In this episode, we interview Nisha Abraham who is a Senior Supplemental Instruction Coordinator at the Sanger Learning Center. We talk about all the amazing academic resources available to students via Sanger and get some advice on asking for and getting help with studying smarter not harder.
Nisha coordinates the Supplemental Instruction program. She received her B.S. in cell and molecular biology from The University of Texas at Austin in 2007 and her M.S. in biology from Texas A&M University in 2012. During her time at Texas A&M, she was a teaching assistant for several undergraduate biology classes, worked for the Center for Teaching Excellence, and conducted research on improving student motivation and performance in science education. Additionally, Nisha has over five years of combined industry and science research experience, has worked recently as a senior bioscience associate at UT’s Austin Technology Incubator, and has served as an adjunct faculty member in biology for South University.
Guests
- Nisha AbrahamSenior Supplemental Instruction Coordinator, Course Support & Instruction, University of Texas at Austin
Hosts
- Christina BuiAssistant Academic Advisor for the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Texas at Austin
- Philip ButlerDirector, Office of Student Success, College of Liberal Arts at The University of Texas at Austin
[0:00:10 Speaker 1] Hello and welcome to the sounds of success. My name is Phil Butler. I’m Christina Buoy. We made it. This is Episode two. I guess this makes us like, um official podcast now? Yes. Yes, a podcast. It’s not a one shot wonder. I mean, I’m sure the big checks will just be rolling in any minute now for sponsors. Yes, I’m excited for those sponsorships. I’m about to sponsored posts all up and down Instagram. This week we had a great guest from the Singer Learning Center. Come and talk to us.
[0:00:42 Speaker 2] Yes. So we talked Thio Misha Abraham from the Singer Learning Center. And she gave quite a lot of really awesome tips and perspectives on online learning and reaching out for help and all of the services that the Single Learning Center provides. And we’ll get into that as you progress through the podcast. But for those of you who are living in the gesture dorms, the singer Learning Center is in the gesture building. It is literally downstairs
[0:01:10 Speaker 1] of where you live excuses, no
[0:01:13 Speaker 2] excuses. And for those of you who aren’t in person who aren’t on campus, all of the services that singer is offering this year is going to be completely online for you. So there are actually no excuses for you to not utilize this amazing service that you have already paid
[0:01:30 Speaker 1] for with your tuition. One of the things I loved about the interview is when she kind of talked about her own background in her own struggles in college and how that translates into the work that she’s doing now. So let’s without further ado get into the interview. Right. Awesome. So
[0:01:52 Speaker 0] my name is Misha Abraham. My title is learning Specialist, but I’m also the senior s I coordinator at the Sanger
[0:01:59 Speaker 1] Learning Center. Alright, what’s what’s your wildest fun fact here? I could read it, but I want to do about it.
[0:02:04 Speaker 0] Yeah, it was so interesting. I actually message this twosome co workers and I thought, Oh, my gosh, I’m really boring because I can’t think of anything, child. Um but I do like to use this fun fact. I think it is kind of an interesting fact about me and my family s o all four of us. My mom, my dad, my sister and I. We all happened to have careers and feels that air not at all related to our undergraduate majors. So my dad got his degree in mechanical engineering, and he ended up becoming a professor of finance and economics and did that for 20 years. Um, he’s now retired on my mom similarly had her undergraduate degree in English, and she ended up getting an MBA and working in corporate finance is well and also retired, but and similar. My sister has an electrical engineering degree and she works in business strategy, and then my background is in biology. I got my degree here atyou t on, but I also got my masters at an M. But now I work in teaching and education. So I just really liked that story because it really hopefully gets across this idea that your undergraduate degree doesn’t really have to determine your future. And you still have a lot of options after college toe chart a different path. If that’s what if that’s what you want.
[0:03:15 Speaker 2] Absolutely, I’m the same way. My undergraduate degree was an international relations. I specialized in Latin American revolutions, and now I work in higher education. It is the best possible job I could ask for after graduating and yeah, you have so many things to do that are not limited to what you study at.
[0:03:36 Speaker 0] Oh, definitely. Yeah. On I I hear that from a lot of students. I know that at least when I see students in person, I think one of the things that I get get from them is just feeling a lot of stress about how you know this degree in my degree plan and how that’s going to translate to jobs and all of that. And I know it’s not always easy for people to hear that when they’re in that crisis mode. But I hope that that can some of these stories or some of these facts can get you thinking of like, Oh, it’s okay, It’s okay if you know this. You know, I don’t end up doing this, and I’m not particularly that motivated. Or maybe I’m not sure. I just I’m unsure about whether this degree is what I want to do with the rest of my life I’ve made. I could tell you, I’ve made probably three or four career changes in my life on guy. You know, I ended up here and I’m so so yeah. Yeah, definitely I I try to tell people that I’m not trying to stop counting now because that certainly could change. Um, but it’s a hard thing, I think, for college students Thio here that, and to internalize it and be like, Yes, that’s It’s OK, It’s OK that, um you haven’t figured it all out yet. That’s that’s not really hopefully that’s people are realizing that’s not the purpose of college. And it’s more about, you know, learning how you learn making connections like all these other things that I’ll certainly talk about later in the podcast. But, um, yeah, sometimes people can get a little bit of What is it called Blinders on for tunnel? Yeah, so, yeah, I
[0:05:09 Speaker 1] really like that So many of your family members have different backgrounds, like I’m imagining some really interesting, like holiday gathering conversations, you know, from all these different perspectives.
[0:05:20 Speaker 0] E can’t tell you how many times my sweet father, who is like I said, very smart, has a PhD. But he to this day cannot seem to understand what DNA is. And I swear, every every this is funny that you brought up Christmas. But truly every Christmas, it’s like trying to sit down with him and explain the thing. And he just he’s still, like, so black, baffled by like, what is biology? It’s like it’s so four am, um, but anyway, it makes me laugh every time. And I’m sure same thing he’s tried to explain, like Fourier transforms to me. And I’m like, What is happening? I have no idea what that means. So But also, that’s the beauty of our family is that we all kind of love and accept, you know, our expertise and are happy to share it. But also, like, happy to be like, we don’t understand your expertise. And that’s okay, too.
[0:06:09 Speaker 2] Yeah, yeah. So it seems like your expertise is in helping students become experts at figuring that out how they learn. How did you get into
[0:06:20 Speaker 0] that role with Singer? That is such a good question. Um, like I said, I’ve had, you know, several career changes in my time, Um, but a little bit of my back story. So I I went to YouTube. Well, I actually grew up internationally. I lived in Saudi Arabia. I lived in India s Oh, yeah. I had a kind of a storied high school upbringing. But I’ll be honest. My last two years of high school where you know, not super well, didn’t really super well prepared me for college. The high school was fine on Guy happened to do really well at that high school. I think the standards this weren’t really there on. And so I’ve kind of skated by just kind of doing the bare minimum. And then I applied to U T. Austin and got in on dshea up here thinking like, I know I’m, like, good at school. I know what’s up and had no idea what I was doing and just really got kind of shocked by what the expectations were of, like, how I was supposed to be learning. And you know what? The level of content, the rigor, three expectations And so, um, that first year was very tough. First year was really hard. And, you know, I was also definitely struggling with ah little bit of figuring out what I wanted to do. So I applied as, uh, non alright. I applied as, um undeclared, um, in the College of Natural Sciences. And you know, I liked biology, but, you know, I had sort of this dream of like, Oh, my dad’s a professor. Maybe I want to be a professor. That sounds really cool, but didn’t really understand what it meant to be a college professor. What did that entail? You know, did I like enough to do that? So I got my degree and selling molecular biology at UT on Di did have some wonderful experiences working in the bio labs, um, and found some wonderful mentors. And after college, I decided to go work at a biotech company that was here in Austin, called and beyond, and had a great experience doing that as well. But eventually was like, Okay, this is this is the time. If I want to, you know, become a college professor. I need to apply to graduate school and and all of that bond. Then when I applied, I got into Texas A and M and started attending, And so I enrolled in a PhD program and pretty much within the first six months was pretty miserable. I I, um you know, part of the program, of course, is that you’re joining ah lab and you’re starting to do research. And that was just the thing that I wanted to do the least. I just was, you know, with, of course, all graduate students have a lot of different responsibilities. I was a ta I was going to classes. I was, you know, lab doing research. But of all those things, the thing that I felt the least connected to his research, I just found it really difficulties and did not really enjoy it. And I found that I was spending close toe probably 80% of my time, actually creating power points for my class and really being engaged in more of the teaching aspect and found that I was just so drawn to that, and I realized kind of within that first year. Oh, Okay. Well, it sounds like the research thing just isn’t your jam. It really is. Something about teaching is really calling you. And so that’s when I really started to discover, um, that I was probably more interested in the teaching aspect that I was in the research aspect. So I ended up getting my m s in biology. I graduated with my masters and then I came back to Austin, and I was a little bit lost to be honest. The first year I got back here, I knew I wanted to be in education. But I didn’t know how to get my foot in the door because I had this masters in biology. You know, people. Of course they think of you as a content expert, but I didn’t have any formal education in education and teaching. So many
[0:10:05 Speaker 1] of us don’t s so
[0:10:06 Speaker 0] many of us don’t, right? Absolutely. And so I just kind of took a kind of a crazy risk at that time. Um, and I just decided to to try to get as many part time jobs they could That would maybe help me get my foot in the door. So some examples of that was I taught as an adjunct faculty member at the university here in Austin. I did tutoring for, you know, just joined a new online tutoring center. And just, you know, what would teach and tutor high school students. Some college students on deny also joined the Austin technology incubator, which is technically part of U t. Some folks haven’t heard of it, but, um, it comes out of the I c squared and so cute and so yeah, what they do, is they? So I was kind of hired more for my bioscience and my biology background. But essentially, they help students and, uh, individuals, faculty members who want to commercialize their technology. So if they’ve developed something that is, you know, some kind of biology innovation, or, I mean, we had an energy incubator. We had lots of different sections of that, but, um, I specifically worked in the bioscience area, so I just kind of cobbled together a lot of things trying Teoh a make ends meet, but also trying to just get some experience in teaching and training eso that, you know, I was getting my foot in the door a little bit there. And then, um uh, in 2016, I applied There is a job that opened up its Sanger for the Discovery Scholars program, which is a success program. Um, that is out of the school of undergraduate studies, and I applied for that. And that’s how I kind of got to Sanger. Wow. Yeah,
[0:11:46 Speaker 1] everyone, student affairs path is so Yeah, So yeah, people, stories of how they got into their positions at UT
[0:11:56 Speaker 0] like yeah, well and telling and the other thing was it was really interesting. In 2016, I was really kind of, you know, I was I was continue doing this tutoring stuff and and teaching, but, um, I was getting a little nervous that maybe because I didn’t have the formal sort of education degree that I was never going to make it into, you know, the university. And so I actually applied for the Sanger job, and I applied to the stem education program at UT at the same time thinking like, 01 of those things will hopefully work out and they both were down. I know I end up getting into the stem ed program at the same time. And so what was really lovely about Sanger and what it’s true? Like you said of many, um, you know, the professional staff units on campus is that we all really value, you know, furthering your education. So, um, the director of the time is really helpful and was like, Yeah, absolutely. If you want to do that part time while you’re working. So I was able to actually go back to school while I was working full time at singer, so I also have an M A and M m. That is so cool. Yeah, it was great. Yeah.
[0:13:02 Speaker 2] So the singer Learning Center. A lot of students know of the singer Learning Center for offering things like one on one and drop in tutoring. But it seems like that is pretty much all students know about the singer Learning Center. I know. That’s all I knew when I was an undergrad. Here. Now is your chance. Thio, plug your learning center.
[0:13:26 Speaker 0] Sure. Oh, my gosh, I can’t. This is going to be, like a long spiel because I love it, you know? E know where to start. I do think you’re right. A lot of people probably associate Sanger most with tutoring, which is awesome. We do have an enormous and very well run tutoring center. And so we do both one on one tutoring and drop in tutoring. So that means you can either make an appointment with the tutor, just you and that tutor. Or you can join our drop in tutoring center, which is virtual right now. It is virtual all his virtual. We do also have workshops. So those workshops are things like reading effectively for college time. management. Just general study effectiveness skills so you can kind of come and take any of those workshops. But they also come out to the figs a lot. So my co worker, Rachel Jenkins, is attending. If I’m not mistaken every single fig this semester, which is an enormous amount of fig, it’s a lot. It’s something like 600. So hopefully all of your students will still be able to hear about some of these really effective study skills through, you know, through their figs. Uh, some other programs that we have are the pure academic coaching programs. So this is if you’re interested as a student to kind of have a little bit more accountability and meet with somebody weekly. Um, and it’s going to be a student, so it’s appear. But they’ve been trained to kind of help you manage your time, study effectiveness, very similar stuff to what a professional learning specialist does. It’s just that you’re meeting with somebody that’s kind of at the same level, is you who may have been a little bit successful in implementing these things that can kind of help you with those skills and generally the person who runs it. Darcy Barrack will help match you with people who are in your same major or in your same college so that yeah, you’re kind of talking about the same. You know, the same similarities. Like, Oh, I really struggled in oak M. R. I really struggled in in thes classes or um oh, you know, this particular college has internships. Can you help me figure out how to do those things? So that’s that’s kind of what pure academic coaching is. Yeah, It’s a really, really great program, um, and free everything at singers free if I hadn’t bugged already. And
[0:15:38 Speaker 1] every time you say that or at least when I talk about things being free at UT, I’m like, quote unquote free, right? Like you pay for this in your tuition using
[0:15:46 Speaker 0] Oh, yeah. And I’m sure, like further down in my in my little spiel, I definitely make that clear. Is that when we say free your tuition has already paid for it. So you know your money, Get your money’s worth? Absolutely So similarly, we have professional learning specialists who just like a appear academic coach or a pat coach. But this is more you would make an appointment. Andi, again, we could talk to you about all kinds of things, like time management, study, effectiveness, test anxiety, learning disabilities, reading effectively. We have a really, like kind of a pretty wide, um, breath of services that you can come talk to a professional learning specialist and you get, you know, 60 minutes with that person. You could make a many appointments, as you want on DSO. That’s a really helpful Tulloch’s well, and then we also have some specific things for courses. Eso again, like tutoring, which is specific to courses. We have a couple of programs that arm or group based so supplemental instruction, which is the program that I run or S. I. And then Plus, which is stands for peer led undergraduate study. Thes air programs that provide essentially weekly study groups or study sessions that air led by train students. So I trained students who have taken the class successfully, and then they come up with a lesson plan that they attend class so that they’re keeping up with the material, and then they create these collaborative activities for students to work through, and it’s totally voluntary. It’s not linked to the, you know, the grades for the class. So you can, if any students feel like man, I’m really struggling with this piece of content, but I’m a little nervous to go toe office hours. You know, going toe s I can help you because talking out those difficulties and those those complexities with other peers and with a person who kind of knows that content a little bit better it is really could be really helpful. Yeah,
[0:17:33 Speaker 1] there’s a lot of value in
[0:17:34 Speaker 0] that. Yeah, absolutely. And then, Plus, is a program that is similar to that. It just happens to be more for upper level courses. So I do wanna emphasize that if your students are like, oh, these were all classes. These are all, you know, support services for freshmen. And they’re not really anything for me. No, we absolutely have services. All these services air open to anybody you know, in your 2nd, 3rd, 4th year, Onda Plus certainly targets upper level courses on. And then we do have math reviews and refresher. So, you know, if you’re taking calculus or you’re taking even algebra, we have algebra, refreshers and reviews. So we owe Yeah, we do them throughout the semester for, you know, the first exam review, second exam review and final exam review as well. And we have our math specialist, J. Whitehead, who actually got his master’s degree here atyou. T So we have a person who is specialized in math making those reviews. So it’s It’s really getting like a content expert. And we have graduate students who run those math reviews and then last
[0:18:31 Speaker 1] good restores. Yeah, didn’t succumb to me. And like I’m really struggling with calculus, I’m really struggling with chemistry. And the next question I’m gonna ask you, probably I know this is like, What have you gone to? Free to be? Oh, exactly. Like sometimes they’re like, Yes, I have a But more often than not, it’s like I didn’t even know that was. The thing is like, Well, not only is that a thing, let me show you all the classes on their website. You can get free tutoring
[0:18:54 Speaker 0] for for sure. Yeah, definitely. I mean, And that zits. So nice to hear that. You know, our other fellow staff members are kind of plugging us, but But I hear you, there’s there’s definitely just I think a ah kind of association with Sanger that is just tutoring and and we just we do provide so many different things because we know that all learners don’t learn the same. So we recognize that some people really do like the one on one. Some folks like the group things. Some folks, um, need Maura kind of accountability or study skills. Some people need more content help. So we really try Thio make our services as, um, kind of personalized and dynamic for kind of what students need. It’s
[0:19:37 Speaker 1] amazing. Every time I go to the website like this is so robust. There’s stuff about time management. There’s stuff about procrastination. There’s stuff about just getting your life together,
[0:19:46 Speaker 2] just scrolling through the website and seeing something about the public speaking center on. I was thinking, Wow, they really are covering everything we
[0:19:54 Speaker 0] are. Yeah, so that’s a new initiative. It started about two years ago now, but we’ve seen enormous growth just to let you know it z really booming because, um, as you probably are aware, like more and more faculty are considering that things like group projects, presentations like these are important components. Of course, is these days. But you know, not every faculty members really providing students. You know that practice time or even just those basic public speaking presentation type skills. So the public speaking center is there again. You condone these air all free, and you can take, you know, you can have as many appointments as you like on, and they have two different types, so one is a sort of preparation phase. So if you’re if you’re just getting started and you haven’t even, you know, kind of really thought that that much about what you are presenting. But you wanna talk that out with somebody, you could take a preparation phase appointment or, if you are, like, kind of ready to go and you want to practice, they have a rehearsal phase appointment, and so you could do either one. You can do them multiple times, and we also have a group based one. So if you are doing a group presentation and you wanna your whole group wants to attend, um, the appointment in practice, we have that option as well. So there’s a lot of different modalities in the public speaking center.
[0:21:08 Speaker 2] Wow, I love that
[0:21:12 Speaker 1] covering all the bases
[0:21:13 Speaker 0] trying trying to cover as many bases. Yeah,
[0:21:15 Speaker 2] you heard it. Here for singer has, like, a million. Different resource is it’s all online. And it’s all free offer because you already paid for it. Exactly. So you somebody paid for it? Somebody s so Misha, what about your career with the same learning center is most satisfying to you. What makes you super excited? Thio get to work in the
[0:21:39 Speaker 0] morning? Absolutely. That’s Ah, that’s a really good question. Eso I like to think of my job, but Sanger is kind of two fold. I work as a learning specialist and then I work as thespian us I coordinator. And I think that the thread that really connects those two roles is just my interaction with students. And so, as a learning specialist, as I mentioned, that’s kind of meeting one on one with students. I really you know, I tried my best to get to know them, understand what their aspirations are, where their struggles are, and I try to strive to convey everything that I’ve learned, you know, during my time, Sanger but also a graduate school about effective studying on Ben in my role as a senior court s I coordinator. Um, you know, mainly my job is to meet groups of peer educator. So these air undergraduate and graduate students, who I train and manage and what they do is they conduct these weekly sessions for historically difficult courses and that really gives students a safe space to collaborate, construct and apply their knowledge as well as develop the best skills to succeed in that course. And again, both of those roles really allow me Thio meet and get to know, like, just at this point, you know, I’ve been at Singer for about five years. Yeah, we met close to 100 students that are just I mean, I’m always really amazed at how resilient, motivated, talented, thes students are. And that’s really just the best part of my job.
[0:23:01 Speaker 2] Yeah, Getting to interact with students is really what keeps people who work in higher education going. Absolutely. Yeah, so that is really awesome. Eso when you’re meeting with these students, Especially now in this pandemic. What? Our struggles that you’re noticing. And how do you think singer can help with that?
[0:23:23 Speaker 0] Definitely. I mean, I would say, um personally the current number one concern that I have about students. Um, well, twofold really is, you know, how are they being affected by the pandemic? I think there are a lot of students that, um, they themselves have either been affected because of, you know, they themselves have gotten it or their family members or someone close to them. We’re talking about students who probably have lost a lot, whether that’s lost friends and family or just the idea of lost, you know, losing that experience of coming. Some folks, you know, I think one of your questions was about, um, not really being able to come to U T campus if if they decided to stay home, and that was just a better choice for them. I mean, that still means like a loss of your first your experience and your and your, you know, interacting with with new students and eso. You know, I think that’s that’s definitely a concern that a lot of staff have on Ben the other, you know, as we know, the current climate of the United States means that there are certainly some students that air just truly being disadvantaged by the situation on dso I think for me the you know my concern is always going to be the holistic student, the student as a whole. And so I think this was maybe one of the questions at the end about kind of what? What do I want students to know the most about? And I want them to. Of course, I want them to do well in school, and I want them to get effective study skills and get the kind of support and help that they need. But more important in this time, I think, is to be making connections. And I know that’s very hard to do online and sometimes, um, even harder if you feel like you don’t have your own personal space and things like that. But I I really encourage students to reach out to just one person on campus, and that means that could be a faculty member that could be a staff member, your you know, your advisor or your mentor or a coach. Um, just that one connection can really make a huge difference. I think that’s what I you know. That’s what I see Sanger being, you know, us as learning specialist. We don’t have any. Um, I like to say this. We don’t have any skin in the game. And what I mean by that is I’m not trying to get you to complete this particular degree plan. I’m not trying to hound you to get your registration done or remove this bar. Really? All I am here to do is help you meet your goal and whatever that may be. And so it’s really a totally non judgmental rule. We have no skin in the game other than what you want to accomplish. So even if you you know, you don’t feel like you have that in, you know, other roles in your life or faculty members or other mentors. You can always reach out to Sanger for that kind of connection. Yeah,
[0:26:05 Speaker 1] it’s like a safe space, right? Like you don’t wanna go to your professor and seem Dummett office hours are be judged by other classmates. Your ta You can kind of go to singer to get some of this help without any riel or unintended consequence in your actual class.
[0:26:20 Speaker 0] Absolutely. We have no connection, Thio. You know we don’t report to your faculty member. We certainly don’t report to your advisor. So really, what we’re here to do is to help you with whatever you wanna get accomplished. And if that does mean you know, you want to talk out, you know, study skills. If you want to get help with content through tutoring or s I but also learning specialists. Definitely. We deal with a lot of affective issues, so students will absolutely come and say I’m just feeling really demotivated. And we we do an internal entire learning specialist appointment. Just about that I take test anxiety appointments often because most of the time, um, test anxiety has a lot of components to it, one being anxiety component, but also the other component tends to be preparation. So kind of how are you preparing for exams? And so we can give you really practical tips on how to manage the anxiety, but also to prepare better so that some of that is alleviated from your preparation for that exam.
[0:27:16 Speaker 2] Yeah, eso Phil and I both work pretty much exclusively with first year students in first your success programs and we spent quite a lot of time introducing campus Resource is to our students, including the Singer Learning Center. So we know for a fact that our students know Singer exists and knows the types of resource is that Singer offers and knows that it is free and extremely helpful. However, not all of our students feel comfortable reaching out for help, and we definitely touched on this just a couple minutes ago. There might be some stigma to it, or they’re just not used to reaching out for help. What would you say to these students who know that the help exists but aren’t comfortable looking for it yet?
[0:28:03 Speaker 0] Yeah, I can absolutely relate to those feelings. So, like I said, I you know, I was a student at u T. And like I mentioned, you know, I didn’t have the best preparation, but I you know, I got here. I thought, you know, I kind of have it figured out. I’ll just figure it out when I when I get here Or, you know, being there meant that I should have figured it out. Something about that meant, you know, I’m not really supposed to be asking for help because I’m here. I’m at u T m. A college student now. Um and I I absolutely did really poorly my first round of exams. And I just remember being so upset. I remember, like, just looking. I mean, I’m I’m really remembering the Blue Book and, like, the Circle number And then, like being so upset and just literally I think I tossed it in the garbage can like I didn’t even look at it on. Yeah, that that was you know, I was really intimidated to go see my professors in office hours because I thought, you know, if I ask questions, they’re just gonna think that I’m dumb or that I’m lazy. I’m just, you know, I’m just not getting it. And I remember just the first instinct that I had was Oh, I just didn’t work hard enough for long enough. It just became a proponent of time. And so I remember my second round of exams. I just I was like, Okay, I’m just gonna re read everything and I’m crushed. I’m going to read, read everything, which is like, Wow, that’s a lot of time. But also I remember I was sitting. I can still remember the jester study room I sat in and I probably had, like, reams reams of paper that I went through rewriting my entire set of notes verbatim. Right? So I have my notes and then I’m just rewriting them, just looking at them and rewriting them. Probably something like five or six times e so much paper. And I’m embarrassed to say that now because I do care a lot about sustainability. E. I remember being really just all I could think of is, I’ll just do it mawr. I’ll just do it harder. I’ll just do it Mawr Just do it more time. And the worst part about that was, of course, it didn’t work. So I did, you know, maybe a a shade better. But I ended up still not doing very well. And I actually ended up on academic probation my second semester at eso on I tell people that because again, as I said, I am not as I’m not embarrassed of things anymore. I’m just, you know, willing to be vulnerable and open about those things because I do want people to also hear that someone like me was on academic probation and she still got to graduate degrees and has a pretty like happy career at YouTube Andi. I think that sometimes you know when you’re when you have that struggle, when you have that roadblock, you kind of catastrophes like this Is it? Like I’m gonna fail this test and there I’m gonna fail that class and therefore I’m going to end up under a bridge like you just kind of
[0:30:49 Speaker 1] like a clearly connected e.
[0:30:54 Speaker 0] I think that’s like a really common human things to catastrophe eyes or to just way call it like the the rolling down the hill. You just one step wrong and you just end up in a ditch somewhere on that is such a misconception. You know, that’s one class out of the five classes you’re taking that semester off all the classes. You’re ever going to take it. You t so you know, one small roadblock you can totally recover from that. The question is, what do you do next? Right, So the first the first thing is you can totally just feel bad, and that’s okay. Feeling your feelings is really important and kind of the opposite of what I did, which is just to, like, shove them down to be like, never mind. I’m just gonna work harder. But the truth is that
[0:31:35 Speaker 1] I’m going to write my notes. 10, 10 everything.
[0:31:40 Speaker 0] Yeah, but its okay, Thio feel a little bad. And Thio, you know, revel in that feeling and then to the second component of that is then too be compassionate to yourself, right and say, Okay, I it’s OK that I messed up. I’m not the worst person in the world. I’m not the worst student in the world. I just haven’t figured out what is gonna work yet. And that’s the big component, the yet part. I haven’t figured it out yet, but I am gonna figure it out and then trying something different and that could be coming to Sanger and meeting somebody like me like a learning specialist that could be going to tutoring That could be going back to your advisor and just talking it out. Being like what resource is, do you think would be a good idea? But it really is that kind of what we call the next step, you know, like, what? What next step do you want to take? And that’s that’s kind of what I would encourage them to do. But like I said, the truth is, um I like I like to talk a little bit about the K through 12 system because I do think, ah, lot of students take on the burden and the responsibility of their preparation, which they sometimes, you know, of course, their shared responsibility there. You know what you did in high school and what you do at UT does matter. But also, the fact that you are struggling to adjust to college learning is not an indication that you’re like a bad student or a bad person. Yeah, they’re so pretty normal, actually, Like E. I mean, I can’t tell you when I you know when I’m out in the world, and I, you know, happened to meet somebody new and they’re like, Oh, what do you do? And I describe a little bit of what? Of what? You know. My job is I probably some somewhere close to 99% of time. I you know, these adult people are like, Oh my God, I could have used that in college. Everybody I meet is just like, why wasn’t that a thing when I was a student? And so I think, and maybe that was it’s just that they didn’t know about it. But I just I really want to highlight that, You know, elementary, middle and high school experiences. They’re generally set up so that you have these well trained teachers that spend a lot of time making your learning and working all of that inside the classroom. And so you’re generally when we talk to students when I talk to students about what was your high school experience, Like they talk a lot about taking quizzes and tests pretty regularly, like, you know, every other week and then even having time set aside in class to do homework. And that’s you know, that’s great. And that’s that’s why they have been learning effectively. But that ends up shifting enormously in college, where the expectation now is that you’re going to be spending a lot of time outside of class, learning that material. And but no one’s actually taught you the effective ways to do that right? So I want students Thio start to hopefully shift off some of this like responsibly, like I should know how toe learn to like Oh, no one ever taught me too. So it’s not totally a surprise that I don’t know how to do that. Yeah, and yeah. And then just to be fully honest about the public education system, which, you know, the majority of refreshment have been trick elated from It’s not an equal system, you know, some did not receive the same kind of resource is or preparation, and that’s just inequitable. And I include myself in this because it’s true for me. But I was never taught those strategies or how to implement them on my own. So what I really encourage students Thio take away is not to feel embarrassed or ashamed. It’s just that you may need some help learning those strategies right now and so internalizing that unnecessarily sponsor ability is That’s what creates that shame and that discomfort. And that’s, I think, what ultimately prevents people from reaching out for help on day. Then, you know, I always like to use a couple of different tactics, um, to to speak to different groups of students. So, you know, if you are the student, that’s like upset and frustrated that your school didn’t prepare you for you tea and you feel that Oh, you know that person sitting next to me in class or that person on Zoom. They had it better. Well, you know what? Sanger’s now your leg up. You know, you were not going to any answers to anything finally means, but we can give you that extra edge. You know, we can teach you those research based skills that will serve you hear it. You t beyond on gets free because you already paid for it. So I go to waste on. Then if you’re the student, that is a little bit worried about being judged or treated poorly because you’re you know you’re reaching out. You’re asking for help. You feel like that’s showing some kind of sign of weakness. The staff and the students staff at Singer have made it their absolute mission to provide nonjudgmental, safe, personalized and responsive support for all students. So you can know that when you arrive at any one of our services, you’ll be greeted by staff and peer educators that want to help you. Yes, that s
[0:36:28 Speaker 1] so good to hear that you know, as people who do these kinds of programs in partnership or in concert, along with the things that you’re doing, we have the same goals, And it’s always nice to know that when you send students in your program and you know how this is, you get very protective. You want them to, like, be taking care of, and it’s very it could be very parental. It’s always nice to know that you can send them somewhere where you know they’re going to be taken care of and that they’re going to get the very best out of everyone that works there. I’ve never had any hesitation of sending students your way, so I’m so grateful there you all are there and that it exists and that our students can take advantage of it. I wish more students took advantage of it honestly,
[0:37:10 Speaker 0] well, and that’s what the other, the other third kind of point that I would make is. Some folks have this, you know, stigma that, like tutoring or support, is remedial or enemies. And really, the research shows the opposite. So students different strategies for different classes, um, those students who reach out for help and do it early and often, and students who show themselves compassion. Those are the ones that end up sticking out the tough times in college and they’ve been actually get better grades and actually graduate on time versus those who just try to, like, do the lone wolf kind of thing on DSO. The best way to learn about those strategies and take part in tutoring, study sessions, workshops, consultations is just to check out Singer.
[0:37:51 Speaker 2] Very good points made E will definitely repeating that word for word to my students.
[0:37:58 Speaker 0] Yeah, Please steal whatever you would like. Yes,
[0:38:02 Speaker 1] Borrow. Borrow. Right. Well, Misha, I think that’s about it. That’s it. We’re out of time. Thank you so much for coming to talk with us today. We really appreciate it. Hopefully we can get our students walking through your virtual zoom doors very soon.
[0:38:19 Speaker 0] We would love that. Thank you so much for having me. And yeah, please reach out. Reach out to Christina or Phil. If you would like to speak with me or other learning specialists or just to get to know
[0:38:29 Speaker 1] more about saying her
[0:38:31 Speaker 2] Amazing. Thank you so much.
[0:38:33 Speaker 1] Nishat. What an amazing guest. Misha just was like the fountain of all things singer information. I
[0:38:45 Speaker 2] feel like I want to go back to undergrad just so I could use the same year King Center, because I feel bad.
[0:38:52 Speaker 1] Like there’s some seeds that could have made a If I had gone to singer. I’m
[0:38:56 Speaker 2] looking at my C from in Trudy Economics. Freshman year like that could have been in a wow.
[0:39:02 Speaker 1] Yeah, classes. They have, like, actual tutoring for two. Yeah, exactly. Yeah,
[0:39:08 Speaker 2] I am a super excited. I really want to bring her back for another episode to talk about. Maybe the psychology of learning,
[0:39:17 Speaker 1] because that’s what’s going on with the brain in the biology, not saying like her whole family, they they should be a panel they could talk about, like from all these different perspectives.
[0:39:26 Speaker 2] For sure we had What was it? We had engineering. We had English. We had biology economics. That was quite a lot in there, I guess. I didn’t
[0:39:37 Speaker 1] know too much about this peer academic coaching program that they have. I really like that. You know, it sounds like tutoring, but it’s a little less scary, right? Yeah, Some advice from an upperclassman.
[0:39:47 Speaker 2] Someone who already took that class exactly knows the exams, knows the quizzes, the formats of that. Honestly, that is an invaluable resource. You can know the material as much as you can. But I feel 11 perspective that really makes you successful in a clauses understanding how a professor makes their exams and how they grade those exams.
[0:40:10 Speaker 1] You don’t really get to figure that out until after your first exam, right? So if you can kind of talk to somebody who’s been there before you you get yourself a little bit of a leg up.
[0:40:21 Speaker 2] Yeah, yeah, something else. I thought that was really interesting. That Misha mentioned is that the professional learning specialist that you can meet with you can also talk about learning disabilities and how you can format your city skills to accommodate your learning difficulties. And I think that is super interesting because I did not know that I had a d h d until my senior year of college. And when I learned that and was diagnosed with that, it made so much more sense why college was so hard for me. And why How, Whenever people would give me all these study tips, I could not implement that my brain just I was not wired to do that. And so I’m just thinking like, Wow, I could have gone to the Singer Learning Center, and they would have probably told me straight away that I have some learning. Yeah, or like the bare minimum. Give me some other strategy that would work. Because I know that’s something that we always talk about with our first year students is Oh, well, you should break up tasks into smaller things so that you can focus better. But for me breaking things up into smaller tasks maybe more overwhelmed and anxious and unfocused because I whenever I wanted to start on an assignment, I wanted to do the entire assignment in one sitting. So breaking things up was very counter intuitive to me. And I think that is just something that I could have figured out a lot sooner
[0:41:47 Speaker 1] if I actually asked for help. You got a little bit of help from your friends? Yeah. How many students? You know, they try, you know, they come to college and then, like, I’m just gonna do what I did in high school because I was successful. And then, Okay, they hit some roadblocks, and then then they don’t know what to do. Right? I’m studying wrong. I’m not reading fast enough I don’t have. I don’t have the skills that I need. Thio be a successful is I wanna be, um, and you can You could do it the hard way with through trial and error, right? Like you can try a different types of cal injuring, or try different kinds of scheduling or time management or whatever. Or you could go to the singer center and get some professional help figuring it out by yourself like figure out how to do laundry it by yourself. That’s something you could maybe do on your own with a YouTube video. But like figuring out how to college, you know there’s professionals that can help you with that like yeah,
[0:42:38 Speaker 2] absolutely. And something else that Misha said that really stuck out to me is how, after not doing well the first round of exams instead of how can I find to my study skills? The initial instinct was, I just need to do exactly what I was doing before. But more e think this is something that every freshman does where, oh, I didn’t do well in that exam. I’ll just write it again and again and again, or I’ll just re read everything again and again and again because it’s just instinct that in high school that worked because in high school your exams were like memorization and multiple choice exams. But in college it’s about knowledge, application and critical thinking, and everything is a free answer response. And so it is a new way of learning in a new way of studying. That freshman really haven’t been exposed to you. And their best resource is people who specialize in teaching freshman how to do these
[0:43:34 Speaker 1] things. I think it’s funny she talked about Blue Books and, gosh, we’re still using blue books. Not this semester. But I felt that a book in my side when she said the word blue books, it made me feel some type of way. It certainly did. Uh, that was a great interview. I think this has been an excellent episode two for our fledgling podcast. Here s Oh, thanks from being part of it. As always, I’m Phil Butler.
[0:44:04 Speaker 2] I’m Christina Buoy and we’re super excited. You’re listening to sounds of success. You’ll hear us next time. Bye. All Yeah