By Marcia Y. Cantarella, Author, I CAN Finish College: The Overcome Any Obstacle and Get Your Degree Guide.
In the last posting we talked about “ F” as in Failure also being tied to three other “F” words including fear, finances and fun. Finances are a huge reason so many students fail to complete college. And fear is also part of that financial reason because again so many do not ask for help with finances because they are afraid of looking dumb or because they just don’t know that help is there or who to ask. As a stranger in this new place called college, a good first question is to ask would be who the money folks are. The financial aid office carries the same scary aura that we attach to most institutions that deal with money. Money is such a huge taboo topic and few know enough about it and fewer still seek the kind of education that they need to make good choices about money. Financial aid is called aid because aid means help. So think of this as the financial help office. This is the office that can help you with the money to pay for college. Sadly they cannot print money. But they can help you find the ways that you can reduce the amount that comes out of your pocket to pay for your education.
Fear also plays into the fact that some parents are afraid to reveal too much about their financial situations—tax returns and such and so do not take advantage of tax breaks that could save literally thousands of dollars from school costs. Interestingly it is the more affluent, financially savvy—who need the funds least who take advantage of the tax breaks that are actually meant for the more needy. This is not $mart.
Money and work go together. You get paid for working in most cases. Well that also applies to getting your out-of-pocket expenses for college reduced. You may have to do some work to research scholarships that you could be eligible for. Websites like www.edvisors.com are a goldmine of information on financial aid and strategies. You certainly have to work hard to get the kinds of grades that will get you the best scholarships. You have to work to fill out the applications for various funds including the federal form called the FAFSA which enables you to access federal college funding through programs like Pell grants.
Some of you will work while you are in college to make up the difference between what you get in financial aid and what you have to pay yourself. The best is work on campus where they will be more understanding of your need to leave work to attend a class or to take off during exams. But most will be working full or part time in places ranging from Starbucks to corporations. Working while at school may be necessary but it can also be a trap. If your job results in your taking too long to get your degree you may lose in several ways. You may not have time to study and so fail courses which then puts you behind and impacts your GPA and then that can impact your scholarships including federal aid. If you take more than 4 years to get your degree then you lose your eligibility for federal and sometimes state aid. And if you keep deferring getting the degree you are also deferring the shot at higher paying jobs. You could be taking one step forward and two back! So it is best, if you can, to reduce the hours you work so as to expedite getting through school with the best grades you possibly can. Again your financial aid (help) office can maybe find enough if you are a good student to enable you to take that change in jobs.
Money and math also go together. Do the math. Figure out how much you will need to live on while in college and begin to save now—maybe fewer movies out and more Netflix in. Figure out how much working is costing you in deferred wages or in money you will end up having to pay out once you have timed out of federal aid eligibility. Someone in your financial aid office can help you do this math—just ask for help—that is what they are there for. When you see the numbers you may be motivated to do things a bit differently. Finances are about dollars and sense. Use yours well.
( For more on this topic in detail see I CAN Finish College chapter 2) www.icanfinishcollege.com)
Why F is the Scariest Letter in the Alphabet
By Marcia Y. Cantarella, PhD, Author of I CAN Finish College: The Overcome Any Obstacle and Get Your Degree Guide
When we think of F the word that comes to mind is failure. (Then there is the other “F” word, but we will not go there here…) When you think of F in relationship to college life it is a screaming panic letter invested with all kinds of power. Who knew that your entire life was wrapped up in one little letter of the alphabet? But in reality F before it becomes failure (which is not, by the way, a terminal state) also can stand for Fear, Finances, and Fun. Those other F words are the ones that can lead to failing to complete college or to failing grades—which can also lead to failing to complete college.
Fear—the fear of looking dumb is one of the biggest barriers to college success that there is. This is the fear that translates to not asking questions whether in class or of advisers. It is the fear that means you will not get the help you need.
On many campuses first year biology is a course that is taken by students who think they want to go to medical school or enter the health professions (often not because it is a real passion but because of other pressures—more on that in a different blog post). In any event, a large number of students take bio and a large number fail. When I have spoken to these students after the fact it turns out that from day one they did not understand what was going on, but assumed everyone else did (since no one was asking for explanations) and so everyone sat with material flying over their heads and the Fear of being thought dumb keeping them from asking for the help and explanations they needed.
The faculty is there to teach you things you do not know and so asking is part of that process. No one will think you are dumb if you ask. They are more likely to be impressed. If you are in a strange town (hopefully) you do not wander around for hours and days looking for your hotel because you don’t know the way. You stop and ask someone. College is like that. You are the new dude in town and need to ask directions. And the nice thing about college is that there are lots of people there to answer the questions you have. The teachers, the advisers –called advisers because their job is to advise you --, the deans, upperclassmen, tutoring centers are all there to answer your questions and see that you get the information that you need to succeed. And on top of it you pay their salaries with your tuition dollars and so it would be dumb not to get your money’s worth. It would be like paying for the hamburger and leaving the meat behind. So if you want to avoid the F remember that Ask begins with A.
(See I CAN Finish College chapters 6 and 9 www.icanfinishcollege.com ) More on other words beginning with F to come.
When we think of F the word that comes to mind is failure. (Then there is the other “F” word, but we will not go there here…) When you think of F in relationship to college life it is a screaming panic letter invested with all kinds of power. Who knew that your entire life was wrapped up in one little letter of the alphabet? But in reality F before it becomes failure (which is not, by the way, a terminal state) also can stand for Fear, Finances, and Fun. Those other F words are the ones that can lead to failing to complete college or to failing grades—which can also lead to failing to complete college.
Fear—the fear of looking dumb is one of the biggest barriers to college success that there is. This is the fear that translates to not asking questions whether in class or of advisers. It is the fear that means you will not get the help you need.
On many campuses first year biology is a course that is taken by students who think they want to go to medical school or enter the health professions (often not because it is a real passion but because of other pressures—more on that in a different blog post). In any event, a large number of students take bio and a large number fail. When I have spoken to these students after the fact it turns out that from day one they did not understand what was going on, but assumed everyone else did (since no one was asking for explanations) and so everyone sat with material flying over their heads and the Fear of being thought dumb keeping them from asking for the help and explanations they needed.
The faculty is there to teach you things you do not know and so asking is part of that process. No one will think you are dumb if you ask. They are more likely to be impressed. If you are in a strange town (hopefully) you do not wander around for hours and days looking for your hotel because you don’t know the way. You stop and ask someone. College is like that. You are the new dude in town and need to ask directions. And the nice thing about college is that there are lots of people there to answer the questions you have. The teachers, the advisers –called advisers because their job is to advise you --, the deans, upperclassmen, tutoring centers are all there to answer your questions and see that you get the information that you need to succeed. And on top of it you pay their salaries with your tuition dollars and so it would be dumb not to get your money’s worth. It would be like paying for the hamburger and leaving the meat behind. So if you want to avoid the F remember that Ask begins with A.
(See I CAN Finish College chapters 6 and 9 www.icanfinishcollege.com ) More on other words beginning with F to come.
Why Should I take Philosophy?
by Marcia Y. Cantarella, PhD,
Author: I CAN Finish College: The Overcome Any Obstacle and Get Your Degree Guide
Over the course of my career as a dean and senior administrator in a variety of schools I have heard the same question—usually in a plaintive voice and you can substitute any number of courses into that question—anthropology, history, art, literature. The assumption is that these are not practical courses. Having made the decision to go to college, presumably to become job-ready and more employable, then students look for the practical. Certainly if one is pursuing an online degree then time is precious. You don’t want to waste it with frivolity like philosophy.
But it may not be a waste at all. The question reveals the lack of understanding of the connection between what you get in an education and your future work life. Learning data entry is a good skill for the short term in a particular job. But critical thinking (such as what you would learn in a philosophy class) is a life-long skill that could actually get you out of the data entry pool.
So what does college prepare you for? College gives you skills that you can use in many career paths. Graduate school is where you most likely will specialize in the arena where most of your work life will be. Interestingly more leaders have liberal arts degrees as undergraduates than specialized degrees including undergraduate business degrees. The liberal arts are a strong preparation for the varied careers you may have along life's path. But what about preparing for a career? What you need for a career are skills. You also need evidence that you are intelligent and teachable. Your grades provide both.
We are in a fast-changing, information and service based environment. The field that is hot today may be gone tomorrow and replaced by something completely new. Think of social media’s impact on the advertising industry or ipods on the record industry. You need to show that you are smart in several areas. That would mean good grades in a variety of subjects and excellence in the majority of your courses. You need to show that you can find, absorb and integrate lots of information. Sometimes you may need to process it in different ways-"thinking out of the box." If you are engaged in a subject that you love then you will enjoy studying it. You will play with it. You will be more creative than if you are struggling to just understand the concepts of a subject area that you don’t really care about. And you just might find you love philosophy.
Employers also tell us that they seek, in addition to basic quantitative skills, really solid communications skills. You have to be able to write-presentations, memos, reports, speeches. They have to be clear, logical, literate (good grammar and spelling) and persuasive. Courses (like philosophy) that require you to read lots and to write many pages of papers are good practice for an executive career path. Firms want people who can come in and be good team players and can quickly learn how things are done. Translation: they seek people with good people skills and who are eager to learn and learn easily. If you majored in people centered subjects like Sociology, Psychology or Anthropology, to name a few, then you will know more about human behavior. But History and literature and Economics and Political Science are also studies in human behavior. All can help build skills useful in understanding situations and colleagues in the workplace.
Employers also seek people who have critical thinking skills and can solve problems even before they happen. Any major will enable you to develop those skills. All learning is about finding new knowledge and solutions to hard questions. Discovering how things work and why they work and how they have worked in the past is the essence of the work done in college. Engaging in research whether in the library or the lab is where the critical thinking skills are developed. The questions that professors ask to get you to think are designed to build this capacity. You must have some degree of quantitative aptitude. That means working with numbers. People come with varying degrees of skill in this area. Some is natural. You were born with it and would rather deal with numbers, spatial relations, or abstract quantitative concepts than read a novel or historical text. For others these are developed in school with varying degrees of success. Interestingly the field of logic which is highly mathematical is found in the philosophy department. However, whether you are managing a budget or developing a media plan based on data or designing a house you will need math in some form. Your future is in your skills—the ones that stretch your brain and can carry you for the long haul. Don’t stop with what looks purely practical. The people who get ahead don’t. Why Philosophy? It may be your path to the CEO’s chair that’s why. It’s all good.
For more go to www.icanfinishcollege.com (Chapter 4 of the book goes into this issue in detail)
Author: I CAN Finish College: The Overcome Any Obstacle and Get Your Degree Guide
Over the course of my career as a dean and senior administrator in a variety of schools I have heard the same question—usually in a plaintive voice and you can substitute any number of courses into that question—anthropology, history, art, literature. The assumption is that these are not practical courses. Having made the decision to go to college, presumably to become job-ready and more employable, then students look for the practical. Certainly if one is pursuing an online degree then time is precious. You don’t want to waste it with frivolity like philosophy.
But it may not be a waste at all. The question reveals the lack of understanding of the connection between what you get in an education and your future work life. Learning data entry is a good skill for the short term in a particular job. But critical thinking (such as what you would learn in a philosophy class) is a life-long skill that could actually get you out of the data entry pool.
So what does college prepare you for? College gives you skills that you can use in many career paths. Graduate school is where you most likely will specialize in the arena where most of your work life will be. Interestingly more leaders have liberal arts degrees as undergraduates than specialized degrees including undergraduate business degrees. The liberal arts are a strong preparation for the varied careers you may have along life's path. But what about preparing for a career? What you need for a career are skills. You also need evidence that you are intelligent and teachable. Your grades provide both.
We are in a fast-changing, information and service based environment. The field that is hot today may be gone tomorrow and replaced by something completely new. Think of social media’s impact on the advertising industry or ipods on the record industry. You need to show that you are smart in several areas. That would mean good grades in a variety of subjects and excellence in the majority of your courses. You need to show that you can find, absorb and integrate lots of information. Sometimes you may need to process it in different ways-"thinking out of the box." If you are engaged in a subject that you love then you will enjoy studying it. You will play with it. You will be more creative than if you are struggling to just understand the concepts of a subject area that you don’t really care about. And you just might find you love philosophy.
Employers also tell us that they seek, in addition to basic quantitative skills, really solid communications skills. You have to be able to write-presentations, memos, reports, speeches. They have to be clear, logical, literate (good grammar and spelling) and persuasive. Courses (like philosophy) that require you to read lots and to write many pages of papers are good practice for an executive career path. Firms want people who can come in and be good team players and can quickly learn how things are done. Translation: they seek people with good people skills and who are eager to learn and learn easily. If you majored in people centered subjects like Sociology, Psychology or Anthropology, to name a few, then you will know more about human behavior. But History and literature and Economics and Political Science are also studies in human behavior. All can help build skills useful in understanding situations and colleagues in the workplace.
Employers also seek people who have critical thinking skills and can solve problems even before they happen. Any major will enable you to develop those skills. All learning is about finding new knowledge and solutions to hard questions. Discovering how things work and why they work and how they have worked in the past is the essence of the work done in college. Engaging in research whether in the library or the lab is where the critical thinking skills are developed. The questions that professors ask to get you to think are designed to build this capacity. You must have some degree of quantitative aptitude. That means working with numbers. People come with varying degrees of skill in this area. Some is natural. You were born with it and would rather deal with numbers, spatial relations, or abstract quantitative concepts than read a novel or historical text. For others these are developed in school with varying degrees of success. Interestingly the field of logic which is highly mathematical is found in the philosophy department. However, whether you are managing a budget or developing a media plan based on data or designing a house you will need math in some form. Your future is in your skills—the ones that stretch your brain and can carry you for the long haul. Don’t stop with what looks purely practical. The people who get ahead don’t. Why Philosophy? It may be your path to the CEO’s chair that’s why. It’s all good.
For more go to www.icanfinishcollege.com (Chapter 4 of the book goes into this issue in detail)
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