Some more thoughts from Alumni

In the last week of school, I had a chance to talk with a lot of our alumni.  The first thing that struck me is that many of them talked about students who were unhappy at school during the first six weeks.  This is truly a normal reaction as many students wonder do they really belong at school, emotionally, socially and academically.  If you had strong connections in high school, it is sometimes hard the first couple of weeks at college because you do not have those connections yet.  The truth is that you forget how long it took to build your friendships in high school and just wonder why you do not have them in college.

My advice is always wait, give college time.  That almost everyone is feeling the same as you but that there are students who are better at hiding it than you are.  That it is natural to wonder do you belong but the fact of the matter is that once you do adjust you will do fine.  An alumni then told me that one of the problems was that our school put too much of an emphasis on college.  That we made college bigger than it really is.

I hope that I convey the message that the individual student is more important than the college.  I know that when our students get accepted to colleges, my first thought is how lucky these schools are to get such talented individuals.  That most of our students have figured out  how to make high school a great experience will have little problems getting that same great experience out of college.  That you define the college experience more than the college.

Alumni also talked about that the pace of the college class is sometimes faster than high school and that students need to be able to keep up the pace on their own.  That reading with understanding is important as the professor is likely not to cover all the material needed for you to be prepared for the papers or the exam you must take.  I am probably going to speed up the pace in the reading for macro in the first unit to see how that goes.

Another great piece of advice was that you need to go to college with an open mind.  That there are so many bright people with diverse views that you need to be open to what other people have to say.  That critical thinking really occurs when you can change your mind based on new information that was obtained.  This is often hard to do but an important part of college life as you continue to grow.

The take away, should be most people struggle at the start, and you should not be scared to be open about your struggles.  It is not a competition to see who is having the best college experience but rather important to express your true emotions.  If for what ever, reason you do not think the college is right for you that is fine because there are plenty of other choices.  Remember, failure is a way to grow not something that should be looked at negatively. That all your parents, friends and teachers want for you is that you are happy.

Failure and other advice from alumni

One of the questions I always ask my returning students is what can we have done better to prepare you for your college experience.  The other day one of my favorite students told me that we needed to teach her how to fail.  When she arrived at college as a Pre-med student she had a difficult time handling a "B".  It made her doubt herself, made her wonder was she following the right career path and brought about general doubt.

Carol Dweck writes a lot about the power of a growth mindset.  The type of person who does not seeing mistakes as failures but as an opportunity to grow.  That many of us get so focused on the grade that we do not look at what we can learn from our mistakes. 

Our new Chinese teacher, a great addition to our school, gave a talk about failure the other day.  He mentioned that nobody start a computer game and masters it the first round.  That the truth is that you play the game and constantly learn from your mistakes.  As you master these mistakes you then go to the next level.  The trick is the ability to transfer the skills from the computer games to real life.

When talking to another former student they told me how much they enjoy the gratitude page but also told me that we need to encourage our students to share their weaknesses and insecurities.  That we need to open up the lines of communication so that we can help each other overcome our problems.

All of us, even the angry old man, sometimes gets lost in the day to day battle we call school.  This alumni gave the advice that we need to walk away from that grind, make sure that we are doing things that we enjoy and finding friends that we can trust to help us.

I proposed a couple of years ago to teach a positive psychology class to all the ninth graders.  The first response was not to our GT kids, like they are immune from stress, anxiety and depression.  Now with a new person in charge maybe it is time to introduce that idea.

How do we make our school a safer (mentally) place for our students?  How do we improve the well-being of our student body?