The Asset that is your Professor by Avery

The Asset that is your Professor by Avery - January 2014 Scholarship Essay

Your professor is your greatest resource. When I attended my previous college (Anoka Technical College) I didn’t know to take advantage of the resources my professors provided. This was because in High School, although the teachers were often kind and wanted to help, they tended to be insufficient. Some teachers didn’t care; as long as they got their paycheck they didn’t feel any further effort was necessary. College professors (from my experience) are different. They want you to succeed and will often provide any reasonable help you believe you need. The most useful resources they seem to provide are the notes that the majority of them post online.

My former Psychology teacher, Mrs. Liberty-Clark, is a great example. For the first quiz, I simply read the chapter and attended class, which led me to just barely passing it. Mrs. Liberty-Clark informed us how displeased she was with our grades for the first quiz, showing I was not the only one to make this mistake. She gave some suggestions; one being to print her notes and fill in the gaps the notes missed. I tried this and did far better on the second quiz. I used this same technique for the rest of the semester and got better and better at it. This was not just because I was getting better conditioned to taking notes this way but also because I got a much better understanding of what to expect on her quizzes and how she tended to format the questions.

I used this same technique in my astronomy class. The professor provided very helpful notes online and even let you know what the big topics would be so you wouldn’t waste time memorizing the little things in between. The method worked just as well here, if not better, than in my psychology class. It was quite a shock to me when I overheard a large number of classmates discuss how poorly they were performing in her class. They all claimed her lectures were boring, which they were, and that the tests were impossible. I agreed that just showing up to lectures wasn’t enough to do well in the class, but that’s the same for almost every class. They didn’t print her notes, they didn’t take notes in class, and they didn’t ever ask questions when they didn’t understand something. I was thoroughly upset when they claimed she was a bad professor when they wouldn’t take any responsibility for themselves.

The two biggest issues I’ve noticed for people who do poorly in college and high school are that they either don’t take advantage of the resources the professor provides and/or they play the role of the “victim”, allowing bad things to happen but never doing anything to prevent them from happening again. In both my psychology and first-year experience class we went over the dangers of the victim approach in college. One can either take the inner defender route, which can be summarized as blaming others for everything bad that happens, or the inner critic route, blaming oneself for anything bad that happens; both lead to becoming a victim and nothing getting resolved.

A few of my peers and even some professors have described me as the ideal student in one way or another. I get mostly A’s by attending every class, taking notes, and getting things done early to avoid last-second panic. This has led me to being invited to an honor society and becoming highly desirable by other colleges. If one wished to try a new approach to studying because that last one is insufficient, I would highly recommend mine.