Academic Success

As a matter of normal emotional development, teenagers tend to want to be independent of their parents.  From age 13 on, it is the expectation of the teen and his parents that he or she will grow to the point that he eventually is able to support himself financially and otherwise to function on his own without any help from his parents.  In American culture, the age of 18 is frequently thought of as the point that a teenager achieves adulthood.  But in another sense, the human brain does not finish developing physically until age 25.  Interestingly, in Kenyan culture, it is my impression that young men are not considered to be independent of their parents until age 25 or later, when they are able to afford their own home and a wife.

As I counsel young people, and beginning at about age 13, I teach them a lesson about being an adult.  Sooner or later, in your emotional development, you will take your eyes off of your parents and teachers with whom you might be getting into trouble, and you will put your eyes on the road in front of you, whereby you are turning yourself into the adult you choose to be.  It is your responsibility, and you are the only one who can do it.

The problem is that many young people, when they do get some independence, are not mature enough to handle it well.  Many leave home and go to college or university, and then they do things that are not good for them.  They have been taught by their parents to have character and values, but then they decide instead to “have fun” instead of observing those values, as if they can do both.  An example might be drinking too much alcohol, and then going to class the next day impaired, such that they are not able to learn as much as if they went to class with a healthy brain. Did you know that every time you get drunk, you kill off a million brain cells, most of which do not regenerate? And you thought drinking too much did not have any immediate consequences, or permanent consequences.

Another problem of emotionally immature college students would be cutting class.  Some students think they can decide not to go to class, in order to have fun doing something else, defying in their sense of independence the obvious facts that one learns more when he goes to class, and that one is in school to learn. I believe young adults should not go to college until they are emotionally mature enough to value their education and how they will use it in their careers.

The first lesson of academic success is in the general attitude one brings to it.  If you are not in school to learn as much as you can, then you will not learn as much as you can, and in some part of your mind you will feel bad about it.  You will feel inadequate, and you will feel guilty to some degree, that you are not honoring the opportunity of becoming well educated.  And you are not honoring the money that is being spent on your education.

SO LET’S TURN THIS INTO A POSITIVE!!! Imagine that you are a college student who procrastinated and forgot to sign up for your electives.  And then are the very last minute you remember. You go online and find that the only elective left is Archeology 101.  You are really disappointed, thinking that archeology is about people digging around in the dirt looking for bones and broken pieces of pottery, and you just have no interest in that.  You have a negative attitude about having to take a course in archeology.  And then you remember that Indiana Jones is an archeologist, and he makes archeology the most exciting thing in the world! So now you became aware that there are two attitudes that could be brought to a study of archeology – your and his.

So you decide to try his attitude, to have a positive attitude towards archeology.  You meet the professor who