Having an attitude

An amazing number of students show up on college campuses with attitudes that simply fight them. This kind of thinking almost guarantees that college will be a dreary struggle (and probably a losing battle).

I'm an idiot

This blog is about Freshman English, so I'll focus here. A great deal of high school teaching (apparently) focused on the idea that the students need to be ground down to a powder. When I was a high school senior, my English teacher announced to the class that no high school student could ever write well enough to get an "A". No, you're not necessarily an idiot. You need to believe in yourself and your abilities before you can hope to make any progress.

I'm God's gift to the world

A little balance is nice, though. One of my students (who had distinctly limited grammatical skills) walked in the first day and began pointing out all the errors in the textbook. I'm not sure what he was trying to prove, but he succeeded in proving that he didn't know what he was talking about or who he was talking to. You may have been the biggest fish in the pond, but college is a much larger and more competitive pond. And things that were valued in high school English (spilling your guts and piling up colorful adjectives) may not necessarily work that well in college.

My teacher is an idiot

I'm going to say this as gently as possible. There's an excellent chance that a college professor who has spent a decade or so gaining a degree might know more than you do. There's also an excellent chance that a professor with an advanced degree specializing in one area might know more than your high school teacher who had a bachelor's degree in education and a general knowledge of a whole bunch of stuff. Besides, college is incredibly expensive. Why on earth would you come here and waste your money on idiots? Stay home if you're that good!

Losing attitude

By the third class meeting I really can tell who will pass and who will fail. Students who saunter in five minutes late with an "I don't give a damn about this stuff" attitude probably will be lucky to get a D plus. They won't do the work, won't participate in class, and will succeed in irritating the teacher. Unfortunately, they don't realize several basic truths:

• The point of college isn't simply to get a diploma; it's to become something different and better.
• A freshman can't really change the system. It's too big and you're too small. If you want to fight, choose your battles wisely.
• Teachers have the ultimate weapons: gradebooks.