With each semester comes a new batch of expectations.
“I’m going to get that 4.0!”
“Transfer this year? Yeah, I can do that!”
“18 units?! Pfft, child’s play.”
While these are admirable goals, seldom do they ever come into fruition when they are taken all at once.
Why do these expectations come all together like a tidal wave of stress? Most of the time, there isn’t external pressure to perform under such exuberant pressures, but students still push themselves more than what they are capable of.
They like to overachieve with each semester because they want to prove to themselves that they can be successes. And maybe to make up for past failures.
With each new semester that comes around, students can be reborn as the student they want to be. They can be reborn as the master juggler of tasks.
This rebirth is the chance to develop new studying habits or finding ways to efficiently use time, but this can prove difficult if too much handed on your plate of academic slop.
Delta student and filmmaker Evan Teed admits that he took a lot of responsibility early on in the semester.
“At the beginning of this semester I was taking 18 units, but I soon switched over to 12” said Teed.
He then learned a better method of handling the stress of class work intertwined with working a 5 to 9 job and making films.
“I decided to spread my units apart over the course of next semester and during the summer” Teed added.
His decision to map put his units is a smart plan of action, especially if there is more than just class work to be worrying about.
Students like Simone Mingua-Lopstain, had priorities of transferring on to a four-year college, so she decided to focus more on her English and math courses — which led to some compromise.
“I wanted to get my required classes out of the way because I knew that you could take science at a 4-year instead at Delta.”
Lopstain admits that she didn’t do as well as she hoped in geography due to her focus on these other classes, but remains optimistic.
“You live and you learn” Mingua-Lopstain added.
This is a true piece of advice and one that any student can carry with them.
Balancing the weight of so much responsibility can cause one to topple over, but it’s up to the student to overcome their struggle — no matter how long it takes.
Students can perform stronger than before when they take what has worked in the past semester and eliminate what didn’t.
This ability to do so is only ever learned by failure that students must face to make a change.
From here, students can gauge what are more suitable expectations to have.
Instead of saying, “I’m going to make the dean’s list!”, and setting up the expectations like, “I’m going to do better than what I did last semester” will diminish the pressure.
With a set of more accessible goals, students can focus less on the expectation of overachieving and more on the act of succeeding.