On Difficult Classes

We're nearing the mid semester mark and a lot of students are coming to advisors to ask about dropping courses or to see if there's an easier teacher to take that tricky course with next time around. Some of them are complaining about personal difficulties or problems with bosses. Here's the thing: tough classes suck. Personal problems can suck the life out of you and so can nasty bosses. I've had them all and I know from first-hand experience that any one of those is a pain in the ass, but combine two and it's rough. The catch is that the Universe seems to have a sick sense of humor in that it frequently will throw you a curve ball right when you need your whole brain the most.
What troubles me is not that students have trouble with courses like calculus or anatomy and physiology. Those courses are difficult and in some cases, colleges design them to be extra difficult to make it hard to get into popular majors. When I was an undergraduate at UCSB, I had to be a "pre-psych" major until I passed Experimental Psychology, Intro to Psychology, Pre-Calculus and Statistics with a 2.5 GPA in those courses. As a bonus: stats, intro and experimental were graded so that 70% of the class had to get a C by default. So, if you had a 90% average on your assignments and tests, but the class average was high (as was often the case), you wouldn't necessarily get an A. I ranted about how unfair it was, but I did it anyway because I wanted that degree and I wanted to study psychology.Take it from Bob Hallett, founding member of Great Big Sea, 

"We weren't the best musicians in town," he says, "we just wanted it more."

It's easy to mistake having trouble with a class for a sign that something isn't meant to be when the class could just be difficult. Also, anything worth doing is bound to come with a few rough spots, and the sooner you stop giving up when it gets tough, the sooner you can move past the icky parts and do what you want to do. Just don't fool yourself into thinking that because you want to give up or you feel the standards aren't fair that the standards will change because whatever you're doing, I guarantee, someone out there wants it more and they'll get it.

What to do about tough classes?

• Attend office hours
• Complete all reading before class
• Review class notes and ask questions based on those notes and a review of the text is something is still unclear
• Use the tutoring center
• Study at least 2 hours for every hour of instruction. If you spend four hours a week in class, that means 8 hours should be spent studying outside of class.