself in order to avoid becoming depressed or turning to risky behaviors. Resilience 101 asserts, “Strive for balance.” (2) By doing this, students can overcome stress and anxiety and thus become resilient. Education is learned through trial and error. First, students must be vulnerable and put themselves out there no matter the outcome. Next, they must accept the outcome and learn from any failures or mistakes. Finally, students must bounce back from these lessons and use their new-found knowledge in order to better themselves. These skills are essential for becoming academically successful. College is a place for learning, so why not take advantage of it? By following these simple steps students can avoid becoming, like I was, a borderline college dropout.
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