A College Education by Angela

A College Education by Angela - July 2017 Scholarship Essay

People think that people go to college to study hard, (maybe party a little) and ultimately learn a lot. Well that’s pretty true. Except sometimes, what is learned is not about a specific topic of study, profession, or trade. Sometimes you learn the most valuable thing you can in college: How to learn.
All throughout your pre-college educational life, you have been taught things; you’ve been presented with material by a teacher in the style the teacher so chooses. If you’re fortunate—as I have been several times throughout my school years—you may have had a teacher who really cared about his or her students. That teacher went out of the way to help students learn. Maybe material was presented to the class in multiple styles. Maybe the teacher took one-on-one time with each student in your class. Maybe the teacher held conferences with a struggling student’s parents to raise the concern for the student’s own educational well-being.
Perhaps—most likely—we have not all been so fortunate to have had such great teachers all the time. We have probably taught ourselves many concepts in school. Maybe opening our textbook was enough to make us understand a concept. Maybe doing our homework at night was enough.
Or perhaps, school may not have been so easy in the days pre-college. Maybe learning was always hard for you. Well, I hate to break it to you, but guess what? College is harder.
In college, a fifty-minute lecture does not exactly offer a professor much time to present material in more than one way. In fact, you are often lucky if all the necessary material is delivered in that time. Though professors often offer office hours during which you can ask them questions, given the size of many universities, the student to professor ratio there is not in your favor. And, at the end of the day, you are an adult at college; there is no need for a professor to call home to mommy about your weaknesses and short-comings—or about your gold stars, either.
So, college is harder. The material is accelerated in pace from what it was in your earlier studies. More is expected from you. And your own learning—that’s on you.
To each person, this individual search for knowledge looks different, and the journey to find it is not easy. It begins as soon as you encounter struggle. I know I hit it very early on at college.
So what are you to do? At college, on your own, in a new environment, and in a situation where your favorite Misters and Misses are now Doctor thises and Professor thats. First off, you take a deep breath and accept this new situation. It’s happening and you’re here. So you pay your dues. You try things out.
You meet new people. Friends and study group members. People who have taken the classes you’ve taken and used the resources you will need to use. You find your favorite study places. You won’t be doing your homework on your kitchen table, so you might as well find a new favorite spot. And for every new difference you encounter, you should remember that some things you used to know and love about your old school are not so different, after all, at your new one.
Professors are people, too. You may not get as much time with them as you want or need, ever. So you will gather your questions and utilize your time the best you can. You can ask professors to try to explain something the way you need to hear it. You can try to explain something to yourself the way you need to hear it. You spend one night, then another, then another coaxing a concept to sink in. Eventually, if you keep at it long enough—no smart enough—in all the ways which work for you best, it just might. You must never give up. You are at college for you, so do yourself some justice and learn about you.
Yes, college is hard. It is harder than previous schooling. But when you learn to control your situation, it can become a situation that reminds you exactly of older, better times.
This is why learning how to learn—how you learn is the most powerful piece of knowledge you can gain. Let me tell you—if it’s the only thing I really learned here, I think that’s really okay. Knowledge is power which lets you feel like you’re on top of the world. Knowledge of my own learning lets me be on top of my world.