TRANSCRIPT: What It Takes To Be A Successful Student

Speaker: Laurie Hazard

What It Takes To Be A Successful Student 

Hi.     My name is Laurie Hazard. 

I work at Bryant University in Smithfield, Rhode Island, and for the past 20 years, I’ve been teaching study skills courses and first-year experience courses.

My area of expertise is personality psychology.

And for the last 20 years, I’ve been studying what it is that makes college students successful. 

And experts in higher education have identified particular habits, attitudes, traits, and behaviors that successful students possess, and these habits and attitudes will contribute to their success in college.

They’ll help them build relationships with their professors, actively use campus resources, and build healthy relationships with peers and friends that will actually contribute to their academic adjustment in college.

These types of healthy relationships also contribute to the way that students use campus resources, and all of these things combined contribute to healthy academic adjustments.

So today we’re going to be talking to you about what those particular habits personality traits and attitudes are that will ultimately contribute to your college success.

Psychology

Okay.  To summarize what I was saying before, in short, there is a psychology to healthy academic adjustment and healthy adjustment in college.

So before we kind of launch into this, I want to tell you what the definition of psychology is.

Psychology is the study of behaviors and mental processes.

Behaviors are things that are observable, things that other people can actually see you doing, like going to your professor and asking for help if you need it, utilizing campus resources, people will be able to observe you sitting at the library; going and ask for help at the Tutoring Center if you need it.

So behaviors are anything that are actually observable that people can see you doing, your body language, all of those types of things are what we would categorize as behaviors, and that’s part of what psychologists study is behaviors of students.

Mental Processes

On the other side are the mental processes, your thoughts, feelings, and attitudes, and what kinds of things go into contributing to how you behave.

So this would be how you think about or perceive your relationship with your professors.

Do you feel comfortable going to speak with them?

How you feel relative to your abilities in certain subject areas.

Do you say to yourself things like, “Oh, I’m just terrible in Math,” or “I’m not a good writer,” so those negative and positive attitudes you have toward your abilities in certain subject areas.

In short, are you a glass half full or a glass half empty person when it comes to the idea of reading and studying and note-taking and mastering your subjects in school?

Self-Reflection & Change

Okay.  So your thoughts, feelings, and attitudes have a strong influence on your behavior, and what personality psychologist says is that a person’s thoughts, feeling, and behaviors really have to match. 

So let’s say you’re a student who has a negative perception or you feel bad or you don’t think you’re that great at Math, so your thought process is,

“I really stink at Math.          No matter what I do, I’m not going to be able to change how I do in Math.”

I was born with a bad Math gene. It’s genetic.”

So someone that thinks like that -- I want you to think about it -- would probably tend not to utilize a campus resource like going to the Tutoring Center, because they might have the attitude like, “Why bother, I was born with a bad Math gene.

If I go to the Tutoring Center and try to get help, it’s not going to help anyway because nothing’s ever going to change how I can do in Math.”

But really the first step to academic success is the beginning of that self-reflection, thinking about how if you do have a negative perception, is that going to get in the way of you taking action in a certain area.

And the good news is that we can change our perceptions, we can change our beliefs.

And what I like to tell students is the first step to academic success in a course that they might be having a little bit of trouble with is to change those perceptions and change the way they think about how it is to be a successful student.

So that’s the first step is self-reflection and believing that you can change.

Cognitive Restructuring

So I want you to -- as we begin to think about this, I want to talk about a couple of concepts in psychology.

One is called “cognitive restructuring,” and I want to tell you a little story to illustrate cognitive restructuring because we can all kind of get caught in negative attitudes that will prevent us from making the most out of our experiences.

A couple of years ago, my dean came to me and said, “Laurie, I want you to go to this Management Development seminar,” and it was September and it’s a really busy time of year in higher education in September.

I’m sure you can all relate to that.

And I thought, “Oh, God, I can’t believe this guy is going to make me go to a Management Development seminar. This is ridiculous.

I don’t have time to do that.

I’m trying to get my classes started.

I’m trying to get my department up and running for the semester.”

And immediately when he told me that, I went to the negative and I thought, “I don’t have time for this. I can’t do this.” 

And then I started thinking like, “Wow, does he think I’m a crappy manager?

Is that why you he wants me to go to this management development seminar?”

So I came to my office and I saw my vent partner there, and I said, “J. P., can you believe I have to go to this Management Development seminar,” and it was negative, negative, negative, venting, venting, venting.

And then I kind of took a deep breath and I said, “I have to change the way that I’m thinking about this, because the fact of the matter is, I have to go to this Management Development seminar.

My supervisor is telling me that.”

So I took a deep breath and I said, “How could I turn this into a positive situation?”

I started thinking, “Well I’m going to Providence, and I get to go to the Cheese Cake Factory for lunch if I go there, and maybe I can hit a sale at the mall after,” so I started thinking of personal stuff that would begin to turn it around. 

And then I said, “Well the truth is, I don’t really get a chance to reflect on my management practices that much because I am really busy, and this will give me that opportunity, and then I could meet other people in higher education that have my same role and responsibility and I will be able to learn something from them.”

So I took something that I felt negative about and I purposefully thought about it, there’s the self-reflection piece, and I turned it around 

And this can happen to you if you think about you classes, because you might think,

“Oh, I don’t feel like doing that chapter in Economics.  I it’s going to take me two hours to read it.         I hate Economics.”

And instead of thinking of it that way, you can say,

“Well the truth of the matter is my professor told me I have to read that chapter, and if I sit down and do it and take a deep breath and think about it in a positive way, I might actually have something to learn from the experience.”

So that’s called “cognitive restructures,” or “switching cognitive gears,” changing the negative into the positive.

Reciprocal Determinism

Another thing that I want you to think about that may influence your behavior and your thoughts and your attitudes in college, it could be your friends and the peers and the people that you surround yourself with.

And there’s this concept in psychology based on social cognitive theory.

The theorist’s name is Albert Bandura, and he talks about this thing called “reciprocal determinism,” and what reciprocal determinism is, it’s this idea that the environment can influence you, but at the same time, you can also have influence over the environment.

So I want you to pay attention to that as a college student.

I can remember a few years ago being in a college orientation, and I had a bunch of first-year students there.

They were about to start the semester. 

And I asked them to all raise their hands, and I said, “How many of you stayed up after midnight,” and I bunch of people raised this hands.

“And how many stayed up after 1:00 in the morning,” and there were a few people with their hands raised. 

“2:00 in the morning, 3:00 in the morning,” there were about 500 students in the lecture hall.

When I got to 4:00 in the morning, there were still six or seven people that had their hands up, and I said to them,

“Why is it that you stayed up that late?    Do you normally stay up that late?”

And I called on one of them, and I said, “What time do you usually stay up to?”

And they said, “Oh, midnight.” 

And I said, “Well, why last night did you stay up until 4:00 in the morning?”

And they said, “Oh, because we were hanging out and talking with new people,” and that was the atmosphere in the dorms during orientation that nobody went to bed much earlier that 4:00 in the morning

So there is an example how an environment really affected something.

They got caught up in the environment, and they stayed up much later than they normally would. 

So an environment can affect you, but you also can have affects over the environment and say, “No, I typically go to bed at midnight, and I’m going to go to bed at midnight.”

So that’s a sleep deprivation example; right?

But in a more serious light, when you get to college, you might be in atmosphere where there’s a lot of drinking and partying going on and you don’t usually do that, but you get caught up into the atmosphere of drinking and partying.

And one night, it’s a night that you have a Math exam the next day, and your friend convinces you that it’s okay to go out and have a couple beers the night before studying for your Math exam. 

And instead of exerting influence over the environment and standing up to your peer and saying, “No,” and saying, “I have to study,” you get caught up in the environment and you go.

And then the next day you wake up with a hangover and you do horribly on your Math exam.

So I want you to think about ways in which the environment can influence you and realize that you still have control over the environment, and you can say “No” to those types of peer pressures and those outside influences that may get in the way of your academic goals and your reading and studying and your doing well in your classes.

Locus Of Control

So now we’re going to get down into the nitty-gritty a little bit and look at one particular attitudinal variable that really has a strong influence over academic achievement.

So you might think of what other kinds of things predict academic achievement, and for a lot of you, you would have taken the Achievement test or the ACT or the SAT scores.

And colleges and universities look at those two things and your college grades and they determine, “Can this person be successful in college?”

Well my research and lots of research has shown that those indicators, that is high school grades and SAT scores, only account for what psychologists would say 30 percent variance of how college students will do and how that will contribute to their grade point average.

That means there’s 70 percent of other kinds of things that contribute to college success. 

Those are the things that we’re talk about right now -- habits, attitudes, feelings, thoughts.

There’s one attitudinal variable in particular that has a higher predictor of academic achievement than SAT scores and high school grades combined, and that’s called “Locus of control.” 

So what I want to find out right now is what is your locus of control so you can kind of assess is how much is this attitudinal variable going to contribute to my college achievement. 

So what I want you to do right now is we’re going to take a break, and you’re going to take the locus of control inventory.

And then afterwards, I’m going to explain to you exactly what locus of control is and how that might influence your ability to do well in college and how that might affect your GPA.

Locus of Control Scale

Internal or External?

Okay.  So the instrument that you just took, again, it’s called the “Trice Academic Locus of Control scale.”

So locus of control is what we call a “generalized expectancy that people have regarding the degree to which they can control their own fate.”

Okay.  So really, it’s how do people make sense of their experiences.

Some people tend to be a little bit more what is called “internal,” and some people tend to be a little bit more what is called “external.”

What Was Your Score?

Okay.  So now I’d like you to take a look at the score on your Trice Academic Locus of Control Inventory.

The way the interpretation of the score works is the lower the score on your locus of control, the higher your grade point average is likely to be.

So if you’re hovering around the fourteens, chances are you’re heading toward a C average.       If you’re in the fives and sixes, you’re probably going to make the dean’s list. 

If you’re above a fourteen, you probably really want to think about how you’re externalizing your experiences and how that’s affecting your ability to do well. 

People with four, fives, and or sixes, sevens, and eights tend toward internality, a personality trait that’s associated with high academic achievement. 

Externals, people in the teens, tend to have lower grade point averages, so I want you to just think about that.           Okay.

And locus of control is particular attitude affects your attitude with your professor, your studies, whether you’ll get involved with campus resources.

So how does it affect these things?           Let’s talk about that

So those students with an internal locus of control believe that the outcomes in their lives are contingent upon their own hard work and effort.

So this might be a student who would say their first exam they get a C on it, and they’re really upset about that, and they look and they say, “What did I do to cause that canner?   Did it not study enough? 

Did I not use the right study techniques? Maybe I should have asked for help from my professor.

What can I personally do to change the next outcome on the next exam in that particular subject area?” 

So internals really look to themselves for solutions and they really look to themselves for recreating outcomes in their lives.

On the other end of the scale, externals believe that the outcomes in their lives are from external variables. 

So the definition is that they believe that luck, fate, chance, and powerful others control the outcomes in their lives. 

And these types of students might say -- let’s go back to that exam that they got a C on, they might say, “Oh, my God, I got a C on that exam.

That professor made that exam too hard.” So that’s a powerful other.

They believe that somebody on the outside controls the outcomes in their life.

They wouldn’t necessarily look to themselves and say, “Maybe it was me that didn’t study enough.”

They blame the outcomes in their lives on the outside variable.

Those are the kinds of students that might say, “Gees, I really lucked out and pulled off a B on that exam”, so they think luck was what contributed to them doing a good job on their test or quiz.

So we’ve internals on one end that look at themselves, and look at themselves and how they control the outcomes in their lives, and then we’ve got externals who tend to blame things on luck, fate, chance, and powerful others.

Internality Vs. Externality

So now I’m going to tell you a story about a student that I worked with several years ago, and it will really illustrate for you how internality versus externality might function in an academic environment. 

Well at this particular school that I worked at years back, they had a lot of nursing majors, and this student was a nursing major.

And in her program she had to make sure that she had an A or a B average in all of our classes. Cs were not acceptable, and I always say that’s a good thing because I don’t want a nurse who had a C average in college taking my pulse; right?

So anyway, she failed her first exam, and she came to me in tears, and she said, “Dr. Hazard, what am I going to do? I failed my first exam.”

And she was really catastrophying.

“My dreams are dashed now.         I’m never going to be able to be a nurse. What am I going to do?”

And I had her change that negative perception into positive, and I said, 

“Take a deep breath.            Let’s see what other things you have left in your class. Well you’ve got two more exams. You have class participation. You have your lab.               If you do well on all of the rest of these things, you are going to be able to pull off a B average.”

Part of her problem was is that she didn’t really know how to study at the college level. 

So we sat down for a few weeks, and I taught her how to study in the sciences.

This was a biology class.

And we were getting ready for her to take her second exam, and she went off home.

It was a Friday afternoon.

Her exam was on Monday, and I was thinking about her and I called her house, and he dad answered the phone.

And I said, “Oh, where’s Suzie-Q?”

And she said, “Oh, she’s at the library.”

And I said, “Oh, great, she’s been working so hard.”

So this was somebody who recognized that she didn’t do well, knew she had to make changes with her study habits, asked for help and came to see me, and now here she is studying and she’s putting in the hard work and effort; right? 

So on the outside appearances, gee, it sounds like this person has an internal locus of control; right?

She’s looking to the inside and she’s taking control of her situation.

Well, she came to see me on Monday and she said, “Oh, Dr. Hazard, thank God the professor made the test easy.”

So she didn’t make the connection that all of her work went into contributing to the high grade on the second exam.

She was still looking to the professor and saying, “The professor made the exam easy this time. I can’t believe that that happened.” 

So she was still exhibiting externality.

And what I said to her was, “You need to connect your hard work and effort to the outcomes in your life,” because it wasn’t that the professor made the test that easy.

It’s that she changed her behaviors.

She changed her attitudes, and she actually did put in the hard work and effort. 

So I want you to really reflect on your locus of control, how you internalize and externalize the outcomes in your life, because this is really going to have a big influence on how you function as a student all four years that you’re in college.

Professors 

Okay.   Let’s think about you relationship with your professors. 

Are they adversaries or advocates?

An advocate is somebody who is willing to help you. They’re there to help you.

They’re there to support you.

An adversary you see is somebody that may be -- I know I’m exaggerating this a little bit -- out to get you.

Okay.  So how do you view your professors?

Typically, students who view their professors as advocates have that internal locus of control. 

They have that positive attitude, and they say things like, “I earned a B in that course.       My professor was really helpful.    I visited him or her during their office hours.”

Students who view their professors more as adversaries will say things like, “I can’t believe that guy gave me a C.      There’s no way I would visit him during his office hours.    I don’t think he likes me at all.       I don’t think he’ll be helpful,” or “I don’t think she’ll be helpful.”

So this is another area where I’ve done some research

When I’ve looked at students who are on probation and I have interviewed them, the students who tend to have higher grade point averages tend to see their professors more as advocates.

They’re more willing to ask their professors for help. Your professors are there to help you.

And every syllabus in your class, likely, your professor has on that syllabus office hours where you can go meet with him or her one on one.

So look at those times, go visit your professors during their office hours.

They expect students to go there. They want students to visit them. They’re willing to help.

So try to take a look at who these people are and think of them more as advocates as opposed to adversaries.

Learning 

Okay.  So how might locus of control and these mindsets affect your learning? 

Well there’s something called “active learning” and something called “passive learning.”

There’s a theorist named Paulo Freire that talks about the “Banking Concept of Education,” and he says that sometimes students conceptualize this idea that we’re just going to chop off the top of your heads as educators and we’re going to just stuff knowledge and information into your head, and it’s a passive experience.

You just sit there and wait for somebody to lecture at you and give you lots of information, and you don’t have to actively take that information and process it.

That’s the passive view of education.

The active view of education and active learning is that the student actually does something.

So active learning is something that you really want to pursue, and, again, it’s those kinds of things that you actually do.

You want to try to contribute to lectures and class discussions.

You want to go to your professor’s office hours. You want to utilize your campus resources.

You want to process your information in your texts when you’re reading and studying in an active manner.

And again, if you don’t know how to do that, you ask for help.

So there’s active learning and passive learning, and externals tend to be more passive learner.

Internals tend to be more active learners.

So, again, I want you to reflect on your locus of control scale, and how is that going to affect the way that you approach your learning? 

Are you taking action? Are you goal setting?

Are you being action-oriented, and are you doing something, active learning? 

Or passive learning, do you just expect all the information to sink in?

Campus Resources

Campus resources: Here’s how I talk to my students about campus resources.

I want you to think for a second, have you ever been in an intimate relationship, either with a good friend or a partner?

Think about how you go about those relationships. Think about the beginning of those relationships.

You were probably what I would call in this “honeymoon stage,” having a grand old time. 

Ask anybody who’s been married for 20 years, they went through a honeymoon stage.

But 20 years later, ask them if their relationship is all roses and lollipops and fireworks right now or is it hard work.

So I want you to think about how do you go about your relationships?

Do you have a lot of acquaintances or are you intimate with some people; that is, those intimate relationships that require hard work, and that’s how I want you to think about you campus resources.

If you have an intimate relationship with your campus resource, for example, you know more than where the office of Career Services is on your campus.

You’re intimate with that resource; that is, you’ve gone there and you’ve taken some career inventories. 

You know the internship coordinator. You know her name or his name.

You know who works there.

You get so comfortable with them through your years at your university that you’re going to ask them for a recommendation when you graduate.

If you’re an acquaintance with the learning center, you know that the learning center offers tutoring services but you’ve never been tutored.

If you’re intimate with that resource, then you’ve used the services.

You know the people who work there.

You have a good relationship with one of the tutors.

So I want you to think about how are you going to go through your college experience.

Are you going to work really hard to establish an intimate relationship with your institution, or are you going to walk there your four years just being acquainted with the goings on and the resources that your campus has to offer you?

Think about that, because the way you go about it will affect your ability to do well.

Struggling > Successful

Well I’ve given you a lot to think about and a lot to reflect on and a lot of ways to think about what type of student am I going to be and what kinds of habits and attitudes do I possess that will contribute to me being a successful student versus a struggling student.

And what I want you to leave with is this idea that no matter what mindset is right now, the good news is if you have the ability to self-reflect you can change your mindset, so you can change your mind set to more positive ones that will help mediate and support and increase your academic achievement. 

So what with I want you to do is maybe think of one thing that we’ve talked about and try to make a change.

So if you’re somebody who, for example, hasn’t utilized your Tutoring Center yet, I want you to look at the five classes, the four classes that you’re taking. 

Think of the one that maybe is the one that’s the thorn in your side, the one that’s giving you a little bit of trouble, and this week, go and make an appointment in your Tutoring Center to see if you can enhance your academic achievement in that particular class.