Bouncing Back After a Tough Academic Term

Difficult semester or quarters in college aren’t unusual, and that’s increased with COVID-19. And college students, whether they live at home or away, have felt the strain. One of the most important things you can do as a family member is help your student keep things in perspective.

Bouncing back after a tough academic term helps them develop resilience and gives them excellent tools for later success.

How Tough an Academic Term Can Be

Every student experiences a challenging semester or quarter—or two. Students who aren’t science majors may hit a wall taking their required lab science courses, for example. Those students who aren’t math whizzes cringe at the thought of calculus. And somewhere along the way, they will have the professor from hell who makes torture seem like a picnic. As I said, most students experience at least one academic term like this. You’ve heard this strain in their voices during telephone calls. All your student wants to do is get through the term and take a well-deserved break. After all, they’ve earned it.

At the same time, students who experience a tough semester begin to questions if they belong in college. We refer to this as imposter syndrome. This is the sense that the students don’t have the skills to be in college, and that someone—a professor, for example—is going to “out” them. This is an incredibly common feeling especially for first generation students. So how can you best help your student?

What You Can Do

As your student finishes a difficult term, give them props for doing so. Let them know that you recognize what they went through and that you’re proud of them. You may also share incidents in your life when everything seemed to go wrong for a while, and how you dealt with that. Few of us go through life without hitting roadblocks and hurdles, but your student may not know that about you. Sharing your experiences helps them see they’re not alone.

This article from STEMEDIA offers several good suggestions. First, they encourage the student to put the past semester in the past. Your student may be worried about the previous semester, but too much focus on the past makes going forward more difficult. I encourage you to help your student keep their performance in perspective. Reflection on how they could improve is good, but wallowing in past failures only saps their energy for the next term. Your student’s performance during the last term may also encourage them to ask for more help at college. This is perhaps the most important lesson they can learn, and it discourages the “go it alone” mentality many students have.