How individual professors have ad-dressed the issue—indeed, that professors need to address the is-sue—lies at the heart of Chapter 6.
This makes me think about my own professors, not my current ones (seriously) but my next ones for my other classes. Do they realize how fear can mess us up?
Thus the fear of failure—rather than actual fail-ure or evidence of unsuitability—prevents full commitment andengagement.
Chapter 6 is probably gonna show the solutions, and the professors are going to need to address fear.
that kind of in itself indicates that I’m not as bad as I thought Iwas. And my fear is maybe just in my head, rather than actualfact.”
This is the conclusion for this chapter which is fear being the barrier itself, not ability or preparation.
Carlos thus pinpointed the conundrum facing fearful stu-dents: fear drives them to the point of quitting, yet making theeffort in the face of that fear may provide the evidence that theycan succeed.
Carlos story gives me hope, maybe I can do it too now.
“I got panicked.And then I thought, ‘Well, I’m going to try it,’ and then I startedwriting and it was okay. That was it. I just got two problemswrong. And actually I got the first- or the second- highest gradein the class.”
The only way out is through it because if you use fear to lead to action which leads to you getting evidence and confidence.
It is dif fi cult to understand why Natalie did not complete anyassignments after her initial X grades.
Probably because she got a grade that was so confusing she shut down. She probably thought it was easier to avoid it entirely than ask.
I turned in my first paper and I got an X. I mean, you’re supposedto get like, a B over X, or a C over X, so that you can have a chanceto fix what you made a mistake in and then get that C. And I didn’tget anything over that X—I just got an X. . . . See, that’s why I don’tturn anything in. . . . That’s why I don’t like turning anything in, be-cause ev ery time I do, I get a bad grade
She should definitely get in contact with that professor because having an X by itself gives you no context on what to improve and if theres any chance to get it fixed.
I’m scared of hard stuff. I’m intimidated by hard stuff, so that’s prob-ably holding me back. I need more courage. . . . I’m a scaredy-cat; Isay, “That class is too hard,” instead of trying it out and applyingmyself. That’s what’s wrong with me.
Natalie blames herself but its shown that its a systemic pattern. The X confused her and the fear hit the nail on the head.
Not surprisingly, students exhibitedvery low tolerance for feeling confused or making mistakes, phe-nomena they could easily attri bute to their own inadequacyrather than to the process of learning new skills or informa-tion.
How can professors create a culture where confusion is normalized? that would definitely reduce fear that leads to people not getting anything done.
When it came to learning, Elisa’s strategy of avoidance wasclearly counterproductive.
I'm afraid of making mistakes but listen we all gotta make them for the sake of learning. The author is showing that while having fear is rational, it can prevent learning.
“Her researchpaper she fi nally submitted to me was A work. I mean, I chuck-led. I wrote a comment back to her: ‘LOL—I’m laughing outloud because your paper is awesome, and you were worried sickabout submitting this paper to me, and this is your best paper.’”
Her paper was A work! This fear was baseless, i mean can't you imagine how many students never find this out?
“But I feel so bad—I’m so far behind and I don’t wanther to know.”
The author is showing that avoidance is a trap, it may feel safe but leads to the very outcome you fear.
This particular example highlightsthe irony of such avoidance strategies, that students’ efforts tomanage their fear of failure can easily lead to failure.
Being ashamed of being behind is something I've felt before, so its easier to disappear than to ask for help on it.
I don’t know what you want written down. Ihave no idea what an essay is.’ . . . She looked at me and I toldher, ‘I’m not coming back.’
Barbara dropped the class to avoid failure but she gave herself guranteed failure by not completing it. Fear itself is self defeating.
Students haveadmitted that silence during class—whether in whole-group orsmall-group con figu ra tions—results from anxiety, not from lazi-ness or lack of caring.
Cox is reframing classroom behavior. Silence isn't not engaging in the material its a response from you know it, fear.
posed the risk of exposing to others (both professors and peers)what students already suspected: their overall unfitness for col-lege.
I don't raise my hand because I'm afraid of being wrong, I don't raise it because I believe I can do it... until I can't.
A third fear management strategy consisted simply of avoid-ing any formal assessment.
Assessment = exposure to something, so if you avoid tests as a defense mechanism, that to me seems a bit... lazy.
“I flunked the classes, but yet I understand what a pronoun is,” canbe a success
I've done this before, and even if I messed up a class that badly where I flunk, it keeps me going.
“No hay malque por bien no venga” (There is no bad thing that can’t turn outfor the good) and explained, “It’s okay, because now I’m goingto focus more on the other classes.
This definition of success seems a bit self protective. He can fail but still feel okay about it.. is it growth or denial?
A second fear management strategy was to redefine successand failure. Some students, who described the advantages thatsprang from spe cific experiences of failure, exhibited remark-able resilience in the face of disappointments and derailed plans.
Carlos reframes failure as a learning opportunity and while thats resiliant it can also just be rationalization.
In both instances, highly capable students with excellent rec-ords of performance in high school took themselves out of high-risk situations by scaling down and starting at LSCC.
Is scaling back always bad or is it sometimes neccesary?
“I don’t want to be the stupid kid in class, where every-one else is raising their hand, and I’m the only one not. And Iknow it’s not going to be like that, but it’s one of my biggestfears.”
I've thought about dropping to part time classes but i'd still have to deal with this.
One such strategy consisted of scaling back.
Scaling back is a form of self protection, but it does limit your potential as a student.
So I sat there and bawled with Mama for three hours.
I've wanted to quit too, its not even about the laziness I just feel overwhelmed considering I can't dedicate my entire life to college.
“I quit. Yeah, I quit here.”
Quitting is the ultimate fear management strategy, it eliminates the source of the anxiety by just removing the source itself.
Fear of failing as college students drove some to employ pre-ventive strategies.
Jenn was a straight A student and still wanted to quit on day one. If that doesn't show the control fear has over someone, i don't know what will.
“But, um, I’m going to see how English 1A goes, because that’slike freshman En glish.”
Yeah I bet when he takes English 1A, that fear will hit him like a train just like almost everyone else.
Sebastian’s anxiety was reserved for the future courses; he ad-mitted,
Why does he suddenly feel so confident now? I mean basic skill classes are a safety net for what he's gonna run into.
“I feel prepared; I feel comfortable doing all the work. It’s all easy forme.”
Sebastian is pretty confident in basic skills but scared of the real college classes. Confidence is only good in context dependent situations.
It’sscary—very scary. . . . I’m so unsure of what to expect at the nextlevel.
Cox is showing that even being successful doesn't cure the fear itself, its just moves along with you.
Nereida, for example, that she wasn’t really “col-lege material.”
I'm also scared to be transferring too??? What If i can't handle the university level work on TOP of the financial burden?
at the community college level were not necessarily as certainabout the four- year leve
Fear doesn't go away magically after community college, it just moves on to the next level. Its about the unknown part that gets ya.
I think that’sone of the things that makes a lot of people fail.
So I've made things harder by stressing out about them not being done, wow its like it writes itself!
“It waslike I thought I wouldn’t make it, like I wasn’t going to be able tomake it.
Why are the men less likely to admit fear? is it the societal construct that makes it embarrassing to admit to.
Although male students were much less likely than femalestudents to offer unsolicited accounts of feeling anxious or un-prepared, they too admitted that particular courses had gen-erated nervousness.
Carlos says fear itself causes failure, and that also sounds like a big circle: Fear leads to avoidance which leads to failure which leads to more fear; rinse and repeat.
“I just saw all the work, and my heart was beating,and I’m just thinking, ‘This is not real. There’s no way collegecan be this hard.’ It was just like they were throwing informationat you, and just expecting you to be okay with it.
Cox (the author) is breaking down the idea that fear comes from being unprepared for college, it comes from the unknown.
Anxiety and low self-con fi dence also plagued studentswho spoke favorably of their former English teachers or com-mented on the rigor of their high school English curriculum.
The syllabus can feel like a threat because it puts the entire semester in your face all at once.
Students’ explanations for their anxiety often highlightedinadequate instruction in the past.
If even the prepared highschool students also get scared, then its not a preparation issue, its a transition issue.
Kyra, who put off taking the course until her very last semes-ter, noted, “I just had a fear of English, like this total fear factor.”
The author is showing that fear isn't irrational, its a real response to real stakes at hand.
As the portal to more exclusive classes, compositionplays a crucial role in selection of students. Those who success-fully complete the course are judged proficient in the generalwriting skills deemed necessary for further academic study.
I put off English initially until I had to get my classes registered for and then come in late to the assignments themselves and not interacting with any of my professors.
Students’ fear of the composition course was particularlyintense.4
Comp is a gatekeeper because if you fail, you're blocked from basically everything else. Thats why its feared.
Colleen’s avoidance strategy in her philosophy courserepresented a frequent student behavior. In this case, her ap-proach was particularly interesting because she had demon-strated a high level of assertiveness in other situations—both onher own behalf and for other students.
If even assertive students like Colleen hide, how can professors make themselves more approachable for the students that aren't as assertive.
. “When I was a highschool student, I very much got the idea that college was veryanonymous, that all you were, really, was a name on a page. Youknow, you really weren’t a person.”
I thought college professors would be distant and unhelpful. I mean even if they're nice I still might feel hesistant on asking for help from them.
Colleen’s perspective, her philosophy instructor tended“to act like he’s teaching at Yale or something.” During her inter-view with me, she addressed him in absentia, with this request:“Come down to our level a little bit. I know you have a lot ofstuff to teach us, but don’t be so high on that pedestal that wecan’t reach you.”
The author shows that even 'friendly' professors can feel intimidating just from their position in power, not their personality.
Students admitted to feeling intimidated by professors’ aca-demic knowledge and by teachers’ power to assess students andassign grades.
Students just want to be seen as human in the eyes of their professors, not just something a professor grades and moves on with their day.
At the core of different expressions of fear, however,were the same feelings of dread and the apprehension that suc-cess in college would prove to be an unrealizable dream.
This is the core concept of the fear factor in college, its the fear of exposure. The professors have the power to destroy or confirm a students self concept in college.
Even students who did not explicitly discuss past failures re-vealed an underlying lack of confi dence, and gnawing doubtsabout their capacity to succeed in college.
I just barely missed an AP US History test and felt like I wasn't ready for college, which is what the author describes here.
Thus, for many students, past failure provided objective evidenceof their academic inadequacy.
Calling past failures 'objective evidence' is problematic, it's not even objective its a story they've been consistently getting told.
Many lacked the kind of “college knowledge” typical ofmiddle-class students and remained uncertain about how toapproach the degree track and their coursework.
COLLEGE KNOWLEDGE IS THE HIDDEN CURRICULUM. If you don't know it, you'll feel like an outsider for sure.
Still, she admitted, “it was still really scary. Oh, myGod, it was a life-altering change.”
Why don't colleges teach time management and pacing initially in the orientation? better yet, why don't they teach themselves about time management instead of the students so they can finally understand what its like to attend college through the students eyes instead of the administrations.
Because in high school, you have two weeks to learn one section. Andhere it’s like one day you learn a section, the next day you learn an-other section, it’s just so fast paced
Again, the nature of college is like living life in the fast lane. There's no breaks and even when there is, it's just not cut out for everyone coming from highschool.
“Inever realized how fast college would be—comparing one year ofhigh school with one semester of college
The pace shock is, well pretty shocking. I fell behind because of the system finally letting me in but my financial issues and work had me delayed even more and only recently was I able to get caught up just a bit. High school is nothing close to what I have to put up with in college.
During her final semesterin high school, she had taken one class at the community college,which made her feel more prepared for her first semester as afull- time student at the college.Despite these advantages, Melanie spoke vividly of the fearsshe confronted on matriculating.
This is what was suggested for me to do so I'm prepared for college, but it turns out I wasn't. The author here is showing that even the best students like Melanie, who has amazing grades and family support, can be overwhelmed.
“My body just said, ‘This is too much stress, this is too much’”—so much that she rushed from the parking lot to the closestwomen’s room, feeling sick to her stomach.
Why don't we talk about the physical symptoms of anxiety in college? I can get maybe its because it can feel humilating but if we have physical side effects from the mental gymnastics having to be performed just to get in and continue working in college, it needs to be discussed.
“When Icame on my first day here, as I was walking up through thatparking lot—I had to park all the way over there at the otherend, because it was, like, crazy packed here, on the first day. Iremember walking up, thinking, ‘I’m all by myself now.’ Not lit-erally, but the decisions that I make from today on, I’m going tohave to make on my own.
This is quite the image, the way her body reacts before she can process it mentally about the load thats about to be given for her to work on. This fear is physical, not just mental.
“I’ve had to figure outdegree plans, courses at LSCC that can transfer to _______ Uni-versity, the online courses at State that can transfer to the univer-sity; and as much as the counselors have helped me—I mean,they are really good at what they do—but a lot of this is set onyou
The author uses Melanie as an example of a 'successful' student that still has to deal with the rest of college even if shes been in the right direction this entire time. This just proves the college fear people have isn't about the ability to do the required tasks, but the REST of the work thats not getting students helped on.
I think college makes you a lot more serious.
That's one way of saying it drains the life out of you, she sounds like she's in a similar situation similar to mine except my transfer credits didn't really work and I burned a day of scheduling a zoom meeting with my counselor for nothing.
classes to take, they direct you in certain ways, they put you in cate-gories, and they put you in smart classes or dumb classes. And herein college, nobody does that for you.
This is the knowledge gap that first gen students have to deal with coming straight out of highschool, like myself for example; college expects me to know all about how everything works and thats extremely unfair for me.
I’ve had to really break out of the comfort zone of high school,and I’ve had to be very much more inde pen dent. In high school, ifyou didn’t do homework, you were able to copy off a kid, one ofyour friends, or you were able to find out information from one ofyour friends if you skipped a day or whatever.
Melanie's description of independence reminds me of how High School itself held your hand even when you missed things in class but in College its a free for all and if you miss anything that's on you to be dealing with.
entering college marked a high-risk and anxiety-provoking transition in their adult lives.
High Risk and Adult lives make me believe this is a ceremonial passage but those are typically supported by the students family as well as themselves, but most of the time going to college isn't.
en-rolling in college courses proved to be an immensely stressfultransition.
The author calls it 'immensly' stressful because the things at hand are real like the financial and emotional side of college. Your talking about someones life here.
academic background, educational goals, or the path to college,students reveal tremendous anxiety about their educational tra-jectories and ability to succeed in college.
If fear is this common in college why isn't it talked about more? It seems to me that might be because the students think they're the only ones feeling it.
Eva’s case is by no means unique
The claim here in this chapter is that Fear is a universal thing, especially when it comes to College English. The author is setting up the argument that its not about preparation, its about the transition itself.
“That first day, whenthe professor said that it’s going to be an essay after an essay, Iwas scared.
I felt this when I first saw my own English Syllabus. The professor isn't trying to scare me but listing everything at once did make me feel overwhelmed. I honestly wish there was a better way to display that without it coming off as in your face.
, “I saw what different paths my friendswent on, and I decided that I didn’t want to not go back to schoolat all.”
-v
Mariella, for example, noted,“I didn’t have the best grades in high school, so I didn’t apply toany four- year colleges. I just thought it was a waste of time, sinceI knew that I wasn’t going anywhere real good. So that’s why I’mhere.”
Thats a shame, because of her grades she doesn't wanna try for any 4 year university because "she wasn't going anywhere good".
Recent high school graduates, who represent the majority offirst- time community college students, tended to report that theyhad always assumed that college would be the immediate stepafter they finished high school.
College is usually the next step by default, other than a break year but usually you come back just to get into college.
well over two-thirds of first-time commu-nity college students enter with the express goal of attaining aneducational credential
So most students are there for the credential, not just exploring.
students may be pursuing one of many possible goals, includ-ing transfer to a baccalaureate-granting college, certifi ca tion orlicensure in an occupation, exploration of possible career paths,avocational interests, or job- spe cific professional development.
Thats alot of variation for goals, college transfer to training for a job to having hobbies. No wonder a professor can't understand a student because they haven't done that.
the funda-mental character of the community college derives from the ideathat its doors are open to everyone.
"Open doors" is the core idea but open doors also mean an open door range of students with very different needs and problems.
Or as another student put it, “This islike high school with cigarettes.”
This is just sad, so they feel its an extension to highschool and not its own thing.
community colleges are heavilyin flu enced by the local and state contexts, and as a result thevariation extends across colleges as well.
so its area dependent, there isn't a singular "community college experience".
one of the truisms aboutthe two- year sector is that its diversity when it comes to educa-tional missions, program offerings, and student population cre-ates a bewildering and contradictory set of policies and practiceswithin each college.
So the system itself is confusing, because using "Bewildering and Contradictory" is some way of seeing it.
American higher education is due for reinvention, if it is to ad-dress the realities that apply to today’s students
Reinvention, strong wording.
my aim is toilluminate how college students understand their educationalpaths, what mismatches exist between their expectations andtheir professors’ expectations, and how some of the traditionalstructures and norms of higher education function as obstaclesto increased access and educational opportunity.
Three goals: How a student sees their paths, where the issues are, and how the traditional structure can block access.
Thefirst of the three parts begins with an examination of students’goals, expectations, and orientation toward college.
Part 1 is about the students, where the fear factor comes from.
we must uncoverstudents’ preconceptions and expectations and integrate thoseresults as we rethink course objectives and the means of accom-plishing them.
So teachers should begin by understanding what students think and expect, then go from there.
chang-ing from within requires a more comprehensive understandingof today’s college students and how to address their needs.
From Within means an inside out approach to start the change, aka start it inside the classroom first then everything else moves.
I contendthat accommodating the changing patterns of partici pa tion inhigher education will require orga ni za tional changes, and thatthese will benefit all college students at every level
The author isn't blaming one particular group, shes saying its a systematic issue that needs the system to change.
multiple and conflicting expectations—among stu-dents and instructors—can easily lead to miscommunication inthe classroom and undermine the learning environment.
Miscommunication is the cause of these issues, makes more sense than race.
such knowledge requires awell- grounded understanding of students’ perspectives, expecta-tions, and behavior.
So the key to solving this issue is understanding students, no wonder the sub title says how they misunderstand eachother
excellentteachers tend to assume that their students can learn at a highlevel, and that such teachers understand enough about how peo-ple learn to be able to support in-depth learning.
Now THIS is a solution I can agree with, you got high standards but a High understanding of the material.
The other common approach is to tryto make the work easier, whether by slowing down, by break-ing the subject matter into discrete parts, or by assigning less.This strategy, however, risks focusing on low-level cognitive ob-jectives to the exclusion of higher-order thinking skills.
So the other way is to make the standards low enough that they can pass, but doesn't that hurt the students capability to learn complex topics? Neither work
professors who view their stu-dents as underprepared for college tend to respond in one of twoways. One approach is to “maintain standards,” by continuingalong as usual
So let them fail and continue moving on? what kind of professor is this??
If a stu-dent’s style of partic i pa tion is different from the norm, for ex-ample, an instructor may believe that the student is not ascapable as the other students.
So cultural differences being misread by the professor could be seen as a form of bias.
Sometimes the assumptions about appropriate socialbehavior and academic performance are class- or race- based,embodying norms and values that are not universally held oreven acknowledged.
This claim sounds like he's trying to claim race and class affect social behavior and academic performance (sounds ignorant and hollow).
Even in college classes, with students who have metentry- level requirements, professors lament students’ weak skillsand lack of preparation for the demands of college.
So even placement level students struggle with it too.
Professors were asking the class to analyze texts, butsome students were unprepared to do so, for their high schoolwork had familiarized them with summarizing and paraphras-ing, but nothing more.
Because of what they were taught in highschool isn't whats needed to prepare them for college. Not the students fault.
I draw on interviews with more
-^
than 120 students, conducted as part of four different researchproj ects
The book is made from actual peoples experiences, so its not a theoretical issue its bringing up.
Being unprepared to meet certain expectations, however, is notthe same as being unable to meet them.
Students not being able to analyze but summarizing was what they were taught before they entered College. It's not an intelligence issue but the learning curriculum.
rooms in the 1970s, as working-class students resisted the ab-stract exercises that their professors devised.
-^
Howard London, forinstance, observed the conflict inside community college class-
So this issue has been documented before and isn't new.
The most compelling evidence of this disjuncture emerges at theclassroom leve
The author is saying the real story is within the classroom itself and not just statistics.
The complications are perhapsmost evident at community colleges, where the diversity of stu-dents is most pronounced
Community colleges are where the contradiction is most obvious.
Higher education’s exclusive beginnings have kept col-leges from adequately serving a greater proportion of thepopulation
The past still affects the present, so the elite origins aren't just history that brushes by
My children are old enough so I can say, ‘It’s time forMom to do something she would really like.’
its being honest because she could've gotten more data but shes done more than enough.
“A lot of people who come to thecommunity college—not half, but a lot of them—are here be-cause they don’t have the grades to get into a good college, andthe other people are here because they don’t have the money toget into a good college.
Shes saying grades and money play a role in what college you go to and thats based off of her peer experience with it.
“I’ll be going here for a year and then trans-ferring to [the nearby university]. I thought it would be nice tosave a little money before I head off.”
Financial reasons make this connect to the cost benefits everyone statement from earlier.
“Really it was just finan cial. I got into severalout- of- state universities coming out of high school, but I couldn’tafford any of them. Even with academic scholarships they werestill too much money, because I have to pay for half of my owncollege
So scholarships don't really cover it, huh.
“I wanted an education,but I wasn’t ready to put forth the horsepower; I wasn’t ready toget serious about it.
He needed time before he jumped into college, and thats fine plus horsepower is one way you can tell he's still young.
In particular, he said, “I saw friends working at the pizzaplace—and I didn’t want to do that.”
I mean if I saw my friends working at a pizza place I'd rather go to college too. Financial Reasons are one big way to change someones view
“My friends had the ability to go straight into universitywithout worrying about paying. I didn’t. I lived on my own inhigh school, and so as soon as I graduated I needed to producemoney because I didn’t have any.”
I mean thats normal, not everyone at 18 has the option to go to college because they have to work.
For women who had left high school and started familiesyears earlier, attending college had not been part of the plan.
So women that didn't have college in their future plans only thought about it later in life.
The three chapters take up themes that consistentlyemerged from those interviews, and provide the basis for under-standing the tensions and misunderstandings that occur insidecollege classrooms.
The core problem is the big misunderstanding between students and professors.
The explanation for the disparities lies in the fundamentalcontradiction between the elite origins of American higher edu-cation and current increased access for people previously ex-cluded.
So they haven't redesigned the system and just made a quick patch that doesn't really fit the new population that wasn't thought of originally.
How is it that the percentage of the popu-lation with college degrees has stayed the same over the past fourde cades
A big question that the author is asking.
By contrast, other countries have increased their collegegraduation rates—in the case of Japan and Korea, by over 30
The U.S is falling behind other countries which makes this seem like an urgent issue we have to address soon.
the number of college graduates has merely kept pace with theoverall population growth.
So even when people GO to college, the same percentage graduate. Why isn't the graduation percentage keeping up with the enrollment?
The Ameri-can system of providing higher education for the masses remainsan unfinished proj ect
Its a bit critical to say it like that but yes its not done yet.
it comprises the largest group ofdifferent types of accredited postsecondary institutions and con-stitutes the first stop for roughly half of today’s college students.In many states (thirty-five out of fifty
Half of all college students start at a community college based off this statement, why is it treated as a supplementary option?
From this perspective, The College Fear Factor takes an un-conventional approach, focusing on the least selective and leastprestigious colleges in the country: community colleges
This is the main idea the author wants the book to show, all the community colleges almost everyone tends to ignore.
In a recent real-ity show, the preeminent role of the Vidal Sassoon Academy wasunderscored by its description as “the Harvard of hairdressing.
If I'm being told a hair dressing school is comparable to Harvard, that just shows how ingrained these postsecondary schools are in popular media WE watch.