When
I think about undergraduate experience, the thoughts are really much different
than about grad school or beyond. Here
are some random thoughts from a teacher of undergrads and from my various
regrets, etc.
1. Stay at school for the whole four years.
If
there's ANY WAY, don't fast track it. Gotta have time for the discoveries that
happen when you take the courses you don't think you'll like, etc. etc.
2. BUY IN.
If
you can, at all possible, try to get at the nerdiness and geek out about
whatever course or thing you’re doing--to not think of something as for a
grade, but for as much as possible to give in to it on ITs terms, not
yours.
Example: if you actually thought of taking the foreign
language as a chance to learn the language rather than get a particular grade
or fulfill a requirement--if you decided that yes, the love of the Trinity
inheres in the magical translatability of the gospel and in the love across
cultures, and that therefore, you will learn a LANGUAGE, not a textbook, then
you would perhaps consider the following:
try church in the language; do some geeky conversation table in the
community at the local library; read Bible in both languages; radically,
publicly, and awkwardly practice it, etc. etc.
Do extra drill and practice, even try starting to write or worship in
the language--not to get an A in Spanish 103, but to find the glory of the Lord
in the multiplicity of languages, etc. etc.
And that metaphor applies across disciplines, I think.
3. Show your buy in
during class in the following ways:
(1) If you can nod sincerely (not nod off) during class, DO IT.[1] Teachers teach better when they feel the buy
in. Indeed, sometimes I feel like I’m giving myself totally to the people who
nod or show buy in, trying to teach specially for them
(2)
If you can, visit office hours at least twice a term per class. It helps YOUR buy in and, (forgive this
vulgarity) I think people who visit office hours get better grades than they
would have without (basically, the teacher, hearing your story, begins to BUY
IN to you even more than they already do or would).
4. If you get stuck, MOVE
YOUR BODY.
I
have heard countless stories about people trying to stick it out, stick it out,
sit there until they crumble into dust in order to study, but often, exercise
of a kind works out a problem, opens you for revelations that you won’t get if
you try to just brain power through it.
Poet
friends tell me of, after a fruitless day of trying to power through, having
even the WALK TO THE CAR be enough to open them to revelation. One friend had to stop on the side walk and
get out paper and pad right there on the concrete because the solution to the
structural problem had, as it were, sort of showed up without him, as soon as he
moved.
5. That whole getting off the media thing is for reals.
Serious.
Trade Facebook (or whatever sites you go to, I know, Facebook is for grammas
now) passwords with a friend, then change your friend’s password (and vice
versa) for a week. Use stayfocusd.com or
other browser aids to keep you from that terrible track.
6. Consider the talks and plays and concerts that are available in your
department and across disciplines on campus to be PART of your
education and
budget in time to see the experts (even if you haven’t heard of them) that your
professors spend great amounts of time and institutional (and sometimes
personal!) money to bring in.
7. Try to remember that
there are two ways that God has given us to serve him, married and single, and
that both are good ways.
Try
very hard to remember that. I wish I
would have thought about the first way much less during college. I think I would have been able to do more
good work and do better work, if I didn’t assume that my whole life was
pointing toward marriage (ok, sex. Mostly sex, and because I’m sort of a
Christian traditionalist, marriage.).
8. Consider that colleges
invent lists of requirements in and across disciplines for a reason and don’t
think you’re too good to benefit from the wisdom of those who put together
those lists.
I
bucked this SO SO many times—in undergrad, for instance, I took “Theology and
Oxford Christian Writers” to fulfill the theology course requirement for
general education—basically so I could read as much Dorothy L. Sayers and C.S.
Lewis as I wanted to. I screwed myself
out of systematic theology at a Christian college because I thought I was too
good for the required course. HUGE
mistake. Huge.
And
not just for theological reasons—it works in other disciplines too. In grad
school, I made my own prelims reading list—another disaster that I’m still
paying for. Oh, and by “don’t think you’re too good to benefit,” I mean both
that you should take the courses that are required, AND that you should BUY IN,
rather than doing the minimum possible.[2]
Learn,
in college, not just how to write, as if it were a universal, but rather learn
how to LEARN how to write in different fields:
by acquiring subject matter knowledge, knowledge of the genres that
writers in the field tackle, knowledge of writing process, rhetorical
knowledge, and knowledge of the discourse communities in which you’ll be
writing.
10. Start every single day reminding yourself practically and
tangibly (on paper, on your knees, in song, out loud) some version of John 15’s
assertion that without Christ, you can do nothing.
Footnotes by stanford
[1] This also works during Collegelife
talks. Seriously. Teacher-learner energy is a feedback loop. And I am more motivated to put in the extra time to prepare the next one if i had the sense that the last one mattered to someone.
[2] I also have regrets with
respect to this. I endured modern
physics. In retrospect, it should have
been my favorite class. 15 years later I
devour all the modern physics I can – it is one of my 4 or 5 favorite topics
(which is saying something given the length of that list). But then it didn’t seem sufficiently
practical to warrant my attention at the time.
I wish I had asked “why is this required and how could it capture my
imagination.” I had a similar experience with at least 3 other classes in undergrad.
[3] As a full fledged STEM
(Science Technology Engineering and Math) nerd…let me say…Yes!!! STEM is not exempt from this advice. It took me 10 years to learn the technical
writing skills I should have picked up in an undergrad class. Every profession writes. And also, for some of us, writing is a mode
of thinking.
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