For roughly 30 years, I taught English composition and literature courses to several thousand students at various Chicago universities. In doing so, I came to discern some common characteristics of students who succeeded and of those who stumbled and fell on their way to a hoped-for degree.
From those experiences, here’s my message to new college students:
To maintain your status as a full-time student — and to safeguard your student loan and financial aid status — you’ll need to manage a course load of 12 semester hours. Students would often arrive in my freshman classes all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, only to crash and burn because they tried to carry 15, 18 or even 21 semester hours.
Bleary-eyed and disheartened, they would visit me in my office, telling me they had wanted to prove to family, friends and former teachers they had the right stuff. Even if you are an overachiever, don’t overreach.
On the other hand, try not to drop a class or take an “incomplete” grade, as you’ll fall behind the pace, making a four-year stint longer and more expensive. Also, having a history of “withdrawals” and “incompletes” on your transcripts just might not impress potential employers.
And here’s a hint: Use your first two years for general education requirements, saving electives for your last semester. Savvy seniors in my literature courses would tell me they had wanted to exit the university taking the kinds of classes — literature, music, art — that they had always wanted to take. Bravo for them and for the humanities!
An important soft skill you should acquire in college is the ability to communicate with others, as employers value this trait. But be careful. Never assume the students sitting next to you in class, or living in your dorm, think exactly as you do on social, political and cultural issues. You might share a certain amount of time and space, but they are not you.
Getting a college degree is — or should be — a lengthy exercise in the lessons of tolerance and civility. Avoid getting into foolish and heated arguments with those who are different from you because you made false assumptions about them. It’s not about being “woke” but about being intelligent and mature.
While I’m on the topic of assumptions, don’t assume friendship on the part of your instructors, even if they suggest it on the first day of class: We’re all friends here! No, you aren’t.
Instead of trying to be chummy, ask your instructors how they want to be addressed. They’ve earned that privilege. Believe it or not, you can’t talk to them any way you want to. (Try that later with a superior in the workplace.) As the old saying maintains, “familiarity breeds contempt,” and it cuts both ways.
If you stumble by performing poorly on an exam, a paper or in class, don’t play the blame game. (It’s my professor’s fault! My teaching assistant’s! My artificial intelligence bots’!)
A former professor of mine intoned in class one day that 90% of education occurs outside of the classroom. Simply put, hit the books! Make the library or the lab your place to hang out, not some off-campus bar or late-night party in your dorm.
Finally, remember that you’re in college for an education, and if you’re successful, the degree will follow, and hopefully a career. Unfortunately, you’ll encounter students who don’t share your desire for success. They’re there for other reasons (their parents don’t know what to do with them), and they are more than happy to drag you down with them. Sad but true.
So remember, there’s only one person in this world responsible for you getting a good education — you!
I know some students may read this and think, “Um, like, old dude, why should I listen to you?”
Here’s why. When I started college in the late 1970s, I was a former steelworker with a GED diploma. Eventually, I earned a doctoral degree. From all my time in a classroom, as a student and then as an instructor, I learned that universities can be beautiful places of new ideas and enriching experiences.
But they can also be cold and indifferent institutions, where the success or failure of any individual student really doesn’t matter to anyone but a few. And the cost of failure has never been higher.
John Vukmirovich is a Chicago-area writer and book reviewer.