Re-Post: Your Foundation to Success in College
Originally published in 2020, this post contains great advice for how to be successful in college. We’re re-publishing it here at the start of a new semester; there are great ideas here for students at all levels to find your motivation for college success!
By Darrin Grubb
“Mr. Grubb, what advice can you give me to be successful”? It is a loaded but very common question I get from students at the start of every semester. At the community college where I teach, we hold a welcome day for the new students where they have an opportunity to meet faculty and ask questions. Each meet-and-greet session consists of probably fifty new students in attendance along with a panel consisting of a few faculty and staff. I am much honored when asked to volunteer for these panels. I always hope that some students can relate to my story and use it as inspiration in their own journey. I suspect my story has some elements of the “American Dream”.: A rags-to-riches-type plot where a very poor, underprepared, first generation college student struggles to graduate, gets fired in his first career job for poor performance, but stays focused on learning which eventually leads to graduate school, starting and then selling a business, and using the proceeds to make some timely investments to become wealthy. While many of us love the “American Dream” story, it is sadly a dream for most poor kids given that there is only about a 16% chance of them escaping poverty. While my individual efforts might not change this statistic significantly, I am hoping that I can share two concrete ideas that will help inspire my students to achieve the same opportunities that I have enjoyed.
“Start with why” is traditionally my initial piece of advice for achieving success. We improve our chances of success when we build knowledge. In order to get knowledge, we need learning and memory. Yet, we can only remember what we pay attention to. As Dr. Julia Shaw noted in her book The Memory Illusion, “…attention is the prerequisite for memory formation”. However, this attention will take effort. Without the inspiration to put in this effort, we give up. Where will students find the inspiration? By having an in-depth understanding about why they are in school. Author Simon Sinek has recently generated a lot of excitement around this idea. You can view his ideas here. However, the idea of attaining a deep level of meaning to enhance learning has been known by psychology researchers for decades.
“Learn to forget” is the second piece of my advice for realizing victory. While deriving inspiration from knowing why is critical to attention which is critical to learning, we cannot pay attention until we expose ourselves to an environment where we sense something new. That is, I cannot help you obtain new skills, without keeping you awake and engaged in class. However, I cannot achieve those goals unless I first get and keep you in class. This dilemma crossed my mind when recently reading Dr. Shaw’s book. It struck me how many ways our memories are a catastrophe of errors. And, yet in the end, she concludes that our malleable memory might have an advantage by allowing us to edit our memories. By learning to forget our past mistakes, we can create a new story that we like. An analogy might be a first generation college student, unsure if they belong in college, fearful if they can hack it, with a lifetime of baggage resulting from less than perfect decisions. Could we use Dr. Shaw’s basic idea of redefining their life for a new beginning to increase the odds that they will not only start school but finish?
This question is exactly the issue that Susan Weinschenk addressed in her article for Psychology Today where she references a process known as story-editing. By completing just four, fifteen minute writing exercises about challenging events in her life, she was able to redefine her story. It seems once we can get a person to forget their past and create a new ethos, they start making decisions consistent with that new character which leads to success not only in school but in other areas of their life as well.
Are you ready to form a new foundation for success? Launch with these two steps:
Start with why. Begin with a deep meaning of knowing why you are pursuing a new undertaking.
Learn to forget. Create a new story for yourself by learning to put your mistakes in the past.
References
Pennebaker, J. W. Writing health: Some practical advice
https://liberalarts.utexas.edu/psychology/faculty/pennebak#writing-health
Ratcliffe, C. & Kalish, E. C. (2017, May 18). Escaping poverty. US Partnership on Mobility Poverty. https://www.mobilitypartnership.org/publications/escaping-poverty
Shaw, J. (2016). The memory illusion: Remembering, forgetting and the science of false memory. Penguin Random House.
Sinek, S..(2014, March 3). Start with why. TED Talk. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IPYeCltXpxw
Weinschenk, S. (2013, June 13). How stories can permanently change behavior. Psychology Today. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/brain-wise/201306/how-stories-can-permanently-change-behavior