This article was originally published in Grown & Flown.
College is a big investment of both money and time. From a college president and parent of two former and one current college student, here are five things you might encourage your student to do.
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Be fully engaged in academic courses and the campus community
Students don’t have to be fully formed when they go off to college, but they do have to be fully engaged. This starts with academics. Students will only get out what they put into their coursework.
They need to do the work, go to classes, and make the academics the centerpiece of their experience. As part of this, they should take a wide range of courses. Too many students go too narrow with their course selection. The more students dive into their courses — and the wider their courses are — the more they will get from any college.
This also applies to campus life. Colleges are filled with opportunities. Encourage your student to get involved in campus activities they already enjoy while opening themselves up to exploring things that were unavailable or they would have been too embarrassed to try in high school. This includes making time to attend some of the lectures, concerts, and other events on campus, especially those organized by academic departments.
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Develop a wide range of relationships
Relationships make or break a college experience. Students who find faculty mentors will get the most from college. Encourage your student to introduce themselves to every one of their faculty members during the first week of classes. Go to their office hours.
Do the same with staff. Many staff members in the Student Life offices and elsewhere can be a great source of support. Parents can help by getting to know the college so you can point them in the right direction. Attend parent orientation programs and spend some time on the website. Campus jobs can be another way to build these relationships.
And, of course, get to know their peers. As they develop friends, make sure they get to know a wide range of people. While students often hang out with people with similar backgrounds and interests, it is important to develop a wider circle of friends.
Encourage them to find friends in their residential halls and courses who have different life experiences from their own. A major part of college is learning to relate to, learn from, and enjoy people whose lives are different from your own.
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Embrace the stumbles and ask for help early and often
The point of college is for students to grow as a person so they can launch successfully into their lives and careers. They will stumble. When that happens, encourage your student to see it as an opportunity and a chance to learn, not as a failure.
This starts with recognizing that everybody on campus experiences setbacks. Some stumble academically. Others have a hard time making friends. It’s normal. The next step is asking for help early and often by seeking out faculty and staff members who can help. The college experience is designed to challenge students in lots of different ways so they can develop confidence in themselves and the capacity to flourish.
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Develop good habits
Best-selling author James Clear has written that whatever goal we want to hit in our lives will only be achieved when our habits align with them. Clear writes in his book Atomic Habits,
“Habits are the small decisions you make and actions you perform every day. Habits account for about 40% of our behaviors on any given day. Your life today is essentially the sum of your habits. What you repeatedly do (i.e., what you spend time thinking about and doing each day) ultimately forms the person you are, the things you believe, and the personality that you portray.” -James Clear
Our ability to be happy, successful, healthy, and productive is all shaped by the habits we have or don’t have. Think about your student. What habits will serve them well? What do they need to work on?
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Be curious about everyone and everything
Encourage your student to arrive on campus with an insatiable curiosity about the classes they take, the people they meet, and the new things they will try. Encourage them to replace fear with curiosity. Replace fear of failure with a curiosity about how to learn from difficulty and improve. Replace fear of embarrassment with curiosity about trying new things.
Replace anger over the views of others with curiosity about why they see things differently and what can be learned from them. Students get the most from college when they are fully engaged in the academic and social life on campus, develop strong relationships with faculty and staff, and find friends-especially those whose life experiences differ from theirs. Doing this requires developing good habits, asking for help when needed, and approaching life from a place of curiosity.
