This article was originally published in Grown & Flown.
As parents, we send our kids off to college with great hopes for them and their future. Too often, the results are mixed. As a college president and parent of two former and one current college student, here are six things you might encourage your student to do to take full advantage of the opportunity so they can architect the lives they want for themselves.
1. 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. Encourage your student to embrace the work, go to classes, and make academics the centerpiece of their experience. As part of this, they should take a wide range of courses. Many students are too narrow in 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. Too few college students are engaged in campus organizations as much as they could or should be.
2. 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. College campuses are filled with staff who can be a great source of support. Parents can help by getting to know the college so they 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. Often, students develop unexpected relationships with staff that add tremendous value to their education.
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 spend time with people with similar backgrounds and interests, it is important to develop a wider circle of friends.
In particular, 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.
3. 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. Everything is not going to go well all the time. Your student will get a grade that stings, say something awkward, and regret it, or discover that they are not as good at something as they thought. All of that is the point. There will be challenges, and that can be a life-transforming moment. If students are not falling short sometimes, they are not reaching far enough.
When things are difficult, encourage them to avoid the false narrative that everybody else is succeeding and happy while they are not. It’s not true! Instead, seek out support from faculty and staff. College campuses are filled with people who want to help students grow and flourish.
4. Develop good habits
Best-selling author James Clear writes 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?
5. 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 of failure with curiosity about how you can learn and improve.
- Replace fear of embarrassment with curiosity about trying new things and doing new things.
- Replace fear of embarrassment with curiosity about trying and doing new things,
- Replace anger over views of others that are different from your own with curiosity about why they see things differently and what you can learn from them.
6. Take advantage of career services offerings
This is an area where most colleges need to do more, but where most colleges also have resources not being taken advantage of by students. Encourage your student to make an appointment during their first year to get advice and to get to know the office and what support they provide.
A word on AI:
Students will need both the durable liberal arts skills and emerging AI skills that are reshaping professions. The irony of AI is that it makes skills such as critical thinking, creative problem-solving, clear communication, and adaptability more important.
Some courses will use AI, while others will avoid AI in favor of developing durable skills. This is one more reason why students should take a wide range of courses that focus on a wide range of skills. They should follow the advice of faculty teaching the courses to make sure they acquire the course objectives.
These six steps are not hard but too many students either don’t do them or recognize too late they should. To boil it down, students get the most from college when they are fully engaged in the academic and social life on campus, take a wide range of courses and challenge themselves to develop new interests and passions, develop strong relationships with faculty and staff, and find friends – especially those whose life experiences differ from their own.
Doing this requires developing good habits, asking for help when needed, and approaching every aspect of their life with insatiable curiosity.
