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Jack Pellerito

Marisa Enos

ENG.101.W02

18 April 2017

A Time for New Habits

Post-secondary education has never been more important than in the world today. It is

almost becoming a necessity in order to find a career and support oneself. This doesn't mean

everyone has to go to college, it could be a trade school or some other training, but it does mean

that some training after high school is almost always required for any job out there today. More

and more students are entering some sort of program of learning after high school, but with this

rise in the number of students seeking higher education, there is also a rise in the number of

students who struggle or even drop out of the post-secondary education of their choice. This

problem stems from many different sources, but one main source is the habits learned in high

school. Many of these habits, such as study schedules, late nights, or slacking off in class, do not

fit into college and lead to problems for the student. Students struggle to maintain grades and be

successful in college due to habits involving the transition from high school to college, the many

new activities involved in college, the distractions both in college and in the everyday life of

students, or the changing educational values from general to specific learning. Many college

students struggle in college due to their high school habits they bring along with them.

When in high school, everything is easy and smooth for students. It is the same format of

courses that lightly hit on everything required for students to know and has been this way for as
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long as these students can remember and the possibility of one on one relationships with teachers

is almost always there. A student might know every other person in his or her school, and always

knows who to ask for help or who is good at what subject. Once the student graduates, and

moves on to college, everything changes. College is a new place with new ways of learning and

new ways of life. In the article "The Biological Basis of Learning and Today's First Year

Students", Robert Leamnson talks about how most high school students are not ready for college.

One of the reasons why is because "most first-year students are ill-prepared for the expectations

of the average college professor" (Leamnson 75). Because the students do not understand how

the professor wants the class to run, it will seem unfamiliar to them and they will be afraid to

follow the the new format of class. They will want to continue doing projects and activities how

they were done in high school and this can lead to problems between student and professor. The

professor might require studying after every class session, but the habit of studying only before a

test, which might have been enough in high school, will no longer work here. However, that is

what most new college students will try and do. Another bad habit is the high school rule that

five sentences make up a paragraph. If this habit is followed in college, students will likely fail.

This can be a problem for students who don't pay careful attention to details. Most college

professors explain early on the requirements of writings that may take place in the class, but even

then, college students are often tired and lazy and resort back to their old habits. bell hooks sheds

more light on this same topic in her article "Language: Teaching New Worlds/New Words"

when she talks of the struggles that Africans faced when they were forced to come to the United

States. College is definitely a new thing and some students may even feel they have been forced

to go. Some professors can use what seems like new language or have new expectations in class
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and this can be extremely daunting to some students. hooks describes this in saying how

"shifting how we think about language and how we use it necessarily alters how we know what

we know" (hooks 59). Therefore, if a new student comes into a class not knowing what to expect

and hears the instructor using all this "gibberish", the class can seem much harder and the student

might feel as if they know nothing about the class. In high school, this was an easy fix. The habit

of many struggling high school students was to go in after school and see the teacher. However,

in college, this isn't quite as easy. Many professors do not have the time to meet with students on

an individual basis in order to help them. Students will have a rude awakening that they may

never be able to bounce all the way back from after the first test they only study the night before

for. They could get a bad grade on the test, and also have more trouble getting help from the

instructor one on one after the bad grade is revealed. Both due to Leamnson's projected lack of

preparedness of the students and hook's thoughts on the minds of people forced into new

environments shed light as to why these problems and the old habits of the students can lead to

more issues. These high school habits of studying at the last minute and expecting one on one

tutoring from the teacher will no longer help in college, and the student will end up out of luck.

Despite being in a new and unfamiliar environment where old habits no longer work out

for the better, college students have trouble because of all the new things they are required to do,

and the habits of high school were to simply let others do most of these chores for them; now

they must become independant. In high school, most students, not all, had parents or guardians

always there for them to make food, help with laundry, do dishes, keep the house clean, etc.

These were all shared tasks in high school and below, and although a good student would have

helped around the house, the parent or guardian would also help out. It is a common habit for
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high school students to let their laundry pile up, wait for someone else to make food, or rely on

other members of the family to clean the house. Once in college, unless the student is

commuting, it becomes the student's problem to do his own laundry, clean his own dishes, wake

himself up every morning, and hold himself accountable for attending class, making food, etc.

Most college students often have a job as well to help pay for things while in college, and the

habits of spending money whenever the student felt like it in high school can now be disastrous.

In his speech "Remarks on Habit", James VanderMey describes how difficult all the things

college students have to do can be and how habits can help or hinder. He says how his speech

might be "a reminder to each of you graduates of how many times you have had to dig in or suck

it up whenever you weren't feeling well or had to work overtime for your job, but had to finish

an essay or project, make a speech, or take an important test" (VanderMey 12). This is a perfect

example of how those habits of relying on others cause issues. They can have a million things to

do outside of school, be sick, and yet still have to attend class. The habit of staying home when

sick doesn't apply to college. It doesn't go at a slow pace like high school anymore. Cathy

Davidson also provides some insight to this topic of changing educational values. Although in

her article "Customized and Participatory Learning", she does not directly talk of the busy lives

of college students like VanderMey did, she does talk of how in "this multidisciplinary learning

world, play and learning are inseparable" (Davidson 51). Davidson focuses more on the

things students do for enjoyment, whether it be video games, attending a sporting event, etc. In

high school, the main habit of a student was to attend all the sporting events, put off homework

till the next day, and play games on phones in class. College is not as forgiving of an

environment and if these habits carry over from high school, college students might find
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themselves far behind, unable to catch back up. Although there is a lot to do, the old habits of

cramming everything in need to be thrown away. New habits of time management and

prioritization need to be taken up and replace the old ones.

College students are busy with the necessities and must find new habits here, but

something else that can be even more disastrous to them are distractions. Distractions are

everywhere in life today, whether they are physical objects like smartphones or TVs, or

advertisements upon these objects, they plague everyone. Besides phones and advertisements,

there are things like sporting events, friends, parties, and other things that can be distractions

from learning, and that can cause a student to want to pursue these things. Matthew Crawford's

article "Attention as a Cultural Problem" is entirely focused on the distractions of today's world

and their effect on people. He says that "such intrusions are everywhere" (Crawford 37), talking

of distractions, and his choice of words is careful here because they truly are "intrusions" that get

in the way and cause problems. Many high school students create bad habits of going to parties,

staying at friends houses during the school week, going to bed late, or simply put, letting all the

distractions get to them. If a student is distracted and always has other things on their mind, this

can start a domino effect of negativity. On this same topic of distractions and environmental

interaction, Robert Leamnson explains in his article how "it is experience and sensory interaction

with the environment that promotes and stabilizes neural connections" (Leamnson 67) in the

brain. These connections are what make everyday actions easier, and if the brain is full of

distractions during this time, it can be hard to create these pathways in the brain and therefore be

hard to focus and accomplish easy tasks. While Crawford focuses on the distractions themselves,

Leamnson shows the effects they can have on a person. If the habit is to let the distractions take
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root, nothing good will come of this. The advertisements or commercials can lead to the common

habit of daydreaming and the brain will build upon this and want to do it more often. Whether

this is a direct effect or a side effect, the habit of letting distractions rule definitely poses a

problem.

Everyone in high school built habits in order to function easier, whether good or bad was

up to them. Whether these habits would have a negative effect or a positive one on college

learning was also up to them. With high school simply focused on preparing students for the

standardized tests of the world, bad habits weren't much of an issue. Once students enter college,

however, things change. The focus is no longer on the general education that has been taught for

centuries, but on the information specific to student's majors and minors, and what they actually

want to study. This transition means that the information being taught is more in depth and more

difficult to teach and understand. There are general courses for all freshman to take, but even

these are much more detailed than the summary type high school classes. This means it takes

more time to cover the information, and college students have to put in more time outside of the

classroom in order to learn. As mentioned before, the habit of many high school students was to

only put in time outside of class to study for tests. However, much more time is required outside

the classroom for students to succeed. Cathy Davidson talks of this in her article and says how

"learning is no longer one size fits all, and we need to learn to appreciate and foster learning in

all its sizes and varieties" (Davidson 52). This means that in college, students don't all learn the

same information, they can't just copy others, which is another bad habit. They have to learn

things on their own and be sure they understand the information without someone else sitting

there helping all the time. High school habits of asking peers every two seconds will not be
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possible anymore. Robert Leamnson also shows how college can take up more time outside of

the classroom as well, and yet some college students do not expect this. He goes on to say how

"the idea that the only reason for study is to pass tests might seem a peculiar one to teachers, but

that conviction comes naturally to freshman" (Leamnson 77). College freshman, and other

college students, are expected to spend a large amount of time outside of the classroom making

sure they understand all the information covered in class. In high school, this was never a

problem, it was habit for everyone to only study the night before and earn good grades, but both

Davidson and Leamnson argue that due to the individualized and more in depth courses of

college, students need to spend more time outside of the classroom studying. For more than one

reason, high school habits and those students full of them will not be successful unless they free

themselves of these habits.

With so many learned habits of high school being carried over into college every year,

freshman and even some upperclassmen are in for a rude awakening when they find out that

these habits can now hurt them instead of make things easier. Whether it be the new expectations

from the transition to college, the new duties of students, the distractions of college that need

new habits to handle, or the new format and educational values of college, high school habits,

more often than not, will hurt more than help. College students learn countless new habits just in

the first weeks of the new lives they live, but unless they give up their old habits, they will

struggle and often fail. There is no cure for this plague of obsolete habits, except perhaps advice

and learning from mistakes. College students will be more successful the quicker they realize

that the old habits are the only thing standing in the way of success and an easier lifestyle.
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Works Cited

Crawford, Matthew B. "Attention as a Cultural Problem." Exploring Connections: Learning in

the 21st Century. Pearson Education Inc., 2016. Pp. 36-48.
Davidson, Cathy N. "Customized and Participatory Learning." Exploring Connections: Learning
in the 21st Century. Pearson Education Inc., 2016. Pp. 49-54
hooks, bell. "Language: Teaching New Worlds/New Words" Exploring Connections: Learning
in the 21st Century. Pearson Education Inc., 2016. Pp. 55-60.
Leamnson, Robert. "The Biological Basis of Learning and Today's First Year Students."
Exploring Connections: Learning in the 21st Century. Pearson Education Inc., 2016. Pp.
65-85.
VanderMey, James. "Remarks on Habit." Exploring Connections: Learning in the 21st Century.
Pearson Education Inc., 2016. Pp. 12-17.