How to Become A Successful College Student?

Successful College Students

Successful college students find ways to learn from mistakes and failures by asking questions. Being successful doesn’t mean with money, but how we as individuals become creative. In order to become creative, students must be open to trying new things. New things can lead to challenging ourselves in a situation that is foreign and being deep in thought to problem solve. Immersing ourselves into something that is not self-centered, but focused on others can help us find a purpose or motivation to try new things. Sympathy, empathy and relatability, opens us up to be affected by someone else’s life and story. In return that gives us a better perspective on life and what our future might look like. The new tools that I have acquired over time from experience will play a large role on our views of what truly being successful means.

Successful college students use unfortunate circumstances to change the course of their future. Students come to the understanding that life is rough, and nothing comes easy. They then used those experiences to want a better life. Good students that are open to new ideas, and are learning from failed attempts tend to grow in knowledge and understanding of what they need to change, to try again and have a better outcome. “When you are building a new kind of life for yourself, this process of discovery is the key to growth”(Bain 18). In all of the exercises that Bain did with his students, they found rewards not in the results they produced but in the opportunity that each exercise afforded them to explore their own thinking and how they responded to space, time, color, and sound. No one cared what their exercises looked like, only that they used them to have inner conversations with themselves and to grow with the new tools they had been given.

On a personal note, being kicked out of my home before I graduated high school was an unfortunate circumstance that came out of the blue. I wasn’t equipped or prepared for a life on my own, up until that point. I didn’t have a full time job, a car, a place to live or money in the bank. The future I had envisioned at that point wasn’t leaving me hopeful. What was I going to do? Being let down by people was just a part of my life that I’d grown accustomed to. From foster care at the age of one, to being in eleven different homes until the age of seven helped my brain shutdown and not opening myself back up to exploring new things. Being kicked out of the house by my adopted family really started to bring up old childhood fears and I went into survival mode. Survival mode for me is not opening myself up for therapy or letting others help. Doing everything my way and not trusting anyone to help me was the biggest thing and it was super exhausting. At the point of thinking how am I still standing, was when I realized that it wasn’t just my works that gave me the strength to keep fighting. The friends who loved me and prayed for me, and my faith and belief in Jesus Christ was what kept me going. Their constant encouragement, and making sure I had everything I needed was what made me realize that I wasn’t doing life on my own, but with people who loved me more at the time then my own family. By people stepping up to the plate to help me get to where I am today is why I have been open to trying and doing new things I never thought I’d ever do or be capable of doing. Pointing out this just proves that how letting you dictate your future instead of your struggles will open you up to an understanding that only you can let take place. Letting people help me was probably the best thing I could have ever done. Being in college now wouldn’t have happened if I had stayed in the mindset of I can’t do it, and that its going to be too hard to do. By overcoming one little fear helped me overcome so many others without even knowing it. Having that in mind I’ve learned so many thing since starting school. I became more aware of what type of learner and person I used to be.

In life there are three different kinds of learners, Surface Leaners, Deep Learners, and Strategic Learners. Surface Learners are people who look for facts and words to memorize so they are able to answer questions on the material that was read or pass an exam. Deep Learners are people who are enthusiastic about their new findings and have added skills of analysis, evaluation and theorizing. Strategic Learners are people who only intend to make good grades to graduate (Bain 35-36). With the three different kinds of learners the best student comes from being a deep learner. They find things to motivate them while enjoying the new things they have stumbled upon. Fascinated with how their brain thinks it helps them want to learn more about themselves.

Understanding that there are different kinds of learners has helped me to think about what kind of learner I am, and what helps contribute to why I think a certain way. Current life hoops and hurdles have a lot to do with that as well. Am I rushing myself or not giving myself enough time to complete the tasks that have been given to me and therefore, I wait until the last possible minute to get things accomplished? Other questions that have risen are, What kind of leaner do I desire to become, and how do I  want to further learn and use the knowledge I obtain to change the social and justice issues we now face as a community? What are the skills that I have, and how can I use them to impact the lives of others while striving to understand myself and be the best person I fully am capable of being?

So many of these questions I wouldn’t have thought about on my own. Having tools and resources to help me understand the nature of my mind and the reason I do certain things is amazing. I am grateful for the opportunity I have been given. For me to be able to overcome so much and be able to use that to push me further in life has been one of my greatest motivations. I want to be the person who changes the trajectory of my future, not my past trials and traumas.

Our brains have “models” that take in information and processes it to form an opinion. I was fascinated by this concept. Our brain from experience develops ways to process things based off past decisions we have made whether it be right or wrong. Putting ourselves out in the world in an environment that is new to us can change our brains and open us up to try new things.

By reading this book it has made me more self-conscious about what kind of learner I want to be. I want to be a deep and mindful learner. “The attributes of a mindful learner are, implicitness of more than one perspective, continuous creation of new categories, and openness to new information” (Bain 74). The fact that we have our own philosophy, and view point sets us apart from everyone else. Our uniqueness can create things in a way that no one else can and the ideas that our brains come up with are our own. We have construed these things due to our differences from others and the abilities that we’ve been given through the experiences and fails that we have overcome.

Everyone fails at some point in their life. People who become highly creative and productive learn to acknowledge their failures, to embrace them, and to use and learn from them. It is not an easy task to admit doing something wrong, or failing to succeed. As human beings pride is one of our greatest setbacks. Being a prideful person, it is not easy to admit to not being perfect in the eyes of others. The opinions of others matter so much to people in today’s society, that we get caught up and get into a vicious cycle of being people pleasers. Being able to set our prides aside and admit that we have failed can open us up to a world a different possibilities. Denying ourselves the truth can make our brain believe it as truth, and it will shut down the reasoning to try and prove that we are capable of improving. If we admit our failures and try to prove those failures wrong we will succeed eventually over whatever problem we are trying to fix.

Again how we deal with failure plays a role on our future accomplishments. Not acknowledging our failures can lead us to self-destruct. “Students with less knowledge often express great confidence in what they don’t know. Perhaps behind their exaggerated assertions about how much they believe in themselves lies an uneasy doubt that can’t admit any shortfall for fear that it might jeopardize some carefully constructed facade of self-regard” (Bain 170).

I’ve always tried to prove to people that I am smart. I know so many different things about, gardening, tiling, cars, fishing…etc. Being wrong has never made me feel good, and it is always hard for me to admit that I was wrong. To have a long streak of what I thought was being right, didn’t help me when I was found to be “dead in my tracks” wrong. When you fear failure itself it stops you from pursuing any kind of new thing. College was hard for me to commit to because my success in being smart to everyone around me, might have been nothing when I decided to join college. Using the excuse that I’d been out of high school for almost four years, was a crutch that made my brain think I had a disability of some kind that was justifiable enough to warrant me not pursuing college. How I would do in school grade-wise is what scared me the most. Would my college grades reflect the A+’s that I had received all four years of high school? Now looking back at the decision to let my excuses keep me from moving forward in continuing my education, I think to myself that college isn’t so bad. I should have gone sooner! College has benefitted me in so many areas already, and I am excited to see what else I learn. I have had some challenging classes already, maybe not associated with grades, but with what kind of person or learner I want to be. Don’t let failure and your past dictate your future progression of success. Being able to ask for help from someone with that experience is key, it also helps us cultivate our problem solving skills. 

Find something that piques your interest. Opening ourselves up to a different environment outside of our comfort zone can change our perspectives on the world. Taking classes on things that would further help us to understand world problems and history, is another way to continue growing in knowledge. Being a person who wants to get a passing grade and not really benefit from what is being learned won’t help us to reach our full potential. Wanting to be successful isn’t a bad thing. To be successful is gaining all the knowledge and understanding that you can, to be a problem solver. Being the kind of person that wants to learn something new every day can peak our interests in many different areas of our lives.

 “Self-compassion allows you to step back from the problem and exercise a more objective approach. As you practice self-compassion, your empathy for others grows with the recognition that everybody, including you, suffers, comes up short, and stumbles from time to time” (Bain 173). Learning to invest our time into something or someone bigger than ourselves can be so valuable, we gain more experience and lifelong lessons. Everyone’s story is different and gives us the perspective that we are not the only ones going through tough times. We can then sympathize with the person and have more compassion for ourselves and those around us. Getting to know someone new, can help us in trying to solve problems the best way we know how.

Finding things that are fascinating helps us to become more creative, because we become lost in something other than ourselves. Researching historical origins of social, and different world issues that we have today, can show us a pattern of how we reached this point in time. Also learning to research can help make sure that whatever we are talking about is accurate and true. Helping solve a problem is great, but making sure that we are providing accurate information can help people form opinions based on truth and fact and not because we have given them biased information. Looking for ways to give back to the community are going to open us up to different kinds of people, nationalities and circumstances.

Becoming a better college student is a good goal to strive for, but becoming a forever learner who is willing to problem solve is even better. Giving back to the community is another good example of helping others out. Putting ourselves out in the world in an unknown environment can help us learn from mistakes made, open us up to new culture and people we may have never associated with otherwise. The attributes of a college student are, learning from mistakes and failures, learning to ask questions, becoming a better creative and problem solving human being. Finding things in life that can motivate us will also help us to become better learners and studiers. Being open-minded and being available to try new things will also gives us more experience and might work out for our good somehow. Being a better college student means, being willing to learn, being open-minded, trying new things, acknowledging our mistakes and failures, being open to correction and finding ways to help solve problems and give back to the community.

Works Cited

Bain, Ken. What The Best College Students Do? Belknap, Harvard, 2012.