We advisers wear many hats, including those of guidance counselor,
motivator, cheerleader, and life coach. As such, we give many suggestions to
students, ranging from the general—“keep trying,” “aim high, jump even higher,”
“you can do it, go for it,” “manage your time well”—to the specific—“while
studying or attending class, make sure to turn your phone off,” “go to every
class” . However, our advice has little staying power in students’ minds, and
important changes fail to happen.
What’s an adviser to do? Arguably, advice is most effective if it first
sticks in students’ minds, and I have found proverbs and parables to be helpful
in this regard. Most of them are simple, concrete, and credible, and many tell
a story. These features are exactly what some researchers claim can make things
memorable.
Below are examples of three proverbs I often use with students who are
in certain situations and facing particular challenges. Let’s start with
students we might call “Regretters.”
Regretters
Scenario: An advisee in her senior year asked about the likelihood she would be
accepted into a clinical psychology graduate program. She revealed that,
although her GPA is decent, she had little research and clinical experiences,
two of the most important components in graduate school applications for
clinical psychology. Her eyes filled with tears, and she expressed deep regret
about how unwisely she spent the previous three years.
I see many students in this predicament. Facing approaching graduation,
students like her often seem to be trapped in cycles of regrets and
self-reproach. Though reflecting on and even regretting past choices can serve
a useful purpose by helping us to avoid poor decisions in the future, regret
and its frequent companion often tax our limited cognitive resources—the mental
energy we need to move forward. Chronic regret is linked with a variety of
negative outcomes such as low life satisfaction, poor mental health, high
self-blame, and frequent physical illnesses.
What proverb might help students like this advisee redirect their
cognitive resources toward a desired future self?
This is the one I use:
The best time to plant a tree was twenty years
ago; the second best time to plant a tree is NOW.
I urge my students to say this Chinese proverb aloud several times. I
often join them in reciting it. Afterward, we explore what they could do
now. In most cases, once students start to focus on NOW, they seem better able
to calm down and come up with several solutions. One student, for example,
thought about volunteering at a mental health clinic to gain clinical
experience and also contacting clinical faculty members for a possible research
assistant position. She even entertained the idea of delaying graduation one semester
so she could gain necessary experience.
I often find ways to reinforce the proverb. Before students leave my
office, I might urge them to recite this proverb whenever they catch themselves
falling into the automatic default setting of regret. If I see them on campus,
I might ask, “The best time to plant a tree was how many years ago?” “Twenty
years ago,” they reply. Then I ask, “The second best time to plant a tree is
…?” They usually say with a laugh, “NOW!”
Pessimists
Scenario: One evening at 10:00 p.m., I received an emergency email from an
advisee. Although I had difficulty discerning the exact nature of her problem,
one thing was clear: She was in a whirlpool of panic. I responded by asking her
to meet with me the following morning at which time she arrived wearing a “my
life is ruined” look. I urged her to breathe deeply and tell me her story. She
explained she had received a rejection email regarding a research assistant
position she had applied for. She had high hopes for this position, as it would
have allowed her to work with a professor whose research interests aligned well
with hers. Now she worried she may not receive any offer for a research
assistant position in other labs.
Students like this advisee tend to see life events, even minor ones,
mainly through pessimistic lenses and worry excessively about outcomes yet to
occur. Ample research shows the detrimental effects of pessimism on many
domains such as mental and physical health, academic performance, and coping
strategies.
My assurances of “don’t worry, everything will be okay” and “of course
you will work with a different professor” seemed barely to register. My words
needed a more effective way to reframe a negative event.
For students like this, an effective proverb might be:
It takes time to know whether good luck turns
out to be bad luck, or bad luck to be good luck.
I tell the students this proverb is an interpretation of a Korean
saying, “Saeongjima” (say-ong-jay-mah), which means “the horse of an elderly
man living on the border.”
Once upon a time in Northern China, an old man lived in a village near
the border of a barbarian country. One day, his horse, his most valuable
property, ran away across the border. All villagers came to offer their
sympathy to the old man: “We’re sorry about your misfortune. It is a terrible
loss.”
To their surprise, the old man did not appear to be that upset. All he
said was, “Who knows?”
Several months later, his horse came back—with a wild horse. This time,
all villagers rushed to the old man’s house to congratulate him for his luck:
“We’re very happy with your good fortune. How lucky you are! Not only did you
get your horse back but also you now have another horse.”
Once again, to their surprise, the old man did not appear to be that
happy. All he said was, “Who knows?”
One day, his only son fell from the wild horse and became permanently
disabled.
Once again, all villagers came to offer their sympathy to the old man:
“We’re terribly sorry about your son’s injury. What bad luck!”
The villagers were expecting a strong reaction from the old man this
time. After all, his only son became disabled, which reduced the son’s marriage
prospects to almost zero. But to their surprise, the old man did not appear to
be that upset. All he said was, “Who knows?”
Sometime later, a war broke out between China and the barbarian country.
By the king’s order, all young men of the village were forced to go to the war;
none came back home alive. There was only one young man who was spared this
fate—the old man’s son. Because of his disability, he was not forced into the
war. Soon, he married and had many children, which made the old man very happy.
After telling this story, I emphasize its take-home message: Like the
old man, we should not dwell on misfortunes. Rather, as he did, we should frame
our misfortunes as harbingers of possible good outcomes in the long run.
I urge students to say aloud, “It could be Saeongjima!” whenever they
experience a misfortune. More often than not, students discover that things do
turn out for the better; their misfortune can lead to a better research
assistant position in the end. Perhaps the misfortune causes the student to
consider and choose a better set of actions that increases their chance of
getting what they have wanted. Quite often I will come across students who have
experienced the wisdom of the proverb, and they say to me, “Saeongjima!”
Another category of students in need of a proverb might be called
“Quitters.”
Quitters
Scenario: One advisee wanted to drop his chemistry class after receiving a D on
the first test. I gently probed the implication of dropping the course, as it
is a requirement of the pre-med program he desired. With a dejected look on his
face, he mumbled, “Well, I can’t do chemistry. There goes my dream of going to medical
school.” Based on his grim expression, I realized that my suggestions—How about
getting a tutor? How about regularly meeting with the TA and the instructor?
How about taking it next semester? How about joining a study group?—would do
little for him in his current state.
Some students, like this advisee, at the first sign of academic
difficulty, want to drop the course, or, in extreme cases, to change their
major rather than give themselves time to persistently work at the task.
Needless to say, dropping a course or changing a major can be a wise course of
action. If students are not well prepared for a course, remaining in it will
likely result in a bad grade, which, in some cases, could lead to losing a
scholarship or failing to meet time-sensitive criteria. If students struggle
with natural science courses, it may be wise to reconsider plans for medical
school.
Yet for various reasons—fear of failure perhaps—some students seem ready
to quit at the first sign of difficulty. By giving up too quickly and easily,
students miss opportunities to learn to be resilient and perseverant. Fostering
these qualities actually requires setbacks and failures. In addition, readily
quitting over challenging tasks confirms and strengthens the fixed mindset. The
students with a fixed mindset
demonstrate poorer academic performance. By contrast, students with a growth
mindset enjoyed an improving academic performance. The advisee’s comment, “I
can’t do chemistry,” hints at his fixed mindset. In fact, we hear from many students,
“I’m not good at _________.” We can easily fill in the blank with math,
languages, writing, research, etc.
The proverb I use here is:
“Fall down seven times; get up eight.”
After offering this proverb,I often talk about a South Korean woman in
her 60s who had attempted a written driver’s license test for four years,
spending more than $42,000 in application fees. She failed, failed, failed, but
never gave up. In fact, she “fell down” numerous times (949 times to be exact),
but she would right away stand up and try again. Finally on her 950th try, she
passed the test by a score of 60 out of 100.
The proverb, along with the story, seems to nudge students toward giving
themselves the chance to remain persistent, despite the risk of failure and
even actual failures. At minimum it seems to offer students a ready example of
persistence that leads to ultimate success.
Students who decide to stay in a chemistry class in which they initially
perform poorly may not receive the “A” they wished for, but even earning a “B”
is a step toward mastery, accomplishment, and a different mindset for the
future. Without persistence in the face of failure, these outcomes would never
happen.
In
Closing
Advisers offer a variety of advice to our students, but the staying
power of our comments appears to be short-lived in students’ minds. I have
found that proverb- and parable-based guidance can enhance the stickiness of
the advice, often resulting in desirable outcomes for the students. Although I
have not systematically compared the effectiveness of proverb-based vs.
nonproverb-based advice, I can say that my students seem to remember proverbs
and stories much better than other types of advice I have given to them. In
many cases, these proverbs seem to prevent students from falling into automatic
default settings of unproductive thinking patterns.
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