THE CHALLENGE COURSE: BUILDING ON SUCCESS

If you’re like most students, you have at least one challenge course. The course where the work is really difficult. It could be memorizing a lot of detail, such as anatomy or history dates and names. Or integrating second-order differentials. Or writing a major paper on postmodern ethics. Or preparing a marketable portfolio. Or . . . you know what you would fill in here.

One of the most rewarding aspects of my work with students is hearing about how a student passed the course they were most worried about. Or how they did better than they thought they would. This week I’m sharing the method that works with many of my students who have challenging courses.

First, name what it is that you fear. Failing the course? OK. That is scary. Afraid of what family, friends, or your employer will think? Afraid of losing funding? Afraid of not getting into a desired school or program? It’s OK to be afraid of those. Take a breath. Accept that you’re afraid and uncomfortable. Student counselling for stress reduction may be useful; if so, sooner is better than later.

In the meantime, let’s get to work.

Step One: List the courses you have completed from easiest to most challenging. 

Step Two: What is the most challenging course that you have dealt with successfully in the past?

Step Three: How did you get through?

List the tactics that got you through. List tactics that you also might have used. These might have included communicating with the prof, working with other classmates, writing down questions on areas that don’t make sense to you, accessing department or library resources, using Google, Wikipedia and AI (all within the constraints your school requires), engaging a tutor or peer tutoring group, designing your own flash cards . . .

Step Four: What can you apply to this challenge course?

From that list, identify what you can use on this challenge course. How will you apply those tactics to this course? For example, taking the list of questions that don’t make sense to your study buddies or to peer tutoring or to a TA. Or finding the librarian that specializes in the term paper topic.

Step Five: Part task and schedule.

Break the course challenges into do-able chunks.

Schedule the chunks. Schedule flexibly, allowing for missing resources or needing more time than you originally planned for some chunks.

Keep current on problem sets and reading. Identify soft spots as they come up, and remedy them immediately. Practice part of your study or your problem sets each day, rather than leaving it all to the weekend. Or the week before the exam.

Step Six: Reinforce for effort.

For each step and each part of a step, pat yourself on the back for the action, the thought control that moves you in the direction you want to move with this challenge course.

Throughout, keep an open perspective. 

Be aware that if this is a challenge course for you, it is likely a challenge course for many, many others. Thinking that you are the only one is a form of catastrophizing, so spot when you’re doing it, change gears, pick up one of these steps, and endorse yourself for shifting back on program. 

There’s nothing really dramatic here. There’s just taking a breath, identifying what has been successful, and figuring out how to use that past success for the current challenge. Connect with me if you’d like to explore how we might work together on tools for your academic success. [email protected] .

The information in this blog cannot take the place of support from your own mental health professional or community health resources. Reach out to them. And IF YOU ARE IN CRISIS, PLEASE DIAL 911.