Success is not a cookie cutter topic for everyone

Tatyana Ross
Staff Writer

I believe there’s a common misconception about the amount of stress college students deal with during the academic school year. 

To the surprise of older family members, friends, and teachers, stress is a major factor in the college community. And I believe that our feelings and struggles as students are often overlooked because of age. 

However, no matter the circumstance the pressure to perform well is high and every Tom, Dick, and Harry has their own interpretations of what academic success means to them.

Navigating a healthy balance between balancing work, school, and personal life feels like the hardest task in the world. Personally sometimes I struggle academically and I’ve noticed that I tend to get overwhelmed by schoolwork.

It seems like I always start off with a fire under myself in the beginning. My expectations and my drive is so high and my goals. I feel attentive, focused, and organized so I find myself working on assignments as early and progressively as possible. 

It lasts for a while and the further I get through the course the more I realize I might be losing the understanding of a subject. And it is undoubtedly discouraging because my classmates were progressing at lightning speed.

This leads to issues dealing with trouble to focus on specific tasks causing me to spend more time than desired on one thing. My time management skills become poor and that causes even more stress.

But by the middle of the semester the material becomes more complex and I comprehend less than before. So, my fire starts to fizzle out until it’s completely extinguished. 

Then it starts a never-ending cycle of procrastination, indetermination, and long nights resulting in a lot of tears. And with my newly adjusted sleep schedule I try to keep going the best that I can. 

However, I have come to the conclusion that sometimes I may be too hard on myself. For a long while and even now I have a bad habit of worrying about things that are out of my control. Much like success, it doesn’t have a one-size-fits-all approach.

So, I feel that how students measure success is really up to them. Nobody can tell anyone how to measure success because it’s open for interpretation.  

Typically, as a college student academic success is measured by the grade received in a class. But I measure academic success by the amount of information I retain about a subject.

I am a herbal tea drinker and every tea bag prints different motivational messages to read before you toss it. And this week I made a cup of tea and the quote read, 

“You cannot rely on others to tell you if you are successful. You need to know for yourself.”

I don’t know if it was coincidental or if it was a sign that I needed to reevaluate my goals. I started doing research and in an article on Evisions I read about five common ways to measure academic success. 

1. Retention Rates – Retention is the most discussed topic for student success. Retained students persist through an academic program to graduate with a degree. Retention rates assist institutions in determining how many students progressed with satisfactory academic results. Higher retention rates also lead to certain benefits.

2. Graduation Rates – This is the number of students enrolled in an institution who sought and achieved a degree. There are different ways to frame this metric. One is the federal definition. This is defined as a first-time, full-time student graduating with a bachelor’s degree after six years or an associate’s degree after three years. Depending on the definition, the resulting metrics can change drastically.

3. Time to Completion – Time to completion is the time it takes for a student to attain the desired degree. This metric allows institutions to measure whether students are taking longer than average to complete their degrees. The key to tracking this metric is setting the proper policies and practices to help accelerate student success.

4. Academic Performance – Academic performance refers to metrics that measure and track academic progress and achievement. First-year performance in core subjects can indicate better performance in future terms. Poor academic performance can affect other metrics such as retention and graduation rates, and lengthen time to completion, resulting in more time that a student stays in the institution.

5. Tracking Educational Goals – To track the progress of educational goals, institutions must plan and set policy. Students should be encouraged to meet with an adviser and set a goal from a list of predetermined goals. It requires resources and coordination among technical staff, instructors and advisers to provide student engagement. However, it can also result in benefits such as enhanced student satisfaction and a reputation for meeting student goals.

These suggestions aren’t fool proof because everyone has their own personal flaws. Success is not a cookie cutter topic and it’s okay to define what it means on a personal level before it can be achieved.