Tag: books

School Me Saturday 4/27/24-Off with her head!

Reminder- this series is roughly based on Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass. In this series, Alice is the student and the other characters are actors in the student’s life.

Nope. It isn’t Alice’s head that needs to be lopped off. It is the Queen of Hearts.

In this post, we are going to pretend that the Queen of Hearts is the little whisper of self-doubt that all students have. Regardless of where they are in the college/university/degree journey.

ALL students have that little voice that whispers to them that they are not good enough.

That they are only in the program they are in because of pity.

That the next test/essay/research paper will be their last.

Because how can they last?

Do they really think they can finish?

Do they really think no one is laughing at them and their audacity for thinking they are on par with their classmates?

And, if they finish by the grace of the teachers, how do they think they will pass the next test? In nursing, this is the NCLEX, the national boards that assess a nurse’s readiness to practice safely.

It is insidious, that little voice in all students’ heads.

In the book, Alice draws the Vorpal sword, which allows her to defeat the Jabberwocky by cutting off its head and defeating the Jabberwocky allows her to defeat the Queen of Hearts.

The key to defeating the student’s Queen of Hearts little voice is to draw their own Vorpal sword.

This is gonna get a little metaphysical but bear with me.

The Queen of Hearts yells constant threats. Off with his head, off with her head. But no heads are actually lopped off except the Jabberwocky. She is all bluster and vim, but in the end, Alice proves her to be thin and unsubstantial. Because the Queen of Hearts is only a playing card. In naming her to be inconsequential Alice defeats her.

The little voice in students’ heads (and I am not immune) can be defeated in such a manner. It is about recognizing the voice and knowing that the voice is not telling the truth which allows the student to defeat the voice.

This is not an easy battle, (see me in my fourth degree program and still struggling at times with the voice), but naming the voice and recognizing that it is self-doubt at its heart allows us to ignore the voice. Ignoring the voice leads to its defeat, just like paying a lot of attention to the voice allows it to grow.

My best advice is to talk to other students and have conversations about defeating self-doubt. There is safety in numbers and when one student is having a bad day, the others can serve as a support system to buoy them up.

Above all, give yourself grace.

This is new. This is difficult. But there have been others before you.

Talk to them. Talk to your classmates. Find the voice and squash it like a little bug!

This is where I put in a mantra- the only way out is through.

School Me Saturday 4/6/24-Down the rabbit hole

Being in school very often results in having to do research. This can be for a paper, or a discussion post, or for a class. Students are always doing research. You trot on down to the library, at the college or other, and you, hopefully, engage in conversation with a research librarian.

These magical creatures exist to aid students. Kind of like the kindly shopkeeper or the stray magical beast who gives you the answer to your quest.

Except being in college is not an adventure game. I mean, it is, but not that kind.

Let’s pretend it is the middle of the night and the library is CLOSED!

And the assignment is due tomorrow!

What then?

For a student in this situation, there is probably an online version of the school library.

There is also Google Scholar. Warning, many of the literature hits from Google Scholar is open source. Which may mean they paid to get their article published. It is still a good option though, and better than plain Google.

But the clock is ticking and the assignment is getting hot. You enter your search terms in Google Scholar or the library, and this results in 4,332,662 hits. Far, far too many. This is where you start refining your search question and publication date. Often, schools only want literature or research from the last 5 years.

Through judicious refining, you only have 15 articles to read. You start reading the titles and find that they have little to do with your original search. But they are interesting and you keep reading.

And reading.

And finding.

And reading.

And finding.

Suddenly it is dawn and you can use absolutely none of the articles that you’ve found. You wanted to find articles about prohibition and suddenly you are reading about they made wine in 500 A.D.

This is the research rabbit hole.

You just keep digging yourself deeper in search of good stuff and all you are finding is not usable for this paper/assignment.

Research is a skill.

But even the research librarian has gone down the rabbit hole. Just ask them.

You are still going to go down rabbit holes. Being aware of the possibility of a fruitless search lets you make decisions about what to read and boundaries to put on your search.

Seriously though, reach out to the research librarian at the school. Or at the actual library in your town. They will have strategies to help.