My Advice to Students

Today is Monday, and I’m done for a while with teaching classes.  This gives me the opportunity to say something I might have been shy about saying when I was still in the middle of teaching.  I feel however like it’s important to say, and I think there are a lot of teachers out there that would agree with me about it.  It’s not as game-related as my other entries and is more general, but I feel safe enough putting it here.

This is advice I wish someone had given me when I was in college.  I might not have listened. You might not either.  But from the perspective of someone who now has two degrees, looking back at what I was best at and what I was worst at, and what I ended up doing with what I learned, my advice to college students is this:

Don’t worry too much about your grade.

You’re at school to learn to do something.  You’re at school to have access to equipment and facilities that you normally wouldn’t have access to at home.  You’re at school to meet up with people who can help you to do that and who can create connections for you.  Your priority should be to concentrate on that stuff.  Your priority should not be to concentrate a lot on a series of letters and numbers assigned to you.

If you do well at what you’ve chosen to attempt in college, the marks will follow.  Or sometimes they won’t… sometimes you’ll realize that you made a good project, but it doesn’t actually follow the rules of the project as set out for you by the teacher. Or maybe you’ll realize that you missed an assignment you weren’t aware of because you were concentrating on one that interested you.  Maybe the instructor will be momentarily frustrated with you, but then life would move on.

If you fail a class, ask yourself why. Is it because you didn’t actually learn the material that the class presented, and you’d benefit from taking the class again? Is it because the class honestly didn’t interest you, because it’s the wrong class for you?  Sometimes you have to take a class you don’t want to take just because it’s on your degree chain. Just suffer through it, do your best, and don’t sweat it if your marks are mediocre, if it’s not something that you’re really interested in.  On the other hand, if your entire major is made up of classes you’re suffering through, then maybe it’s the wrong field for you, or the wrong time for you to be in college.

Remember that no one is making you go to college.  I know that bit is hard to swallow, because you might think that, for example, your parents are making you go.  But as an adult student, you now have the choice to go or not go.  You are, in fact, paying to go.  This does not entitle you to a particular mark, but, as we just went over, marks are the least of your worries anyway.  This does give you access to the facilities and the people and the opportunity to learn.  I’ve seen a lot of students who realize suddenly that college isn’t high school, and therefore they don’t “have to” go.  The problem is that they should want to go.  If you realize that you really, bone-deep, don’t want to go, then you should ask yourself who is “making” you go.

Connect with your peers. Other students may be able to help you even more than instructors can.  They may mentor you or explain a concept to you that you previously needed help with.  And take advantage of everything that the school offers you.  If you do genuinely want to go, and succeed, but there is an obstacle preventing you from going, see how your school can help.

And — and — don’t worry so much about your grade.  If you get a bad grade it really isn’t the end of the world. It’s something you can shrug off and move on from, or, perhaps even a teaching moment that you will remember.  On the other hand, if you’re also not learning anything, not showing up, and don’t particularly care, then please figure out what does motivate you and do that instead.