The Key to Success in College Is So Simple, It’s Almost Never Mentioned

NYT OPINION: The Key to Success in College Is So Simple, It’s Almost Never Mentioned
By Jonathan Malesic
Section: Opinion
Source: New York Times
Published Date: January 3, 2023 at 02:00AM

Students must be willing to learn.

For Emily Zurek Small, college did what it’s supposed to do. Growing up in a small town in northeastern Pennsylvania, she had career and intellectual ambitions for which college is the clearest pathway. “I just kind of always wanted to learn,” she told me recently. “I wanted to be able to have intelligent conversations with people and know about the world.”
She enrolled at a small nearby Catholic college, majored in neuroscience and in 2016 became the first person in her family to earn a bachelor’s degree — and later, a master’s. She now works as a school psychologist in Virginia.
I saw Ms. Zurek Small’s education up close, in two theology classes I taught during my 11 years as a professor at the college she attended. She was a good student, but what struck me more than her ability was the fact that she cared. Being in class, asking questions and exploring ideas meant something to her.
One reason she cared was that she was paying her own way and was thus amply aware of her education’s cost. “If I was not engaging, I was just throwing money out the window,” she said. That engagement helped her realize that her “thoughts and opinions matter.”
As universities in much of the country suffer declining enrollment, they need to make the broader case for going to college even as they debate how best to help students learn after Covid disruptions. How should universities carry out remote learning? How should they teach writing in the age of artificial intelligence? How difficult should it be to pass organic chemistry?
But there’s an equally important question that only students can answer: What will they do to get the most out of college? It’s their education, after all.
One of the most important factors in Ms. Zurek Small’s success seems almost too obvious to mention but, in fact, deserves far more attention and discussion: a simple willingness to learn. In more than 20 years of college teaching, I have seen that students who are open to new knowledge will learn. Students who aren’t won’t. But this attitude is not fixed. The paradoxical union of intellectual humility and ambition is something that every student can (with help from teachers, counselors and parents) and should cultivate. It’s what makes learning possible.
The willingness to learn is related to the growth mind-set — the belief that your abilities are not fixed but can improve. But there is a key difference: This willingness is a belief not primarily about the self but about the world. It’s a belief that every class offers something worthwhile, even if you don’t know in advance what that something is.

Read more at: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/03/opinion/college-learning-students-success.html

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