This book was written to support the academic success of student athletes—whether at a large or small university or college, whether team or individual sport, whether women or men, whether on scholarship or not.
While all college students must learn to negotiate the complex transition from high school to college, student athletes face unique challenges, including the complicated set of regulations set out by the NCAA and individual conferences that determine eligibility. The current environment in college athletics makes it even more critical that student athletes understand what they need to do academically and how to avoid potential situations that could jeopardize their athletic careers.
College Knowledge for the Student Athlete is a road map and tour guide for a successful career as a student athlete. Tips are based on research and the authors’ experience, as well as the wisdom and advice of hundreds of former student athletes.
This book was written to support the academic success of student athletes—whether at a large or small university or college, whether team or individual sport, whether women or men, whether on scholarship or not.
While all college students must learn to negotiate the complex transition from high school to college, student athletes face unique challenges, including the complicated set of regulations set out by the NCAA and individual conferences that determine eligibility. The current environment in college athletics makes it even more critical that student athletes understand what they need to do academically and how to avoid potential situations that could jeopardize their athletic careers.
College Knowledge for the Student Athlete is a road map and tour guide for a successful career as a student athlete. Tips are based on research and the authors’ experience, as well as the wisdom and advice of hundreds of former student athletes.
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Overview
This book was written to support the academic success of student athletes—whether at a large or small university or college, whether team or individual sport, whether women or men, whether on scholarship or not.
While all college students must learn to negotiate the complex transition from high school to college, student athletes face unique challenges, including the complicated set of regulations set out by the NCAA and individual conferences that determine eligibility. The current environment in college athletics makes it even more critical that student athletes understand what they need to do academically and how to avoid potential situations that could jeopardize their athletic careers.
College Knowledge for the Student Athlete is a road map and tour guide for a successful career as a student athlete. Tips are based on research and the authors’ experience, as well as the wisdom and advice of hundreds of former student athletes.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780472120260 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | University of Michigan Press |
| Publication date: | 06/06/2013 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 200 |
| File size: | 495 KB |
Read an Excerpt
College Knowledge for the Student Athlete
By David Schoem, Shelly Kovacs
The University of Michigan Press
Copyright © 2011 University of MichiganAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-472-12026-0
CHAPTER 1
The Top 10 Tips for a Championship Education
1. Believe in Both of You: The College Student and the College Athlete
The importance of maintaining your self-confidence in college cannot be overstated. If you practice good study habits and have the desire to succeed, you will do just that at each and every college that offered you admission. Know that this is true, remind yourself daily, and never question your intellectual abilities.
There is a mind game that gets played out at every college. Very simply, students worry that they're not up to the college's standard. Unfortunately, colleges do very little to allay such fears. First-year students look at their peers in the residence hall cafeteria, at the college convocation, at the first lecture or the first team meeting and worry that they're just not as smart as the other students. The reality, however, is that how well you do in college is not just about how smart you are. Instead, the key is developing good study skills, discovering your interests, meeting good students and faculty, and finding your own identity.
Most student athletes come to college with a strong belief in their athletic competence. In fact, it is part of your competitive spirit to believe that you landed on a college athletic team because you belong there. You may have been recruited by a few, even many, schools on the basis of your athletic prowess. But just like most new college students, most student athletes do not have that same level of confidence in their academic abilities when starting college. This dichotomy of feeling so confident in the athletic arena yet lacking confidence in yourself in the academic arena can sometimes create a self-fulfilling prophecy that can land you in academic trouble. You want to be successful in both athletics and academics. See also Tip 7 on pages 45–47.
One of the most valuable lessons you can acquire as a successful college student athlete is about transferable skills: how to transfer the athletic skills you already possess and have trained toward perfecting to the academic area of your life. You have trained to be focused and prepared, to have confidence in yourself, and to believe that practice makes perfect. These same principles apply to academic success.
Effort also plays a critical role in athletic and academic success. Any seasoned athlete knows a coach would choose the athlete with less natural ability and a strong work ethic over the athlete with more natural ability and a poor work ethic. Just as there will be athletes better than you and not as good as you, there will be students smarter than you and less smart than you. Your success will be determined, in large part, by what you do to attain the results you want.
Even the brightest students at the best schools experience feelings of academic inadequacy. You have the advantage of being trained to believe in yourself as part of your athletic development. Pay attention to the feedback you get from instructors as a helpful indicator of how you are actually performing, as opposed to how you think you're performing. Be as prepared for an exam as you would be for a game or meet. Don't be embarrassed to ask questions or ask for help. Believe in your right to be a student, believe in your ability to be successful, and allow your competitiveness to flow into your academic life. Above all else, believe in both parts of you, the student and the athlete.
2. Learn to Be a College Student
Chances are you visited your college while you were being recruited; so that when you arrived on campus to start college, you already had some familiarity with it. However, once you start going to class, you will appreciate that you did not fully understand what college would be like. College is an entirely different universe than high school, both athletically and academically. The easiest way to describe the difference is that college is more of everything — more expectations and demands both athletically and academically and more independence in how you live each day. Simply said, college is not Grade 13. This is true both academically and athletically.
Don't waste your time in college by approaching it as you approached high school. What worked for you in high school will not work for you in college, and, really, you wouldn't want it to. Athletically, everything will be more intense — preparation, practice, and competition. As a student athlete, you will be governed by the NCAA and conference rules. The compliance office in your athletic department will be your primary resource for following these rules. Don't take chances with your eligibility. The stakes are much greater than they were in high school.
Come to college mentally prepared and with the right expectations for your college learning experience. It's your time to be an independent adult thinker. You can assert your own ideas, interpretations, and analyses. You can, and should, get involved in the issues of the world. Be prepared to defend your ideas, opinions, values, decisions, and actions. This can be difficult, especially in your first year. But embrace this opportunity. Don't shy away from it.
Think about what skills you want to improve to help you do better in college. Then find out where you can learn those skills. Most students have not had formal instruction in note taking, study skills, time management, or test taking, yet these are fundamental skills that will make a difference in your college success. See also Tip 2 on pages 30–32, Tip 8 on pages 47–49, and Tip 2 on pages 56–57. Most college athletic programs provide academic and tutorial support that includes the opportunity to work on these skills.
Whether or not you know what you want to pursue in college, do not think you need to take all of your requirements right away. Balance your schedule with courses that count toward your requirements and courses you find interesting and exciting. See Tip 9 on pages 71–73. Most new college students have not thought about taking courses in subjects not offered in their high schools. What steps can you take in your first year to help you transition from high school and to embrace the best that your college has to offer?
1 Take a small class or seminar in a subject that interests you. In a small class you will be with a faculty member who loves to get to know students, and you will get to explore the subject very differently than you would in a large class.
2 Take courses with good teachers. See also Tip 8 on pages 69–71. Regardless of how interested you are in any given course content or course description, you are better off selecting your courses on the basis of the best teachers you can find. Speak to your advisors and other students for suggestions (see also Tip 5 on pages 91–93).
3 Try out a new idea. It is the very essence of college.
4 Try out a course in a subject you've never considered before. See Tip 4 on pages 109–11.
5 Imagine a new career. See Tip 6 on pages 177–79.
6 Make new friends with students from all backgrounds (see also Tip 3 on pages 121–23).
3. Expand Your Comfort Zone
The first days of college can be intimidating socially as well as academically. After four or more years with the same group of friends, having established a reputation among your peers and teachers, having been a leader in school and community groups, and having been recognized as both an accomplished athlete and a special person, you now have to start all over. Or so it seems at the time. At this anxious moment, many students are inclined to withdraw to what feels most comfortable, which is their teammates and their high school circle of friends.
Teammates and high school friends are important, but it's a mistake to retreat to them just for security. It's a mistake because you don't want to repeat your high school experience.
College truly is the time for you to meet the world from which you've been protected for most of your life. See also Tips 2 and 3 on pages 119–23. As an athlete, your high school experience may have been broadened through travel to compete with students from outside your own school. Yet, most students entering college have not yet been exposed to many different types of people or experiences. And some college students come from neighborhoods and schools that are segregated by race, religion, and class. If you retreat to the comfort zone of your high school days, it's as if you are locking yourself in your room and imposing a strict curfew.
In college you have the opportunity to meet a whole range of new people with different backgrounds and different ideas from yours. They may see the world through very different lenses. Try on their lenses in addition to your own. It will sharpen your vision and will encourage others to want to learn more about you, as an individual, as a student, and as an athlete.
Look around your classrooms and you will see interesting and smart people. Look at the faces in your cafeteria. There you will find hundreds of talented people. Get to know some of these people. Each one has an inspiring life story that you should hear.
If you come from a big city, you will have the opportunity to meet people from small rural towns. In what ways do they view politics and interpret books different from or similar to you? If you come from a liberal background, talk to a conservative student and find out that person's perspective. If you are a student who could not afford to attend college without your athletic scholarship, get to know someone whose family can afford to fly that student home on weekends. What do you have in common, and in what ways are your worlds so different that it takes a special effort to speak a common language?
Students who embrace the diversity of their colleges are better prepared for participating in a diverse workforce, negotiating contracts with people from different backgrounds, and supervising or being supervised by a wide range of people.
4. Work Smarter, Not Harder, for Academic and Athletic Success
It may come as a surprise that for many students college success is as much a result of good study skills as it is of intellectual ability or "smarts." That's right. One of the most important elements of academic success in college is having good study skills. Your college already has made the determination that you are intellectually qualified to do good academic work. But translating your intellectual abilities into passing grades requires expertise in the how-to of studying. This is true for all college students, but especially for student athletes who essentially have two full-time jobs: school and sports.
There's no single best answer for everyone regarding study skills, but there certainly is a best approach for you as an individual. Where and under what conditions do you study best? Some students can concentrate quite well in their residence hall rooms with music playing, interruptions from neighbors, and a generally loud setting. Other students need to leave their living space and go to a library or an empty classroom to find the quiet and solitude necessary to concentrate, study, and write.
Most athletic departments require first-year student athletes and others to participate in what is called study table. This usually means going to a designated place to study for a minimum amount of time each day. Study hours can be during the day or evening hours, and tutors are usually available onsite or by scheduling tutor sessions. Be assertive about getting the help you need as soon as possible.
When you sit down to study, the first thing to do is get yourself organized. Review your assignments. What is due the next day, the next week, the next month? How long is each assignment likely to take? Which assignment are you mentally and physically prepared to focus on first? The most difficult assignment should have your deepest concentration. Know whether your study style is to immerse yourself in a single project for hours at a time or to work in 20- or 30-minute chunks. Pace yourself. Plan breaks.
In math and science, you will likely have problem sets to complete daily and weekly. It's important to keep up with these daily assignments but not at the expense of putting off longer term assignments. Do not even think about leaving long essays or research papers until a few days or even the night before the due date. Writing papers requires a process of thinking, rethinking, drafting, revising, rethinking again, redrafting again, and so on. Every paper you turn in should represent, at the very least, your third draft. And, reaching the third draft should represent a process of thinking, composing, and rethinking the content, language, style, and the technical aspects of the paper.
As you are about to begin on a specific assignment, go back and carefully reread the assignment. Make sure you understand it. Not only is it frustrating to work for hours on something only to realize that you didn't precisely address the written assignment, but your grade will reflect that mistake as well. In college you will only get points for outcome, not for effort. Be certain you understand what is expected, and don't hesitate to contact the instructor — but not at the last minute — for clarification if you have any questions.
Many students are not prepared for all the reading required in college courses. It is essential that you learn to read the wide range of text assignments in different ways. Reading history or chemistry textbooks requires a different approach than reading more popular non-fiction or fiction books. Scholarly journal articles and longer academic books require yet another level of focus and concentration to fully comprehend the research findings, empirical analysis, and theoretical discussion they reflect. Most students did not learn how to do this in high school, so make sure to learn how to do this type of reading when you get to college.
Don't sell yourself short in the area of study habits. Do a good, honest assessment of your study habits, and make adjustments and improvements as needed. Don't hesitate to ask for advice and suggestions to improve your study skills very early in your college career.
5. Ask for Help: That's Why You Need a Professor, a Coach, an Advisor, and a Compliance Officer
In high school, asking for academic help is often what distinguishes the students who are in academic difficulty or considered at risk from the "smart" students. In college, the whole notion of asking for academic help is entirely different from high school. Asking about a topic or to get a more detailed explanation reflects that you are engaged in the very process. Being able to ask for help is crucial, and the first step is acknowledging that you need help. However, there are rules for asking for help in college. You are expected to do your part first.
Instructors, advisors, or tutors will not take kindly to giving you individualized assistance if you did not attempt to do the required reading or homework. And it will be obvious to them. There is a huge leap between high school and college in the amount of work required and study time expected for most classes. Depending on the specific class and college, the norm for college work ranges from 2.0–3.0 clock hours of study time for each instructional or contact hour. That means if you are taking 12 credit hours, you should plan on 24–36 clock hours of study time. If that sounds too high to you, compare it to the number of hours you practice and prepare for your sport. Your grade is often a direct result of the amount of study time you put in outside of class. Short cuts that worked in high school will not work in college. Do not look to your instructors or tutors to bail you out of work that you did not take the time to do. But when you are doing your part, those in a position to assist you will most often be glad to help.
Universities are comprised of people genuinely interested in discovering, studying, learning, analyzing, creating, and sharing new knowledge. It is within that context that everyone in college, faculty and students alike, are in constant search of deeper, clearer understandings and new insights. If you don't understand the complexities of an argument, if you miss the meaning of a lecture, or if the math assignment or readings are not clear, then ask! See also Tip 6 on pages 43–45.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from College Knowledge for the Student Athlete by David Schoem, Shelly Kovacs. Copyright © 2011 University of Michigan. Excerpted by permission of The University of Michigan Press.
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