Our guest blogger for this post is Dr. Bill Carpenter, Director of First-Year Programs.
You’ve no doubt worked very hard to become a part of High Point University’s class of 2019 and you should think of your enrollment here as a marker of success. Clearly, you’ve already accomplished some great things, and one of our jobs as faculty and staff is to help you find ways to channel your energy into new avenues for intellectual and personal growth. There are so many such avenues here at High Point University that it may be easy to get overwhelmed by the options. It will be easy, too, when confronting all those options to fall back on the habits and ways of thinking that have defined your previous successes. Many students spend a lot of energy trying to make the strategies that worked in high school work in college, and they often discover that the new opportunities and challenges awaiting them here require wholly different approaches and wholly new strategies.
But it’s hard to change fundamentally what’s worked in the past. If writing a 5-paragraph essay with an obvious thesis and a redundant conclusion scored an A in high school, then college essays just need to be a little bit longer, yes? If studying in high school meant rereading the textbook chapter the night before the test, then college means rereading it twice and highlighting important sentences, right? And if math just wasn’t your thing in high school, there’s no good reason to take a challenging math course, correct? From this insider to you: the answer is “No” to all three questions. But I don’t expect you to believe me right away. Most students will need to learn for themselves that college writing requires original analysis developed over multiple drafts; that studying effectively means synthesizing material from textbooks, labs, and class discussions; and that learning new skills, like calculus or Spanish, can strengthen other areas of intelligence.
I’m sure you already know that college will be full of challenges and struggles. It will also be full of failure. Let me say this directly: if you’re doing college “right,” you will fail – repeatedly – gloriously. You will try very hard, stay up late, rack your brain – and you will still fail. College is designed for that; we’ve made it that way on purpose because we know that failure helps you learn and grow. College is something of a haven for thoughtful, productive failure – it’s the safest place to try and to fail. What I hope this blog post does is help you remember that failure is good for you. It helps you succeed.
I’m here to tell you – with over twenty years experience teaching in higher education – that students adapt to and thrive in college more quickly when they give up the idea that they need to play it safe, to do what they’ve always done, and to avoid situations that might lead to failure. To be clear, I’m not saying that successful students go around doing dangerous stuff – there’s an important distinction between risk taking and being reckless. Instead, I’m saying that college isn’t supposed to be 13th grade and it isn’t meant to be just a showcase for what you already know how to do. Rather, college is one of the best places to explore different areas to figure out just what’s important to you – and this exploration requires taking some risks.
Your first instinct in confronting challenge and failure might be to stress-out and then double-down on your past habits. Go back to what worked, to what feels safe. Avoid the assignments or classes that don’t immediately jibe with your talents. Fear of failure, as Wes Moore writes, keeps people from changing; it has “created conformity, spurred conservatism, and stifled creative thinking” (155). These traits are precisely what we don’t need to solve the world’s problems. We need bold, new ways of thinking and innovative leaders who can synthesize information creatively and efficiently. Leaders who aren’t afraid to try and to fail – and then to try again. Taking risks, learning from failure – that is what helps you determine how your passions and skills align with the world’s biggest needs.
Here’s my advice: Study differently, and for longer than you think necessary. Experiment with your writing and use it to ask big questions. Take a class you know will push you. Introduce yourself to your professors and meet them during office hours. Debate ideas from class with friends and family. Think about how your courses relate to each other and articulate those connections frequently. Take advantage of campus resources, especially the library and academic services. Imagine your mind as a muscle, one that needs constant exercise and nourishment.
And then fail. Fail early and often. Fail spectacularly. And when you do fail, don’t get down or morose or scared. Don’t hang out alone in your room or go home for the weekends. Get pumped and get back to work. Because that failure is evidence of learning; it’s data on the way to success. It doesn’t define you or speak to your innate abilities. It simply tells you what you don’t yet know, what you still need to learn about the subject matter and about yourself. Always remember, faculty and staff are here to help. When you try conscientiously and still fail, there will always be people you can reach out to who can help you learn from the experience and shape your next effort. Confronting failure requires confronting our insecurities, but as Moore tells us, those confrontations are ultimately liberating. “When we have nothing to lose, when we realize that nothing is certain, we are freer than ever to choose our own path” (155).
