The academic roller-coaster for students is fairly
predictable, but it seems to take new students by surprise that there is a
season for student panics or problems. It
might depend on work load, or on mood, overall perspective of life, or just
what time of year it is – but I often hear waves of students’ troubles with
their classes. Sometimes this is a
simple need for resources or referrals, or an idea for the occasional writer’s
block, or an issue of time/life management.
I can speak to all of these. I
can also ‘help’ much more than this with specific academic/learning/life issues
– but I’ve learned that sometimes it is better to just be silent, and listen.
Sometimes, talking too much is just that. Too many ideas or solutions truncate the
students’ abilities to figure it out for themselves, to bumble through the
problem-solving process. Often this takes
way longer than my quick tip would take.
It occasionally takes several semesters, bad grades, and even loss of
financial aid to figure out their answer.
It’s messy and sometimes heartbreaking, but I guess that makes advising
students a lot like parenting in some ways.
In my jobs within higher education, and especially outside
of it, I’ve had perhaps too much experience in ‘helping’ – sometimes I get
snookered, but for the most part, I can usually guess which folks need to learn
the hard way, and which just need one little hint to get back on track or to hear ‘the
pep talk.’ And then there are my
‘projects.’ Those are my students that
are either frequent flyers (seeing me weekly or more often) or those that only arrive
for a crisis-download, usually when it is too late to do anything constructive
to salvage their grade/semester/financial aid.
As I get older, I realize that the most critical part of education may
not be what classes they take, what degree they earn, but what they learn about
themselves. And frighteningly, some just
don’t want to learn that stuff. They want the tidy check sheet of classes to
take in the right order, and expect to emerge as an employable, self-aware
individual who can get along with others.
Uh oh. There is no class for
that! There is only the messiness of
personal growth that happens along the way, and never conveniently on breaks
between semesters.
That messiness ranges from an inability to self-manage time
(I.E. working a full-time job and trying to do full-time classes) to family
crises (I.E. catastrophic illness, divorce, death in the family) to the strange
expectation that everything should be easy and go their way. And though I can empathize with many of these
situations, and give resources/suggestions/tips when appropriate, what the
students will or will not learn, is their choice. It’s somewhat of a bitter pill to realize
that my rushing in to help too much can actually prevent some of the messy and
necessary learning experiences that will help my students become their best. And whether students are 18 or 80, college is
a time to grow. Yes, it is check sheets
and courses and degrees, outrageous textbook prices, and financial aid rules,
and knowing what major to choose – but I still believe in the higher purpose of higher education. That’s to become the best you can be. All of us who work in any level of any
educational institution have a role to play in that transformation, even if it
is to pause, stop giving too much help, and to witness the miracle of
individual evolution. On a good day, it’s
like watching butterflies hatch and take flight.
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