By Ryan Pavel and Dr. Cassie Sanchez
For many veterans, college is an essential part of building toward a fulfilling civilian career. Adjusting to college and navigating the cultural shifts of transition can be a challenging experience, but it’s also full of opportunities.
At Warrior-Scholar Project (WSP), we’ve helped more than 2,500 enlisted student veterans get a head start in higher education through our academic boot camps, run in partnership with leading universities nationwide. Before we dive into any type of humanities, STEM or business content at our boot camps, we start with a foundational principle of college success: mindset.
Ample research and experience underscore a vital truth—how we approach learning is crucial to improving performance. Here, we’ll explore three actionable ways that understanding mindset can help you become a better student.
Step 1: Embrace the Mindset Continuum
Chances are you’re already familiar with fixed and growth mindsets. In a fixed mindset, intelligence and aptitude are considered un-growable. Someone with a fixed mindset may say, “I’m not a math person,” indicating a belief in their limitations.
On the flip side, individuals with a growth mindset believe they can get better at just about anything. They may say, “I can solve this math problem with some help.”
At WSP, we advocate for a modified approach: the mindset continuum, which recognizes that mindset depends on circumstances and can change over time. Educator James Anderson lays out a range of potential mindsets, all of which could be situationally appropriate:
- Fixed mindset: The individual makes low effort and avoids challenges.
- Low growth mindset: The individual takes easy challenges and focuses on positive feedback.
- Mixed growth mindset: The individual knows effort is necessary and persists with progress.
- Growth mindset: The individual enjoys challenges, expects mastery and learns from feedback.
- High growth mindset: The individual embraces challenges and requests feedback.
The mindset continuum encourages intentional movement along this spectrum. You may have core beliefs about who you are as a learner, but those beliefs don’t need to hold infinite power over how you learn.
PRACTICAL TIP: Take a minute to think about how you’ve exhibited a fixed and growth mindset, then write out a few examples of each.
Step 2: Practice Self-Awareness
Self-awareness is one of those defining qualities that helps veterans maximize the college experience. It allows students to make better decisions and communicate more effectively. It improves academic performance, guides goal setting and reduces burnout.
So, how do you increase self-awareness? Start by paying attention to your thoughts and feelings and observe how others respond to you. This practice helps you recognize patterns and identify actionable steps for improvement. Say you face a setback like a low midterm test score. Instead of asking, “Why did this happen?” which can lead to negative self-reflection, you could ask, “What can I do differently?”
You can further develop self-awareness by observing how others approach situations and considering whether you see something in them that you want to try for yourself.
PRACTICAL TIP: Consider your answers to these questions: What motivates you? Why do you want to learn? What do you hope to accomplish in college?
Step 3: Optimize Attention and Time
As you grow your self-awareness, pay close attention to how you manage your attention and time—maximizing this skill pays dividends in the college classroom and beyond.
Our society puts an exceptionally high value on productivity, to the point that many people feel down when they fail to get “enough” done. An essential first step is to assess your perception of productivity, then work to separate your sense of worth from the number of things you can check off a to-do list.
An unhealthy relationship with productivity leads to classic inefficient studying scenarios. You may observe that good students spend a lot of time in the library, concluding that the key to being a good student is to spend a lot of time in the library. But are you a “good” student if you’re spending all those library hours just browsing social media instead of actually studying? Relatedly, are you a “bad” student if poor study habits lead to subpar grades?
The answer to both questions is probably not. How you learn best may differ from others, and just because you don’t get the desired outcome doesn’t mean you’re bad at school. It may just mean that you need to reflect, adjust and try again.
Recognize that static productivity metrics like grades should not be tied to your self-worth. Your level of productivity and the quality of the work you produce (or don’t produce) do not reflect your value as a human being.
Boost Productivity by Closing Loops
In our experience, closing loops is the single most effective productivity habit a student veteran can build. Every time a new task surfaces, some small part of your cognitive capacity is automatically allocated to remembering to do that thing—an open loop. The more open loops you have, the less brain power you have to focus. The goal is to close loops by (1) completing tasks immediately or (2) jotting them down for future completion.
For example, if you come across a task while doing something else, like remembering you need to buy a birthday gift while you’re studying for a test, jotting down the reminder to buy the gift helps clear mental space and allows you to focus on the task at hand: studying.
Photo: Courtesy of WARRIOR SCHOLAR PROJECT
Explore more articles for the veteran community here.
