Student Guide to Success
Success is not easy. Not for most of us anyway.
College
classes can be tougher than students expect. What about you? Are you handling
the academic demands of Winthrop? How are your grades? Are they up to
your standards? If not, what can you do?
Many students find the social adjustments to college life tricky. Do you miss your family or your boyfriend or girlfriend? Have you found new friends and activities that you enjoy? If not, what can you do?
Students change majors, should you? Students transfer or leave school, should you? Students seek help for a wide variety of issues, should you? How can you succeed?
If you ask yourself such questions, join the crowd. Many of your fellow students are doing the same. And not just at Winthrop. Students on every college campus -- yes, even Harvard and Princeton -- harbor the same doubts and agonize over the same issues as you.
Compared to similar schools, Winthrop does quite well in retaining students and enabling them to reach their goals. Yet students do leave. Some leave by choice; others are dismissed. Some return at a later date; some do not.
Students do fail. We don't like it, but it happens. We want you to succeed. We believe you have the ability to succeed. We want to help you succeed. But, what we want for you is far less important than what you want for yourself. What do you want? Not what do your parents want or what do your friends want or what do your teachers want. What do you want?
We hope that you will stay at Winthrop University. We also realize that for many students the road to success is a rocky one, one that can be strewn with a wide variety of academic and non-academic roadblocks.
Can we help? Overcoming these obstacles typically involves three basic steps:
- Identify the obstacles. What stands in your way? What is keeping you from success at Winthrop?
- Identify strategies for overcoming these difficulties. What options do you have? What resources might help you in your quest?
- Commit to change. Problems do not vanish spontaneously. If you are driving into a ditch, closing your eyes and crossing your fingers will not help. You must slow down and turn the steering wheel. Will you do it? What do you really want?
We have tried to organize this Student Guide to lead you through each leg of the journey. We hope it helps!
[Student
Guide to Success][Obstacles to Success]
[Analysis of Poor Course Performance][Checklist
of Obstacles]
[Strategies for Success][Resources
for Success][Commitment to Success]
[REACH Home Page] [Winthrop
Home Page]
