Christine J. Sobek, Ed.D.
The start of the calendar year is a natural time to start new things. Many people start the year with a list of resolutions or life enhancements that they want to accomplish. These personal goals are almost always good and worth accomplishing and are designed with the best intentions. Even with all of these strengths at the beginning, these new year resolutions often end up unresolved.
I suspect that one reason this happens so often is that people lose momentum fairly early on in the process. It can be hard to maintain momentum and energy for a project for the length of time it takes to complete a change or transformation over a long period of time. We often see this in higher education. I know that a decision to pursue education is a long-term commitment that requires energy throughout the length of time it takes to complete.
It takes momentum to earn a degree. Many students at community colleges start right after finishing high school while others have been away from school for a period of time. Regardless, it is often the case for people to enter college with their time in high school as their primary point of reference for the education experience. This is natural, but it may not be ideal for people starting college. The college experience is quite different from the high school experience.
In a recent interview published in The Chronicle of Higher Education, Wes Moore said, “Students go into their sophomore and junior years with momentum, those generally are students who are going to complete. So in many ways we do not have a college-completion crisis in this country. We have a freshman- and sophomore-year crisis.”
Moore knows what he’s talking about. He started out his college experience at a two-year college and went on to be an honors student at the Johns Hopkins University, a Rhodes Scholar, an Army officer, an international banker and the founder of BridgeEdU, a company that helps in the transition from high school to college.
As we start this new calendar year, our Waubonsee team is committed to helping students get the momentum they need to finish their freshman- and sophomore-years and move on to a four-year institution or complete the two-year degree that they need to enter the workforce in their chosen profession. Whatever your educational goals may be, the variety of academic support services at Waubonsee will help you make it happen. Our dedicated faculty are just the beginning when it comes to offering academic support; our staff members throughout all departments are equally committed to helping you reach your full potential. Waubonsee students have access to free walk-in or online tutoring, assistance with accommodations through the Access Center for Disability Resources, as well as Academic and Career Advising with advice for transferring to a four-year college, career planning, and personal counseling.
We have our own resolutions for this year; we call it our transformative reinvention. We have strategies in place so that we can ensure a successful student experience. We are monitoring our momentum in these efforts so we can help our current and future students maintain their momentum.
