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Gabriel Reches

Professor Batty

English 101

30 May 2019

Probation and the Much-Needed Perspectives to Surviving College

There are those that let failures define them, and there are those that use failures to provide

opportunities for growth and success. Students on academic probation can often find themselves

at a crossroads between these two reactions to failure. The negative connotations surrounding

academic probation can cripple a student’s self-confidence or psychological wellbeing and can

lead them to self-shaming, which often results in further lack of performance and motivation. It is

even more important for these students to seek out help from a psychologist or counseling service

because these burdens are often too heavy to carry alone. Going at it alone can often lead to a

repetition of the patterns that led them here in the first place. An advisor, along with a school

dedicated to incorporating mental health discussions, can help guide students towards a positive,

growth-minded, metacognitive mindset. This guidance towards increased self-awareness and

personal development will not only steer a struggling student toward academic success and a sense

of renewed optimism but can also serve to build long lasting habits that serve for a lifetime.

Often times, students on academic probation have a fixed mindset when it comes to

intelligence. They see intelligence as inherent, not as something that can be developed. Fixed-

minded individuals view struggling to understand a topic as a bad reflection on themselves. The

University of Arizona’s Academic Affairs has a web series that touches on the opposite outlook,

which is a growth mindset. A growth mindset would imply that a person views intelligence as

something that can be developed. Students with a growth mindset believe failure is a part of
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learning; they view struggling as an opportunity to grow and attain more knowledge. Feedback is

not taken personally, rather they recognize it as constructive criticism. The biggest difference and

what separate the academic results of these two different mindsets, is that fixed minded individuals

are, “more likely to seek to demonstrate their ‘smartness’ and less likely to ask questions in order

to overcome setbacks in their learning.” (Arizona University). Although easier said than done,

students should view setbacks and failures as a chance to grow and should encourage themselves

to persevere through challenges. It seems that many students rarely take this approach to failure.

A fixed mindset will often debilitate a student’s ability to succeed and many students fall into this

category because they aren’t equipped with the proper mental tools or are too afraid to ask for help

when they need it most.

When I started my freshman year at Indiana University in the fall of 2017, I had an

extremely underdeveloped sense of metacognition. I came from a college preparatory high

school, where class sizes were small and your hand was held most of the way. This led me to

being overly confident about my knowledge and abilities and caused me to underestimate the

amount of work I needed to put in to achieve academic success. By the end of the first semester,

I was not in good academic standing and was thus placed on academic probation. When the

second semester rolled in, instead of seeing it as an opportunity to grow and pick myself back up,

I became sad and full of shame and slipped further into my struggles. It was a mentality that I

could not shake. Not once did I seek out help from a psychologist or school counselor and as a

result, I continued to do poorly. I was never taken off of probation and was dismissed from the

University. Now, reflecting back after gaining some helpful perspective from a psychologist, I

am able to understand the mindset I once had and can apply all the lessons that I learned from

my missteps to my present academic endeavors.

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Of course, there are students that are reluctant to ask for help from counseling services or

a psychologist. Many people associate mental health with negative connotations, leading them

unable to admit to having concerns over their own mental health, and causing people to be secretive

about their problems which discourages them to seek help. It is understandable that students might

feel, due to pride, that they don’t need assistance that they can figure it out on their own. Some

might feel that such help is useless because of bad past experiences with such professionals, but

how can a student with a fixed-mindset on academic probation expect to thrive without support?

To have the courage and self-discipline to treat your own short-fallings is no easy task on your

own. Studies have shown that reaching out for support and participating in programs helps raise a

student’s GPA. I can say from personal experience that talking to a psychologist allowed me to

vocalize my struggles and provided me with a wonderfully new perspective that has helped me

regain my confidence academically. As I look back, I do not feel that I could have done this alone.

Schools play a vital role in forming one’s character, habits, and motivation. It’s extremely

important for schools to create awareness around mental health and to developing a safe and

supportive environment for those students, whose lives are affected by a mental health difficulty.

The University of California, San Diego has a unique program called Goals in Action, which is

designed to help students on academic probation who struggle with their mentality towards

school. In 2007, Molly Nonce wrote an article for Diverse Education discussing the program.

Nonce wrote, “The Goals in Action research project fuses the work of the university’s academic

support office with the efforts of the student health and wellness department to address social,

behavioral and psychological functioning, both inside and outside the classroom.” (Nonce). A

psychologist by the name of Dr. Daniel Singley led the program along with his colleague Dr.

Jeanne Manese. GIA students partake in a series of five 75-minute workshops facilitated by
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professionals from Psychological and Counseling Services. Prior to the workshops, students hear

testimonials from provosts, deans, assistant deans and/or academic advisors who share their

stories of hard times, some even facing academic probation when they were in college. (Nonce).

Hearing these stories introduces hope for these students and allows them to relate to their

advisors. Dr. Daniel claimed that students were getting a full GPA point higher, and showed

improvements in their psycho-social ability. Rarely do schools have programs such as GIA and I

believe that it's very important for all colleges to integrate programs like this so that students feel

supported and hopeful in their academic endeavors. It could be something as simple as creating a

curriculum-based learning programs that explicitly teach about mental health issues and develop

students' mental health literacy. Schools could hire therapists to come and talk to students and

their families. The statistics show that grades improve drastically when a conversation is had.

Many student's need something like this where they can apply these newly learned mindsets to

their everyday study habits and engagements in class.

In conclusion, a growth-mindset and proper sense of metacognition can be achieved

through introspection and the ability to seek support. It is not solely on the student to gain this

mindset, the school shares responsibility for making sure their students are mentally fit to

achieve academic success. If students on probation master these mental abilities, they have the

power to face not only academic challenges, but also all obstacles in life, whether it be striving

for a promotion at work or trying to master a sport. Today, thanks to my past experiences at

Indiana, I feel that I am better able to improve on my skills as an athlete, as a student and as a

person. I continue to grow a little every day and will use my past failures as fuel to propel me

forward to future success.

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Works Cited

Cmaadmin. “The Psychological Impact of Academic Probation.” Diverse, 1 Nov. 2007,

diverseeducation.com/article/10004/.

University, Arizona. “Administration Building 501.” Academic Affairs,

academicaffairs.arizona.edu/growth-mindset.