Questions to consider:
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How will you be able to develop your purpose?
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In what ways will you be able to create strategies for your success?
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What other resources can you use to help you succeed?
As Reginald and Madison go through their college experiences and create a balance between their academic and personal lives, their stories, no doubt, will diverge. But you can be assured that each of them will demonstrate grit, the ability to stay focused on a goal over the long-term, along the way. As Duckworth (2016) has said, it takes passion and perseverance to be gritty. It also takes resilience, or the ability to bounce back from adversity. The challenges you face will certainly stretch you, but if you have these three things—purpose, strategies, and resources—you will be more likely to bounce back, even become stronger in the process. This book has been designed with these things in mind.
Develop Your “Why”
This chapter began with the suggestion to explore why you are in college or, more simply, what your purpose is. This course—and this book—will help you continue to refine your answer and create a map for your journey to fulfill your purpose. The features in this book that help you develop your purpose include the following:
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Student Survey Questions: Each chapter opens with several questions that provide you with a snapshot on how you feel about the chapter content. How does this feature help you develop purpose? It allows you to develop better self-awareness, which will in turn help you build an awareness of your purpose.
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Analysis Questions: These questions are included throughout each chapter. Consider them “pauses” to help you reflect on what you have read and how to incorporate the information into your own journey.
Refine Your Strategies for Success
Purpose by itself may illuminate the pathway forward, but it will take strategies to help you complete your journey. Think of the strategies you will learn in this course as tools you will need along the way to completing your degree. The following features provide you with an opportunity to practice and refine strategies for success:
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Application Questions: Any time you are asked to
apply
what you are learning in the chapters, you are improving your skills. Look for them throughout and take some time to stop, think, and use the skill.
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Activities: As you read, you will also have the opportunity to interact with the content. They give you the chance to refine the strategies that will help you succeed in college.
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Career Connection: This feature allows you to consider how the skills you are developing for college connect to your future career. Making these connections will help you appreciate the deeper importance of them.
Use Your Resources
In addition to developing strategies for succeeding in your academic and future professional career, you will find that this course will point out the resources you may need to obtain more tools or refuel your desire to continue along the pathway. No one succeeds at anything by oneself. The features related to resources will certainly help you find ways to fill up your toolkit of information.
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Get Connected: Despite its ability to distract us from the work we need to do, technology can help you accomplish your day-to-day tasks with relative ease. This feature offers suggestions for apps and websites that can help you build skills or just keep track of due dates!
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Where Do You Go from Here?: The skills and habits you are building now will serve you well in your future endeavors. This feature is designed to help you dig deeper into the chapter content and refine your research skills. It also asks that you find ways to connect what you are learning now to your life and career.
All of these features, in addition to the content, will help you see yourself for who you are and provide opportunities to develop in ways that will make reaching your goal a little easier. Will it be challenging at times? Yes, it will. Will it take time to reflect on those challenges and find better ways to learn and reach your goals? Most definitely. But the effort you put into completing your college degree will result in the confidence you will gain from knowing that anything you set your mind to do—and you work hard for—can be accomplished.
Chapter Takeaways
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The first year of college is the most critical. Make the commitment to overcome any obstacles to a successful transition and stay committed and motivated to succeed.
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Although college students differ in many ways, all successful students share certain common traits, including a positive attitude, effective critical thinking skills, good time management skills, effective study skills, interactions with instructors and other students, and good habits for personal health and financial stability.
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You can learn to maximize your learning by attending to each step of the learning process: preparing, absorbing, capturing, and reviewing.
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It is important to understand your personal learning style and use it well in classes, while also making the effort to learn in new ways and work with other students for a more effective overall learning experience.
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Working with your academic advisor and taking advantage of the many resources available at your college are key actions to ensure success.
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Understanding the larger characteristics of college success leads to a richer college experience, supplementing the value of good grades.
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While it may take a few weeks to develop all the skills needed for success in college, there are many steps you can begin taking today to get moving in the right direction.
This chapter provides an introduction to the transition to college by first asking “Why?” Understanding why you are in college and what a college degree can do for you is the foundation of making a smooth transition. These transitional experiences are part of being in college, and this chapter provides you with information about what to expect and how to handle the changes you will go through. Next, the chapter discusses college culture and how to understand the customs and language of higher education. The chapter ends with resources throughout the text that can help you practice skills and dive deeper into the topics.
Where do you go from here?
Making the transition into college smoother for you can have long-term benefits. What have you learned about in this chapter that you want to know more about that could help you? Review the questions below. The answer to these questions will be further discussed in future chapters.
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What is the long-term value of a college degree?
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What is the “hidden curriculum,” and how can knowing about it help you succeed in college?
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What learning strategies are the most effective?
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What kinds of resources and services do colleges now offer that help students’ personal development?
Chapter Takeaways
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An active social life and social interaction with a variety of people on campus contribute to college students’ well-being and overall academic success.
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Successfully interacting with diverse others requires effective communication skills, including both listening skills and assertive communication rather than passive or aggressive communication.
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Social interaction can be heightened by productive and moderate online networking.
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Time management and study skills help one avoid problems when balancing social life and academic studies.
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To prevent or resolve conflicts that may occur in any social interaction, maintain an attitude of respect for others, be open minded and willing to compromise, and know how to work together calmly to resolve conflicts.
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Diversity on campus is beneficial for all students, not just those from ethnic or minority groups. The wider perspectives of students from different backgrounds and the greater variety of teaching methods help everyone gain more fully in educational experiences. Socially, students develop a more mature worldview and are better prepared for interacting with a diverse world in the future.
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Multiculturalism involves an attitude of respect for the ideas, feelings, behaviors, and experiences of others who differ from oneself in any way. Colleges promote both diversity in the student body and multiculturalism among all students.
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To gain a multicultural perspective, challenge your own learned stereotypes while you learn more about other cultural groups. Understanding what can be learned from others leads to celebrating the diversity found on most campuses.
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Take a personal responsibility both for broadening your own social world and for speaking out against prejudice and discrimination wherever encountered.
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Take advantage of campus opportunities to increase your cultural awareness and to form social relationships with diverse others. Organized campus groups and events can help you broaden your horizons in many beneficial ways.
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Participation in campus clubs and other organizations is not only fun and a good way to reduce stress but also helps develop social, intellectual, and technical skills that may serve you well in your future career or other endeavors.
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Visit your college’s Web site and look for a section on student activities and organizations. Try to identify two or three groups you might be interested to learn more about.
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Next time you walk across campus or through the student center, stop to look at bulletin boards and posters. Look for upcoming events that celebrate cultural diversity in some way. Read the information in detail and imagine how much fun the event might be while you also learn something new. Then ask a friend to go with you.
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Go to www.understandingrace.org/liv...rts/index.html—a Web site of the American Anthropological Association—and take the short online sports quiz. Many things have been said about why certain races or people from certain geographic areas excel at certain sports. People often talk about differences in biology and other differences among ethnic groups as related to sports. How much is true, partly true, or blatantly false? How much do you know about what are real or not real differences?
Rethinking
Revisit the questions you answered at the beginning of the chapter, and consider one option you learned in this chapter that might change your answer to them.
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I am fully aware of the expectations of college and how to meet them.
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I know why I am in college and have clear goals that I want to achieve.
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Most of the time, I take responsibility for my learning new and challenging concepts.
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I feel comfortable working with faculty, advisors, and classmates to accomplish my goals.