Inspirational_Dev

10/31/2020 HUM-200 - Page 1.1.2 - Four Keys to Success

https://www.webtexts.com/courses/39511-sanderovsky/traditional_book/chapters/4391571-module-one-introduction-to-the-humanities/pages/3897024-… 1/5

Applied Humanities

Succeeding in This Course Four Keys to Success 1 Module One: Introduction to the Humanities / Page 1.1.2 Four Keys to Success On this page: 0 of 4 attempted (0%) Objective: Understand the most common reasons for failure so that you can overcome them.

Course /kôrs/

1. The route or direction followed by a ship, aircraft, road, or river. 1.1 The way in which something progresses or develops. 1.2 A procedure adopted to deal with a situation. 1.3 An area of land set aside and prepared for racing, golf, or another sport. —Oxford Dictionaries

Why do we call this a course? Clearly it’s a metaphor, but the term has become so consistently used to refer to a class that it’s hard to see the metaphor anymore. Why would we compare a group of students engaged in study to a route from one place to another?

Some may see a class as an obstacle course—a series of challenges with a goal of getting to the finish line. But it’s worth noting there are two kinds of obstacle courses: those that test and those that train. The television show American Ninja Warrior features contestants seeking to complete a course designed to test their fitness. But they’re no more eager to try those obstacles for the first time on national TV than most of us are to attempt a difficult task for the first time at a new job. Aspiring “Ninja Warriors” build courses in gyms, garages, and backyards to learn how to deal with each of the obstacles. These homegrown obstacle courses are for training. They give the athletes a place where it’s comfortable to try out the obstacles, attempt different approaches to each, and learn which techniques work best for them.

10/31/2020 HUM-200 - Page 1.1.2 - Four Keys to Success

https://www.webtexts.com/courses/39511-sanderovsky/traditional_book/chapters/4391571-module-one-introduction-to-the-humanities/pages/3897024-… 2/5

This is a photograph of a blonde woman pulling herself over a steep obstacle with a rope. She is wearing a pink tank top, dark blue stretch pants with a spiderweb pattern running the length of the left pant leg, pink athletic shoes, and dark ankle socks. There are trees and bushes in the background. The obstacle is brown with graffiti on the side.

Obstacle courses are never easy—that’s the point.

Andreas Gradin

This course, the one you’re starting right now, is like that second kind of obstacle course. It’s a series of challenges that invites you to build a set of skills and provides a safe place to try out different approaches to each of those challenges. Yes, you’ll be graded—but only on your final attempt, and you get to decide how many practice runs you want before you submit your work for evaluation.

Success Skills

On this page, you will learn about four essential skills that contribute to success.

This particular course can only be conquered by someone who is ready for college, which makes it extremely useful for people who are a little rusty or uncertain about just how ready they are. Succeeding in a college course requires a wide variety of skills, from basic to advanced. It’s helpful to think of these as a pyramid:

10/31/2020 HUM-200 - Page 1.1.2 - Four Keys to Success

https://www.webtexts.com/courses/39511-sanderovsky/traditional_book/chapters/4391571-module-one-introduction-to-the-humanities/pages/3897024-… 3/5

This is a pyramid graphic of the steps to success. It has gradient shading of light orange at the top to purple-pink at the bottom. There are eight steps to success. From bottom to top they are: Show Up, Know Requirements, Commit, Overcome, Read Closely, Question Well, Support Claims, Revision.

Eight skills that contribute to success.

Clint McFarlin/Soomo Learning

There are arguably hundreds of other skills we could have included in this stack. Why these? Because these are the eight most common failure points. On the rest of this page, we’ll take a closer look at the four at the base of the pyramid.

1. Showing Up

Most people who fail a course do so because they stop showing up. Sometimes this is due to one of the higher-level challenges, like dealing with adversity. But there’s really no new idea here for you to discover. It’s as basic as it sounds—you have to show up, and keep showing up, to succeed. The same is true of preparing for a physical test like those on American Ninja Warrior. Merely building your own obstacle course or purchasing a membership to a well-equipped gym does not improve your ability to navigate the obstacles. Practice does, and that requires showing up.

Response Board Describe a time when you started and finished something challenging.

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10/31/2020 HUM-200 - Page 1.1.2 - Four Keys to Success

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2. Understanding What’s Required

This level and the next one are potentially tragic. Failing to understand what’s required means you show up and you do what you think you’re supposed to do, but because you misunderstood the requirements, you don’t do what you’re actually supposed to do, and thus miss the target.

Short-Answer Question

What do you think will be required to successfully complete this course?

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3. Planning Time and Making Commitments

One level up from that, we have the realm of wishful thinking, in which you know what’s needed and intend to do it, but you don’t go through the sometimes challenging process of actually setting aside the time and resources needed to get it all done.

For example, this course officially requires 15 hours of study per week. Maybe you can complete it a little more quickly, or maybe it will take you a little longer. But as a starting point, where are you going to find 15 hours in your week? No, seriously— where?

Short-Answer Question

List the days and times where you can most reliably find 15 hours for study.

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A few tips:

Have a routine you can keep every week, as often as possible. Don’t pick times when you’re exhausted—it’s hard to learn when you’re tired. Don’t choose times when you should be sleeping—it’s hard to learn when you’re tired. Spread study sessions out across the week. It’s easier and more productive to learn across five separate sessions than in one marathon cram-fest.

10/31/2020 HUM-200 - Page 1.1.2 - Four Keys to Success

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Figure out what you’ll need in order to study, such as a connection to the internet and freedom from interruptions. Where will you work, and how will you head off potential distractions?

Picture an A student in your mind. Obviously this person is going to show up and keep showing up, going to take pains to understand what’s required, and going to budget enough time with good Wi-Fi and no interruptions to get the work done. Really, if this student didn’t do those three things, how would the work ever get done?

4. Dealing with Adversity and Setbacks

Now comes the fourth level of challenge: adversity. If you ask the people who serve as advisers to students in online courses why students don’t complete a course, they’ll tell you, “Life happens.” What they mean is that it’s extremely rare for people to drop a class because they changed their mind and decided school wasn’t that important after all. What students will usually say led to a drop is some extenuating circumstance.

In my first term of college, I got sick for a week. Just a bad cold, really, but I was already a little behind in my classes and then took a week off to be sick. By the following week, catching up seemed impossible, so I dropped. If anyone asked why I dropped, I would say it was because I got sick. But since then, I’ve had the privilege of completing many terms of college, and in every single one, something could have given me a good excuse to drop all my classes and quit: a family trip, a lost job, a big project, getting married, earning mediocre grades, or just not liking the course. Each of these led to an opportunity to either drop, or double down and push through the adversity. The adversity is coming. It will strike during this term. What will be your strategies for dealing with it? What support can you put in place now?

Short-Answer Question

Where do you think your adversity will most likely come from?

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Those four capabilities—showing up, understanding what’s required, planning your time, and dealing with adversity—will get you headed toward success. We’ll take a closer look at the four more advanced skills a little later.

Thanks for showing up! You’re on the path to success.

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