How College Works (Chapters 2 & 3)
This part of the text discussed two critically important pieces of a college student's life: entering college & choosing a multitude of different factors.
Entering college is a critical component. If a student does not enter college 'correctly', there is a higher chance that they are going to be retained after their first year. Specifically, one of the most important factors to entering is finding that social group/friends that you feel connected with. Though institutions do what they can to help foster an environment where finding and connecting with people is easy - I think it also falls on the part of the student to be adventurous and try new things. Only by doing so do students find where they belong.
When I was an undergraduate, I knew I wanted to be in a Greek organization, but I knew no one coming to college. For this reason, I was going to be exploring these Greek organizations - sometimes recognized for their exclusivity - by myself. I put myself out there during those first few weeks and that made all the different in collegiate career.
Then, there is the process of choosing: a major, a department, professors, mentors, etc. This is all important because choosing the right courses with the right professors can be a critical component of student success. One of the students interviewed noted that she was thinking about two different departments and that one was very friendly, while the other was more interested in the publishing that they were doing.
I had a very similar experience at my undergraduate institution. I started off college as a political science major. The courses were okay, the professors were fine, but there was nothing that really stood out to me. In fact, I had one professor that I struggled with and disagreed with on philosophical terms. Our minds just worked at complete opposite ends of the spectrum. For this reason, I pushed through the major, but going into the second semester of my junior year, I thought that my adding a major - criminal justice - it was going to 'add another feather to my hat' and make me more marketable. Though I am not in the criminal justice field currently, the professors and connections I made there were so much more genuine.
When I took my introductory course with Dr. R, it was like my mind was opened and there were professors that actually cared about students. She made my last year of college one of the best times in my life. Her courses were fun, she was remarkable with how she taught the courses, and her assignments had real-life applicability. Even during the senior seminar course when we were suppose to doing an informational interview with someone that had a position in the criminal justice field that we were interested in pursuing, I informed her of my path and she allowed me to make the assignment work for me rather than me working for the assignment.
One of her taglines that she said during almost every class was "Show me, don't tell me what you're doing. I want proof." Her teaching style, her mantras, and her passion for students made all the different in me choosing the courses I took while in that department.