College Parent Central Podcast

#128 Help Your Student Complete Challenging Required Courses

• Vicki Nelson and Lynn Abrahams

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Almost all colleges have a set of required courses for all students – sometimes called General Education or Distribution courses. They’re designed to expose students to a variety of different subjects and disciplines. But what happens when that particular area or course is especially challenging for a student? How do they face this mandatory course that can seem so daunting?  Some students may assume or wish that they might receive an accommodation that will waive the course, exempt them from having to take it, or at least modify the course to help them be more successful. But that rarely happens.  In this episode Elizabeth and Vicki talk about how students can tackle these tough classes head-on. With the right strategies, such as sequencing courses carefully, engaging with professors, and seeking early tutoring, students can not only survive, but thrive in these challenging environments. We share practical tips for staying organized and proactive to overcome these potential academic hurdles.

Thank you for listening!

Speaker 1:

Welcome to the College Parent Central podcast. Whether your child is just beginning the college admission process or is already in college, this podcast is for you. You'll find food for thought and information about college and about navigating that delicate balance of guidance, involvement and knowing when to get out of the way. Join your hosts as they share support and a celebration of the amazing experience of having a child in college.

Speaker 2:

Welcome to the College Parent Central podcast. This is the podcast where we talk about all kinds of things that have to do with parenting a college student, or a student who may be thinking about or getting ready to go to college, and sometimes even those students who have graduated from college, and sometimes even those students who have graduated from college. My name is Vicki Nelson and I am a professor of communication at a small liberal arts school, and I have also served for a few years as a director of academic advising. And, probably just as important, I am the mother of three daughters, who have all gone to college and come out on the other side. So I look at this topic of college parenting both as a professional who works with students every day and also having lived it as a parent. And I am here today with one of our co-hosts, elizabeth.

Speaker 3:

Hamblett and I'm going to let her introduce herself and then I'm going to talk about what we're going to talk about today. Okay, I'm Elizabeth Hamblett and I work part-time as a university college, university college my goodness, college learning disability specialist. That's what I do. We're both having difficulty today.

Speaker 3:

It's been a long January, folks, so I work one-on-one with students registered with our office on things like time management and organization and reading and writing strategies all those things that I love so much and in my spare time I do a lot of writing and speaking on preparing students with disabilities for successful college transition, which is a little bit of the things that you both talk about in terms of working with students with learning differences also apply to all the students, I see.

Speaker 2:

So you know they're general things, and what we want to talk about today has to do with when students have to take challenging courses, and especially when those courses are required and they don't have a choice. Most colleges require some general education or distribution courses. They call them different things and, elizabeth, you can help me out here. I don't think in most cases students can get an accommodation to skip the class entirely. Is that true?

Speaker 3:

It is like a likelihood that I can't really speak to. I can talk about sort of the legal aspects of this, specifically for students with disabilities, if that's where you want to start.

Speaker 2:

Well, I'm just thinking that. You know students may feel well, I'm going to have an accommodation because I have a learning difference, so you know if I'll pick on something math maybe I'm projecting here because of how I felt about math, math is really hard for me, so I'm sure my accommodation will let me skip taking a math class. That's the sort of thing, and I think most of the time that's not going to be the case. There are going to be ways to help level the playing field, but not get out of it.

Speaker 3:

I always have to start by prefacing that this is neither legal nor medical advice, because it's very important. You know I've been in the field for more than 25 years and I stay active in my community. But essentially you know from what I get from the experts that I listen to. Colleges have to consider any requests that students with disabilities specifically make, and that could include a course substitution. So you brought up math students with dyscalculia, for instance, might say I just cannot pass a math class at the college level and it's a little bit. It seems contradictory to me and I haven't quite figured out how it's not. But here's what I mean.

Speaker 3:

Colleges should and I would assume most of them have, but again I don't have any numbers on this have figured out what their core curriculum is. There should have been a committee of involved people saying we require everybody who graduates from Hamlet University to have taken whatever the courses are for their major, as well as two in this area, two in this area, two in this area, which is what we refer to as sort of a traditional liberal arts education where you study in different areas, so they are allowed to decide that, having made those decisions. It would be a fundamental alteration of their degree requirements to allow a student to substitute one of those courses. So it always feels strange to me when I explain this, because a college can basically be in the position of saying there isn't any argument anybody's ever going to bring to us that is going to change that fact, and yet we are required by the Office for Civil Rights to still review any requests that come in. So I want to be very clear. Do not take this conversation at all to mean that you know, if you find out, hamlet University has established all these requirements, your students should not request a substitution. My mantra is your students should request any accommodation for disability that they believe that they need. Whether that will get granted is based on too many variables to address, so they should always ask. And so the genesis of this conversation, vicki right, was a blog post that I have up on my site because, to your point I think, so often the things that I talk about in my work, trying to talk to professionals and parents about what the college disability service environment, you know, looks like what people can and can't expect. Sometimes that advice crosses over into being good advice generally for students, you know, without disabilities, and so you know, my best example of this is myself, and there's nothing more boring than listening, probably, to a podcast host talk about herself.

Speaker 3:

But it is interesting because I was in college in the mid and late 80s and I was taking French because I wanted to learn it anew and our school required six semesters of language, which is unusual, wow. Yes, for undergrads and non-engineering. My husband graduated with an engineering degree. He didn't have to do any foreign language, which is something that we know we should touch on as well. So I started in a class where, I think, possibly because of this requirement, a lot of students just took again whatever language they had studied in high school.

Speaker 3:

And so I still remember my freshman, first year, first semester French class, being myself and two other students who hadn't taken French. Everybody else had taken it throughout high school, and you know now, as somebody who understands learning, I realized the professor never wrote anything on the board, she just spoke. It was meant to be immersive, but because I did not see the words, just because of the way I learn and in learning styles are not supported by research, but because of my learning strengths and weaknesses I was unable to link the words she was saying with the words. And I remember being in the language lab for those of us old enough to remember that and seeing words she had been saying all term and finally putting it together. So I, you know, truth be told, I did not apply myself very much to my French.

Speaker 3:

I did not seek tutoring, except once, I think so that's on me and I made it scrambling through the fifth class and the professor looked at me and she said you will not pass the literature level and that's next, and I needed this to graduate. Again, no disability, just some strengths and weaknesses. I did not need any special permission to take French. Comedy taught in English, and that is among the reasons I sit before you. A college graduate, I also went to a school that required two semesters of any combination, at that time, of math and science. I dropped out of calculus with a 40 average, that's probably better than I would have had.

Speaker 3:

You've never seen a professor sign a drop slip so fast in your life, um, and I think she might've said I don't really know how you ended up here, and I didn't really either but um, and managed to graduate, having taken physical anthropology and biological psychology, which you know we're still challenging. That one was still challenging for me. So you know, if we're going to start with, I would like to even start before they get to college. Okay, because often when I am giving my presentations on preparing students for college, one of the things that I do address is the fact that students may not get a substitution for classes that are extremely challenging for them, but one of the things that they can do is check the graduation requirements for the colleges that they're looking at and also check if they've identified a major those requirements, that's a good idea, because it is possible to attend a school that doesn't require the things that you find really challenging.

Speaker 3:

I am the parent of an art school grad and an engineering school grad and none of my kids had to do the kinds of things I had to. They didn't have those general education requirements and they were delighted. And so you know, if you're going to spend all that money and all that time, it is a good idea to look at what they require. You know, there are some schools with very intensive core requirements and maybe that's just not your student's preference and that's a really great decision to make.

Speaker 2:

That's really really good advice, and you know. The other thing about starting to think about this in high school is if there is a school that you really want to go to that has a requirement that you think is going to be really tough to find out. If there is, instead of avoiding it in high school, see if you can take something that class or related to it while you're in high school to help you have the background and foundation and come up to speed by the time you get to this required level class in college.

Speaker 3:

And what's interesting, when I was researching stuff from my latest book, one of the things that I learned was that there are colleges and this is again back to students with disabilities who might get admitted to a college having not met their entrance requirements, for instance, for math or for foreign language, and some of those colleges require those students to then take those classes in order to graduate.

Speaker 3:

And I think it was one of the Florida State I mean, this has been a few years now I think it was one of the Florida State universities and it may be system-wide for them. I'm not sure where I identified that policy. So these are things to keep in mind, you know, and for the parents of students with disabilities and I am using disability for a specific reason Vicki used differences I use disability because it has to be a disability to get accommodated at college, and so that's just, that's not that I I don't think of disability as a bad word, but anyway. So it can be really important, if you're looking at these requirements and your student doesn't meet the entrance requirements and gets admitted to Hamlet University, to ask and I don't even know who you would speak to about this whether that university would require your student to then take those credits there, because that's something I think a lot of people don't expect Lots of questions to ask even before you get started.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and lots to think about.

Speaker 2:

And again, just a reminder that we are not, you know, in the things that we've gotten ourselves way off from what we were going to talk about, but it, but it's it's it's important information, um, but that it we're we're not, as we go through, exclusively talking about students with disabilities, um, because I'm the one that's constantly saying you know everything you're saying about students with disabilities other than the you know, getting accommodations applies to students without disabilities, absolutely, and thinking about that.

Speaker 2:

So it was your you mentioned, it was your blog post on LD Advisory, your website that I looked at and said, wow, this is all information that would be really helpful to any student who's faced with a required course that is going to be really challenging, and you had some strategies there. So we pulled some of those out and we wanted to talk about them so that parents can talk to their students about how to face this course that may be looming, that they know is going to be really challenging, but they have to get through in order to pass. So do you want to start and talk about some of you know looking at options?

Speaker 3:

So, speaking of options, I started by giving the example of I you know rather rashly just picked, I think, calculus back in 1980, whatever, I wasn't really thinking. I knew I had a requirement to meet. I had, you know, probably been a C student in high school in math and just did not imagine how you know behind I would be. So that was a poor choice. We did not have the internet back when.

Speaker 3:

I was in school, and it is. You know it's kind of mind boggling to think of your students' opportunities for research now. And you know it used to be that you would get the course catalog from your college. It was a printed huge volume with the requirements for every department right for every degree, and now those are all available online. And I do want to mention too, you know we were talking about the school's own graduation, general ed, distribution, core requirements, whatever they're called.

Speaker 3:

But also you know, there are requirements for certain majors and again, it's not always students with disabilities who just cannot pass a particular class. You don't have to have a disability to just be unable to pass a certain class. And so at my previous job, you know again, I was working in disability services but we had students who couldn't pass the statistics class for a psychology major and generally statistics is required for most psychology degrees, which is why it would have been a fundamental alteration to provide a substitution. I say this by way of to your point assuming there were also students without disabilities who just were really struggling with stats. So I had the advantage of, you know again, being able to take French comedy taught in English at the school where I was. So one of the things to do, first of all, your students need to know what those requirements are.

Speaker 3:

I don't know what your experience is, vicki, as an advisor. You know, are you, when you meet with students to to construct their schedules every week, are term? Oh please, not every week, oh God Are you generally sort of saying to them, hey, do you remember? You have to take these things? You know what?

Speaker 2:

goes on in your advising. I think most of the time and again it depends very much on the school and it depends on the advising system. There are some schools where students are just on their own to keep track and know what it is, and there are some where they may get a little more handholding. But it can feel overwhelming when students start, you know as a freshman, oh sure.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, but if they constantly keep looking at okay, this is what I have to do, this is what I have to do and every semester, as they put their schedule together, look at what's left and try to be chipping away at it, I think that helps and then looking to see whether there are options. So math, for instance okay, I'm required to take a math class. Do I have options for that? Can it be algebra or calculus or statistics or something else, or geometry? You talked about your experience with French, my experience in high school with required math. I struggled with algebra. Algebra and calculus was like a foreign language for me, but when I was in geometry, I could not wait to get home and do my homework and I was top of the class. It was a different kind of thinking. So looking to see are there options to fulfill this particular requirement I think is helpful.

Speaker 3:

Right and getting some intel if they can. If the syllabus is available for the classes that they're considering, can they see what it covers, See if a classmate has looked at it, Getting a sense of how they get assessed in that class? Is it two exams and that's it? Are there weekly problem sets? That kind of help you at least build a completion grade, if you will. So there are lots of different things you know. I'm sure advisors have to be careful if somebody asks them who's a good professor for?

Speaker 2:

you know, for a particular class and what I say when students, because they ask me that all the time is one person's good, is another person's terrible.

Speaker 3:

I think that's right.

Speaker 1:

It depends on what you need and what you're looking for.

Speaker 3:

Dare I bring up the website that a lot of places schools don't like.

Speaker 2:

Rate my Professors is one right Rate, my Professor.

Speaker 3:

Take it with a grain of salt.

Speaker 2:

That's all I can say, right is one right.

Speaker 3:

Take it with a grain of salt, that's all I can say. Right and my advice on that one is to focus on the consistency of the comments. You know, if a number of students keep saying professors disorganized, the syllabus is never put together. You know it happens as we go along that that's more what I'd be looking for than individual comments.

Speaker 2:

Or if the students are talking to other students and they say that was the worst professor I ever had, always say why? Right, and the student may say that professor did nothing but lecture all the time. Well, if I'm a student who loves you know, just stand and tell me the information I like, lecture, I want to take note. Then you know we're going to have a different opinion.

Speaker 3:

Absolutely. Now. Another way to see what's available may be to take a class at another school. So that gets a little bit trickier and it's going to require a lot more homework on the student's part to identify a class. You know, certainly, wherever they are. Now, of course, with the world, the wonders of the internet, they may be able to take that online. I know when my engineering student was looking at schools, one of them was in a consortium and they could take classes at another school that was in the consortium, so that may be a way of doing things. So it's really important to make sure that the credits will transfer, to get that in writing from the appropriate person and who that is is not going to be consistent from school to school but work, have the student work with their advisor to, you know, explore those things, and if the advisor has never helped with that, that could be. For those of you who haven't heard this term, the registrar at a college is the one who's sort of like the, the grand wizard of classes and registrations right.

Speaker 2:

They keep all the records and the transcripts and the grades and all of that.

Speaker 3:

And see if there's somebody in the registrar's office that can help with that. I had a story when I was first, when I wrote my first book. A parent reached out because her student had not taken foreign language and ended up taking, was told by an admissions counselor that it would be no big deal to get a substitution. That turned out to be wrong, and then she was looking for American Sign Language classes because she had a language based learning disability and the only place she could find one was a local high school and they wouldn't take the credits because it wasn't a college course. So that's maybe not the best option, but we just want to present all the different ways.

Speaker 2:

Well, it can be a good option as long as the school will accept those credits and you know that before you take the course, you don't take the course and then say, oh, by the way, I've taken this.

Speaker 3:

Will you take the credits? Oh, such a good point, vicki. You always want it in writing and stored in their email file somewhere so that should a problem come up later they can say but you know, registrar Hamblett said I did this was okay and the other thing that can be an issue that you want to check is is the course that you want to take somewhere else.

Speaker 2:

the college may say, yes, we'll accept those credits. That's fine, but is it a prerequisite?

Speaker 2:

for another course that you need to take later, and will they accept it as the prereq? Because you know, if you take it somewhere else and then the college says, well, no, yeah, we'll take those credits but it's not going to count as the prerequisite, then you have to figure out how that's going to work. So that's always good to you know. Check kind of. You know why are you taking the course? Are you going to need it for something else down the line? So another option besides taking it at another school, which can be fine, is taking a class pass-fail. And I think most colleges have some kind of pass-fail policy, pass-fail option, maybe not every one. So you want to ask and you want to ask what the policy is so that it may be that you can take one course per semester pass-fail. It may be. I know at our school students are allowed four pass-fails over their four years there.

Speaker 2:

So they can't do one every semester and they want to choose carefully because they don't want to waste a pass-fail early. And then you know, and they can't take a pass-fail in their major Right right, that's an important thing to know about.

Speaker 2:

So it's really finding out what qualifies and for some majors, like our nursing majors, who are required to take some biology courses as prereqs for their nursing, they can't take the prereqs pass-fail. So you really want to find out all the details. But if you know what the details are and you know when the deadline for declaring it is and you're really clear on the policy, taking a difficult course, pass, fail. And when you take a course for people who may not be familiar, you opt for a pass or a fail. And that means if you pass the class and it may be with a certain grade, I know at our school the students get to contract for the grade. If I get a B or better, I want the grade, but if I get below a B.

Speaker 2:

But I still pass even with a D then I just get a P and it's not going to affect the GPA. So does this course qualify? Is it a prereq? Would that be a problem? How many can I take? Do I want to use it on this? When do I have to declare? Do I have to declare in the second week of the semester, or do I get to declare in the 10th week of the semester, when I really know you know finding out all of that, and then you take a course. Pass fail. Of course. Pass fail, as I'm always reminding students, does mean you still have to pass. An F is an F is an F.

Speaker 3:

Yes, yes.

Speaker 2:

And again confirm it in writing ahead of time. There's usually a form you have to fill out and submit to the registrar and then you get something saying yes, you are registered to do this pass-fail.

Speaker 3:

Oh, that's a really good point, too, that they can't just declare it later. They have to have permission, and they're right, just like everything. There's a really good point, too, that they can't just declare it later. They have to have permission, right, just like everything, there's a form.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and you can't wait until the semester is over and say, oh, I got a D in that class, I want to take it, pass fail. So you need to know the policy and ask questions and think of every possibility and ask a question about it and be clear, because every school does have a different policy. Oh, absolutely so. Besides researching your options and maybe taking courses other places and maybe taking a pass fail, another option is maybe to take the course during winter break or over the summer.

Speaker 3:

Winter break is sometimes referred to as J-term.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, at some schools they call it a January term or a J-term. The problem with J-term or winter break is it's short with J-term or winter break is it short, so you know we have a three-week break and some students take a class in three weeks.

Speaker 2:

That means they're doing 15 weeks worth of work in three weeks. It's a little modified but still they're doing a whole course. Summer classes are usually a little bit longer, right? About six? Right six weeks, excuse me, about six, six weeks. So there's some advantages and disadvantages of both. One of the disadvantages is that you have to pay. You know, if you're paying tuition you get to take your courses during a semester as part of that tuition. But summer and winter courses usually are extra part of that tuition. But summer and winter courses usually are extra.

Speaker 2:

But there are some pros. You're only taking one class at a time. Usually, if you do, you know think summer Maybe you'll do one for the first six-week term and one for a second six-week term. If there are two terms but one class at a time, you can focus on that class. It makes it a little easier. It may meet a little more often and that's sometimes good because it keeps you fresh and it keeps momentum going and that works. It's more of an immersion experience. Classes in the summer are usually smaller and a little less formal and that's good. For some students they're a little more low-key and in many places the summer and winter classes are online. That can be a pro or a con, depending on.

Speaker 3:

That can be.

Speaker 2:

A student needs to really think and say do I do well in this kind of class or not? And so you know, for some students online that's great and for others not so much. And then you know, thinking about the other side, yes, there's the cost. The pace is going to be quicker because it's, you know, shorter term, which means absences can make a huge difference. So you need to be able to really commit to being in class and sometimes those summer classes meet for longer blocks of time.

Speaker 2:

So, if you have trouble sitting for two or three hours at a time, you want to think about that. So again, it's not a cure-all for everybody, but for some students that's a great way to approach a difficult class by doing it when you're not trying to split your attention to five different classes.

Speaker 3:

You know, as we're sitting here at the end of January and I'm huddled in my office, you know, wearing three layers, one of the things that occurs to me too is, you know, sometimes the seasonal stuff winter it may may feel more, may feel more conducive to taking a class, because you know what else are you going to do if you live in a cold climate. And summer, you know you may be daydreaming looking out the window. So you know, when we talk about motivation, you know, as a student, how are you going to feel if everybody else is already off. You know a lot of your friends have left campus. If that's what you're doing and you were there taking, you know so many things factor into your enjoyment and engagement with a class.

Speaker 2:

That's just something else to think about and you know, thinking, as you're mentioning that, about being off campus, combining taking a summer class with taking the class at another college, because a number of students say well, I would take a summer class, but I live two states away and I'm not going to stay on campus for six weeks to take a class, but I might take it at my local community college so we can work together.

Speaker 3:

So for students who are not going to take it outside of the regular term, one thing to think about is when are you going to take these classes? So if they've got to get done, it can be a good idea and it's always a good idea to balance what you're taking in any given term. So I still remember a student several years ago who hated writing and took all of the writing courses that they needed to take in one term. It didn't go well and they didn't enjoy it. This was a very, very stressed student and so I get that urge.

Speaker 3:

But a lot of smart people I know always encourage even freshmen. You know who kind of to your point, vicki get in there and they see how many things they have to take and they think, oh my gosh, I just have to start. You know, chipping away at this stuff right now and I'm going to load myself up with the worst. You know the things I dislike the most. You know, when I work with students I always say well, you know what's your preference to get the stuff you don't like out of the way or to start with what you like, and this is an opportunity to balance. So try not to take the two classes that you are most worried about in the same term, spread them out.

Speaker 3:

Something to think about is, if you've evaluated all the different options for this, pay attention to when they're offered, because, like you know, I took this biological psychology class in college. I'm not sure it was offered in the fall and the spring, and so you need that's the student's job to know when the classes they want to take are held. You know, if that's the one they've absolutely decided they must take or they've gotten permission from the registrar to take as a substitution, it's on them to make sure that it's going to work into their you know, into their course progress before they graduate. Colleges are not required to allow you to come back for free in the fall because you didn't take that one last class you needed. So can you take the class that you find really challenging alongside some classes that you don't find as challenging?

Speaker 3:

Can you, if you have to take five classes in two terms, just to meet the proper number of credits to graduate? Perhaps do the class you find challenging in the terms where you don't take five classes, or if one of them can be something that doesn't require homework, like weightlifting, yoga, dance, whatever. It is just something where you'll have the mental bandwidth to deal with the class and for some students with disabilities, a reduced course load may be an accommodation that they are allowed, where they still have to take a certain number of credits every term, but perhaps fewer than would be required to stay in the dorms, be in the school activities. That could be a good time to take it. So, vicki, you were going to add.

Speaker 2:

Well, yeah, one thing that occurred to me as you were talking about. You know balancing. I find when I'm working with athletes, I always ask them do you do better when you're in season'm?

Speaker 2:

not in season because I have more time and I'm not as stressed and I'm not as tired, and that's better. And then I have other athletes who say oh, I want to take the difficult ones when I'm in season because I'm very disciplined, I have a schedule, I have a routine, the coach is all over me all the time, so so not just balancing hard and easy classes or different types of classes, but also thinking about what else is going on in your life and when do you want to do it?

Speaker 3:

really good advice um so.

Speaker 2:

So there's just really, I think maybe maybe one more that we wanted to talk about specifically and then think about some things that are true for all classes, and that is really just to think about sequencing of classes. We already talked about prerequisites, you know, making sure you know if something is a required course and it's a prerequisite, and I think that's a term most people know that means you have to take that before you can take something else. To really think about that. But also, if you have, especially if you have to take more than one class in an area that are going to be difficult for you, really thinking about taking them back to back so that you don't lose momentum.

Speaker 2:

When I'm working with trying to do schedules with students, new students who are coming out of high school, first-year students in the summer, before they come, we do their schedule and they often say you know they're required to take a math class and they say you know I really don't like math. You know I did okay in high school, but I really hate math. I really don't want to take math my first semester and that's their option, and for some students that makes sense, they take a break, but for other students, once we talk about it and we say you don't like math, but you had to do math all through high school. You probably right now know more math than you're ever going to know, and the longer you wait, the less you're going to know. So why not take it while it's fresh in your mind? You're coming off all the math you did in high school and doing it, and many students then say, oh, that makes sense.

Speaker 3:

I get it. Yeah, I want to do it.

Speaker 2:

So just really thinking about sequencing. And the other thing about sequencing is, if you have to do more than one, make sure you keep the textbook for the first one. Make sure you keep all your notes, all your tests, all your, everything from that first class so that you can review them and come up to speed and have a little help when you're taking the tough one when you're taking the tough one.

Speaker 2:

So there are lots of things to think about that can make taking those tough classes. I don't know if I want to say easier, but can make it manageable. Manageable is a good word. I like that. Let's set the bar low. Successful, yes, manageable. Manageable is a good word. I like that. Yeah, let's set the bar low and successful.

Speaker 3:

Well, let's set the bar high.

Speaker 2:

And then there are just, you know, some things that are standard in any class, that anybody takes, but really to keep in mind it's worth reminding your student about, you know, and that is talk to the professor, work with the professor, use the professor's office hours.

Speaker 2:

The professor wants to help you. So don't just struggle in silence. Get tutoring. Most every college has a tutoring center and sometimes they're professional tutors and sometimes they're peer tutors and peer tutors. I think as parents sometimes we say oh, you know, I want you to work with a professional tutor, I don't want you to just work with another student. But sometimes peer tutors can be really excellent helpers because they've been in the class, they know where the struggles are, they know the professor and professional tutors. Sometimes you know I'm tutoring math because I'm great at math, so I don't understand your struggle, and so it may be. You know a help.

Speaker 2:

And if you're going to use tutoring starting early so that you can don't wait till you're starting early, so that you can don't wait till you're having trouble, start early and work regularly with the tutor. The tutor gets to know you, gets to know your strengths, your weaknesses, so by the time you hit a tough spot, they already know you. Keeping a planner, you know. Keep track of your assignments, look ahead, know what's ahead. Basically, just do the work and stay up to date and not fall behind. That's for any student in any class, but they're especially important in those difficult classes. I want to say one more thing before we kind of wind this up. I know we really need to um, because we're going on and on, because these are things that matter to us, um, and that is, you know, sometimes we're talking about how to make these difficult classes manageable and successful, and that's really important.

Speaker 2:

But sometimes it's important, I think, to keep in mind that there are advantages to taking hard classes, that avoiding them is not the goal. If you can, you know, manage to take a hard class, you learn how to do difficult things, and that's a quality that's going to help students throughout their lives. They learn some coping skills and some strategies for how to manage themselves when they hit the wall, when they hit things that are different, and sometimes they discover new abilities that they didn't know they had. They find out that they're capable of more than they really thought they could do. They rise to the challenge and then, when you do face these difficult, challenging, required classes and you make it through, there's nothing like that feeling of success, of knowing that you did something really hard and you succeeded. You know you did something really hard and you succeeded. So, um, you know, seeing it, seeing, not just the course is challenging, but taking on the challenge of doing a tough thing can really be good. So what do we have? Bottom line make a plan.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, make a plan. It may have to be done, so do what you can to manage it and make it, you know, achievable.

Speaker 2:

And get help, be a little creative in how you approach it and stay positive as you're doing it.

Speaker 2:

I like that, yeah, so hopefully parents can have some conversations with their students. When the students look at the things that are ahead and say I'm never going to be able to do this, this is required and it's challenging. How am I going to get through? And there are lots of things that they can think about and do. So hopefully it will be helpful and there are lots of people at every college who are there to help your student and keep reminding them of that and pointing them toward the resources that they have.

Speaker 2:

Absolutely so. Thank you to everybody who stuck with us here to the end, and if you know someone else that might be able to use some of this information, please share this podcast with them. Word of Mouth is our best advertisement, and we hope you'll be back and join us again next time.