An essay I wrote entitled, “Incoming college STEM freshmen, take note: You need to take your classes seriously,” was published as a special to the USA TODAY Network and in two other South Florida newspapers. I offered ten suggestions for success to incoming college freshmen planning to major in a STEM discipline. Among the suggestions were things like the need to manage time, spending less time on cellphones, completing every assignment, including any extra credit, avoiding dating until junior or senior year, and, if struggling in a difficult class, asking for help from a peer tutor or even the professor himself. I included a link to the published version on my course tile for a class in introductory chemistry and turned it into an extra credit assignment. Students were encouraged to write a three-page essay in MLA or Chicago Style format, summarizing the essay in one page and then to share their thoughts and experiences. This semester, one student’s essay was outstanding and deserves to be published. It is presented below in its entirety, exactly as written:
My name is Anne Dekker, I’m a sophomore here at Palm Beach Atlantic University and I’m from Grand Rapids, Michigan. I am taking chemistry because my long-term goal is medical school (my dream is University of Michigan Medical School, but I’ll take what I can get), where I plan on studying to become a dermatologist. I am taking introductory chemistry specifically because I haven’t taken a chemistry class since my freshman year of high school, and I want to make sure I have a solid understanding and foundation before I move onto more difficult chemistry courses. I am here at Palm Beach Atlantic University first and foremost as a STEM student hoping to gain a Christ-centered education throughout my 4 years here.
While reading through the Ten Suggestions article, the very first suggestion really called me out. I didn’t put in much effort in high school, because honestly, I didn’t need to. My high school was not very academically rigorous to begin with, and at the time I had very little direction or motivation, so I coasted along and barely studied or worked hard at anything and still passed every class with mostly-okay grades. First semester of college last year hit me like a truck; not only because I was nearly 1500 miles away from home and my roommate was the devil incarnate, but because I realized that to accomplish the lofty goals I’d created for myself I’d have to actually use the gifts God gave me and try in every class, not just the ones I liked, for the first time in my life. College definitely isn’t high school, and I can’t coast. I spent my first year of college developing good study habits, social skills, and time management so I’d have a shot at accomplishing what I feel God calling me to do in the years to come.
‘Do every assignment, even the extra credit.’ Extra. Credit. Matters. Extra credit is literally a free grade-booster presented to you on a silver platter, and I’ve come to realize in college that anyone who passes on extra credit is cheating themselves out of the grade they could have. The pride you feel when you get over 100% on a test makes the long hours of studying, homework, and extra credit more than worth it. In my first semester of college, I was studying for an exam, and for whatever reason (I’m still not sure of the reason myself), I decided I was going to learn absolutely everything about the topic of the Israelites in exile and aim for a perfect score. I studied so hard that I also won the class Kahoot and received 5 extra credit points, putting my final exam score at 104%. I haven’t had a victory quite that big since, but I still revel in the small victories in my day-to-day academic life: the confetti on Canvas when I submit an assignment, the pride in myself when I study ahead of time instead of the night before. Doing every assignment is the bare minimum expected to do decently well in a class, but the reward seen in your grades for doing your work and then some extra credit on top is satisfying.
My phone is my biggest enemy when it comes to studying. Nearly every single distraction I can think of is on my phone. Social media is the biggest one, obviously, but I can also get sidetracked easily by online shopping, answering texts, or choosing new music. Something I didn’t realize about myself until recently is that I even find ways to distract myself from what needs to happen by choosing a task that is semi-productive, but won’t benefit me much in the long run. Examples of this include organizing my camera roll, cleaning out my email, and Duolingo. I’m learning Japanese on Duolingo right now, it’s fun and I’m sure it will look good on job applications, but studying for a test the next day or finishing my homework is definitely more important. Doing these tasks that could be postponed in favor of homework and studying gives me the illusion of productivity, while actually holding me back. I need to limit my screen time and show more discipline during my study sessions, or better yet, throw my phone off my balcony.
Going more in-depth on how ‘college isn’t high school,’ the final suggestion also rang true for me, especially when I think about how much I got away with academically in high school. I definitely relied on my teachers extending mercy, and my teachers (by no fault of their own, most of them were just genuinely nice people) enabled my behavior and as a result my time management suffered. In high school, the majority of my teachers were easy-going enough that deadlines were pretty subjective, so I was in for a rude awakening when Canvas didn’t allow me to submit an art project 13 minutes past the due date. By my second semester, I made a pact with myself that I wouldn’t rely on professors’ mercy unless I genuinely could not complete something or be in class for a valid reason, like a violent illness or injury.
I enjoyed this extra credit assignment! It gave me reason to reflect on my study habits and past mistakes and further learn from them. I think even though I’ve come a long way since I studied very little or not at all, or exclusively the night before, I still have a long way to go and I think these suggestions are useful for future reference.
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At the risk of being brutally honest, how about faculty TEACHING these skills rather than presume that students will somehow magically acquire them.
I teach graduate students and I have come to accept that I will have to hold their hands and teach them the writing and outlining skills that they ought to have learned in High School. It’s not on my syllabus, and it’s at best incidental to what I am teaching, but instead of pulling out my hair, I *can* do something about.it.
I have long felt that colleges should have a mandatory freshman class where they are taught how to take notes, how to write an essay exam question (i.e. what the professor is looking for), how to write a 5 page paper, basic citation & style, etc. In the days of tracking, college prep students were taught much of this in high school — but now with heterogeneous grouping of ability levels in the same classroom, they don’t.