In My Feels - Am I Good Enough for College | The Reschool'd Podcast

Welcome to the Reschooled Podcast, the show that discusses all the things that schools

may have missed with your hosts, AJ Couttee and Jason Gordon. Hey everyone. Welcome back to another great show. For those of you who are first time

listeners, as the intro said, we are the Reschooled Podcast, the show that discusses the things

schools may have not prepared you for. I am AJ, and with me as always is my co-host, the man who

tries to his best to keep the ship afloat. Jason, how you doing? Doing great, AJ. Excited to jump

into another episode with you. On a scale of one to ten, how excited are we? I'm going to go with

an eight on this one. Okay. Pretty high. Pretty high. But this is actually a pretty interesting

topic that we're going to be talking about today too. It's a hard one for somebody as an educator

to hear. And so recently I asked some of my students in class, what is something that you

wished your high school would have taught you better or at all that you think would have helped

make your transition into college a bit smoother? And I had a bunch of responses, but I had one

student's response stuck out to me a lot. And so much so to the point that I felt it was needed to

have its own episode. So here's what that student said. They said, I actually wish they didn't put

so many ideas in my head about college. In high school, it made me feel like I wasn't good enough

for college. And I can tell you, like I said, not only from a college professor standpoint

but also just from an educator standpoint, that's surprising and tough to hear

And so that's what we're going to be talking about today in this episode. Jason, are you ready to talk

about something like that? Absolutely. I'm looking forward to it. One thing before we do, though

I want to remind everybody, visit Reschooled.com. That's our website. You can see our past episodes

things like that. We're on all of your favorite podcast sites, Google, Apple, Spotify

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So we'll keep those apprised on Twitter and Instagram and all that kind of stuff too, so you can keep up with it as well

But before we get to the main topic today, I'm going to ask you a serious question

I'm interested to see what you say about this. But I want you to think back to your first semester in college

What was your biggest fear? Failure. No question about it. Failure. And it wasn't just academic

I told people on this podcast before that I'm first generation. My brother went to school a year ahead of me and he did fine his first year

I was nowhere near as good of a student. And honestly, coming out of high school, I wouldn't say that I was adequately prepared

for college. I did not put in the effort and the time to prepare myself, not understanding the system

not having somebody to really guide me through it, aside from my brother who went a year

ahead of me who wasn't really there to advise me during the whole process

What I heard in high school, what I saw from others and things like that, it confused me

a lot. It scared me a lot. When I got to college, it was a little different than I expected

And I was just scared I was not going to make the cut, that I was not going to pass my classes

or that I just wasn't in a position to keep it all up, that everything was just, it was

just going to be a waste. I was going to waste time. I was going to waste money. People were going to be disappointed in me because there was a lot of expectation there. You make it to college

People expect that you go on through. So there's the fear there of, am I going to let people down

All that together. That was mine right there is it wasn't the fear of me failing for the purpose

of grade wise. It was the fear of me not living up to the standard that I had in myself

and I thought other people saw in me. Obviously, like I said, my dad who has gone through as many

I mean, he's got post-doctorate. Education is very heavy to him. And I've always looked up to that

And I was always afraid that if you venture out into something in this situation

if you venture out into education, there's always the opportunity of you not living up to that standard

And so that fear of not living up to that standard really kind of pulled me back a little bit and gave me some struggles early on in my college career

So I would say that would be my biggest fear is the living up to expectations and standard

Yeah, that's, you know, you had an influence there that I didn't have, right

You had somebody who knew and understand what was going on. If you didn't meet a standard, they knew exactly the standard you weren't meeting

At least in my situation, most of my family or anyone in my immediate family had never taken any college courses

or I had never been exposed to how that system works at all

So at the same time, they didn't understand it. I suppose I could have painted that picture however I wanted it

It did make it a little more difficult that my brother was a year ahead of me

and was doing just fine. But, of course, he was always a better student than me

He was always brighter than me. So I was scared then, you know, was I going to fall into, I guess

the doubt and expectations that I had for myself. So sure. Well, let's get into the main topic about this idea of not being good enough. I think that was a perfect question, you know, quick question that segwayed us into this. So first, since we don't know or we don't have all the context behind what this person meant when they said that they didn't feel like they were good enough. What do you think they meant by that? What would you say the definition or the feeling of not being good enough is

What I would say is that the idea of college as being something that sets you apart, that it's a standard you have to meet

And still, 50 percent of high school graduates in the United States do not go on to college or at least do not ultimately complete college, even if they go on

So there is a certain failure rate there that that's obvious to people

So it's built up to people in a certain way that this is what you need to do to move yourself into a different class, social class, I would say, economic

So together, a socioeconomic status or class. These are the big words again

There it is, right? And to build it up that way, I think it just leads to anxiety, right

Right. You have something in front of you that you could fail out

And it means somehow that you're not as accomplished or not as good a person, which is completely bogus, obviously, but that it's somehow you're lesser than somebody else and will establish your your socioeconomic class in society

And that's that's a real worry when obviously that's not certain. Certain That not true It can lead to that That a negative part of society or at least our tendency in Western culture is your education or your level of attained education oftentimes relates to socioeconomic status

But that being said, I think it relates back once again, just to that aspect of failure and who I'm going to be in life. And to think that you're not good enough for something implies that there are others who are better than you

Yeah, I would agree with that. And I've played sports all my life. And anybody that's played sports on any kind of level knows the feeling of I'm playing on a team, especially obviously this is a team sport. I'm playing on a team, but I'm second string or I'm third string. I'm not the starter

and there is a level of sitting on what we used to call riding the pine

sitting on the bench. And all you can think of is I'm not good enough to be on the starting squad

I'm not good enough to be the number one. And that is a tall glass of water to drink in the sense of

you know, you have to have some kind of humility in that. That's why a lot of people, when they get to that point

They tend to not finish out their, their athletics. They, they tend to just quit because it's what's the purpose of riding the pine

And I think that can be translated into the college setting to where you feel like you're

a second string student. You're not the best. You're not the top of the class

You're not the curve buster. In my class, I hated the curve buster because they always killed the curve for me and I

needed those points. And I hated this person so much, I ended up marrying her. My wife was a curve buster

But I think that's not being able to maintain that standard that either, like you said, culture has created for you or you have created for you or your family has created for you would give you that feeling of not being good enough

Absolutely. And particularly the environment that people come from. So school is one thing, right? High school tells you this is what you need to do to prepare for college. This is why you need to go to college. This is what it'll mean for you career wise, personally, if you do go to college

And so if you make a decision that I'm not going to go to college or I'm going to go to a junior college or I'm going to go to a technical college versus a four year academic institution or even the school that you go to

Right. And certainly in more upper echelon communities, there's this hierarchy of did you get into a top private school or did you have to go to a state school

Right. Type scenario. So that exists at every level outside of school, in the family, in the social environment, that type of thing

things, people just have this tendency to want to classify people based upon their accomplishments

their resources that they've acquired, that type of thing. One thing I have noticed is not

people don't often classify you based upon just generally how intelligent you are or how kind you

are or things like that. They want to classify you based upon accomplishment. And it's built

into our system this level of education relating to accomplishment. And if people have always

treated you a certain way, or you feel like the general influences in your life say, you know

you are in this class of individual, which once again, is a very negative, both mentally and

personal thing to be classified by somebody in that way, that all of a sudden you start to believe

Perhaps I'm not the type of person that should go on to higher education or traditional higher education when I can say 100% there is no type of person that education is made for

It's simply, as we've discussed over and over, based upon what you want personally and professionally

That should be the role of it and it is the role of it

how people make you feel. Absolutely. Because you've said this and I think we've said it in

the past episodes, but I don't think we've ever put a focus on it. And I think it's so important

for us to put a focus on this. As you said, it's what you want. It's what you are trying to pursue

what you're focused on. And the common word that you keep saying is what you want, not what your

parents want, not what your friends want, not what society wants. It's what you want. And I've seen

it time and time again where, you know, I've talked to students and they just go, you know, why are you in college? Like, what's your goal? And they say, well, my parents made me come

And I feel like that's such a bad mindset to go into college with because then you're not doing

it for you. You're doing it for someone else. And that right away is going to set up a whole

new standard for you to where you think you may not be good enough. Absolutely. Absolutely

Without a question. I mean, you're going to have people who judge you, cast their expectations or

opinion upon you. But that's one aspect of confidence. To the extent you have confidence

in who you are and who you want to be, because honestly, they go hand in hand. Who you are

is always subject to change. And hopefully it just proceeds in the direction of who you want to be

Right. How other people see you, of course, that's that can be important in terms of your

relationship with them. But when it comes to what ultimately you want, what makes you content

It has to be a focus on you. And you have to have confidence when you decide on that, that the opinions, the perceptions of other people, if they conflict with what you truly want and what you truly desire and what you truly are going to pursue to make your life, then you have to have the confidence to block that out and say their beliefs about me aren't true

Their expectations for me are irrelevant. Right. It's what I want. It is what I want to pursue. Now, I'm not saying just to heck with everybody else, right? Other people are going to help you. Your relationship with other people matter. You need support systems in everything you do financially, mentally, socially. You need people to be there for you in some way, shape or form. And people show up for you in various ways

So it's not like their opinions, their perspective does not matter at all

But when it comes to who you want to be, the key word there is you

It's not who others want you to be. I fell into that very early on

I tried to be something that I had no true aspiration to be

It wasn't my passion. It wasn't my interest because I just wanted to meet expectation of others

And that's a virtue of not having confidence in myself and my own ability

And many of us suffer from that, right? By all outward appearances, a lot of people early on would have said I was aggressive

or arrogant, right? Which would have looked like excessive confidence but it wasn It was a lack of confidence And as we get older we start to recognize that people who act in immature ways or you know some of the most outspoken people are the ones who have the least confidence

Yeah, I've battled with that. You know, growing up is I've used humor to compensate for my lack of confidence

Yeah, it cuts both ways. Is it do you become outspoken, aggressive or, you know, the appearing of overconfident and arrogant to compensate for an underlying lack of confidence in yourself

And so self-worth comes from within. No one else can give you that

I would say if a student says that they feel like they're not good enough, then they've

somehow accepted an outside interpretation of what it means to do something, that accomplishing

something all of a sudden puts you in a separate class. And that's a problem

So going into the next question, it kind of is a great segue. way we've been talking about this because we've gone on a little bit of a tangent, but

it's been really directly associated with this. What areas in the transition of high school to college do you feel creates that gap between

expectation and reality? So in high school, it has been my experience that people build up college as being some

magnificent transformational experience. and it can be for many people, just like any experience can be transformational

But college, once again, it's an institution. It has procedures and processes

The way it's built up is often not related to what you can expect on the daily, right

What your daily life will look like. Because in many respects, that's what it is

Every moment is unique. The minute you step foot on campus, everything you do for every minute, it's still part of your routine, what you're going to do

The disconnect there, I would say, is not preparing students for exactly what the daily life is going to be, not preparing them for many of the things we talk about on these podcasts

Right. The things that they should expect from college other than just here's what your class schedule is

This is what you're going to learn about. Here's what Greek life is going to look like if you do that

College is hard. That's what I get a lot. Exactly. College is hard. You've got to study. You've got to do this. You've got to do this. You've got to do this

But at the same time, you have community or society telling you, oh, it's going to be so much fun

You're going to go to these parties. You're going to meet people. You're going to do these things. But all of the things that go around it, the separation between the two and how you balance those, I think that's what creates the issue

People want to have the fun. They want to have the experience or they may dread leaving their friends or family and going off to a strange place, whatever your personality is

But then how do you balance all of those personal social aspects with this is going to be hard

You're going to have to study all the time. You're going to have to do all this when oftentimes it's more about just creating a routine, creating habits that are going to make you successful

Yeah, I would agree. And I want to take a different route to answer this question on my side

I think a lot of the gap between expectation and reality comes from the way they're taught in high school and to no fault to the teachers

It has nothing to do with the teachers. I truly respect the teachers. They're handicapped in a lot of what they have to do in their classrooms

What I'm referring to is there's such a big focus on grades and grades alone in high school to where the students don't understand the importance of learning over grades

And then they get to college and they try to put that same technique or that same concept into their classes of I only need to worry about my grades

I need to get the top grades and they forget about the learning side of it. I couldn't agree more. I see it all the time

It's it's it's it's terrible to see because, you know, I have students I have students in my class right now where, you know, they're doing homework at home right now

And they ask me, you know, I don't understand how to do this problem

And I look back at their problem. I said, well, you got it right. Well, I got it right for the purpose of the grade. I looked it up to see how you do the problem so I can get the grade right

But they don't have a clue how to do it. A student being able to understand that learning first grades come

If you put in the time to learn it, then the grades will easily follow right behind it

But if you only focus on the grades, then you're lacking that learning side of it

And so I think that's a huge disconnect between the expectation and reality

Because once you get that learning part too, it is the investment of your time

You're putting in time early to learn something so you don't have to relearn it later on

Inevitably in college, you're going to have to take a class where you took something from a prior class and have to use it in a later class

You can either learn it in the first class and take it with you to the second class, or you can more or less memorize it for the purpose of the test in the first one and then have to memorize it again for the second class

And so I think that's a skill that is being lost in high school of just the truly learning side of it

I couldn't agree more. And you see it translate into career wise what students pursue in terms of how to better their career options while they're in college

The student who is focused on learning above just the test grade or just making a certain grade standard, they're the ones who go out and do experiential learning

They take on secondary projects. They do internships. They take practical classes in their concentrations

They have great relationships with their professors. They join clubs and industry groups inside and outside of the school

And they really make their educational experience worth it. But a student who does that and makes a B rather than an A, in my mind, is getting way more out of college

It's getting way more value for their life than the student who simply just wants to make the grade and leave the classroom and be done with it

And they'll they'll figure out what they're going to do in their career later. My dad told me a while back when I first got into teaching, his advice to me was you teach the student and the subject will come. You don't just focus on the subject. You teach the student. You teach ways for the students to better themselves, even if it means going outside of the realm of the academic subject

So for me, accounting, when I teach accounting in my financial accounting class, I don't just stay focused on inside the box topics of financial accounting

When we talk about and for those who've never had financial accounting, this is going to sound Greek to you

But for instance, notes, payables. What about car loans? Well, how do you buy a car

So it's an indirect topic. So it does relate to the topic itself, but it's indirectly related

But it's something that they're going to use more for the most part in their normal day to day life than what a notes payable is

How to buy a car, how to negotiate for a car. What is what is the financial impact if you lease versus you finance or you pay in cash and all that kind of stuff To me that going to go further with these students and help them not get taken advantage of

you know, for their lack of knowledge when they go buy a car, then how to account for a notes payable

Now, granted, we talk about that too. But again, I want to teach the students how to better their lives in every aspect

not just simply the accounting stuff that we talk about, because 80% of my students are probably not going to be accounting majors or accountants, period

And that goes back to one of the things we talked about as being the primary advantages of college, being a more well-rounded person, being able to interact better with society, being able to interact better with a cross section of people, whether it's the person who's never had an accounting class, who knows nothing about personal or professional finance, and also being able to talk to the business professional or the accountant who has an in-depth understanding of those concepts

So just the value you get there is exceptional. So what's something students can do now that would help build their confidence either going into college or if they're already in college, continuing in on their college careers

Get a mentor. Actually, let me let me say this. Get multiple mentors

ask them to tell you everything they know or can tell you about what their college experience was

like, what they wish they had known. Don't let them get away with telling you the platitudes about

you know, what you should do and that type of thing. Get them to explain to you the daily life

Get them to explain to you what those that first semester of college felt like, all the things that

we're pulling them in different directions, all of their interests, all their influences

And honestly, get as many people who will talk to you about that as possible, because

I'm a big proponent of, and as I've said before, the reason I'm really doing this podcast

is, you know, life in the academic arena is a game and you need to learn how to play that

game well. Part of playing the game well when you're making a decision and going to college, preparing

yourself is understanding the game to the fullest extent possible. Getting other people to tell you

firsthand what their experience was like down to the minutiae. Did they live on campus? Did they

live off campus? Did they have roommates? Were there conflicts there? Did they have a boyfriend

or girlfriend during their first semesters? Did they join Greek life or did they not? Did they

play intramural sports? All of these things. If you can understand all of those things going in

you will be better prepared than you could otherwise be. Yeah. And speaking of mentors, I have, I had a mentor when I was going through college

because again, in that transition between pre-med to not knowing what I wanted to do

I didn't have a clue how to figure out what I wanted to be outside of a doctor. And I know I

just didn't want to be a doctor. So I have a mentor, a great friend of mine who is very

very successful in his career, his professional career, super successful in building companies

and selling them, CEOs of companies. I look at him as otherworldly when it comes to his business

mind, but I also treat him as just a friend and he treats me just as a friend. He doesn't treat

me any lower. I don't treat him any higher. We're just really good friends, but he's somebody that

I go to very often when I have issues, when I have questions, because he's the type of person

that just doesn't, could he, if I said, Hey, I need this, or I need, I just need money

Could he give me the money? He could absolutely give me the money, but it's that give a man a fish. He'll eat for a day, teach a man to fish. He'll eat for a lifetime. That's his response to

any question I've ever had is what are you going to do about it? Oh, you know, I have this problem

Well, what are you going to do about it? I need help figuring this out. Well, what are you going to do about it

And when it came to, I asked him, I said, hey, I don't have a clue what I want to be

I don't know where I want to go with my degree. And he gave me two questions or actually a question and a statement

He said, what would you do if money was no option? And I met him at a camp

I love working at my camp. I've been working there for 13, 14 years now, volunteering there, doing different things

And I love the aspect of teaching. You're teaching, especially in our camp, we teach about leadership. And so I thought that would be a really cool gig would be to just teach, teach people how to better themselves. And so I said, I would like to do the camp for my career, which I knew that wasn't a possibility, but he said if money was no option. So I said, I would love to do the camp. And then the second statement he gave me was figure out how to make money off of it

And so that's when I really dove into what the camp was. And it was all about teaching. I thought teaching is just a natural transition for me from being what I do at the camp to doing what I'm actually passionate about. And that's why I love it because I wake up every morning that I have class and I'm excited to go to class. Like it's never a dull moment. I love being in front of my students. It's just fun for me. And that's, again, why I wanted to use this podcast as a way to reach even more students. Would you agree with that

Well, so how it relates to our students, you have figured out the system, how it works. You've been through college, you've been through the professional ranks and you knew what you were looking for. But also you were able to identify what mattered most to you

So if you understand the rules of the game and then you understand yourself, then you can start to align those. How can you align your external environment in terms of career, in terms of hobbies, in terms of things that you do on your own that will ultimately fulfill you internally and make it so you have a happy, lucrative, productive career

Hopefully, college for most people can be a mechanism for that, that you can start to align your external environment with your internal needs

And that is going to lead to ultimately what you will deem as successful because you will have long term contentment in your professional and oftentimes as a result, personal life

And so hopefully these topics that we continue to cover episode after episode are going to build towards that long term contentment professionally, personally, etc

Well, I think that's a great place to close off this episode. I think this is a wonderful episode. And I'm excited about the next episode because we're going to be taking on a very common question that I think a lot of up and coming college students have. And that is what's more important college or getting the experience

So we're going to be discussing that on the next one. So until next time, Jason, do you have anything before we sign off

Well, AJ, I just want to say I appreciate it. And you guys, don't forget, visit our website

Drop us some questions. If there are things you want to hear about, we're more than willing to talk about it

Well, that sounds wonderful. Well, you all have a good one, and we look forward to seeing you next time. Goodbye

Take care. Thanks for listening to the Reschooled Podcast. Be sure to head over to reschooled.com for news and other information on things we're getting into