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A Different Kind of Student Stress
Lori Bender
Starting college is a huge transition even for the most hardworking, well-prepared student. Inevitably during the college years you will face pitfalls, challenges, and failures. If you’re wondering what these setbacks might look like, ask a recent college graduate.
That’s right! Ask someone who has succeeded what kinds of failures and disappointments they dealt with over the course of their college career. Chances are they’ll share stories of flunking a big test, getting cut from a sports team, being turned down for a highly sought-after job or internship, and/or failing at a relationship or two.
What do these successful people have in common? Successful people at the college level and beyond have figured out skills and strategies to work through their failures and move on. They have cultivated good problem-solving skills, which means being able to identify the reasons they’ve experienced failure, and then brainstorming and implementing solutions.
The ability to successfully work through your problems and challenges means that you have developed intrapersonal skills. That is, you know yourself well and are willing to be honest about how to make the necessary adjustments and changes when another failure or disappointment comes around.
Handling failure isn’t easy, but reframing the experience and reflecting on how you can adjust your approach will help you move forward in a healthier, more productive way.
Use these Five A’s of Facing Failure as a helpful framework.
Naturally you have big hopes and dreams for your college years, but it’s unrealistic to think you’ll never experience disappointment. Many times, students feel let down because they have unrealistic expectations. Consider a first-year student who assumes they’ll automatically become best friends with their roommate. They’re crushed when they discover that their roommate has another “friend group” and isn’t interested in developing a deeper relationship with them beyond the roommate one.
What should this student do? Recognize that they’re disappointed — it’s valid to feel sad when you thought you’d have a built-in best friend. Once they acknowledge and accept the painful emotions, they can embrace the situation as a growth experience and brainstorm healthy ways to cope. One idea would be to join a club or organization and begin the process of cultivating their own friend group. What better way to work through disappointment than to try something new?
What are some other situations where you might need to adjust your expectations? Consider another first-semester college student who thinks they’ll be able to study in college the same way that they did in high school. Before they know it, they’re routinely getting C’s and D’s on tests and quizzes — not at all the performance they were hoping for. Without adjusting their strategies and developing college-level study skills, they end up with a less-than-desirable GPA for their first semester.
It’s unrealistic to expect not to have to adapt your study approaches to meet the heightened academic expectations in college. This usually means putting in many more hours of outside work than you were used to in high school, and being proactive about getting help, whether it’s tutoring, study groups and sessions, or going to office hours.
Even students who start college open to change and growth will encounter failure. Take the student who considers themself a strong writer but receives a failing grade on their first college paper. They’re surprised and embarrassed by the F. What should they do?
As hard as it is, instead of brushing it aside, they need to dig into what went wrong. Perhaps they didn’t understand the assignment. Maybe they could have done more research or read their source materials more carefully. Did they procrastinate and run out of time?
When you experience failure, it’s important to self-reflect. Be honest with yourself about what you could’ve done differently in the situation.
To start with, the student who failed their first college paper would have benefited from going to their professor’s office hours to discuss the assignment, or taking their first draft to the campus writing center to get feedback. The same resources are available after the fact, and in every case, one of the best ways to move from failure to success is to seek guidance from experts.
Colleges and universities want students to succeed and thrive. Faculty, staff and administrators (your campus “experts”) oversee a variety of programs and services providing academic and social support. From peer tutors to research librarians, advising hubs to math/quantitative centers, there are plentiful opportunities — take advantage of them!
Asking for help in a college and university setting will allow you to get connected with an expert and activate a plan for success. What better way to move quickly and efficiently through a failure or disappointment than enlisting the guidance of a professional who’s worked with countless students on plans for improvement?
Let’s say you failed a course — you can seek help from an academic advisor to understand options for retaking the class.
You didn’t get your dream internship? Apply the five A’s. Accept disappointment and acknowledge your feelings.
Then, adjust your expectations. Chances are there are still a number of internships available that match with your major, skills, and talents. Ask for help. There is a professional staff member in the career services center who will sit down with you to assess the outcome and figure out why you may have missed the mark and didn’t land that original internship. They can walk you through the process of obtaining a different internship and help you activate a plan for success now and in the future.
