Here it is…the number one way you can suck up to your professor…
#1. BE POSITIVE
If you come into the classroom with the attitude “I can’t,” I can guarantee “you won’t.” Your attitude has built a brick wall around your brain. I’ve banged up against student brick walls enough to know once you’ve built them there’s not a thing I can say or do that will tear them down– you have to do that yourself.
“I hate this.” “This is too hard.” “Is there math in this, I’m no good at math.” “I won’t ever be able to figure this out.” Each statement places another brick.
Even the statements “I’ll try,” or “I’ll do my best,” can be self-defeating; you’re accepting failure as an option before you’ve even begun. As long as you did your best, well then failing is okay, you tried, right?
No. Wrong. I sure don’t want my doctor coming to me and telling me she tried, I want her to do. And I don’t want the engineer who designed the bridge that I cross over every day to tell me he did his best, I want a bridge I can trust. Even Gladys, the super sweet woman at the McDonald’s where I get an occasional coffee doesn’t tell me to try and have a nice day, she tells me to have one and she doesn’t try to hand me my coffee either, she does it. Even Yoda knows this, “No. Try not. Do… or do not. There is no try.”
Choose your attitude: “I will succeed,” then build an incremental plan with plenty of wins a long the way. For example, “I’m going to figure XYZ out and I’m not going to give up until I do. If I have to ask my teacher to explain it to me a dozen different ways, I will. If I have to put in ten extra hours a week practicing, I will. If I have to get extra help from a tutor, I will. I will get the job done, because I can!” Now that’s the attitude that makes your professor swoon 🙂
Photo credit © Marek Uliasz
@KarlieMac I completely agree with you. It’s one of the reasons I hate getting assigned to a team, I always get stuck with someone with a bad attitude. But here I am complaining about it–guess I’ve got an attitude problem too LOL.
Nothing I hate more than being on a team with people who complain all the time about why do we have to do this and I wish I was in such and such’s class, they don’t have to do this. It brings everyone down. First thing I say is if you hate it so much why don’t you drop and give the rest of us a break.
I am so with you on the math. In my classes, the moment I mention the students are going to have to do math, even if it’s simple addition/multiplication/division/subtraction half of the women either groan or get the dear in headlights look. The guys no big deal, but the ladies are scared to death. I’d like to know exactly at what point in a girl’s life she decides she can’t do math any more.
These 5 were great. You said you started with ten and edited it down. What were the ones that didn’t make the cut?