Advice for students

Back in August, when professors are preparing their syllabi, I posted some advice for newby profs. Now that high-school and college students are through the course-shopping and orientation phase, and starting to really think about their course requirements, it's time for some advice to new students.

1. Don't ask what the professor "wants" in regard to an assignment. You know what we want? We want you to be interested enough, and educated enough by the time you come to us, that you could just read the kinds of things we do and have a good discussion with us about it, and we could critique each others' writing and we could learn from you as you do from us, and no grading would be involved. Unfortunately, you're not there yet; people don't usually get to that point until graduate school, if then. So we have to assign papers and tests and other exercises. But we're not assigning them for our benefit, but for yours. It's not like a sweatshop where every page the student writes, the professor makes five cents profit. Acting as though you are doing your assignments for the teachers is sure to drive them batty. (Especially because everyone hates grading; as the saying goes, I teach for free, they pay me to grade.)

2. Figure out what you are supposed to learn/prove you've learned from each assignment. This is related to point 1. Professors design assignments with particular learning objectives in mind. Sometimes, they'll come right out and say what this objective is, but often they forget to do that. So you have to figure it out (or figure out some way of asking, "What am I supposed to get out of this?" that sounds sincere, not confrontational and snotty). Maybe you are supposed to get practice with a certain style of writing, or show that you understand a particular concept, or apply knowledge you've learned in class. Figure out what the learning objective is and meet that objective, and you won't have to worry about grades.

3. Required page lengths are a prediction. Being told to write a "five-page paper" drove me crazy in college, and then I became a professor and discovered that my students didn't really know what that meant any more than I did at their age. So let me decode it for you. An X-page paper doesn't mean that the teacher personally desires to read X pages of your thoughts about mitosis or Kierkegaard or cognitive development, or even that they think that's how much you have to write in order to learn. It's less of a requirement than it is a prediction. When a teacher assigns a page length, it's because they know that given your depth of knowledge about the topic, and the specific requirements of the paper (research write-up, critique, compare & contrast, personal response), that's about how much you're going to have to say that is worthwhile. Shorter, and you're probably not engaging with the material deeply enough; longer, and you're probably not writing tightly enough. Every now and then, if a student would get too wrapped around the axle about the page length thing, I would say to them, "Forget the page length. Just write the paper according to the rest of the instructions, and write as well as you can." Invariably, they'd be within a page of the original length I'd specified.

4. Be fun to read. If you get any kind of choice about your papers, pick topics that are unusual. If you're taking a developmental psychology course, I can tell you right now, do not write a paper on the effects of media violence on children. Why? Because a third of your fellow classmates are writing that exact same paper. This means, for one thing, that you are boring the teacher. Don't bore Nina! It also means that your paper will be compared to aaaallll those other papers on the effects of media violence on children, and chances are good that some of the other students in your class are going to be better than you. If they're not, that's still not good news for you--it means that, in the teacher's mind, all the papers on the E.O.M.V.O.C. are an undifferentiated mediocre mess. Write about something original and different, that will capture the teacher's attention. (This is especially crucial in big classes.) If it helps to pretend you're in a reality show--"America's Next Top Student" or "Who Wants a 3.5 GPA" or whatever--do it.

5. Make the class better because you're in it. No, that's not a euphemistic way of saying "Suck up to the teacher." If I meant "suck up to the teacher," I would have just written "suck up to the teacher." I mean, ask yourself, am I contributing thought-provoking comments, asking questions that other students are afraid to, creating an atmosphere of cooperative learning, bringing insights from my own unique life experience and skills? If you aren't, why on earth aren't you? Every effort you're involved in, from a family reunion to a temp job to a class to a volleyball league, should be better because you're there. Check out this oldie-but-goodie Fast Company article on "Brand You." What's your brand? What do you bring to the table? Start thinking this way now and by the time you make it to the job market, you'll be so ahead of your peers it won't even be funny.

6. Dare to fail. Okay, not to fail the entire class--that would be bad. But you know how teachers always say, "There's no such thing as a stupid question?" They're lying. But ask the stupid questions anyway. For one thing, you don't yet know enough to even know what questions are stupid and which ones aren't, so stop trying to second-guess yourself. For another, either half the class wants to ask the same question you just did, in which case you're doing everyone a favor, or else the question you've asked has never occurred to anyone before, in which case--dang! I mean, that's how knowledge happens. I know a lot of scientists, and do you know who scientists love and fear being interviewed by more than anyone else in the world? Not reporters. Not other scientists.

Little kids, that's who. Because little kids don't yet know the rules of what questions are out-of-bounds and which ones aren't. They're not afraid to ask the big questions, or the really little ones. Which makes them unpredictable and fun, because in answering their questions, the scientists have to re-engage their discipline in a whole new way.

Take chances, make a few mistakes. That's how you learn. Of course, if your teacher is a nasty bully--and of course there are some--then keep your head down and your ego safe. But if the class is a good one, and the teacher really wants you to learn, there's nothing that will make them happier than knowing you've got the guts to fall on your face once in a while in the headlong pursuit of wisdom. And they won't penalize you for it.

And that's all the wisdom I've got to share on the topic. If any students or former students would like to weigh in, comments are open.