Genevieve

February 17, 2023 | Read time: 4 min

Did You Miss Another Academic Milestone? Here’s how to map your journey differently

No battle plan ever survives contact with the enemy. Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face. The best-laid plans of men and mice often go awry. So no one told you; life was gonna be this way. There are a pretty handful of pithy aphorisms that all get at this essential notion that seems to be a bare fact of life – things seldom ever go as planned. Unfortunately, our academic journeys are no exception to this rule.

We often like to imagine, when we start college or a new semester or some new project, that we are at a new beginning, the first blank page of a story that can redefine us. And then reality not so gently tells us what it thinks of our plans. You bombed that last test. Your experiments aren’t going as planned. Your professor’s/department’s funding gets slashed. The number of things that can go wrong are too numerous to list. The point is, in school and out, you will regularly find yourself caught off guard and be forced to adapt on the fly. Your success will be determined by how effectively you can respond to unforeseen circumstances. So, with that, here are four things not to do.

Don’t give up.

Having your plans be disrupted or shattered – especially when those plans were some on which you had a lot riding – can be devastating. It’s all too easy to feel like things are hopeless and that any further effort is just a waste of energy and hope. Just as with panic, though, despair solves nothing. You can crawl into a corner and curl into the fetal position, maybe even rock back and forth and cry for a few hours. But, eventually, the tears will dry, you’ll still be breathing, and there will still be the matter of what you do next. To that end…

Don’t get distracted.

Now, when I say “distracted,” I don’t mean by scrolling through TikTok (though don’t do that either. In fact, just delete TikTok on your phone altogether. Seriously, TikTok sucks). No, what I mean is don’t get so sidetracked by the giant obstacle that’s jumped in front of you that you lose sight of what your main goal is!

Yes, it is an obstacle and may hinder your progress, but it’s important not to focus on dealing with this eventuality any more than it needs to meet your primary objective. To do this, you need to have a very clear idea of what that objective was and is and, even more importantly, why you wanted that in the first place. You wanted to earn a degree? Why? What did you actually want to do with it? Can you do that thing without it? If not, what is the most expedient and likely-to-succeed way of getting that degree despite your present difficulties? Did you fail a critical test that you needed to pass a class? Well, can your GPA survive it? Can you make up for the shortfall with extra credit? If the course was essential, can you retake the class in the summer or next semester? Was your grade impacted because real-life obligations got in the way? Maybe you can take a lighter course load next semester. Be adaptable, and keep your eyes on the prize. However…

Don’t be afraid to change course.

This might seem like a contradiction to my previous points. Isn’t changing course the very definition of getting distracted or giving up? It can be if done out of resignation or despair. However, sometimes accepting a loss and moving past it, charting a course for a new direction, is one of the bravest – and hardest – things you can do.

Remember that I said to bear in mind what you wanted and why you wanted it. That’s “why” there is doing some heavy lifting. This gets at the very core of who we are. Let’s say you wanted to be, I dunno, an engineer. Why? What was/is it about engineering that appeals to you? Can you satisfy that same base need in another career? Sometimes, a crisis can be the very thing that leads you down a more fulfilling and rewarding path. Just never lose sight of your goal, and keep in mind the immortal advice of Rudyard Kipling in his poem If:

Dream, but don’t make dreams your master;

Think, but don’t make thoughts your aim;

Learn to meet with Triumph and Disaster

And treat those two impostors just the same;

Forbear when truths that you have spoken

Are twisted by knaves to make a trap of fools,

And when what you gave your life to’s broken,

Stoop and build it up with worn-out tools:

Force your heart and nerve and sinew

To serve your turn long after they are gone,

And hold on when there is nothing in you

Except the Will, which says to them: ‘Hold on!’