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In the first-year of college, a typical student experiences change in ALL of the following areas of their life: residence, living situation, school, working hours and conditions, social activities, eating habits, frequency of family gatherings, type and/or amount of recreation. The 8 items listed above are among the 48 that appear on the Holmes-Rahe Life Stress Inventory. Holmes and Rahe studied the how stress contributes to illness; the more events listed in the inventory that a person experiences (even if desirable) the more stressed they may ultimately be to the point of falling ill. The Inventory tool helps individuals measure the stress load they carry and think about ways to mitigate the stress.(1)
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First-year college students often struggle academically. This challenge occurs not due to lack of intellectual ability but due to the fact that first-year students are unfamiliar with the context. At the college level, students are exposed to course material from a variety of sources including class lectures and discussion, required readings, supplemental material, and assignments. The expectation is for students to take in all of this information and synthesize it to develop an applied understanding of the material. It is this applied knowledge that is often put to the test on exams; the student who relied on rote memorization in high school and does not adapt is in for a wakeup call when grades come in after the first round of tests in college.
College classes meet only a few times a week for an hour or two. It can seem like there is a lot of “free” time. While not scheduled, it is the expectation that students use this time to study, prepare, read, and work on assignments. Students need to figure out how to budget their time effectively to keep up. Additionally, individual instructors will design a course structure they feel works best for their particular class and academic discipline. It falls to the student to navigate the rapids in multiple concurrent courses and adapt to each professor’s teaching and grading style.
Beyond the basics of learning how to study at the college level, for the first time students have access to a multitude of academic disciplines not routinely available in a standard high school curriculum. While this is a tremendous opportunity to learn about a new field of study it can also be a challenge to acquire knowledge of a completely unfamiliar topic.
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First-year college students are thrown into a new environment filled with tremendous opportunity. In addition to academics, there is the social aspect of college which entails making new friends, personal relationships, getting involved in extracurricular activities, student organizations, and volunteer work. Many students are also working at least part-time while attending college. In addition, self-care is critical to success in college, managing stress, and general well-being; students need to get enough sleep, engage in physical activity, and maintain proper nutrition. Managing their new life situation, finding their niche/home away from home, and maintaining the right balance in all of these things without tipping the scales too far in any one area is difficult.
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Regular Coaching Sessions
Orientation Preparation
Resource Identification
Goal Setting
Academic Planning
Planning For Enrichment Opportunities
Life Skills Development
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FOOTNOTES
Peter A Noone; The Holmes–Rahe Stress Inventory, Occupational Medicine, Volume 67, Issue 7, 1 October 2017, Pages 581–582, https://doi.org/10.1093/occmed/kqx099 Original Source – T.H.Holmes and T.H. Rahe. “The Social Readjustment Rating Scale,” Journal of Psychosomatic Research. 11:213, 1967.
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