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# Thinking ## Analytical Thinking Questions to Consider: 1. How can you best establish component parts in thinking? 2. How can you use analysis to improve efficiency? Thinking helps in many situations, as we’ve discussed throughout this chapter. When we work out a problem or situation systematically, breaking the whole into its component parts for separate analysis, to come to a solution or a variety of possible solutions, we call that analytical thinking. Characteristics of analytical thinking include setting up the parts, using information literacy, and verifying the validity of any sources you reference. While the phrase analytical thinking may sound daunting, we actually do this sort of thinking in our everyday lives when we brainstorm, budget, detect patterns, plan, compare, work puzzles, and make decisions based on multiple sources of information. Think of all the thinking that goes into the logistics of a dinner-and-a-movie date—where to eat, what to watch, who to invite, what to wear, popcorn or candy—when choices and decisions are rapid-fire, but we do it relatively successfully all the time. Employers specifically look for candidates with analytical skills because they need to know employees can use clear and logical thinking to resolve conflicts that cause work to slow down or may even put the company in jeopardy of not complying with state or national requirements. If everything always went smoothly on the shop floor or in the office, we wouldn’t need front-line managers, but everything doesn’t always go according to plan or company policy. Your ability to think analytically could be the difference between getting a good job and being passed over by others who prove they are stronger thinkers. A mechanic who takes each car apart piece by piece to see what might be wrong instead of investigating the entire car, gathering customer information, assessing the symptoms, and focusing on a narrow set of possible problems is not an effective member of the team. Some career fields even have set, formulaic analyses that professionals in those fields need to know how to conduct and understand, such as a cost analysis, a statistical analysis, or a return on investment (ROI) analysis. You can learn more about these in Chapters 4 and 12. ### Establishing Component Parts Component parts refer to the separate elements of a situation or problem. It might include the people involved, the locations of the people, the weather, market fluctuations, or any number of other characteristics of the situation you’re examining. If you don’t identify all parts of a problem, you run the risk of ignoring a critical element when you offer the solution. For example, if you have a scheduling problem at home and seem to never see your loved ones, the first step in thinking through this problem analytically would be to decide what is contributing to this unfavorable result. To begin, you may examine the family members’ individual work, school, and personal schedules, and then create a group calendar to determine if pockets of time exist that are not taken by outside commitments. Perhaps rather than reading your homework assignments at the college library, you could plan to one day a week read with other members of your family who are doing quiet work. You may also need to determine how time is spent to better understand the family’s use of time, perhaps using categories such as work/school, recreation, exercise, sleep, and meals. Once you sort the categories for all the family members, you may see blocks of time spent that would lend themselves to combining with other categories—if you and your significant other both exercise three times a week for an hour each time but at separate locations, one possible solution may be to work out together. You could alternate locations if both people have favorite places to run, or you could compromise and decide on one location for both of you—one week at the park, one week at the campus rec center. This may not ultimately be the solution, but after establishing the component parts and thinking analytically, you have provided at least one viable solution. What if you look at the situation and decide you have too many component parts? Consider, for instance, how Amazon delivers packages every day. That’s a lot of items going to and from seemingly countless locations within a relatively short time—sometimes within just one day. An organization such as Amazon must use a great deal of thinking and organizing to deliver goods and services. One way to maintain clear thinking with so many parts is hyper organization. Proper labeling (for Amazon to ship it uses the foundation of our mailing system, unique ZIP codes that each address must contain to be delivered) as well as a strong sense of categorization (fulfillment warehouses, customer return warehouses, grocery item warehouses, etc.) are necessary for Amazon to do business. If you were faced with a major research paper your freshman composition professor expects to be polished by the end of the semester, where do you start? What are the component parts of a high-quality research paper? What tasks do you need to finish and how quickly to accomplish the overall goals? A partial list might include generating ideas, selecting a topic, researching, reviewing the available literature, outlining, drafting, and reviewing. What if you encounter setbacks in any of the steps? Do you have a contingency plan? In the construction industry, engineers called this float, and they deliberately build in extra time and money in case problems arise on the project. This allows them to avoid getting off schedule, for instance if a severe storm makes access to the worksite impossible. ### Forging a Revolution While most problems require a variety of thinking types, analytical thinking is arguably required in solving all. There was a time when manufacturing was completed by a few people who moved around a workspace to complete their projects. As companies grew, this became more and more inefficient, leading to the need for automation. Henry Ford, the early-20th-century American auto inventor, used analytical thinking to revolutionize the way companies increase production by inventing the assembly line. He perceived the problem in his own factory. When the demand for cars increased but his workers continued their work at the same pace, he analyzed their process to create something more efficient in the assembly line. This invention allowed one person to perform the same role over and over before sending the car chassis to another person who also performed the same role over and over as the evolving car moved down a sort of conveyor-belt system. The workers on Ford’s assembly lines still had to think and make sure that the task for which they were responsible was properly constructed, free of defects, and ready to move to the next station; they just did this thinking about their one area of expertise. Instead of various skilled workers wasting time and energy moving themselves and their tools around the factory from one incomplete car to the next, possibly getting in the way of each other’s work, the cars came to the workers. Ford vastly improved production rates and decreased manufacturing time by thinking about this then-new way of doing things. In the 1960s, companies did not have a fast, reliable, and cost-effective way to deliver urgent documents or packages to each other. The standard mail system was slow but inexpensive, and the only alternative was a private courier, which, while faster, was prohibitively expensive. That’s when Frederick W. Smith came up with the idea of a national, overnight delivery service as a part of an assignment in his undergraduate economics class at Yale University. As the story goes, Smith received only an average grade because evidently his professor wasn’t all that impressed with the concept, but after analyzing the problems with the current system, thinking through his original ideas more fully, and refining his business plan, Smith launched FedEx, the largest, now global, overnight delivery service in the world.“Online Extra: Fred Smith on the BIrth of FedEx.” Bloomberg Business Week. 2004. Retrieved 1/28/20. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2004-09-19/online-extra-fred-smith-on-the-birth-of-fedex This isn’t a parable about ignoring your professors, but a testimony to thinking through ideas others may not initially support or even understand; thinking can create change and always has. As with Ford’s assembly line and Smith’s overnight delivery service, any service we now use and any problem we may still face provides thinkers with opportunities to generate solutions and viable options for improvement. Your thinking may result in a new personal service, a cure for cancer, or a revolutionary way to deliver water to developing countries.

# Thinking ## Critical Thinking Questions to Consider: 1. How can determining the situation help you think critically? 2. How do you present informed, unbiased thinking? 3. What is the difference between factual arguments and opinions? Critical thinking has become a buzz phrase in education and corporate environments in recent years. The definitions vary slightly, but most agree that thinking critically includes some form of judgement that thinkers generate after careful analysis of the perspectives, opinions, or experimental results present for a particular problem or situation. Before you wonder if you’re even capable of critical thinking, consider that you think critically every day. When you grab an unwashed T-shirt off the top of the pile on the floor of your bedroom to wear into class but then suddenly remember that you may see the person of your dreams on that route, you may change into something a bit less disheveled. That’s thinking critically—you used data (the memory that your potential soul mate walks the same route you use on that day on campus) to change a sartorial decision (dirty shirt for clean shirt), and you will validate your thinking if and when you do have a successful encounter with said soul mate. Likewise, when you decide to make your lunch rather than just grabbing a bag of chips, you’re thinking critically. You have to plan ahead, buy the food, possibly prepare it, arrange to and carry the lunch with you, and you may have various reasons for doing that—making healthier eating choices, saving money for an upcoming trip, or wanting more quiet time to unwind instead of waiting in a crowded lunch line. You are constantly weighing options, consulting data, gathering opinions, making choices, and then evaluating those decisions, which is a general definition of critical thinking. Consider the following situations and how each one demands your thinking attention. Which do you find most demanding of critical thinking? Why? 1. Participating in competitive athletic events 2. Watching competitive athletic events 3. Reading a novel for pleasure 4. Reading a textbook passage in science Critical thinking forces you to determine the actual situation under question and to determine your thoughts and actions around that situation. ### Determining the Problem One component to keep in mind to guide your critical thinking is to determine the situation. What problem are you solving? When problems become complex and multifaceted, it is easy to be distracted by the simple parts that may not need as much thinking to resolve but also may not contribute as much to the ultimate problem resolution. What aspect of the situation truly needs your attention and your critical thinking? Imagine you’re planning a fantasy vacation as a group assignment in a class you’re taking where each person is allowed only $200. The group doles out specific preliminary tasks to each member to decide where to go, what sort of trip to take, and how to keep costs low, all in the name of a fun fantasy vacation. In this scenario, whose plan demonstrates the most effective critical thinking? 1. DeRhonda creates an elaborate invitation for a dinner party she’ll coordinate at an exclusive mountain cabin. 2. Patrick researches cruises, cabin rentals, and staycation options, considering costs for various trip lengths. 3. Rodrigio puts down a deposit for a private dining room for 25 at an expensive local restaurant for a date six weeks from the end of the semester. Write out what each person’s thinking reflects about their expectations for this trip and why their actions may or may not help the group at this stage of the planning. Critical thinking differs according to the subject you’re thinking about, and as such it can be difficult to pin down any sort of formula to make sure you are doing a good job of thinking critically in all situations. While you may need to adapt this list of critical thinking components, you can get started if you do the following: 1. Question everything 2. Conduct legitimate research 3. Limit your assumptions 4. Recognize your own biases 5. Gather and weigh all options Additionally, you must recognize that changes will occur and may alter your conclusions now and in the future. You may eventually have to revisit an issue you effectively resolved previously and adapt to changing conditions. Knowing when to do that is another example of critical thinking. Informed flexibility, or knowing that parts of the plan may need to change and how those changes can work into the overall goal, is also a recognized element of thinking critically. For example, early in the 20th century, many people considered cigarette smoking a relaxing social pastime that didn’t have many negative consequences. Some people may still consider smoking a way to relax; however, years of medical research have proven with mounting evidence that smoking causes cancer and exacerbates numerous other medical conditions. Researchers asked questions about the impact of smoking on people’s overall health, conducted regulated experiments, tracked smokers’ reactions, and concluded that smoking did impact health. Over time, attitudes, evidence, and opinions change, and as a critical thinker, you must continue to research, synthesize newly discovered evidence, and adapt to that new information. ### Defending against Bias Once you have all your information gathered and you have checked your sources for currency and validity, you need to direct your attention to how you’re going to present your now well-informed analysis. Be careful on this step to recognize your own possible biases. Facts are verifiable; opinions are beliefs without supporting evidence. Stating an opinion is just that. You could say “Blue is the best color,” and that’s your opinion. If you were to conduct research and find evidence to support this claim, you could say, “Researchers at Oxford University recognize that the use of blue paint in mental hospitals reduces heart rates by 25% and contributes to fewer angry outbursts from patients.” This would be an informed analysis with credible evidence to support the claim. Not everyone will accept your analysis, which can be frustrating. Most people resist change and have firm beliefs on both important issues and less significant preferences. With all the competing information surfacing online, on the news, and in general conversation, you can understand how confusing it can be to make any decisions. Look at all the reliable, valid sources that claim different approaches to be the best diet for healthy living: ketogenic, low-carb, vegan, vegetarian, high fat, raw foods, paleo, Mediterranean, etc. All you can do in this sort of situation is conduct your own serious research, check your sources, and write clearly and concisely to provide your analysis of the information for consideration. You cannot force others to accept your stance, but you can show your evidence in support of your thinking, being as persuasive as possible without lapsing into your own personal biases. Then the rest is up to the person reading or viewing your analysis. ### Factual Arguments vs. Opinions Thinking and constructing analyses based on your thinking will bring you in contact with a great deal of information. Some of that information will be factual, and some will not be. You need to be able to distinguish between facts and opinions so you know how to support your arguments. Begin with basic definitions: 1. Fact: a statement that is true and backed up with evidence; facts can be verified through observation or research 2. Opinion: a statement someone holds to be true without supporting evidence; opinions express beliefs, assumptions, perceptions, or judgements Of course, the tricky part is that most people do not label statements as fact and opinion, so you need to be aware and recognize the difference as you go about honing your critical thinking skills. You probably have heard the old saying “Everyone is entitled to their own opinions,” which may be true, but conversely, not everyone is entitled to their own facts. Facts are true for everyone, not just those who want to believe in them. For example, mice are animals is a fact; mice make the best pets is an opinion. Many people become very attached to their opinions, even stating them as facts despite the lack of verifiable evidence. Think about political campaigns, sporting rivalries, musical preferences, and religious or philosophical beliefs. When you are reading, writing, and thinking critically, you must be on the lookout for sophisticated opinions others may present as factual information. While it’s possible to be polite when questioning another person's opinions when engaging in intellectual debate, thinking critically requires that you do conduct this questioning. For instance, someone may say or write that a particular political party should move its offices to different cities every year—that’s an opinion regardless of whether you side with one party or the other. If, on the other hand, the same person said that one political party is headquartered in a specific city, that is a fact you can verify. You could find sources that can validate or discredit the statement. Even if the city the person lists as the party headquarters is incorrect, the statement itself is still a fact—just an erroneous one. If you use biased and opinionated information or even incorrect facts as your evidence to support your factual arguments, then you have not validated your sources or checked your facts well enough. At this point, you would need to keep researching.

# Thinking ## Problem-Solving Questions to Consider: 1. How can determining the best approach to solve a problem help you generate solutions? 2. Why do thinkers create multiple solutions to problems? When we’re solving a problem, whether at work, school, or home, we are being asked to perform multiple, often complex, tasks. The most effective problem-solving approach includes some variation of the following steps: 1. Determine the issue(s) 2. Recognize other perspectives 3. Think of multiple possible results 4. Research and evaluate the possibilities 5. Select the best result(s) 6. Communicate your findings 7. Establish logical action items based on your analysis Determining the best approach to any given problem and generating more than one possible solution to the problem constitutes the complicated process of problem-solving. People who are good at these skills are highly marketable because many jobs consist of a series of problems that need to be solved for production, services, goods, and sales to continue smoothly. Think about what happens when a worker at your favorite coffee shop slips on a wet spot behind the counter, dropping several drinks she just prepared. One problem is the employee may be hurt, in need of attention, and probably embarrassed; another problem is that several customers do not have the drinks they were waiting for; and another problem is that stopping production of drinks (to care for the hurt worker, to clean up her spilled drinks, to make new drinks) causes the line at the cash register to back up. A good manager has to juggle all of these elements to resolve the situation as quickly and efficiently as possible. That resolution and return to standard operations doesn’t happen without a great deal of thinking: prioritizing needs, shifting other workers off one station onto another temporarily, and dealing with all the people involved, from the injured worker to the impatient patrons. ### Determining the Best Approach Faced with a problem-solving opportunity, you must assess the skills you will need to create solutions. Problem-solving can involve many different types of thinking. You may have to call on your creative, analytical, or critical thinking skills—or more frequently, a combination of several different types of thinking—to solve a problem satisfactorily. When you approach a situation, how can you decide what is the best type of thinking to employ? Sometimes the answer is obvious; if you are working a scientific challenge, you likely will use analytical thinking; if you are a design student considering the atmosphere of a home, you may need to tap into creative thinking skills; and if you are an early childhood education major outlining the logistics involved in establishing a summer day camp for children, you may need a combination of critical, analytical, and creative thinking to solve this challenge. ### Generating Multiple Solutions Why do you think it is important to provide multiple solutions when you’re going through the steps to solve problems? Typically, you’ll end up only using one solution at a time, so why expend the extra energy to create alternatives? If you planned a wonderful trip to Europe and had all the sites you want to see planned out and reservations made, you would think that your problem-solving and organizational skills had quite a workout. But what if when you arrived, the country you’re visiting is enmeshed in a public transportation strike experts predict will last several weeks if not longer? A back-up plan would have helped you contemplate alternatives you could substitute for the original plans. You certainly cannot predict every possible contingency—sick children, weather delays, economic downfalls—but you can be prepared for unexpected issues to come up and adapt more easily if you plan for multiple solutions. Write out at least two possible solutions to these dilemmas: 1. Your significant other wants a birthday present—you have no cash. 2. You have three exams scheduled on a day when you also need to work. 3. Your car needs new tires, an oil change, and gas—you have no cash. (Is there a trend here?) 4. You have to pass a running test for your physical education class, but you’re out of shape. Providing more than one solution to a problem gives people options. You may not need several options, but having more than one solution will allow you to feel more in control and part of the problem-solving process.

# Thinking ## Metacognition Questions to Consider: 1. How can you become more aware of your own thinking? 2. What is the benefit of thinkers using their thoughts deliberately? For many of us, it was in kindergarten or first grade when our teacher asked our class to “put on our thinking caps.” That may partially have been a clever way for a harried teacher to get young scholars to calm down and focus, but the idea is an apt depiction of how we think. Depending on the situation, we may have to don several very different caps to do our best thinking. Knowing which cap to wear in which situation so we are most prepared, effective, and efficient becomes the work of a lifetime. When you can handle more than one complex thought at a time or when you need to direct all your focus on one crucial task is highly individual. Some people study well with music on in the background while others need absolute silence and see any noise as a distraction. Many chefs delight in creating dinners for hundreds of people in a chaotic kitchen but don’t care for making a meal for two at home. When an individual thinks about how they think, this practice is called metacognition. Developmental psychiatrist John Flavell coined the term metacognition and divided the theory into three processes of planning, tracking, and assessing your own understanding.Flavell, J. H. (1976). Metacognitive aspects of problem solving. In L. B. Resnick (Ed.), The nature of intelligence (pp. 231–236). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum For example, you may be reading a difficult passage in a textbook on chemistry and recognize that you are not fully understanding the meaning of the section you just read or its connection to the rest of the chapter. Students use metacognition when they practice self-awareness and self-assessment. You are the best judge of how well you know a topic or a skill. In college especially, thinking about your thinking is crucial so you know what you don't know and how to fix this problem, i.e., what you need to study, how you need to organize your calendar, and so on. If you stop and recognize this challenge with the aim of improving your comprehension, you are practicing metacognition. You may decide to highlight difficult terms to look up, write a summary of each paragraph in as few sentences as you can, or join a peer study group to work on your comprehension. If you know you retain material better if you hear it, you may read out loud or watch video tutorials covering the material. These are all examples of thinking about how you think and adapting your behavior based on this metacognition. Likewise, if you periodically assess your progress toward a goal, such as when you check your grades in a course every few weeks during a long semester so you know how well you are doing, this too is metacognition. Beyond just being a good idea, thinking about your own thinking process allows you to reap great benefits from becoming more aware of and deliberate with your thoughts. If you know how you react in a specific thinking or learning situation, you have a better chance to improve how well you think or to change your thoughts altogether by tuning into your reaction and your thinking. You can plan how to move forward because you recognize that the way you think about a task or idea makes a difference in what you do with that thought. The famous Greek philosopher Socrates allegedly said, “The unexamined life isn’t worth living.” Examine your thoughts and be aware of them. ### Becoming Aware of Your Thinking Just as elite athletes watch game footage and work with coaches to improve specific aspects of their athletic performance, students can improve their mindset and performance reliant upon their thinking by starting to be aware of what they think. If a baseball pitcher recognizes that the curveball that once was so successful in producing strikeouts has not worked as well recently, the pitcher may break down every step of the physical movement required for the once-successful pitch. He and his coaches may notice a slight difference they can remedy during practice to improve the pitche Likewise, if Shamika, for instance, wants to be more generally optimistic and not dwell on negative thoughts, she may ask her friends to mention every time she adds a negative post on social media. Shamika may go even further by stopping herself when she says something that is not in line with her new, optimistic mindset. She could jot down the instance in a journal and capture her feelings at the time so that later she could analyze or think through why she was negative at that time. If you procrastinate on assignments, you may ask a friend to be your accountability buddy to help keep you on track. Thinking about how to focus on the positive, in Shamika’s case, or avoid procrastination doesn’t magically change the situation. It does, however, allow the owner of the thought to contemplate alternatives instead of becoming frustrated or mindlessly continuing to sabotage sincere goals. Think now of a personal example of a habit you may want to change, such as smoking, or an attribute such as patience or perseverance you may want to improve in yourself. Can you determine what steps you may need to undertake to change this habit or to develop a stronger awareness of the need to change? ### Using Thought Deliberately If you need to plan, track, and assess your understanding to engage in metacognition, what strategies do you need to employ? Students can use metacognition strategies before, during, and after reading, lectures, assignments, and group work. ### Planning Students can plan and get ready to learn by asking questions such as: 1. What am I supposed to learn in this situation? 2. What do I already know that might help me learn this information? 3. How should I start to get the most out of this situation? 4. What should I be looking for and anticipating as I read or study or listen? As part of this planning stage, students may want to jot down the answers to some of the questions they considered while preparing to study. If the task is a writing assignment, prewriting is particularly helpful just to get your ideas down on paper. You may want to start an outline of ideas you think you may encounter in the upcoming session; it probably won’t be complete until you learn more, but it can be a place to start. ### Tracking Students can keep up with their learning or track their progress by asking themselves: 1. How am I doing so far? 2. What information is important in each section? 3. Should I slow down my pace to understand the difficult parts more fully? 4. What information should I review now or mark for later review? In this part of metacognition, students may want to step away from a reading selection and write a summary paragraph on what the passage was about without looking at the text. Another way to track your learning progress is to review lecture or lab notes within a few hours of the initial note-taking session. This allows you to have a fresh memory of the information and fill in gaps you may need to research more fully. ### Assessing Students can assess their learning by asking themselves: 1. How well do I understand this material? 2. What else can I do to understand the information better? 3. Is there any element of the task I don’t get yet? 4. What do I need to do now to understand the information more fully? 5. How can I adjust how I study (or read or listen or perform) to get better results moving forward? Looking back at how you did on assignments, tests, and reading selections isn’t just a means to getting a better grade the next time, even if that does sometimes happen as a result of this sort of reflection. If you rework the math problems you missed on a quiz and figure out what went wrong the first time, you will understand that mathematical concept better than if you ignore the opportunity to learn from your errors. Learning is not a linear process; you will bring knowledge from other parts of your life and from your reading to understand something new in your academic or personal learning for the rest of your life. Using these planning, tracking, and assessing strategies will help you progress as a learner in all subjects. Have you ever been in a situation where a series of events transpired that on reflection you wish you had handled differently? For instance, what if you were tired after a long day at work or school and snapped at your roommates over an insignificant problem and that heated exchange ruined your weekend plans? You’d been anticipating a fun outing with a large group, but now several people don’t want to go because of the increased tension. Afterwards, you come up with several other ways you wish you had acted—you might have explained how tired you were, ignored the irritation, or even asked if you could continue your discussion of the problem at another time when you were less tired. You could call that wish metacognition after the fact. How much more effective could you be in general if instead of reacting to events and then contemplating better alternatives later, you were able to do the thinking proactively before the situation arises? Just the act of pausing to think through the potential consequences is a good first step to accomplishing the goal of using metacognition to reduce negative results. Can you think of a situation in which you reacted to events around you with less than ideal results? How about a time when you thought through a situation beforehand and reaped the benefits of this proactive approach? Let’s look at two seemingly ordinary examples of this concept. Think about your reaction and the eventual long- and short-term results of you walking into your math class on Tuesday afternoon to recall only then that you have a major closed-book exam that class session. You look around to see nervous classmates reading notecards or working practice problems. You choose to stay and take the exam wholly unprepared. You end up with a low D on the exam and now must contemplate the consequences of that result. Scoring such a low exam grade may not be the end of the world, certainly, but you may not maintain the GPA you had hoped to post, you may need to repeat the course, or you may get further behind in this subject because you didn’t master the skills on this test. This is quite a bit of awareness about your thinking. Now you need to decide what actions to take as a result of your self-awareness thinking. Contemplating this negative consequence may lead you to make an appointment with your instructor to discuss your situation, which is always a good idea. Could you take an alternate exam to replace this atypical low score? Even if the answer is no, you have still made a connection and shown your instructor that you are seriously thinking about your coursework. Now consider the opposite scenario. What if you had entered your exam schedule onto your calendar beforehand and devised a viable plan to be prepared? You likely would have prepared in advance of exam days, studied the required materials, worked through similar problems, and come to the exam session more prepared than you did in the first example. Because you know you need a set amount of time to prepare for exams, you would have blocked that time on your calendar, possibly changing your work schedule for the week, declining social invitations, and otherwise altering your daily routine to accommodate this significant event. Consider how much better your results would be with this amount of preparation and how this would improve your overall performance in the course. You can take advantage of thinking about consequences before they happen so you can employ specific strategies to improve your learning.

# Thinking ## Information Literacy Questions to Consider: 1. How do you go about verifying source validity, and why is this important? 2. How do you use resources to improve your thinking? 3. Where do you go to find print and online resources? What type of system best helps you to manage your resources? When conducting any type of thinking, you need to have a firm grasp on , or knowing how to access the sources you may need. Practicing good information literacy skills involves more than simply using a search engine such as Google, although that could be a starting point. You also engage in creative thinking (i.e., generating topics to research), analytical thinking (i.e., reading and examining the parts of sources), and critical thinking (i.e., evaluating sources for accuracy, authority, etc.). Then there is synthesis that is used when incorporating multiple sources into a research project. Information literacy utilizes all of the necessary thinking skills. If you saw the name of a person on the cover of a magazine, for instance, you might assume the person did something important to merit the attention. If you were to google the person’s name, you would instantly need to use context clues to determine if the information your search produced is actually about your person and not someone else with the same or a similar name, whether the information is accurate, and if it is current. If it is not, you would need to continue your research with other sources. ### Verifying Source Validity The American Library Association defines information literacy as a set of skills that allow you to “recognize when information is needed and have the ability to locate, evaluate, and use effectively the needed information.”“Information Literacy.” American Library Association. Accessed February 1, 2020. https://literacy.ala.org/information-literacy/ We need information almost all the time, and with practice, you’ll become more and more efficient at knowing where to look for answers on certain topics. As information is increasingly available in multiple formats, not only in print and online versions but also through audio and visual means, users of this information must employ critical thinking skills to sift through it all. In today’s information environment, what would be the best way to find valid information about climate change? Would it be Wikipedia, NASA, a printed encyclopedia from 1985, or a report from a political campaign? If you chose any answer except the NASA website, can you see how the other answers may have a vested interest in encouraging readers to believe a particular theory? The encyclopedia may not intentionally attempt to mislead readers; however, the write-up is not current. And Wikipedia, being an open-source site where anyone may upload information, is not reliable enough to lend full credence to the articles. A professional, government organization that does not sell items related to the topic and provides its ethics policy for review is worthy of more consideration and research. This level of critical thinking and examined consideration is the only way to ensure you have all the information you need to make decisions. You likely know how to find some sources when you conduct research. And remember—we think and research all the time, not just in school or on the job. If you’re out with friends and someone asks where to find the best Italian food, someone will probably consult a phone app to present choices. This quick phone search may suffice to provide an address, hours, and possibly even menu choices, but you’ll have to dig more deeply if you want to evaluate the restaurant by finding reviews, negative press, or personal testimonies. Why is it important to verify sources? The words we write (or speak) and the sources we use to back up our ideas need to be true and honest, or we would not have any basis for distinguishing facts from opinions that may be, at the least damaging level, only uninformed musings but, at the worst level, intentionally misleading and distorted versions of the truth. Maintaining a strict adherence to verifiable facts is a hallmark of a strong thinker. You probably see information presented as fact on social media daily, but as a critical thinker, you must practice validating facts, especially if something you see or read in a post conveniently fits your perception. You may be familiar with the Facebook and Instagram hoaxes requiring users to copy and paste a statement that they will not grant permission for these social media sites to make public the content from their private pages. Maybe you’ve seen any number of posts and memes that inaccurately associate famous people with memorable quotations. We may even allow ourselves to believe inaccurate claims as truth when we experience different emotions including anger, fear, or loneliness; we want to believe a claim is true because it aligns with how we are feeling, regardless of any verifiable source. Be diligent in your critical thinking to avoid misinformation! Determining how valid a source is typically includes looking into the author’s credentials, experience, and status in the discipline; the actual content of the source material; any evidence the source presents as support; and whether any biases exist that may make the source questionable. Once you know who controls the content of the source you’ve chosen, you need to determine what biases or special interests the site or article may exhibit. Whatever you write or declare based on sources should be correct and truthful. Reliable sources present current and honest information backed up with evidence you can check. Any source that essentially says you should believe this “because I said so” isn’t a valid source for critically thinking, information-literate individuals. Evaluating books, articles, and websites for validity presents different challenges. For books and scholarly articles, in print or online, you can typically establish if the source is current and from a reputable publisher or organization with information on the copyright page or journal publication information. For a website, you should determine who owns this site. Is it a professional organization such as the American Medical Association? You can usually find this info in the About section of the site or in a copyright designation near the end of the landing page. Domain names can help you determine the purpose of the site, but you shouldn’t rely solely on this website marker. ### Resources for Thinking When you look into books, articles, and documentaries on thinking, you will find plenty of choices. Some books or articles on thinking may seem to apply only to a narrow group of readers, such as entrepreneurs or artists. For example, the audiences for these two books about thinking seem highly selective: Carl Sagan’s The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark may be mostly directed to the science community, and James Lohan’s Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Taught Wrong is likely of interest primarily to historians. And some chapters may focus specifically on those groups; however, most texts on thinking are also applicable to other disciplines. You may have to work a bit harder to find a common ground or generate your own examples that explain the concepts from the book, but you can still reap benefits from understanding different perspectives. Don’t immediately disregard a book or article just because it doesn’t seem to fit your thinking perspective on the surface; dig a bit more deeply to see what you can learn. Remember, being open-minded and considering as many alternate approaches as possible are two hallmarks of critical thinking. ### Finding Print and Online Resources When you need to research a topic, you probably start with a search engine. That can be helpful, but can easily lead you down incorrect paths and waste time. Use advanced searches, filters, and other means to target your results more specifically. However, don’t limit yourself to just Internet sources; print journals, books, and articles are still significant sources of information. Your college may have access to extensive stores of subscription-based site content, photos, videos, and other media through its library, providing more than enough information to start researching and analyzing any topic. Depending on the specific database and school, you may be able to access some of these resources remotely; others may require you to visit the library in person. Remember, when you are gathering and arranging pieces of information, keep track of the source and the URL so that you can both cite it correctly and return to learn more if needed. Some other more general places to explore educational, inspirational, and thought-provoking material follow: 1. Exploring the TED website is worth a few minutes of time. There you’ll find short videos (limited to 18 minutes) of speaking demonstrations by diverse experts in fields covering all disciplines. If you are in an exploratory phase of your thinking and researching, you can scan the TED Talk topics related to your interest area. 2. You may be familiar with the Khan Academy, created in 2008 by Salman Khan, as an online learning resource for students and teachers containing tutorials, videos, and practice sets in a variety of subjects from science and mathematics to grammar lessons. 3. Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) provided by Coursera, Udemy, and Udacity, provide learners and thinkers the chance to take courses, attend webinars and discussions, and learn about a large number of subjects, often free of charge. Much of the content is provided by major universities, and the courses are often facilitated by faculty. 4. For-profit companies and nonprofit groups such as the Foundation for Critical Thinking (FCT) can also help you hone your thinking. The FCT presents materials, seminars, and conferences to help people think with “clarity, relevance, logic, accuracy, depth, significance, precision, breadth, and fairness.” ### Creating a System for Managing Resources You could have all the money (or time or cars or great ideas) in the world, but that won’t do you any good if you haven’t also created a system for managing all your resources. In the same way you might feel overwhelmed with all the choices when a waiter gives you a book-sized menu with hundreds of options, you can stall your thinking if you don’t have an effective and efficient way to access all the great articles, websites, books, podcasts, webinars, and other idea resources you can amass for the life of a project or during a college course or for a life event. Systems to manage your ideas and thoughts don’t need to be elaborate. The best idea-management system is the one that gets used, so you need to be comfortable with what all is involved in managing these thoughts. Keep in mind, once you get into the swing of researching for and keeping good ideas, you’re going to end up with resources in many different formats. Gone are the days when one shelf of an oak bookcase near your desk could contain all your thinking resources on a topic. You may still find books, so you don’t need to discard the bookcase just yet, but very likely, you’ll also have online resources including search results, document files, websites, blogs, audio files, videos, and more. You can use filing folders, binders, online folders, boxes, or computer systems to organize your ideas. A word about stacking papers and clutter: don’t. Clutter impedes creativity, steals focus, and represents procrastination. Fight the temptation to allow clutter to overwhelm your projects and workspace. File or trash anything you are not using right at the moment; this daily practice will save you a tremendous amount of time that you could waste looking for papers or articles you saved for later review. Like physical clutter, a messy online environment can stall productivity and clear thinking. One key to effective information and idea management is a simple, consistent labeling system. Some companies call this a naming protocol or naming convention, a standard way all online files, folders, and drives are labeled for easier retrieval and long-term storage. If you don’t think through a file name with this forward-looking approach and then you don’t access that file for several months, you aren’t likely to remember which file is which, and you may end up wasting valuable time opening random files in an attempt to find the one you need. This isn’t a very efficient way to operate, and in some work environments would not be acceptable on large-scale and important projects. For example, if you were taking an upper-level literature course studying poetry, and remember you filed an excellent summary of one of the poems a few years earlier in your freshman composition class, you won’t be too happy when you have 78 documents called Notes. Great idea—lousy document/idea management system. If your searches will take place on multiple devices—a laptop and a smartphone, for example—you could use a note-taking app such as Evernote, which contains a wealth of organizational tools and has various levels of access. You can access the same note regardless of where you’re searching. In the same way, you could even use a series of Google Docs or Sheets, as long as you consider the file naming and organizational conventions mentioned above. For example, if you needed to put together a research paper requiring 20 data sources, you could use a spreadsheet to keep track of the source article name, author, topics, potential data points you plan to use, the source, and the URL. Even if you didn’t incorporate everything into the final paper, such a method would save you a lot of time trying to track down small pieces of information. (The sheet would also be a great reference when you write your bibliography.) Finding print and online sources demands a great deal of time and effort. Understanding how different approaches to thinking are appropriate for various situations as you research will help you be more creative and critical as you identify and verify your sources. All professions need thinkers to take good ideas and make them better and to tackle problems that seem unresolvable and make sense of them. No job or career area is exempt from this crucial human resource. Your critical thinking in college will help you succeed in the work you do after your academic journey. Make a list of your top three ideal careers. What types of thinking are required of each? How will your time in college better prepare you for this type of work? ### Rethinking Revisit the questions you answered at the beginning of the chapter, and consider one option you learned in this chapter that might change your answer to one of them. How do you feel about the ways you think? Take this quick survey to figure it out, ranking questions on a scale of 1–4, 1 meaning “least like me” and 4 meaning “most like me.” 1. I understand how to approach problem-solving. 2. I have creative potential. 3. I often think about how I’m learning 4. I know how to find and evaluate valid information. ### Where Do You Go from Here? Thinking isn’t something we can turn on and off when we enter or leave a classroom—we think about everything. We may have different strategies and processes for thinking in different environments, but all thinking starts with our own ideas coming into contact with new information and experiences. What would you like to learn more about? Choose topics from the list below, or create your own ideas relative to thinking and research them. 1. learning to be a creative thinker 2. technological advances in the study of the brain 3. thinking and brain trauma 4. thinking in leadership roles 5. theories of nontraditional learning methods

# Communicating ## Introduction ### Student Survey How do you communicate? Take this quick survey to figure it out, ranking questions on a scale of 1–4, 1 meaning “least like me” and 4 meaning “most like me.” These questions will help you determine how the chapter concepts relate to you right now. As we are introduced to new concepts and practices, it can be informative to reflect on how your understanding changes over time. We’ll revisit these questions at the end of the chapter to see whether your feelings have changed. 1. I think my mobile device is effective and appropriate for most communication. 2. I have a good sense of how to communicate in different environments/situations. 3. I listen more than I talk. 4. I have a lot of experience with research projects and essays. You can also take the Chapter 8 Survey anonymously online. ### About This Chapter Communication has always been a complex life skill for everyone. How we pass information to others and how we understand what is being conveyed to us can often be complicated. And today, with the ever-increasing number of communication tools at our fingertips, our need to understand how, when, and what we communicate is even more crucial. Well-honed communication skills can improve all aspects of your life. This is true regarding relationships with friends, significant others, family, acquaintances, people with whom you work, colleagues in your classes, and professors. In other words, everyone! Communication is probably the most important skill you can develop in your life. By the time you complete this chapter, you should be able to do the following: 1. Articulate the variables to communication. 2. Define the forms and purpose of communication. 3. Understand how technology has changed communication. 4. Discuss various contexts of communication. 5. Describe barriers to effective communication.

# Communicating ## An Overview of Communication Questions to Consider: 1. Do I think about the ways in which I communicate? 2. Do I consider the variables present in every communication method and situation? To begin with, let’s look at the following two definitions of communication: 1. A process by which information is exchanged between individuals through a common system of symbols, signs, or behavior.In Merriam-Webster online dictionary: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/communication 2. Communication is giving, receiving or exchanging ideas, information, signals or messages through appropriate media, enabling individuals or groups to persuade, to seek information, to give information or to express emotions.Definitions of Communication. Communication Theory.Org. https://www.communicationtheory.org/definitions-of-communication/ These definitions offer an overview of the concept of communication. Within this chapter, however, you will be looking deeper into the “process” of communication and how infinitely complex it really is. To start with, let’s take a look at both traditional and the newest forms of communication and see if you can determine rules for each. ### Variables of Communication Technology has created new rules for communication because of the different structures of communication, everything from emoji protocols, to truncated words and spelling, to etiquette and how we form communication networks. AAMOF it is important to understand communication. However, BTAIM, you might think it is a CWOT. FWIW this chapter will help you navigate the myriad ways of communicating. SLAP? (Meaning of acronyms should be included at bottom of page) (AAMOF = as a matter of fact, BTAIM = be that as it may, CWOT = complete waste of time, FWIW = for what it’s worth, SLAP = sounds like a plan) Although using the acronyms (symbols of communication) above allow us to do more in less space and time, we need to be careful about how we pass information to others as well as think more clearly about what is being communicated to us. Certainly, with the scope of the Internet we are seeing briefer messages, a wider reach, and greater immediacy. You are aware that the transfer of information can be done vocally—voice, phone, face-to-face, over radio or television. It can come to us in a written format such as correspondence or printed or digital media. We obtain information visually in logos, pictures, maps, menus, and street signs. And, of course, we find ourselves learning things nonverbally by observing body language, tone of voice, gestures, and so forth. Communication means that there is at least one sender and one recipient, and in between, there is the message. The kind of communication tool you choose to use also has an effect on the message being conveyed. Will you choose a pencil? Pen? Phone? Email? Text? Picture? Or perhaps a face-to-face opportunity? Whatever you choose as your method of communicating with one person or a group of people guides how effectively you send your message. Additionally, there are always emotions behind a message. You could just be sharing a picture of yourself on the beach or sending out a call for help on a class assignment, or perhaps feeling sad because a friend is sick. Each of these would affect how you might communicate. Have you ever sent a message to someone too quickly? For example, you heard that a friend just broke up with her boyfriend and is terribly heartbroken. You immediately think you should send some kind of “hope you are ok” comment and decide to use Facebook to do so. Later you find out that she didn’t want people to know about it at all and you kind of jumped the gun on your condolences. How did you feel? Could you have gone about it in any other way? Perhaps waited until she told you about it herself? A private email or phone call? This is one of those situations where you have to step back for a moment and clarify for yourself that what you are about to send will be received the way you intended. Learning a little about the concept of emotional intelligence (EQ) will also be helpful to your decision about how to communicate in various situations. More on that concept will be discussed in the sections on listening and miscommunication. Additionally, there are other significant variables that play an important role in communicating. These range from ethnicity to culture to age to gender and are meaningful to what one is trying to “say” to someone else. Unfortunately, sometimes the message is lost or misconstrued because neither the sender nor the receiver has taken into account these important aspects of successful communication. You will learn more about this later in the chapter. ### Context of Communication It is also essential to understand the context of your communication. In other words, to whom are you talking? Why are you talking to this person or people? What, exactly, do you hope to achieve out of the communication you initiate? An effective communicator understands the audience to whom they are trying to send a message. This means that you use the correct venue—face-to-face conversation, phone, email, text, written letter, picture, or whatever else makes the most sense in a particular situation. This way your message can reach your audience (professor, boss, colleague, friend, parent, teammate) in a productive way, and hopefully the message you intend to convey is received accordingly. An example of context might be the following: you need to ask your professor about a grade you received on an assignment because you think the grade was too low for the work you did. Would it be appropriate for you to send a text asking why you received the grade? Might it be better to give your professor a call and hope she is available to talk with you? Or do you think it could be more useful and productive if you found out the professor’s office hours and went in to discuss your concerns in person? These are decisions you have to make carefully so you can make the most of what you are trying to communicate. ### Listening Another aspect of communication is the art of listening. Remember, communication is a two-way street. It is not enough to just send out a message. One has to listen carefully to the response, and not only listen, but understand that the audience receiving your message might have a very different take on the topic. As noted earlier, this could be due to gender, age, culture, and so forth. All of these have an effect on how well the communication is transmitted and received. Later in this chapter we will discuss the difference between just “hearing” the response and actually “listening” to the response. Optimal communication occurs when both parties actively listen. And finally, it comes down to this: communication is any act that involves a sender and at least one receiver, where a message is conveyed and hopefully the message is received correctly. Many variables get in the way of messages being received correctly. One of these is emotion—both yours and that of the person with whom you are trying to communicate. Sometimes you have to use emotional information to help you make a decision about how you are communicating. What this means is that you need to be able to understand your own feelings and those of others. There are five components (self-awareness, self-regulation, motivation, empathy, and social skills) to emotional intelligence. Understanding how these components work to help you get in touch with your and others’ emotional sides is an important part of listening. Ultimately, communication is about information. The message you are sending may be as simple as one word (or even one letter), or as complex as an application for an internship. How you act on that information, how you expect others to act on it, and how it becomes knowledge are all part of the complexity of communication.

# Communicating ## Purpose of Communication Questions to Consider: 1. Does everything I say or write have a purpose? 2. Do I expect a response or a result from my communication? 3. Do I change how I communicate depending on what response I want or need? ### Does Everything I Say or Write Have a Purpose? There are many reasons that communication takes place. Some of our communication might be simply an attempt at being cordial and friendly. For instance, we might like to say hello to a friend down the hall, give a shout-out on Twitter to a family member living in another state, say “excuse me” to someone we’ve just bumped into, smile at a baby in a stroller going by, post a picture of our birthday party on Facebook, and stop to pet a new puppy in the park. Or maybe we just need some information, such as asking an instructor for guidelines for a project, telling a store owner what we are looking for, or going up to a stranger for directions to the nearest bus stop. As you can see, almost everything we do on a daily basis has something to do with communication. Additionally, we can communicate the same information to a wide range of people, and how this is received can vary greatly. Another important purpose of communication is to forge relationships, whether these are of short or long duration or for particular purposes. What kind of relationships do you hope to develop when using various forms of communication? Are you looking for a partner for a project, or perhaps a date for the football game, or just want to nurture the relationships you have with friends already? The impact of flawed communication on relationships can be long-lasting, so it is important to be thoughtful when posting your thoughts and ideas. ### Do I Expect a Response or a Result From My Communication? There are times we are just sending out messages or information and not expecting a response, except perhaps a “like.” For instance, your friend posts a picture of her new dog on Instagram and you click on “like.” Other times we try to communicate an idea or ask a question and we do want a response, such as “What time is the exam on Friday?” This response is possibly from one person or many. There are instances when you need information, and you will either ask someone, do some web searching, or make a phone call to get the information that you need. Depending on what your need is, you must consider what form of communication will work best and get you the most satisfactory results. Your purpose for communicating is to get some kind of reply. ### What Do I Bring to My Communication With Others? You probably haven’t thought of this, but whether you actively communicate or not, you are still communicating. Your facial expressions, body language, what you are wearing, your hairstyle, body art, where you choose to sit or stand in a room, the people you associate with, eye contact or lack thereof, and any other mannerisms that you have are a form of communication. We all pick up signals from each other in these nonverbal ways. So even though you might be shy, or reserved, or not interested in any interaction at all, you are still communicating some information to others.

# Communicating ## Communication and Technology Questions to Consider: 1. Is technology vital to your ability to communicate well? 2. Are there rules to follow when using communication technology? 3. How do you take control of your online communication? ### Is Technology Vital to Your Ability to Communicate Well? Over a billion people use chat rooms, mailing lists, instant messengers, social network services, newsgroups, games, wikis, blogs, and more in order to share social relationships and organize collective action. Everything is connected: people, information, events, and places, all the more so with the advent of online social media. You live in a world where the traditional forms of education, conversations, relationships, and social activity in general have been transformed by the ubiquitous presence of technology. Digital media affects every student’s life and that of their families, friends, and the wider community. Most of you have grown up while this transformation has taken place. The new technologies have created dramatic changes in the relationship between people and information. Though you will come across people who don’t want to believe that these new technologies are here to stay, we, as humans, will never be able to separate ourselves from our own inventions, and trying to do so is perhaps only a step backward in an evolutionary sense. Therefore it is important that we learn to adapt our behavior to include the new inventions. Technology, after all, is an extension of the human mind, and the new technologies are only tools we have created over years of fashioning new ways to do things. We continue to move from simple to complex tools. Advancements of technology go hand in hand with changes in communication options. The telegraph was replaced with landlines, those went out of style as the cordless phone became available, and this phone eventually morphed to a cell phone. When the Internet became accessible by cell phone, cell phones became devices that revolutionized personal communication. The following activity is a good way for you to reflect on your own use of technology. It is always interesting to step back and actually see what platforms you use and how much time you spend using them. ### Are There Rules to Follow When Using Communication Technology? Did you find anything significant about how you use social media? When you carefully looked at how much time you spent on the different platforms, were you surprised? It is probably a good thing to sometimes step back and take a look at how we use our communication tools, and even more importantly, we need to ask ourselves if we are using them to our advantage and not just to pass the time. ### Netiquette Just as it is important to know your responsibilities in using communication technologies, it is necessary for you to understand that there is a code of honor and etiquette to go along with them. Here are a few pointers on how to go about being active on the Internet without offending or annoying others. 1. Don’t write emails, post to social media sites, or talk in chat rooms in ALL CAPS. CAPS can be interpreted as screaming or talking in a very loud voice. 2. Don’t make fun of others. 3. Apologize if someone was offended and did not “hear” what you were saying in the way you meant it. 4. When stating a strong opinion, it is not a bad idea to use the abbreviation of IMHO (in my humble opinion). It might keep people from reacting strongly right back at you. 5. Remember, no one can hear your tone of voice or see your facial expression, so use words carefully to get your message across. 6. Be respectful of your audience with the level of familiarity used. ### College Netiquette While these Netiquette guidelines are applicable in nearly every environment, communication in college may have additional or more stringent rules to consider. Always be particularly mindful of how you communicate in any official environments, such as online courses, course discussion boards, and even on social media specifically related to your college, such as a club or team page. For example, if your political science class requires students to post in a discussion forum after each night’s reading, students may have the opportunity to argue about issues or politics. Vibrant discussion, and even argument, may be acceptable, but personal attacks or insults won’t advance the discussion and could result in more significant consequences. Just as you wouldn’t—and couldn't—become overly animated in an in-class argument, online arguments should remain civil. The goal is to make your points with evidence and reason, not emotion and assertiveness. Finally, just as a note of caution, college codes of conduct regarding communication often apply to any interaction between members of the community, whether or not they occur on campus or in a campus online environment. Any inappropriate, offensive, or threatening comments or messages may have severe consequences. Our communication in college conveys how we feel about others and how we’d like to interact with them. Unless you know for certain they don’t like it, you should use professional or semi-formal communication when interacting with college faculty and staff. For example, if you need to send a message explaining something or making a request, the recipient will likely respond more favorably to it if you address them properly and use thoughtful, complete sentences. In a similar manner, you can make or break relationships with your classmates depending on how you communicate with them. Consider the following scenario: Demetrius sends an email to several classmates about the details of a group assignment. He asks about availability and about which member of the group will take responsibility for which aspect of the project. He’s received four responses addressing availability, but no one volunteers for the responsibilities. Demetrius replies to all with an attempt at creating a division of responsibilities by typing different names next to each role. He uses ALL CAPS to make sure his classmates notice the suggestions. Lee responds immediately. They don’t like being forced into a specific role, and think Demetrius should have waited until the first group session instead of forcing his opinion on the group. Shirisha jumps in to mention that she’s upset Demetrius chose to put her in a non-speaking role of recording secretary. What mistake did Demetrius make? How might he have handled the situation more smoothly? ### How Do You Control Your Online Communication Strategies? What is important is that we have to decide what we are going to do with the new communication tools for our future. We need to understand when to log on and when to log off. These days you sometimes find yourself being bombarded with new technologies and social media platforms, and you don’t know how you will keep up with them all. You have multiple sites sending you continuous notifications and find yourself scrambling to look at them and perhaps respond. Perhaps turning off those notifications will free up your mind a bit. Sitting at your desk in your dorm room and trying to do an assignment for a class can be difficult if your phone is blinking messages at you continuously. It is probably important sometimes to take the focus away from the media itself and look at oneself. What is happening to our minds, our sense of self, and our ways of representing ourselves to others when we spend a significant portion of our time on various online sites? How do we mediate our relationships differently? What kinds of signals do we send, knowingly and unknowingly? Are we shaping the media we use, or is it shaping us? Sometimes we hide behind our on-screen identities as well as navigate social media sites in ways that make us communicate with people that are like ourselves. Do we use these new communication tools appropriately? The following activity might help clarify how well you utilize your social media platforms. ### Ways to Take Control of Your Online Communication Howard Rheingold, a technology guru who coined the term “virtual community” in 1993, has been thinking and writing about the changes that technology has been making over the years. He has come to the opinion that in order for us to deal with the new communication opportunities, we must learn about what he calls “mindful participation.”Rheingold, Howard. Rheingold doesn’t suggest, as many others do, that these new technologies are bad for us. He offers ways to engage online that keep us in control of our actions and make us a bit more productive about our use of online platforms. He believes in social media literacy and suggests that learning the following five literacies will make our life on the Internet more productive, less stressful, and ultimately more enjoyable. If social media is our most often used form of communication, then the following five literacies should help us manage our time online and keep us in control of the tools we use for purposes of communication. ### Attention Attention is the first literacy and is the fundamental building block of how individuals think. It is sometimes difficult to focus our attention since our minds tend to wander in a random manner. It is therefore essential that you become more aware of how you are directing your attention. Consider being in a lecture hall and trying to focus on the professor and what she is saying. Is your full attention there? Are you also scrolling through some social media feed while listening to the lecture? When you are in your dorm room working on a class assignment, are you also watching your social media notifications, listening to music, talking to your roommate, and clicking on various ads on a website? On what is your attention most focused? Probably on everything and consequently on nothing. Learning how to pay attention to what is most important at the moment will help you fine-tune your skills. ### Participation And even though you might be really good at using online applications and connecting with friends, that does not necessarily mean that you always understand the implications of your participation or that you are actually participating. Participation, the next literacy, is much broader as it recognizes the vast population of users that are connected. Participation is connecting with the tool, not people. It is a way of becoming an active citizen and not just a passive consumer. There are multiple ways to participate on a variety of social media platforms. In fact, you probably don’t realize that clicking on a “like,” making a short comment on a picture, or whatever else one does on a site is actually participating. Of course, the effect of your participation can vary, but it can also be very powerful. You participate when you post, fill out a survey, start your own blog, respond to others’ blogs, or just watch a video on YouTube. All of these actions are a form of participation. In college, participation with communication environments and other resources is often essential for success and for your grade. If you use learning management systems, online homework systems, polling or attendance software, or other educational media, you need to understand the levels and types of participation, as well as the implications of each. As with social media platforms, learning technology can be a powerful tool, and you’ll likely engage with it throughout your academic and even your professional career. ### Collaboration The third literacy, collaboration, refers to your being able to work together using technology. Doing things together gives us more power than doing them alone. Think of all the times Twitter was used by multitudes of people to pass on information about major storms. When there was a bombing in Paris, people went to Twitter to let those people in the streets who’d been displaced know they had apartments and homes that they would open up to them. Of course, there are many collective intelligence projects, such as helping Coke come up with a new flavor, or GoFundMe sites to help people in need of money for health reasons. The collaborative efforts of people communicating around a big project are endless and a perfect way to use communication technologies. Tools allowing collaboration allow you to share resources and work as a team, and build on each other’s ideas. ### Network Awareness Network awareness is the fourth literacy. Technological networks now allow us to have a greater number of people we can contact. These networks multiply human capacity for social networking and allow connection in a matter of seconds. You can become a member of newsgroups, virtual communities, gossip sites, forums, and other organizations. Making use of these possibilities expands your ability to contribute to the vast stores of information on the Internet. At the same time, you should be conscious of the people whom you’re inviting to hear you and influence you. Have you ever been intrigued, angered, or persuaded by a friend of a friend (someone you don’t know at all) who commented on a social media posting? If so, you are in a relationship with that stranger, and they are affecting you. ### Critical Consumption The last literacy, critical consumption, helps us to discern what is true and what is not. We have to learn how to differentiate fact from fiction. Humans have a difficult time trusting people in everyday life; this also translates to the millions of people on the Internet using social media. Before believing what others have written, communicating with them, or using a tool, it is wise to do some detective work. Check the claims, the author’s background, sources, and accuracy. Critical consumption is closely related to Informational Literacy, which is discussed in Chapter 7 on Thinking. ### Evolving Our Strategies to Match Our Evolving Technologies Communication has changed because of the way we are using technology. Yes, we still write and talk, but where and how? There are myriad social media platforms that you can use for communication, from Snapchat to Twitter, each with its own set of rules and limitations. These platforms have completely changed many of the ways we transfer ideas and information, find romantic partners, keep in touch with friends and family, connect with our professors and classmates, make plans with teammates, look for employment, and so much more. When using a device for communication, there are fewer nonverbal cues we can pick up on, only what the other person is posting or showing. In certain situations, such as talking on the phone, a person can't see hand gestures but can still hear a tone of voice. When typing, however, there is no tone of voice or hand gesture or body language. Sometimes typing may not convey the same message as saying what you’re feeling. Social media has made it easier to keep in contact with many people, but it also creates missed opportunities for new relationships since we are too often looking down at our phones instead of talking with the person standing next to us. Socialization is an integral part of human behavior, and over time new technologies have made networking and communication more complex. The tools you have available for communication within your networks are powerful and fulfilling, but they can also stand in the way of real-time thinking, doing, relating, and communicating. The past twenty years have seen an explosion in new tools and means of communication, but the next twenty may see similarly rapid growth and change. Adaptability may be as important a skill as any method specific to a certain platform. The key is mindfully participating and knowing when to use and when not to use the new technological tools available to us, which may require learning and acceptance. In this way your communication with others will be positive and allow you to be productive in all aspects of your life.

# Communicating ## The Context of Communication Questions to Consider: 1. Does my form of communication change in certain situations? 2. Do I use an altered style of talking when I am with different people? 3. What role does listening play in communication? ### Does My Form of Communication Change in Certain Situations? The circumstances surrounding a message provide the context. These include the setting you are in, the culture that guides you and whomever you are communicating with, and the purpose of the communication to begin with. Context also includes the values people have, appropriateness of the message, the timing you choose to convey your message, and the reason behind your wanting to communicate. This means considering your audience, the place, the time, and all other variables that impact communicating constructively. Generally, all communication happens for a reason. When you are communicating with people, are you always on the same wavelength? Are you wide-awake and your roommate almost asleep? Is the baseball game really important to you but totally boring to the person you are talking with? It is important that everyone involved understands the context of the conversation. Is it a party, which lends itself to frivolous banter? Is the conversation about something serious that occurred? What are some of the relevant steps to understanding context? First of all, pay attention to timing. Is there enough time to cover what you are trying to say? Is it the right time to talk to the boss about a raise? What about the location? Should your conversation take place in the elevator, over email, in a chat room? Is everyone in the conversation involved for the same reason? The following is an activity that might help you understand what is meant by context. Sometimes we have misconceptions about what is going on in a group situation. Perhaps we think that everyone there knows what we are talking about. Or we think we know everyone’s opinions on an issue or situation. Or we come into the conversation already thinking we are right and they are wrong. Communication in these instances can go very wrong. Why? We aren’t listening or even preparing ourselves adequately for the conversation we hope to have. So often we are only concerned about what we have to say to an individual or a group and we don’t step back long enough to reflect on what our message might mean to them. We seem to not care about how the message will be received and are often surprised by how poorly the communication actually went. Why? Because we didn’t step back and think, “Hmmmm, my aunt is a really religious person and probably would be offended by a conversation about sexual intimacy.” Or, “My father is having a bit of financial trouble, and this might not be the right time to bring up money I need for a new car.” ### Do I Use an Altered Style of Talking When I Am With Different People? There are so many instances in our lives when we think about our needs first and blurt out what we are thinking, leading to some critical misunderstandings. It is really important not only to be concerned about our need to communicate, but to take into consideration with whom we are communicating, when and where we are communicating, and how we are going to do so in a positive way. First, you should step back and think about what you want to say and why. Then reflect on with whom you are attempting to communicate. ### Emotional Intelligence We’ve talked about emotional intelligence when it comes to listening. Recognizing your own emotions and those of others will help you avoid miscommunication as well. When you are aware of your own emotional state and you have the skills to address and adjust, your communication with others will improve. You’re less likely to blurt out an angry retort to a perceived criticism, for example. You’re better able to manage communication when you recognize someone else’s emotions, as well. A conversation can veer into hostile territory if someone feels attacked, or perhaps simply because they’ve had an emotional experience related to the conversation that you don’t understand. Taking note of other people’s emotional responses during a conversation and listening and speaking with empathy will help you manage the situation. When conversations begin to feel heated, it’s a good idea to pause and ask yourself why. If it’s you who are feeling defensive and angry, make an effort to recognize the source of your frustration and try to take a step back, perhaps leaving the conversation until you’re better able to control your emotions and communicate in a way that’s more clearheaded and calm. If it’s someone else who’s emotional, again, ask yourself why. Can you see reasons that this person may feel attacked, belittled, or usurped? If you can recognize their emotion and address it, you may be able to get the communication back on solid footing. ### Listening Is a Communication Action Our communication includes both sending and, especially, receiving messages. Unfortunately, we often don’t take the time to focus on the latter part. Often we are already thinking about what we are going to say next and not listening to what is being said to us. This lack of focus occurs in intense, oppositional discussions, but it can also be common in one-on-one conversations and when someone is confiding in us. When we listen, we need to embrace the concept of empathy, meaning you understand what a person might be feeling, and understand why that person’s actions made sense to them at the time. This way our ideas can be communicated in a way that makes sense to others, and it helps us understand others when they communicate with us. Even though it is silent, listening is communication. We can often “hear” what is being said but don’t really listen well enough to discern what is meant by the person trying to communicate with us. In order to listen effectively, we should consider it an active process, in the same way we think about speaking or messaging. So what does active listening entail? There are some strategies you can use to help you become a good listener. First of all, stop talking. You can’t listen if you are talking. Secondly, turn off the television, put your phone in your pocket, silence the music and, if needed, go somewhere quiet, so you can actually focus on what is being said. Next, have empathy for the person talking to you. In other words, don’t begin thinking of ways to answer. Even if someone has a problem (with you or something else), avoid trying to immediately solve it; consider whether the person speaking to you really wants advice or action, or might simply want to be seen and heard. Finally, before you say anything as a reply, repeat what you heard so the other person can confirm that you heard them correctly. You would be amazed at how well these strategies work to help avoid misunderstandings and confusion. Think about all the times you have gone through a drive-through for food or coffee. The scenario is most often the same, right? You order, let’s say, medium fries, a burger with no cheese or onions, and a large soft drink. You then listen to the person inside the restaurant say back to you, “You want medium fries, a quarter pounder with no cheese or onions, and a large Coke.” If that is the right order, you say yes and move on to pay. This can be seen as active listening on both sides. The following activity can help you reflect on active listening. As said earlier, emotions are frequently involved in communication.It would be nice if everything was logical and everyone was always coming from that place of no emotion. But that’s not how it works in most instances. People have opinions, needs, desires, and outcomes they are looking for; feelings that can be hurt; and differing attitudes. The list could go on and on. What is important is that we need to be aware of our own emotions, and those of others, when attempting to communicate. Consider other people’s feelings as well as your own. Have empathy. And in the midst of trying to do that, listen, don’t just hear!

# Communicating ## Barriers to Effective Communication Questions to Consider: 1. Can you remember a time when you were surprised that what you communicated was not well received? 2. What are some other barriers to effective communication? Meredith and Anvi are working together on a project on marketing for a communications class: Anvi will create content for a flier, and Meredith will determine the best platform for advertising. In their brainstorming session the two realized they had some outstanding questions about how much content the flier should contain and whether they needed to turn in additional documentation. Meredith left it to Anvi to clarify this material since the content of the flier was her responsibility. Meredith waited impatiently the entire class session for Anvi to ask about the assignment. With class time almost up, Meredith spoke up, telling the instructor in front of the class that Anvi had a question about the assignment. Anvi clarified the assignment with the professor, but when Meredith tried to find her after class to talk about next steps, Anvi had gone. Meredith was surprised to receive an angry text from Anvi soon after class accusing Meredith of embarrassing her. Anvi pointed out that she’d managed to complete every assignment so far in the course and she didn’t need Meredith to take over on this one. Communication can go awry for a number of reasons. One could use jargon or technical language that is unfamiliar. There can be differences in the perception of an issue. People may speak different languages, or the colloquialisms that one uses don’t make sense to everyone. As in the case with Meredith and Anvi, cultural considerations can also affect the way people communicate. Anvi, for instance, prefers not to speak to the instructor during class because she feels that she’s interrupting. She prefers to approach the instructor after class time is over. Meredith, on the other hand, usually has a task list she likes to tick off one by one to make sure everything is moving on time, and she can sometimes become insensitive to the communication styles of others. Some barriers are likely to be emotional, often caused by topics that are sometimes considered problematic, such as sex, politics, or religion, which can interfere with effective communication. Sometimes what you are trying to communicate is embarrassing or otherwise a bit personal, and you kind of skirt around the edges of really saying what you want to say. Other emotions, such as stress, anger, depression, sadness, and the like, can have an effect on how well you communicate with another person, or they with you. Physical disabilities, such as hearing loss, can also come into play and get in the way of successful communication. Some of our behavior and communication is based on previous encounters, and we don’t see past that and start fresh. Sometimes the barrier can be a lack of interest or attention on the part of the receiver. There are also expectations about what might be said or stereotyping on the part of the sender or the receiver. Often when we communicate with people we have preconceptions about who they are, what they are thinking, and how they will react to whatever we say. These preconceptions can get in the way of productive communication. A person could have an attitude that comes with whatever is being said or written. Or perhaps there is a lack of motivation to clarify what you want to communicate, and the end result is not what you were hoping for. ### Preconceptions and Assumptions Have you ever thought about the message you are conveying to others? If you were the one standing on the street corner, what would others see? How do you play into others’ preconceptions simply based on your appearance? Of course, you should be yourself, but certain environments or situations require us to consider and, perhaps, change our appearance. Wearing a T-shirt with a “message” may be appropriate when you’re at leisure, but you wouldn't wear it to a job interview. College presents us with many situations where people’s preconceived notions of our appearance may come into play. For example, while it might not be fair, faculty may have a certain perception of students who attend lecture or office hours in pajamas. Consider the implications of sitting in your instructor’s office, asking for help, when they think you haven’t changed your clothes since you woke up. You are absolutely free to express yourself in a certain manner, but your appearance may miscommunicate your motivation or intent. Recognizing how our own preconceptions come into play, and acknowledging those of others, generally leads to more effective interactions. One of the biggest changes about the way we interact is the vast number of people available with whom we can communicate. This is a wonderful thing as we get to meet many people from diverse places. It can also be challenging because we are not always prepared to communicate with people from varying cultures, genders, ages, or religious and political views. Sometimes a simple lack of familiarity can lead to errors or even offense. Did your answers come from stereotypes or experience? (Or both?) Did you choose your words carefully with the child? Did you assume the man would know more about sports than the woman? Did you assume the elderly person wouldn't know about Twitter or Instagram? Perhaps being mindful in your interactions with others will help bring clarity to your communication. Unfortunately, relying on stereotypes often results in failed communication. Our understanding of others is often masked by the stereotypes that have infiltrated our society. Think about if you bring your own stereotypes to the table. Do you think others do the same? If so, those probably get in the way of a successful conversation. Look in more detail at the issues of stereotypes, assumptions, and avoiding offense (microaggressions) in Chapter 9. ### How Can Identities and Experiences Lead to Communication Barriers? Aside from our actual communication abilities and tools, we bring to each interaction many unique aspects based on who we are and where we come from. Diversity, as important and great as it is, requires us to consider the different perspectives and experiences others bring to a discussion or interaction, and to understand that our own views and contexts may be unfamiliar to others. While we shouldn’t shy away from this diversity, we should exercise patience and practice when communicating with new people. Part of this consideration is known as cultural competency, which you’ll learn more about in Chapter 9. Below are several aspects of people’s lives that you might consider when communicating. Identity is generally a feeling of belonging to a group. It is your self-perception and is usually related to nationality, ethnicity, religion, social class, sexual orientation, gender, generation, region or any social group that has its own distinct identity. Examples of cultural identity markers include the rituals people observe, the music that a group prefers, the style of clothing that is worn, the languages actual ethnic group one belongs to and its various foods and celebrations, or possibly the games that are a preferred sport in some communities. All of these variables can constitute a cultural identity for people. And belonging to these groups gives people an identity and a frame of reference on how to communicate and relate to the world around them. Gender identity refers to the deeply held, internal sense of a person’s gender. Sometimes, a person's genetically assigned sex does not line up with their gender identity. These individuals might refer to themselves as transgender, nonbinary, or gender-nonconforming.Newman, Tim. “Sex and gender: What’s the Difference?” Thus, gender is what a person identifies with. While gender is internal, social influences and perceptions can shape a person’s attitude and method of communication. For example, in some families and cultures, men are raised to be more dominant or less emotionally expressive. Their use of that approach may lead to communication problems with others. However, people’s assumptions about men may also lead to communication problems. The same can happen with other gender identities. What are your communication experiences with different genders? Have you seen people communicate a specific way based on the genders involved in the conversation? For example, does a classmate have a way of speaking to men that is different from their way of speaking to women? Does that difference become a barrier or issue in the communication? Age can have a very significant impact on communication. This is a little easier to understand, as people from varying generations bring very different experiences to their contact with others. We all grow up surrounded by certain music, clothing styles, language, and cultural influences. Modes of parenting have evolved, food choices have expanded, and tragedies and world politics have occurred, and each of these had an effect on the generation that experienced them firsthand. And, of course, most of us live or have lived with multiple generations in our lives and have experienced many of the differences ourselves. Think of the times you’ve tried to explain what you do on your social media platforms to your grandparent (though some grandparents are pretty good at all the new technologies!). And think of how very young family members—age three or four—describe the videos they watch or the games they play. As you can see from the above categories of cultural identity, gender, age, and our own stereotypes about people, there are many barriers that can come into play when you are trying to communicate with someone. In fact, on a college campus you probably will run into a large variety of differences in the people you meet. Many come from other countries, cultures, religions, and family backgrounds. Some may be in the country solely for the purpose of going to college, and intend to return home when they graduate. Some may have a lot of life experience, while others could be high school students in a dual enrollment program. All of that will have an effect on how they communicate, as your own upbringing and experiences have had an influence on who you are. Keep that in mind as you try to create relationships with the many people that are available to you, both face-to-face and online. ### Chapter Summary Communication is one of the basic components of how we live our lives. It’s a foundation of society and civilization as a whole. And the better we become at navigating through all of our various communication options, the more fulfilled and productive we will become. You have the capability to communicate with myriad people and groups in faraway places, as well as just next door or the room down the hall. In all of those interactions, the sender and recipient of each message brings their own context, purpose, and perspective. Your communication will be much more effective if you think about those differences before sending and especially before responding to people. Sometimes thinking so deeply about a simple conversation seems overwhelming and unnecessary, but keeping in mind the reasons you’re communicating and focusing on the words you use can lead to better relationships and outcomes. Listening, practicing empathy, and working on your cultural competence will enrich you and the people around you. Check the methods of communication you would most likely use for each of the following. Then write an explanation for why you have chosen the various forms of communication and how your choice had a link to the purpose of communicating with these different people. Take a close look at how you filled out the above chart. Do you find that there were definitely different purposes to how and why you used email instead of the phone, or Snapchat instead of a letter? It is good for you to reflect on your communication choices so that they are always most effective. Look at the forms of communication you chose for “boss.” Perhaps you chose face-to-face and email as the two forms of communication you would use with your boss. Think through how those might have had an effect on the success of your communication with them. Now select two other forms of communication. Would you have been able to get the same response from your boss? ### Rethinking Student Survey Revisit the questions you answered at the beginning of the chapter, and consider one option you learned in this chapter that might change your answer to one of them. 1. I think my mobile device is effective and appropriate for most communication. 2. I have a good sense of how to communicate in different environments/situations. 3. I listen more than I talk. 4. I have a lot of experience with research projects and essays. ### Where Do You Go from Here? Staying aware of how and when you communicate is important to every aspect of your life. As you learned throughout this chapter, there are many variables that come into play when you communicate. Most of the time none of us really think about all of these before we send out some kind of communication. Perhaps you would like to learn a little more about how to be mindful of your methods of communication. It will serve you well throughout your life. Choose a topic that interests you from the list below. Then search for sources that inform this topic and create an annotated bibliography that would be useful to someone who is interested in doing further research. 1. Communication using social media can be detrimental to mental health. 2. It is imperative that you pay attention to cultural norms when trying to communicate with others. 3. Listening is important to successful communication, and there are steps that can be taken to hone listening skills. 4. Men and women are said to communicate differently.

# Understanding Civility and Cultural Competence ## Introduction ### Student Survey How do you feel about diversity, equity, and inclusion? These questions will help you determine how the chapter concepts relate to you right now. As you are introduced to new concepts and practices, it can be informative to reflect on how your understanding changes over time. We’ll revisit these questions at the end of the chapter to see whether your feelings have changed. Take this quick survey to figure it out, ranking questions on a scale of 1–4, 1 meaning “least like me” and 4 meaning “most like me.” 1. I'm aware of the different categories of diversity and the various populations I may encounter. 2. I think we sometimes go too far in trying to be sensitive to different groups. 3. I think nearly everybody in our society has equal opportunity. 4. It’s not my role to ensure equity and inclusiveness among my peers or colleagues. You can also take the Chapter 9 survey anonymously online. ### About This Chapter In this chapter you will learn about diversity and how it plays a role in personal, civic, academic, and professional aspects of our lives. By the end of the chapter, you should be able to do the following: 1. Articulate how diverse voices have been historically ignored or minimized in American civic life, education, and culture. 2. Describe categories of identity and experience that contribute to diverse points of view. 3. Acknowledge implicit bias and recognize privilege. 4. Evaluate statements and situations based on their inclusion of diverse perspectives.

# Understanding Civility and Cultural Competence ## What Is Diversity, and Why Is Everybody Talking About It? Questions to Consider: 1. Historically, has diversity always been a concern? 2. What does it mean to be civil? 3. Why do people argue about diversity? ### What Would Shakespeare Say? Consider a classroom containing 25 college students and their instructor. In this particular class, all of the students and the instructor share the same racial group—White. In fact, everyone in the class is a White American from the Midwest. The instructor is leading the class through reading a scene from William Shakespeare’s drama Romeo and Juliet. As students read their parts, each one is thinking carefully about the role they have been given. One of the male students wonders what it would be like to read the part of Juliet; after all, men originally played the part in Shakespeare’s day. The young woman reading Juliet wonders if anyone would object to her taking the role if they knew she was a lesbian. What would it be like, she wonders, if Romeo, her love interest, were also played by a woman? One reader strongly identifies as German American, but he is reading the part of an Italian. Another student has a grandmother who is African American, but he looks like every other White student in the room. No one recognizes his mixed-race heritage. After the students finish reading the scene, the instructor announces, “In our classroom, everyone is the same, but these days when Shakespeare is staged, there is a tendency for nontraditional casting. Romeo could be Black, Juliet could be Latina, Lady Montague could be Asian. Do you think that kind of casting would disrupt the experience of seeing the play?” In this case, the instructor makes the assumption that because everyone in the class looks the same, they are the same. What did the instructor miss about the potential for diversity in his classroom? Have you ever made a similar mistake? Diversity is more than what we can recognize from external clues such as race and gender. Diversity includes many unseen aspects of identity, like sexual orientation, political point of view, veteran status, and many other aspects that you may have not considered. To be inclusive and civil within your community, it is essential that you avoid making assumptions about how other people define or identify themselves. In this chapter we will discover that each person is more than the sum of surface clues presented to the world. Personal experience, social and family history, public policy, and even geography play a role in how diversity is constructed. We’ll also explore elements of civility and fairness within the college community. One important objective of civility is to become culturally competent. Culturally competent people understand the complexity of their own personal identity, values, and culture. In addition, they respect the personal identities and values of others who may not share their identity and values. Further, culturally competent people remain open-minded when confronted with new cultural experiences. They learn to relate to and respect difference; they look beyond the obvious and learn as much as they can about what makes each person different and appreciated. These concepts tie closely to Chapter 8, particularly the section on Emotional Intelligence and Overcoming Barriers to Communication. ### Why Diversity Matters The United States of America is viewed the world over as a leader in democracy and democratic ideals. Our nation, young by most standards, continues to evolve to make the freedoms and opportunities available to all. Where the benefits of citizenship have been imperfect, discord over issues related to civil rights and inclusion have often been at the center of the conflict. To understand the importance of civility and civil engagement, it is necessary to acknowledge our country’s history. The United States is a country born out of protest. Colonists protesting what they felt were unfair taxes under King George III was at the foundation of the Revolutionary War. Over time, many groups have been given their civil liberties and equal access to all that our country has to offer through that same spirit of protest and petition. The United States is often described as a “melting pot,” a rich mixture made up of people of many colors, religions, abilities, etc. working together to make one great big stew. That is the image generations of Americans grew up learning, and it is a true one. The United States is a nation of immigrants, and cultural influences from around the world have added to its strength. Historically, however, not all contributions and voices have been acknowledged equally or adequately. Some groups have had to struggle to have their contributions acknowledged, be treated fairly, and be allowed full participation in the civic life of the country. Entire populations of people have been oppressed as a part of the nation’s history, something important for Americans to confront and acknowledge. For example, in what is known as the Trail of Tears, the U.S. government forcibly removed Native Americans from their homelands and made them walk to reservations; some had to travel more than 1,000 miles, and over 10,000 died on the journey. Further, in an act of forced assimilation, Native American children were taken from their families and placed in schools where they were not allowed to practice cultural traditions or speak their Native languages. This practice continued as late as the 1970s. As a result, many Native American languages have been lost or are at risk of being lost. The slavery of Africans occurred in America for close to 250 years. Much of the wealth in the United States during that time came directly from the labor of enslaved people; however, the enslaved people themselves did not benefit financially. During World War II, Japanese Americans were placed into internment camps and considered a danger to our country because our nation was at war with Japan. For many years, all women and minority men were traditionally left out of public discourse and denied participation in government, industry, and even cultural institutions such as sports. For example, the United States Supreme Court was founded in 1789; however, the court’s first female justice, Sandra Day O’Connor, was not appointed until 1981, almost 200 years later. Jackie Robinson famously became the first African American major league baseball player in 1947 when he was hired by the Brooklyn Dodgers, although the major leagues were established in 1869, decades earlier. The absence of White women and minorities was not an accident. Their exclusion was based on legal discrimination or unfair treatment. These are all examples of mistreatment, inequality, and discrimination, and they didn’t end without incredible sacrifice and heroism. The civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s and the equal rights movement for women’s rights in the 1970s are examples of how public protests work to bring attention to discriminatory practices and to create change. Because racism, anti-Semitism, sexism, and other forms of bias and intolerance still exist, civil engagement and protests continue, and policies must be constantly monitored. Many people still work to ensure the gains these communities have made in acquiring the rights of full citizenship are not lost. Diversity refers to differences in the human experience. As different groups have gained in number and influence, our definition of diversity has evolved to embrace many variables that reflect a multitude of different backgrounds, experiences, and points of view, not just race and gender. Diversity takes into account age, socioeconomic factors, ability (such as sight, hearing, and mobility), ethnicity, veteran status, geography, language, sexual orientation, religion, size, and other factors. At one time or another, each group has had to make petitions to the government for equal treatment under the law and appeals to society for respect. Safeguarding these groups’ hard-won rights and public regard maintains diversity and its two closely related factors, equity and inclusion. ### The Role of Equity and Inclusion Equity plays a major part in achieving fairness in a diverse landscape. Equity gives everyone equal access to opportunity and success. For example, you may have seen interpreters for deaf or hard of hearing people in situations where a public official is making an announcement about an impending weather emergency. Providing immediate translation into sign language means that there is no gap between what the public official is saying and when all people receive the information. Simultaneous sign language provides equity.https://www.nad.org/resources/american-sign-language/community-and-culture-frequently-asked-questions/ Similarly, many students have learning differences that require accommodations in the classroom. For example, a student with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) might be given more time to complete tests or writing assignments. The extra time granted takes into account that students with ADHD process information differently. If a student with a learning difference is given more time than other students to complete a test, that is a matter of equity. The student is not being given an advantage; the extra time gives them an equal chance at success. The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA, 1990) is a federal government policy that addresses equity in the workplace, housing, and public places. The ADA requires “reasonable accommodations” so that people with disabilities have equal access to the same services as people without disabilities. For example, wheelchair lifts on public transportation, automatic doors, entrance ramps, and elevators are examples of accommodations that eliminate barriers of participation for people with certain disabilities. Without the above accommodations, those with a disability may justly feel like second-class citizens because their needs were not anticipated. Further, they might have to use their own resources to gain equal access to services although their tax dollars contribute to providing that same access and service to other citizens. Equity levels the playing field so that everyone’s needs are anticipated and everyone has an equal starting point. However, understanding equity is not enough. When equity is properly considered, there is also inclusion. Inclusion means that there are a multiplicity of voices, skills, and interests represented in any given situation. Inclusion has played a major role in education, especially in terms of creating inclusion classrooms and inclusive curricula. In an inclusion classroom, students of different skill levels study together. For example, students with and without developmental disabilities study in the same classroom. Such an arrangement eliminates the stigma of the “special education classroom” where students were once segregated. In addition, in inclusion classrooms all students receive support when needed. Students benefit from seeing how others learn. In an inclusive curriculum, a course includes content and perspectives from underrepresented groups. For example, a college course in psychology might include consideration of different contexts such as immigration, incarceration, or unemployment in addition to addressing societal norms. Inclusion means that these voices of varied background and experience are integrated into discussions, research, and assignments rather than ignored. ### Our Country Is Becoming More Diverse You may have heard the phrase "majority minority" meaning it is predicted that today’s racial minorities will, collectively, be the majority of the population in the future. The graph from the Pew Research Center projects that by the year 2065, U.S. demographics will have shifted significantly. In 2019, the White population made up just over 60% of the population. In 2065, the Pew Research Center predicts that White people will be approximately 46% of the population. The majority of Americans will be the non-White majority, 54% Hispanic/Latino people, Black people, and Asian people. What does this mean? It could mean that the United States begins accepting Spanish as a mainstream language since the Hispanic/Latino population will be significantly larger. It could mean a changing face for local governments. It could mean that our country will elect its second non-White president. Beyond anything specific, the shifting demographics of the United States could mean greater attention is paid to diversity awareness, equity, and inclusion. ### Education: Equity for All Education has been one of the most significant arenas for social change related to our rights as Americans. And the effects of that change have significantly impacted other power dynamics in society. You need look no further than the landmark case Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka (1954) to see how our nation has responded passionately in civil and uncivil ways to appeals for equity and inclusion in public education. For much of the 20th century, African Americans lived under government-sanctioned separation better known as segregation. Not only were schools segregated, but Jim Crow laws allowed for legal separation in transportation, hospitals, parks, restaurants, theaters, and just about every aspect of public life. These laws enacted that there be “Whites only” water fountains and restrooms. Only White people could enter the front door of a restaurant or sit on the main level of a movie theater, while African Americans had to enter through the back door and sit in the balcony. The segregation also included Mexican Americans and Catholics, who were forced to attend separate schools. Brown v. Board of Education was a landmark Supreme Court case that challenged the interpretation of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States. The case involved the father of Linda Brown suing the Topeka, Kansas, board of education for denying his daughter the right to attend an all-White school. Oliver Brown maintained that segregation left his Black community with inferior schools, a condition counter to the equal protection clause contained in Section I of the 14th Amendment: There was widespread heated opposition to desegregated education across the country. Passions were even more severe after Brown v. Board of Education was won by the plaintiff on appeal to the United States Supreme Court. In effect, the case changed the power dynamics in America by leveling the playing field for education. No longer were White schools (and their better resources) legally segregated. In principal, there was equity—equal access. Debates in the courtrooms surrounding Brown were passionate but professional. Protests and debate in those communities directly affected by the decision, especially in the South, were intense, violent confrontations that demonstrated the height of incivility. One thing you may notice about uncivil behavior is the difficulty most have looking back on those actions. Educational institutions like colleges and school districts are critically important spaces for equity and inclusion, and debates around them remain challenging. Transgender students in America’s schools face discrimination, harrassment, and bullying, which causes nearly 45 percent of LGBTQ+ to feel unsafe because of their gender expression and 60 percent of to feel unsafe due to their sexual orientation. Many of these students miss school or experience significant stress, which usually has a negative impact on their grades, participation, and overall success.2017 National School Climate Survey, GLESN. https://www.glsen.org/research/school-climate-survey In essence, this hostility creates inequality. Regardless of individual state or district laws on bathroom use and overall accommodation, federal law protects all students from discrimination, especially that based on categories such as gender. But implementation of these federal protections varies, and, in general, many outside the transgender community do not fully understand, empathize with, or support transgender rights. How can the circumstances improve for transgender students? In other societal changes throughout our nation’s history, court decisions, new legislation, protests, and general public opinion combined to right past wrongs and provide justice and protection for mistreated people. For example, in 2015, the Supreme Court upheld the right to same-sex marriage under the 14th Amendment. Just as African Americans publicly debated and protested educational inequality, the gay community used discussion, protest, and debate to sway public and legal opinion. Proponents of gay marriage faced fervent argument against their position based on religion and culture; like other minority groups, they were confronted with name-calling, job insecurity, family division, religious isolation, and physical confrontation. And as has often been the case, success in achieving marriage equality eventually came through the courts. Legal remedies are significant, but can take a very long time. Before they see success in the courts or legislatures, transgender students in America’s schools will continue to undergo harsh treatment. Their lives and education will remain very difficult until people from outside their community better understand their situation. ### Debates: Civility vs. Incivility Healthy debate is a desirable part of a community. In a healthy debate, people are given room to explain their point of view. In a healthy airing of differences, people on opposing sides of an argument can reach common ground and compromise or even agree to disagree and move on. However, incivility occurs when people are not culturally competent. An individual who is not culturally competent might make negative assumptions about others’ values, lack an open mindset, or be inflexible in thinking. Instead of being tolerant of different points of view, they may try to shut down communication by not listening or by keeping someone with a different point of view from being heard at all. Out of frustration, a person who is uncivil may resort to name-calling or discrediting another person only with the intention of causing confusion and division within a community. Incivility can also propagate violence. Such uncivil reaction to difficult issues is what makes many people avoid certain topics at all costs. Instead of seeking out diverse communities, people retreat to safe spaces where they will not be challenged to hear opposing opinions or have their beliefs contested. Debates on difficult or divisive topics surrounding diversity, especially those promoting orchestrated change, are often passionate. People on each side may base their positions on deeply held beliefs, family traditions, personal experience, academic expertise, and a desire to orchestrate change. With such a strong foundation, emotions can be intense, and debates can become uncivil. Even when the disagreement is based on information rather than personal feelings, discussions can quickly turn to arguments. For example, in academic environments, it’s common to find extremely well-informed arguments in direct opposition to each other. Two well-known economics faculty members from your college could debate for hours on financial policies, with each professor’s position backed by data, research, and publications. Each person could feel very strongly that they are right and the other person is wrong. They may even feel that the approach proposed by their opponent would actually do damage to the country or to certain groups of people. But for this debate—whether it occurs over lunch or on an auditorium stage—to remain civil, the participants need to maintain certain standards of behavior. Civility is a valued practice that takes advantage of cultural and political systems we have in place to work through disagreements while maintaining respect for others’ points of view. Civil behavior allows for a respectful airing of grievances. The benefit of civil discussion is that members of a community can hear different sides of an argument, weigh evidence, and decide for themselves which side to support. You have probably witnessed or taken part in debates in your courses, at social events, or even at family gatherings. What makes people so passionate about certain issues? First, some may have a personal stake in an issue, such as abortion rights. Convincing other people to share their beliefs may be intended to create a community that will protect their rights. Second, others may have deeply held beliefs based on faith or cultural practices. They argue based on deeply held moral and ethical beliefs. Third, others may be limited in their background knowledge about an issue but are able to speak from a “script” of conventional points of view. They may not want to stray from the script because they do not have enough information to extend an argument. ### Rules for Fair Debate The courtroom and the public square are not the only places where serious debate takes place. Every day we tackle tough decisions that involve other people, some of whom have strong opposing points of view. To be successful in college, you will need to master sound and ethical approaches to argument, whether it be for a mathematical proof or an essay in a composition class. You probably already know how to be sensitive and thoughtful when giving feedback to a family member or friend. You think about their feelings and the best way to confront your disagreement without attacking them. Of course, sometimes it’s easier to be less sensitive with people who love you no matter what. Still, whether in a classroom, a workplace, or your family dinner table, there are rules for debating that help people with opposing points of view get to the heart of an issue while remaining civil: 1. Avoid direct insults and personal attacks—the quickest way to turn someone away from your discussion is to attack them personally. This is actually a common logical fallacy called ad hominem, which means “to the person,” and it means to attack the person rather than the issue. 2. Avoid generalizations and extreme examples—these are two more logical fallacies called bandwagon, or ad populum, and reduction to absurdity, or argumentum ad absurdum. The first is when you argue that everyone is doing something so it must be right. The second is when you argue that a belief or position would lead to an absurd or extreme outcome. 3. Avoid appealing to emotions rather than facts—it’s easy to get emotional if you’re debating something about which you feel passionate. Someone disagreeing with you can feel like a personal affront. This fallacy, called argument to compassion, appeals to one’s emotions and happens when we mistake feelings for facts. While strong and motivating, our feelings are not great arbiters of the truth. 4. Avoid irrelevant arguments—sometimes it’s easy to change the subject when we’re debating, especially if we feel flustered or like we’re not being heard. Irrelevant conclusion is the fallacy of introducing a topic that may or may not be sound logic but is not about the issue under debate. 5. Avoid appeal to bias—you may not have strong opinions on every topic but, no doubt, you are opinionated about things that matter to you. This strong view can create a bias, or a leaning toward an idea or belief. While there’s nothing wrong with having a strong opinion, you must be mindful to ensure that your bias doesn’t create prejudice. Ask yourself if your biases influence the ways in which you interact with other people and with ideas that differ from your own. 6. Avoid appeal to tradition—just because something worked in the past or was true in the past does not necessarily mean that it is true today. It’s easy to commit this fallacy, as we often default to “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” It’s appealing because it seems to be common sense. However, it ignores questions such as whether the existing or old policy truly works as well as it could and if new technology or new ways of thinking can offer an improvement. Old ways can certainly be good ways, but not simply because they are old. 7. Avoid making assumptions—often, we think we know enough about a topic or maybe even more than the person talking, so we jump ahead to the outcome. We assume we know what they’re referring to, thinking about, or even imagining, but this is a dangerous practice because it often leads to misunderstandings. In fact, most logical fallacies are the result of assuming. 8. Strive for root cause analysis—getting at the root cause of something means to dig deeper and deeper until you discover why a problem or disagreement occurred. Sometimes, the most obvious or immediate cause for a problem is not actually the most significant one. Discovering the root cause can help to resolve the conflict or reveal that there isn’t one at all. 9. Avoid obstinacy—in the heat of a debate, it’s easy to dig in your heels and refuse to acknowledge when you’re wrong. Your argument is at stake, and so is your ego. However, it’s important to give credit where it’s due and to say you’re wrong if you are. If you misquoted a fact or made an incorrect assumption, admit to it and move on. 10. Strive for resolution—while some people like to debate for the sake of debating, in the case of a true conflict, both parties should seek agreement, or at least a truce. One way to do this is to listen more than you speak. Listen, listen, listen: you’ll learn and perhaps make better points of your own if you deeply consider the other point of view. ### Online Civility The Internet is the watershed innovation of our time. It provides incredible access to information and resources, helping us to connect in ways inconceivable just a few decades ago. But it also presents risks, and these risks seem to be changing and increasing at the same rate as technology itself. Because of our regular access to the Internet, it’s important to create a safe, healthy, and enjoyable online space. In the survey conducted by Microsoft, “nearly 4 in 10 [respondents] feel unwanted online contact (39%), bullying (39%) and unwelcome sexual attention (39%) will worsen [in 2020]. A slightly smaller percentage (35%) expect people’s reputations, both professional and personal, will continue to be attacked online. One-quarter (25%) of respondents see improvement across each of these risk areas in 2020.” Digital civility is the practice of leading with empathy and kindness in all online interactions and treating each other with respect and dignity. This type of civility requires users to fully understand and appreciate potential harms and to follow the new rules of the digital road. You can find a discussion on best practices for online communication, often referred to as Netiquette, in Chapter 8 on Communicating. Following, are some basic guidelines to help exercise digital civility: 1. Live the “Golden Rule” and treat others with respect and dignity both online and off. 2. Respect differences of culture, geography, and opinion, and when disagreements surface, engage thoughtfully. 3. Pause before replying to comments or posts you disagree with, and ensure responses are considerate and free of name-calling and abuse. 4. Stand up for yourself and others if it’s safe and prudent to do so.

# Understanding Civility and Cultural Competence ## Categories of Diversity Questions to Consider: 1. What is identity? 2. Can a person have more than one identity? 3. Can identity be ambiguous? 4. What are fluidity and intersectionality? The multiple roles we play in life—student, sibling, employee, roommate, for example—are only a partial glimpse into our true identity. Right now, you may think, “I really don’t know what I want to be,” meaning you don’t know what you want to do for a living, but have you ever tried to define yourself in terms of the sum of your parts? Social roles are those identities we assume in relationship to others. Our social roles tend to shift based on where we are and who we are with. Taking into account your social roles as well as your nationality, ethnicity, race, friends, gender, sexuality, beliefs, abilities, geography, etc., who are you? ### Who Am I? Popeye, a familiar 20th-century cartoon character, was a sailor-philosopher. He declared his own identity in a circular manner, landing us right where we started: “I am what I am and that’s all that I am.” Popeye proves his existence rather than help us identify him. It is his title, “The Sailor Man,” that tells us how Popeye operates in the social sphere. According to the American Psychological Association, personal identity is an individual’s sense of self defined by (a) a set of physical, psychological, and interpersonal characteristics that is not wholly shared with any other person and (b) a range of affiliations (e.g., ethnicity) and social roles. Your identity is tied to the most dominant aspects of your background and personality.APA Dictionary of Psychology https://dictionary.apa.org/identity proper citation to come It determines the lens through which you see the world and the lens through which you receive information. To better understand identity, consider how social psychologists describe it. Social psychologists, those who study how social interactions take place, often categorize identity into four types: personal identity, role identity, social identity, and collective identity. Personal identity captures what distinguishes one person from another based on life experiences. No two people, even identical twins, live the same life. Role identity defines how we interact in certain situations. Our roles change from setting to setting, and so do our identities. At work you may be a supervisor; in the classroom you are a peer working collaboratively; at home, you may be the parent of a 10-year-old. In each setting, your bubbly personality may be the same, but how your coworkers, classmates, and family see you is different. Social identity shapes our public lives by our awareness of how we relate to certain groups. For example, an individual might relate to or “identify with” Korean Americans, Chicagoans, Methodists, and Lakers fans. These identities influence our interactions with others. Upon meeting someone, for example, we look for connections as to how we are the same or different. Our awareness of who we are makes us behave a certain way in relation to others. If you identify as a hockey fan, you may feel an affinity for someone else who also loves the game. Collective identity refers to how groups form around a common cause or belief. For example, individuals may bond over similar political ideologies or social movements. Their identity is as much a physical formation as a shared understanding of the issues they believe in. For example, many people consider themselves part of the collective energy surrounding the #metoo movement. Others may identify as fans of a specific type of entertainment such as Trekkies, fans of the Star Trek series. ### “I am large. I contain multitudes.” Walt Whitman In his epic poem Song of Myself, Walt Whitman writes, “Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself (I am large. I contain multitudes.).” Whitman was asserting and defending his shifting sense of self and identity. Those lines importantly point out that our identities may evolve over time. What we do and believe today may not be the same tomorrow. Further, at any one moment, the identities we claim may seem at odds with each other. Shifting identities are a part of personal growth. While we are figuring out who we truly are and what we believe, our sense of self and the image that others have of us may be unclear or ambiguous. Many people are uncomfortable with identities that do not fit squarely into one category. How do you respond when someone’s identity or social role is unclear? Such ambiguity may challenge your sense of certainty about the roles that we all play in relationship to one another. Racial, ethnic, and gender ambiguity, in particular, can challenge some people’s sense of social order and social identity. When we force others to choose only one category of identity (race, ethnicity, or gender, for example) to make ourselves feel comfortable, we do a disservice to the person who identifies with more than one group. For instance, people with multiracial ancestry are often told that they are too much of one and not enough of another. The actor Keanu Reeves has a complex background. He was born in Beirut, Lebanon, to a White English mother and a father with Chinese-Hawaiian ancestry. His childhood was spent in Hawaii, Australia, New York, and Toronto. Reeves considers himself Canadian and has publicly acknowledged influences from all aspects of his heritage. Would you feel comfortable telling Keanu Reeves how he must identify racially and ethnically? There is a question many people ask when they meet someone whom they cannot clearly identify by checking a specific identity box. Inappropriate or not, you have probably heard people ask, “What are you?” Would it surprise you if someone like Keanu Reeves shrugged and answered, “I’m just me”? Malcom Gladwell is an author of five New York Times best-sellers and is hailed as one of Foreign Policy’s Top Global Thinkers. He has spoken on his experience with identity as well. Gladwell has a Black Jamaican mother and a White Irish father. He often tells the story of how the perception of his hair has allowed him to straddle racial groups. As long as he kept his hair cut very short, his fair skin obscured his Black ancestry, and he was most often perceived as White. However, once he let his hair grow long into a curly Afro style, Gladwell says he began being pulled over for speeding tickets and stopped at airport check-ins. His racial expression carried serious consequences. ### Gender More and more, gender is also a diversity category that we increasingly understand to be less clearly defined. Some people identify themselves as gender fluid or non-binary. “Binary” refers to the notion that gender is only one of two possibilities, male or female. Fluidity suggests that there is a range or continuum of expression. Gender fluidity acknowledges that a person may vacillate between male and female identity. Asia Kate Dillon is an American actor and the first non-binary actor to perform in a major television show with their roles on Orange is the New Black and Billions. In an article about the actor, a reporter conducting the interview describes his struggle with trying to describe Dillon to the manager of the restaurant where the two planned to meet. The reporter and the manger struggle with describing someone who does not fit a pre-defined notion of gender identity. Imagine the situation: You’re meeting someone at a restaurant for the first time, and you need to describe the person to a manager. Typically, the person’s gender would be a part of the description, but what if the person cannot be described as a man or a woman? Within any group, individuals obviously have a right to define themselves; however, collectively, a group’s self-determination is also important. The history of Black Americans demonstrates a progression of self-determined labels: Negro, Afro-American, colored, Black, African American. Similarly, in the nonbinary community, self-described labels have evolved. Nouns such as genderqueer and pronouns such as hir, ze, and Mx. (instead of Miss, Mrs. or Mr.) have entered not only our informal lexicon, but the dictionary as well. Transgender men and women were assigned a gender identity at birth that does not fit their true identity. Even though our culture is increasingly giving space to non-heteronormative (straight) people to speak out and live openly, they do so at a risk. Violence against gay, nonbinary, and transgender people occurs at more frequent rates than for other groups. To make ourselves feel comfortable, we often want people to fall into specific categories so that our own social identity is clear. However, instead of asking someone to make us feel comfortable, we should accept the identity people choose for themselves. Cultural competency includes respectfully addressing individuals as they ask to be addressed. ### Intersectionality The many layers of our multiple identities do not fit together like puzzle pieces with clear boundaries between one piece and another. Our identities overlap, creating a combined identity in which one aspect is inseparable from the next. The term intersectionality was coined by legal scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw in 1989 to describe how the experience of Black women was a unique combination of gender and race that could not be divided into two separate identities. In other words, this group could not be seen solely as women or solely as Black; where their identities overlapped is considered the “intersection,” or crossroads, where identities combine in specific and inseparable ways. Intersectionality and awareness of intersectionality can drive societal change, both in how people see themselves and how they interact with others. That experience can be very inward-facing, or can be more external. It can also lead to debate and challenges. For example, the term “Latinx” is growing in use because it is seen as more inclusive than “Latino/Latina,” but some people—including scholars and advocates—lay out substantive arguments against its use. While the debate continues, it serves as an important reminder of a key element of intersectionality: Never assume that all people in a certain group or population feel the same way. Why not? Because people are more than any one element of their identity; they are defined by more than their race, color, geographic origin, gender, or socio-economic status. The overlapping aspects of each person’s identity and experiences will create a unique perspective.

# Understanding Civility and Cultural Competence ## Navigating the Diversity Landscape Questions to Consider: 1. What happens when we make assumptions about others? 2. Are microaggressions honest mistakes? 3. How do I know if I have a diversity “problem”? 4. How important is diversity awareness in the college classroom? ### Avoid Making Assumptions By now you should be aware of the many ways diversity can be both observable and less apparent. Based on surface clues, we may be able to approximate someone’s age, weight, and perhaps their geographical origin, but even with those observable characteristics, we cannot be sure about how individuals define themselves. If we rely too heavily on assumptions, we may be buying into stereotypes, or generalizations. Stereotyping robs people of their individual identities. If we buy into stereotypes, we project a profile onto someone that probably is not true. Prejudging people without knowing them, better known as prejudice or bias, has consequences for both the person who is biased and the individual or group that is prejudged. In such a scenario, the intimacy of real human connections is lost. Individuals are objectified, meaning that they only serve as symbolic examples of who we assume they are instead of the complex, intersectional individuals we know each person to be. Stereotyping may be our way of avoiding others’ complexities. When we stereotype, we do not have to remember distinguishing details about a person. We simply write their stories for ourselves and let those stories fulfill who we expect those individuals to be. For example, a hiring manager may project onto an Asian American the stereotype of being good at math, and hire her as a researcher over her Hispanic counterpart. Similarly, an elementary school teacher may recruit an Indian American sixth-grader to the spelling bee team because many Indian American students have won national tournaments in the recent past. A real estate developer may hire a gay man as an interior designer because he has seen so many gay men performing this job on television programs. A coach chooses a White male student to be a quarterback because traditionally, quarterbacks have been White men. In those scenarios, individuals of other backgrounds, with similar abilities, may have been overlooked because they do not fit the stereotype of who others suspect them to be. Earlier in this chapter, equity and inclusion were discussed as going hand in hand with achieving civility and diversity. In the above scenarios, equity and inclusion are needed as guiding principles for those with decision-making power who are blocking opportunity for nontraditional groups. Equity might be achieved by giving a diverse group of people access to internships to demonstrate their skills. Inclusion might be achieved by assembling a hiring or recruiting committee that might have a better chance of seeing beyond stereotypical expectations. Being civil and inclusive does not require a deep-seated knowledge of the backgrounds and perspectives of everyone you meet. That would be impossible. But avoiding assumptions and being considerate will build better relationships and provide a more effective learning experience. It takes openness and self-awareness and sometimes requires help or advice, but learning to be sensitive—practicing assumption avoidance—is like a muscle you can strengthen. ### Be Mindful of Microaggressions Whether we mean to or not, we sometimes offend people by not thinking about what we say and the manner in which we say it. One danger of limiting our social interactions to people who are from our own social group is in being insensitive to people who are not like us. The term microaggression refers to acts of insensitivity that reveal our inherent biases, cultural incompetency, and hostility toward someone outside of our community. Those biases can be toward race, gender, nationality, or any other diversity variable. The individual on the receiving end of a microaggression is reminded of the barriers to complete acceptance and understanding in the relationship. Let’s consider an example. Ann is new to her office job. Her colleagues are friendly and helpful, and her first two months have been promising. She uncovered a significant oversight in a financial report, and, based on her attention to detail, was put on a team working with a large client. While waiting in line at the cafeteria one day, Ann’s new boss overhears her laughing and talking loudly with some colleagues. He then steps into the conversation, saying, “Ann, this isn’t a night at one of your clubs. Quiet down.” As people from the nearby tables look on, Ann is humiliated and angered. What was Ann’s manager implying? What could he have meant by referring to “your clubs?” How would you feel if such a comment were openly directed at you? One reaction to this interaction might be to say, “So what? Why let other people determine how you feel? Ignore them.” While that is certainly reasonable, it may ignore the pain and invalidation of the experience. And even if you could simply ignore some of these comments, there is a compounding effect of being frequently, if not constantly, barraged by such experiences. Consider the table below, which highlights common examples of microaggressions. In many cases, the person speaking these phrases may not mean to be offensive. In fact, in some cases the speaker might think they are being nice. However, appropriate terminology and other attitudes or acceptable descriptions change all the time. Before saying something, consider how a person could take the words differently than you meant them. As we discussed in Chapter 8, emotional intelligence and empathy can help understand another’s perspective. ### Everyone Has a Problem: Implicit Bias One reason we fall prey to stereotypes is our own implicit bias. Jo Handelsman and Natasha Sakraney, who developed science and technology policy during the Obama administration, defined implicit bias. According to Handelsman and Sakraney, “A lifetime of experience and cultural history shapes people and their judgments of others. Research demonstrates that most people hold unconscious, implicit assumptions that influence their judgments and perceptions of others. Implicit bias manifests in expectations or assumptions about physical or social characteristics dictated by stereotypes that are based on a person’s race, gender, age, or ethnicity. People who intend to be fair, and believe they are egalitarian, apply biases unintentionally. Some behaviors that result from implicit bias manifest in actions, and others are embodied in the absence of action; either can reduce the quality of the workforce and create an unfair and destructive environment.”Handlesman, Jo and Sakraney, Natasha. White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/sites/default/files/microsites/ostp/bias_9-14-15_final.pdf. The notion of bias being “implicit,” or unconsciously embedded in our thoughts and actions, is what makes this characteristic hard to recognize and evaluate. You may assume that you hold no racial bias, but messages from our upbringing, social groups, and media can feed us negative racial stereotypes no matter how carefully we select and consume information. Further, online environments have algorithms that reduce our exposure to diverse points of view. Psychologists generally agree that implicit bias affects the judgements we make about others. Harvard University’s Project Implicit website offers an interactive implicit association test that measures individual preference for characteristics such as weight, skin color, and gender. During the test, participants are asked to match a series of words and images with positive or negative associations. Test results, researchers suggest, can indicate the extent to which there is implicit bias in favor of or against a certain group. Completing a test like this might reveal unconscious feelings you were previously aware you had. The researchers who developed the test make clear that there are limitations to its validity and that for some, the results of the test can be unsettling. The test makers advise not taking the test if you feel unprepared to receive unexpected results. ### Cultural Competency in the College Classroom We carry our attitudes about gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, age, and other diversity categories with us wherever we go. The college classroom is no different than any other place. Both educators and students maintain their implicit bias and are sometimes made uncomfortable by interacting with people different than themselves. Take for example a female freshman who has attended a school for girls for six years before college. She might find being in the classroom with her new male classmates a culture shock and dismiss male students’ contributions to class discussions. Similarly, a homeschooled student may be surprised to find that no one on campus shares his religion. He may feel isolated in class until he finds other students of similar background and experience. Embedded in your classroom may be peers who are food insecure, undocumented, veterans, atheist, Muslim, or politically liberal or conservative. These identities may not be visible, but they still may separate and even marginalize these members of your community. If, in the context of classroom conversations, their perspectives are overlooked, they may also feel very isolated. In each case, the students’ assumptions, previous experience with diversity of any kind, and implicit bias surface. How each student reacts to the new situation can differ. One reaction might be to self-segregate, that is, locate people they believe are similar to them based on how they look, the assumption being that those people will share the same academic skills, cultural interests, and personal values that make the student feel comfortable. The English instructor at the beginning of this chapter who assumed all of his students were the same demonstrated how this strategy could backfire. You do not have to be enrolled in a course related to diversity, such as Asian American literature, to be concerned about diversity in the classroom. Diversity touches all aspects of our lives and can enter a curriculum or discussion at any time because each student and the instructor bring multiple identities and concerns into the classroom. Ignoring these concerns, which often reveal themselves as questions, makes for an unfulfilling educational experience. In higher education, diversity includes not only the identities we have discussed such as race and gender, but also academic preparation and ability, learning differences, familiarity with technology, part-time status, language, and other factors students bring with them. Of course, the instructor, too, brings diversity into the classroom setting. They decide how to incorporate diverse perspectives into class discussions, maintain rules of civility, choose inclusive materials to study or reference, receive training on giving accommodations to students who need them, and acknowledge their own implicit bias. If they are culturally competent, both students and instructors are juggling many concerns. How do you navigate diversity in the college classroom? ### Academic Freedom Allows for Honest Conversations Academic freedom applies to the permission instructors and students have to follow a line of intellectual inquiry without the fear of censorship or sanction. There are many heavily contested intellectual and cultural debates that, for some, are not resolved. A student who wants to argue against prevailing opinion has the right to do so based on academic freedom. Many point to a liberal bias on college campuses. Conservative points of view on immigration, education, and even science, are often not accepted on campus as readily as liberal viewpoints. An instructor or student who wants to posit a conservative idea, however, has the right to do so because of academic freedom. Uncomfortable conversations about diversity are a part of the college classroom landscape. For example, a student might use statistical data to argue that disparities in degrees for men and women in chemistry reflect an advantage in analytical ability for men. While many would disagree with that theory, the student could pursue that topic in a discussion or paper as long as they use evidence and sound, logical reasoning. ### “I’m just me.” Remember the response to the “What are you?” question for people whose racial or gender identity was ambiguous? “I’m just me” also serves those who are undecided about diversity issues or those who do not fall into hard categories such as feminist, liberal, conservative, or religious. Ambiguity sometimes makes others feel uncomfortable. For example, if someone states she is a Catholic feminist unsure about abortion rights, another student may wonder how to compare her own strong pro-life position to her classmate’s uncertainty. It would be much easier to know exactly which side her classmate is on. Some people straddle the fence on big issues, and that is OK. You do not have to fit neatly into one school of thought. Answer your detractors with “I’m just me,” or tell them if you genuinely don’t know enough about an issue or are not ready to take a strong position. ### Seek Resources and Projects That Contribute to Civility A culturally responsive curriculum addresses cultural and ethnic differences of students. Even in classrooms full of minority students, the textbooks and topics may only reflect American cultural norms determined by the mainstream and tradition. Students may not relate to teaching that never makes reference to their socio-economic background, race, or their own way of thinking and expression. Educators widely believe that a culturally responsive curriculum, one that integrates relatable contexts for learning and reinforces cultural norms of the students receiving the information, makes a difference. The K-12 classroom is different than the college classroom. Because of academic freedom, college instructors are not required to be culturally inclusive. (They are usually required to be respectful and civil, but there are different interpretations of those qualities.) Because American colleges are increasingly more sensitive to issues regarding diversity, faculty are compelled to be inclusive. Still, diversity is not always adequately addressed. In his TED “Talk Can Art Amend History?” the artist Titus Kaphar tells the story of the art history class that influenced him to become an artist and provides an example of this absence of diversity in the college classroom. Kaphar explains that his instructor led his class through important periods and artists throughout history, but failed to spend time on Black artists, something that Kaphar was anxiously awaiting. The instructor stated that there was just not enough time to cover it. While the professor probably did not intend to be noninclusive, her choice resulted in just that. Kaphar let his disappointment fuel his passion and mission to amend the representation of Black figures in historical paintings. His work brings to light the unnoticed Black figures that are too often overlooked. Any student can respond to a lack of diversity in a curriculum as Titus Kaphar did. Where you find diversity missing, when possible, fill in the gaps with research papers and projects that broaden your exposure to diverse perspectives. Take the time to research contributions in your field by underrepresented groups. Discover the diversity issues relevant to your major. Are women well-represented in your field? Is there equity when it comes to access to opportunities such as internships? Are veterans welcomed? Do the academic societies in your discipline have subgroups or boards focused on diversity and equity? (Most do.) Resources for expanding our understanding and inclusion of diversity issues are all around us. ### Directly Confront Prejudice To draw our attention to possible danger, the Department of Homeland Security has adopted the phrase, “If you see something, say something.” That credo can easily be adopted to confront stereotypes and bias: “If you hear something, say something.” Academic freedom protects students and instructors from reprisal for having unpopular opinions, but prejudice is never correct, nor should it be tolerated. Do not confuse hate speech, such as sexist language, anti-Semitism, xenophobia, and acts that reflect those points of view, with academic freedom. Yes, the classroom is a place to discuss these attitudes, but it is not a place to direct those sentiments toward fellow students, educators, or society in general. Most higher education institutions have mission statements and codes of conduct that warn students about engaging in such behavior. The consequences for violators are usually probation and possibly dismissal. Further policies such as affirmative action and Title IX are instituted to evaluate and maintain racial and gender equity. ### Affirmative Action and Higher Education Affirmative action is a policy that began during the John F. Kennedy administration to eliminate discrimination in employment. Since that time, it has expanded as a policy to protect from discrimination in a number of contexts, including higher education. Most notably in higher education, affirmative action has been used to create equity in access. Institutions have used affirmative action as a mandate of sorts in admission policies to create diverse student bodies. Colleges sometimes overlook traditional admissions criteria and use socioeconomic and historical disparities in education equity as criteria to admit underrepresented groups. Affirmative action is a federal requirement to be met by entities that contract with the federal government; most colleges are federal government contractors and must adhere to the policy by stating a timeline by which its affirmative action goals are met. Many interpret “goals” as quotas, meaning that a certain number of students from underrepresented groups would be admitted, presumably to meet affirmative action requirements. Opposition to affirmative action in college admissions has been pursued in several well-known court cases. ### Regents of the University of California v. Bakke This 1978 case resulted in a U.S. Supreme Court decision to allow race to be used as one of the criteria in higher education admission policies as long as quotas were not established and race was not the only criterion for admission. The case stemmed from Alan Bakke, an applicant to the University of California at Davis Medical School, suing the university because he was not admitted but had higher test scores and grades than minority students who had been accepted. Lawyers for Bakke referenced the same equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment used to desegregate public schools in Brown v. Board of Education. The “reverse discrimination” denied him equal protection under the law. ### Fisher v. University of Texas In 2016, the U.S. Supreme Court decided another affirmative action case regarding Fisher v. University of Texas. Abigail Fisher also argued that she had been denied college admission based on race. The case ended in favor of the university. Justice Kennedy, in the majority opinion, wrote: In each of the above landmark cases, affirmative action in college admission policies were upheld. However, cases of reverse discrimination in college admission policies continue to be pursued. ### Title IX and Higher Education Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 states, “No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.” As with affirmative action, Title IX applies to institutions that receive federal funding, such as public and charter schools, for-profit schools, libraries, and museums in the United States and its territories. According to the Office for Civil Rights, educational programs and activities receiving federal funds must operate in a nondiscriminatory manner. Title IX addresses recruitment, admissions, and counseling; financial assistance; athletics; sex-based harassment; treatment of pregnant and parenting students; discipline; single-sex education; and employment. Before the enactment of Title IX, there were few if any protections provided for women college students. To give some perspective, consider this description of the circumstances: “Young women were not admitted into many colleges and universities, athletic scholarships for women were rare, and math and science was a realm reserved for boys. Girls square danced instead of playing sports, studied home economics instead of training for 'male-oriented' (read: higher-paying) trades. Girls could become teachers and nurses, but not doctors or principals; women rarely were awarded tenure and even more rarely appointed college presidents. There was no such thing as sexual harassment because 'boys will be boys,' after all, and if a student got pregnant, her formal education ended. Graduate professional schools openly discriminated against women.”WInslow, Barbara. “The Impact of Title IX.” Gilder-Lerhman Institute. https://faculty.uml.edu/sgallagher/The_Impact_of_Title_IX-_GilderLehrman.pdf The protections of Title IX have been invoked in college athletics to ensure women’s athletic programs are sustained. In addition, schools must make efforts to prevent sexual harassment and violence. Gender discrimination under Title IX extends to the protection of transgender students so that they are treated as the gender they identify with.

# Understanding Civility and Cultural Competence ## Inclusivity and Civility: What Role Can I Play? Questions to Consider: 1. Is it my fault that I have privilege? 2. How long will diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts continue? 3. What is to be gained by cultural competency? ### Privilege Is Not Just for White People Privilege is a right or exemption from liability or duty granted as a special benefit or advantage. Oppression is the result of the “use of institutional privilege and power, wherein one person or group benefits at the expense of another,”Golbach, Jeremy. “A Guide to Discussion Identity, Power, and Priveledge.” https://msw.usc.edu/mswusc-blog/diversity-workshop-guide-to-discussing-identity-power-and-privilege/ according to the University of Southern California Suzanne Dworak Peck School of Social Work. Just as everyone has implicit bias, everyone has a certain amount of privilege, too. For example, consider the privilege brought by being a certain height. If someone's height is close to the average height, they likely have a privilege of convenience when it comes to many day-to-day activities. A person of average height does not need assistance reaching items on high store shelves and does not need adjustments to their car to reach the brake pedal. There’s nothing wrong with having this privilege, but recognizing it, especially when considering others who do not share it, can be eye-opening and empowering. Wealthy people have privilege of not having to struggle economically. The wealthy can build retirement savings, can afford to live in the safest of neighborhoods, and can afford to pay out of pocket for their children’s private education. People with a college education and advanced degrees are privileged because a college degree allows for a better choice of employment and earning potential. Their privilege doesn’t erase the hard work and sacrifice necessary to earn those degrees, but the degrees often lead to advantages. And, yes, White people are privileged over racial minorities. Remember Malcolm Gladwell’s explanation of how he was treated when people assumed he was White as opposed to how people treated him when they assumed he was Black? It is no one’s fault that they may have privilege in any given situation. In pursuit of civility, diversity, equity, and inclusion, the goal is to not exploit privilege but to share it. What does that mean? It means that when given an opportunity to hire a new employee or even pick someone for your study group, you make an effort to be inclusive and not dismiss someone who has not had the same academic advantages as you. Perhaps you could mentor a student who might otherwise feel isolated. Sharing your privilege could also mean recognizing when diversity is absent, speaking out on issues others feel intimidated about supporting, and making donations to causes you find worthy. When you are culturally competent, you become aware of how your privilege may put others at a disadvantage. With some effort, you can level the playing field without making yourself vulnerable to falling behind. ### “Eternal vigilance is the price of civility.” The original statement reads, “Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.” History sometimes credits that statement to Thomas Jefferson and sometimes to Wendell Holmes. Ironically, no one was paying enough attention to document it accurately. Still, the meaning is clear—if we relax our standards, we may lose everything. Civility is like liberty; it requires constant attention. We have to adjust diversity awareness, policies, and laws to accommodate the ever-changing needs of society. Without the vigilance of civil rights workers, society could have lapsed back into the Jim Crow era. Without activists such as Betty Friedan, Gloria Steinem, and Flo Kennedy remaining vigilant, women might not have made the gains they did in the 1970s. Constant attention is still needed because in the case of women’s earning power, they only make about 80 cents for every dollar a man makes. Constant vigilance requires passion and persistence. The activism chronologies of Native Americans, African Americans, Asian Americans, the LGBTQ+ community, immigrants, students, labor, and other groups is full of stops and starts, twists and turns that represent adjustments to their movements based on the shifting needs of younger generations. As long as there are new generations of these groups, we will need to pursue diversity, equity, and inclusion. ### Your Future and Cultural Competency Where will you be in five years? Will you own your own business? Will you be a stay-at-home parent? Will you be making your way up the corporate ladder of your dream job? Will you be pursuing an advanced degree? Maybe you will have settled into an entry-level job with good benefits and be willing to stay there for a while. Wherever life leads you in the future, you will need to be culturally competent. Your competency will be a valuable skill not only because of the increasing diversity and awareness in America, but also because we live in a world with increasing global connections. If you do not speak a second language, try to learn one. If you can travel, do so, even if it’s to another state or region of the United States. See how others live in order to understand their experience and yours. To quote Mark Twain, “Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness.” The more we expose ourselves to different cultures and experiences, the more understanding and tolerance we tend to have. The United States is not perfect in its practice of diversity, equity, and inclusion. Still, compared to much of the world, Americans are privileged on a number of fronts. Not everyone can pursue their dreams as freely as Americans do. Our democratic elections and representative government give us a role in our future. Understanding diversity and being culturally competent will make for a better future for everyone. ### Chapter Summary Understanding diversity, especially in the context of our country’s history, is an important part of being an engaged citizen who can help us to adapt to a changing world. Diversity goes hand in hand with the concepts of equity and inclusion, which increase the chances of equal opportunity and representation. Sometimes creating inclusive communities upsets the social order with which people are familiar. Change can be difficult, and people are passionate. These passions can disrupt communities and communication with uncivil behavior, or people can “fight fair” and use strategies that allow for the smooth exchange of ideas. Everyone has a personal identity made up of various aspects and experiences—intersectionality. Some elements of identity place people in a diversity category. Some categories are expansive and well understood; others are new and may face scrutiny. Policies and laws have been put in place to protect underrepresented citizens from discrimination. These standards are constantly being challenged to make sure that they allow for the shifting demographics of the United States and shifting values of its citizens. Cultural competency, which includes our ability to adapt to diversity, is a valuable skill in our communities and workplaces. The more culturally competent we are, the more we can help safeguard diversity and make equitable and inclusive connections on a global scale. Keisha went to a temp agency to sign up for part-time work. The person in charge there gave her several tests on office skills. She checked Keisha’s typing speed, her ability to handle phone calls, and her writing skills. Keisha also took a grammar test and a test about how to handle disputes in the office. The tester also had Keisha answer questions about whether it was OK to take home office supplies and other appropriate things to do and not to do. The tester told Keisha that she scored very well on the evaluations, but she never called Keisha back for a job or even an interview. Keisha knows that she presented herself well, but wonders if she was not called back because she wears her hair in dreadlocks or because she has been told that her name sounds African American? Reflection questions: 1. Can this student say that she was discriminated against? 2. What would you do to determine why you were not called back for a job? 3. Should Keisha ask about how her name and appearance were received? ### Rethinking Student Survey Revisit the questions you answered at the beginning of the chapter, and consider one option you learned in this chapter that might make you rethink how you answered each one. Has this chapter prompted you to consider changing any of your feelings or practices? Rank the following questions on a scale of 1–4. 1 = “least like me” and 4 = “most like me.” 1. I'm aware of the different categories of diversity and the various populations I may encounter. 2. I think we sometimes go too far in trying to be sensitive to different groups. 3. I think nearly everybody in our society has equal opportunity. 4. It’s not my role to ensure equity and inclusiveness among my peers or colleagues. ### Where Do You Go from Here? This chapter touched on many elements of civility and diversity, and mentioned a wide array of groups, identities, and populations. But the chapter certainly did not explore every concept or reflect every group you may encounter. In a similar way, you can’t know everything about everyone, but you can build cultural competency and understanding to make people feel included and deepen your abilities and relationships. Sometimes learning about one group or making one person feel comfortable can be as important as addressing a larger population. To that end, consider researching or discussing one of the following topics to increase your level of civility and understanding: 1. Appropriate terminology and ways to address members of certain populations. For example, ways to properly describe people with certain disabilities, or discuss issues around racial or gender identity. 2. Discussions or debates related to civility and intersectionality, such as whether “Latinx” should be used instead of “Latino/Latina,” or whether certain sports team mascots can be considered offensive. 3. Major historical figures or events related to a certain group. 4. Academic majors and research centers/groups related to aspects of diversity. 5. Historical events at your college or in your city related to civil rights.

# Understanding Financial Literacy ## Introduction ### Student Survey How financially literate are you? This survey will help you determine how the chapter concepts relate to you right now. As we are introduced to new concepts and practices, it can be informative to reflect on how your understanding changes over time. We’ll revisit these questions at the end of the chapter to see whether your feelings have changed. Take this quick survey to figure it out, ranking the statements on a scale of 1–4, 1 meaning “least like me” and 4 meaning “most like me.” 1. I actively and regularly plan and/or monitor my finances. 2. I understand the benefits and risks of credit. 3. I have a plan to repay my student loans. 4. I regularly take steps to protect my identity and assets. You can also take the Chapter 10 survey anonymously online. ### About This Chapter In this chapter, you will learn to reach your personal life goals by implementing financial planning and strategies to protect yourself, manage your money today, and put yourself in a better position for tomorrow. How you act today impacts your tomorrow. By the end of this chapter, you should be able to do the following: 1. Align your personal and financial goals through smart financial planning. 2. Create a saving and spending plan and track your performance. 3. Plan for emergencies. 4. Identify best practices and risks associated with credit cards and other debt. 5. Determine the best opportunities for you to finance your college education. 6. Articulate specific ways to secure your identity and accounts. ### What Would You Do? Everything was working out for Elan. They got into the college they wanted to, and some friends were planning to attend as well. They felt like an adult, and were looking forward to new freedoms and opportunities. Elan’s parents let them get a credit card after high school graduation. Elan shared an apartment with their friends just off campus, and was able to get where they needed to go because they had a car. Elan had also saved over $1,000 from gifts and a summer job. They needed a new laptop. Elan planned to stay within set limits. They went to the store found a very knowledgeable salesperson, Jermain, who said he knew exactly what Elan needed. Jermain pointed out that the laptop in Elan’s budget would do schoolwork just fine, but it was not as powerful as the best top-of-the line unit with advanced gaming features. Plus, the better computer came with new headphones! Jermain suggested that Elan could later sell the computer to incoming students. (Most freshmen bought used computers if they did not have one when they came to school.) The high-powered computer was $2,000, though, and Elan didn’t have that much money. Maybe they should use the credit card? Maybe their new part-time job would pay for it. But Jermain arranged for a small down payment and monthly payments of only $100. That did not seem too bad to Elan. The future looked bright! At least, that’s what Elan thought. They soon realized that working more hours meant fewer hours to study. Meanwhile, Elan’s rent and gas usage went up, and, as a young car owner, their insurance was through the roof. Only three months into the first semester, Elan missed a payment on the laptop and accrued a late fee. They put the next laptop payment on the credit card. Soon, Elan was alternating payments between the credit card, laptop, and car, building up interest and late charges. Now Elan was having trouble paying their rent and started getting calls from creditors. Everything had seemed so promising. Elan didn’t know where they had gone wrong. Elan comes to you and shares the situation. They ask, “What could I have done differently?” This chapter offers you insight into your finances so that you can make good decisions and avoid costly mistakes. We all face chances to spend money and try to get what we want. Many think only about now and not next month, next year, or ten years from now, but our behavior now has consequences later. Not everyone can own all the latest technology, drive their dream car, continually invest for their retirement, or live in the perfect home at this moment. But by understanding the different components of earning money, banking, credit, and budgeting, you can begin working toward your personal and financial goals. We’ll also discuss a related topic, safeguarding your accounts and personal information, which is critical to protecting everything you’ve worked for. By the end of this chapter, you will have good insights for Elan . . . and you!

# Understanding Financial Literacy ## Personal Financial Planning Questions to Consider: 1. What simple steps do I take to create a financial plan? 2. How do I use financial planning in everyday life? 3. How is the financial planning process implemented for every purchase? Honestly, practicing money management isn’t that hard to figure out. In many ways it’s similar to playing a video game. The first time you play a game, you may feel awkward or have the lowest score. Playing for a while can make you OK at the game. But if you learn the rules of the game, figure out how to best use each tool in the game, read strategy guides from experts, and practice, you can get really good at it. Money management is the same. It’s not enough to “figure it out as you go.” If you want to get good at managing your money, you must treat money like you treat your favorite game. You have to come at it with a well-researched plan. Research has shown that people with stronger finances are healthierhttps://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277953613002839 and happier,https://academic.oup.com/geronj/article-abstract/38/5/626/578092 have better marriages,https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1741-3729.2012.00715.x and http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1741-3729.2012.00715.x/abstract and even have better cognitive functioning.https://science.sciencemag.org/content/341/6149/976%20 ### Financial Planning Process Personal goals and behaviors have a financial component or consequence. To make the most of your financial resources, you need to do some financial planning. The financial planning process consists of five distinct steps: goal setting, evaluating, planning, implementing, and monitoring. You can read in more depth about SMART goals in Chapter 3. ### Financial Planning in Five Steps 1. Develop Personal Goals 2. Identify and Evaluate Alternatives for Achieving Goals for My Situation 3. Write My Financial Plan 4. Implement the Plan 5. Monitor and Adjust the Plan ### How to Use Financial Planning in Everyday Life The financial planning process isn’t only about creating one big financial plan. You can also use it to get a better deal when you buy a car or computer or rent an apartment. In fact, anytime you are thinking about spending a lot of money, you can use the financial planning process to pay less and get more. To explore financial planning in depth, we’ll use the example of buying a car. ### 1. Develop Goals First, what do you really need? If you’re looking for a car, you probably need transportation. Before you decide to buy a car, consider alternatives to buying a car. Could you take a bus, walk, or bike instead? Often one goal can impact another goal. Cars are typically not good financial investments. We have cars for convenience and necessity, to earn an income and to enjoy life. Financially, they are an expense. They lose value, or depreciate, rather than increasing in value, like savings. So buying a car may slow your savings or retirement plan goals. Cars continually use up cash for gas, repairs, taxes, parking, and so on. Keep this in mind throughout the planning process. ### 2. Identify and Evaluate Alternatives for Achieving Goals in Your Current Situation. For this example, let’s assume that you have determined the best alternative is to buy a car. Do you need a new car? Will your current car last with some upkeep? Consider a used car over a new one. On average, a new car will lose one-fifth of its value during its first year.Krome, Charles. “Car Depreciation.” 2018, Carfax. https://www.carfax.com/blog/car-depreciation Buying a one-year-old car is like getting a practically new car for a 20 percent discount. So in many cases, the best deal may be to buy a five- or six-year-old car. Sites such as the Kelley Blue Book website (KBB.com) and Edmunds.com can show you depreciation tables for the cars you are considering. Perhaps someone in your family has a car they will sell you at a discount. Do you know how much it will cost in total to own the car? It will help to check out the total cost of ownership tools (also on KBB.com and Edmunds.com) to estimate how much each car will cost you in maintenance, repairs, gas, and insurance. A cheap car that gets poor gas mileage and breaks down all the time will actually cost you more in the long run. ### 3. Write Down Your Financial Plan ### 4. Implement Your Plan Once you’ve narrowed down which car you are looking for, do more online research with resources such as Kelley Blue Book to see what is for sale in your area. You can also begin contacting dealerships and asking them if they have the car you are looking for with the features you want. Ask the dealerships with the car you want to give you their best offer, then compare their price to your researched price. You may have to spend more time looking at other dealerships to compare offers, but one goal of online research is to save time and avoid driving from place to place if possible. When you do go to buy the car, bring a copy of your written plan into the dealership and stick to it. If a dealership tries to switch you to a more expensive option, just say no, or you can leave to go to another dealership. Remember Elan in our opening scenario? He went shopping alone and caved to the pressure and persuasion of the salesperson. If you feel it is helpful, take a responsible friend or family member with you for support. ### 5. Monitor and Adjust the Plan to Changing Circumstances and New Life Goals Life changes, and things wear out. Keep up the recommended maintenance on the car (or any other purchase). Keep saving money for your emergency fund, then for your next car. The worst time to buy a car is when your current car breaks down, because you are easier to take advantage of when you are desperate. When your car starts giving you trouble or your life circumstances start to change, you will be ready to shop smart again. A good practice is to keep making car payments once the car loan is paid off. If you are paying $300 per month for a car loan, when the loan is paid off, put $300 per month into a savings account for a new car instead. Do it long enough and you can buy your next car using your own money! ### Use the Financial Planning Process for Everything The same process can be used to make every major purchase in your life. When you rent an apartment, begin with the same assessment of your current financial situation, what you need in an apartment, and what goals it will impact or fulfill. Then look for an apartment using a written plan to avoid being sold on a more expensive place than you want. You can even use the process of assessing and planning for small things such as buying textbooks or weekly groceries. While saving a few bucks each week may seem like a small deal, you will gain practice using the financial planning process, so it will become automatic for when you make the big decisions in life. Stick to your plan.

# Understanding Financial Literacy ## Savings, Expenses, and Budgeting Questions to Consider: 1. How is the flow of money best measured? 2. How do I keep things balanced? What is the best way to get to the Mississippi River from here? Do you know? To answer the question, even with a map app, you would need to know where you are starting from and exactly where on the river you want to arrive before you can map the best route. Our financial lives need maps, too. You need to know where you are now and where you want to end up in order to map a course to meet the goal. You map your financial path using a spending and savings plan, or budget, which tracks your income, savings, and spending. You check on your progress using a balance sheet that lists your assets, or what you own, and your liabilities, or what you owe. A balance sheet is like a snapshot, a moment in time, that we use to check our progress. ### Budgets The term budget is unpleasant to some people because it just looks like work. But who will care more about your money than you? We all want to know if we have enough money to pay our bills, travel, get an education, buy a car, etc. Technically, a budget is a specific financial plan for a specified time. Budgets have three elements: income, saving and investing, and expenses. ### Income Income most often comes from our jobs in the form of a paper or electronic paycheck. When listing your income for your monthly budget, you should use your net pay, also called your disposable income. It is the only money you can use to pay bills. If you currently have a job, look at the pay stub or statement. You will find gross pay, then some money deducted for a variety of taxes, leaving a smaller amount—your net pay. Sometimes you have the opportunity to have some other, optional deductions taken from your paycheck before you get your net pay. Examples of optional deductions include 401(k) or health insurance payments. You can change these amounts, but you should still use your net pay when considering your budget. Some individuals receive disability income, social security income, investment income, alimony, child support, and other forms of payment on a regular basis. All of these go under income. During school, you may receive support from family that could be considered income. You may also receive scholarships, grants, or student loan money. ### Saving and Investing The first bill you should pay is to yourself. You owe yourself today and tomorrow. That means you should set aside a certain amount of money for savings and investments, before paying bills and making discretionary, or optional, purchases. Savings can be for an emergency fund or for short-term goals such as education, a wedding, travel, or a car. Investing, such as putting your money into stocks, bonds, or real estate, offers higher returns at a higher risk than money saved in a bank. Investments include retirement accounts that can be automatically funded with money deducted from your paycheck. Automatic payroll deductions are an effective way to save money before you can get your hands on it. Setting saving as a priority assures that you will work to make the payment to yourself as hard as you work to make your car or housing payment. The money you “pay” toward saving or investing will earn you back your money, plus some money earned on your money. Compare this to the cost of buying an item on credit and paying your money plus interest to a creditor. Paying yourself first is a habit that pays off! ### Expenses Expenses are categorized in two ways. One method separates them into fixed expenses and variable expenses. Rent, insurance costs, and utilities (power, water) are fixed: they cost about the same every month and are predictable based on your arrangement with the provider. Variable expenses, on the other hand, change based on your priorities and available funds; they include groceries, restaurants, cell phone plans, gas, clothing, and so on. You have a good degree of control over your variable expenses. You can begin organizing your expenses by categorizing each one as either fixed or variable. A second way to categorize expenses is to identify them as either needs or wants. Your needs come first: food, basic clothing, safe housing, medical care, and water. Your wants come afterward, if you can afford them while sticking to a savings plan. Wants may include meals at a restaurant, designer clothes, video games, other forms of entertainment, or a new car. After you identify an item as a need or want, you must exercise self-control to avoid caving to your desire for too many wants. How do your total “need” expenses compare to your total “want” expenses? Should either of them change? Budgets are done in a chart or spreadsheet format and often look like the ones below. Pay attention to how the first budget differs from the second. ### Balancing Your Budget Would you take all your cash outside and throw it up in the air on a windy day? Probably not. We want to hold on to every cent and decide where we want it to go. Our budget allows us to find a place for each dollar. We should not regularly have money left over. If we do, we should consider increasing our saving and investing. We also should not have a negative balance, meaning we don’t have enough to pay our bills. If we are short of money, we can look at all three categories of our budget: income, savings, and expenses. We could increase our income by taking a second job or working overtime, although this is rarely advisable alongside college coursework. The time commitment quickly becomes overwhelming. Another option is to cut savings, or there’s always the possibility of reducing expenses. Any of these options in combination can work. Another, even less desirable option is to take on debt to make up the shortfall. This is usually only a short-term solution that makes future months and cash shortages worse as we pay off the debt. When we budget for each successive month, we can look at what we actually spent the month before and make adjustments. ### Tracking the Big Picture When you think about becoming more financially secure, you’re usually considering your net worth, or the total measure of your wealth. Earnings, savings, and investments build up your assets—that is, the valuable things you own. Borrowed money, or debt, increases your liabilities, or what you owe. If you subtract what you owe from what you own, the result is your net worth. Your goal is to own more than you owe. When people first get out of college and have student debt, they often owe more than they own. But over time and with good financial strategies, they can reverse that situation. You can track information about your assets, liabilities, and net worth on a balance sheet or part of a personal financial statement. This information will be required to get a home loan or other types of loans. For your net worth to grow in a positive direction, you must increase your assets and decrease your liabilities over time.

# Understanding Financial Literacy ## Banking and Emergency Funds Questions to Consider: 1. How do I plan appropriately for a financial emergency? 2. What do I need to keep in mind when it comes to the banking system? ### Emergency Funds Plan on the unplanned happening to you. It happens to all of us: a car repair, a broken computer, an unplanned visit to the doctor, a friend or relative in desperate need, etc. How will you pay for it? A recent study found that over 60 percent of households could not pay cash for a $400 unexpected expense.Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. “Report on the Economic Wellbeing of US Households, 2018” https://www.federalreserve.gov/publications/2019-economic-well-being-of-us-households-in-2018-dealing-with-unexpected-expenses.htm Could you? ### What Is an Emergency Fund? An emergency fund is a cash reserve that’s specifically set aside for unplanned expenses or financial emergenciesConsumer Financial Protection Bureau. “An Essential Guide to Building an Emergency Fund.” https://www.consumerfinance.gov/start-small-save-up/an-essential-guide-to-building-an-emergency-fund/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=SSSU_YSFT&utm_content=FY20_Jan_P. Some common examples include car repairs, home repairs, medical bills, and a loss of income. In general, emergency savings can be used for large or small unplanned bills or payments that are not part of your routine monthly expenses and spending. ### Why Do I Need an Emergency Fund? Without savings, even a minor financial shock could set you back, and if it turns into debt, it can potentially have a lasting impact.  Research suggests that individuals who struggle to recover from a financial shock have less savings to help protect against a future emergency. They may rely on credit cards or loans, which can lead to debt that’s generally harder to pay off. They may also pull from other savings, such as retirement funds, to cover these costs.  ### How Much Money Should I Keep in My Emergency Fund? There is no magic or “official” amount to keep in an emergency fund, but you can look at your own life to get an idea to start with. How much could you put into a bank account to have for emergencies? Some students and their parents will not have a problem paying for most emergencies, but many students are on their own. What can you save up over time? A common recommendation for graduates with full-time jobs is perhaps three to six months’ worth of expenses. This may not be practical for you. A large sampling of students in financial literacy classes recommend approximately $1,000. One thousand dollars can cover a lot of small to medium unexpected expenses, such as last-minute textbooks, computer repair or replacement, car repair, or a prescription or doctor’s visit. The emergency fund is best kept separate from other money for living expenses to protect it as emergency money. While you could keep cash, an emergency fund is often best kept in a bank, in order to avoid theft or loss and still have easy access by debit card or ATM. Pizza is not an emergency! ### How Do I Create an Emergency Fund? Emergency funds can be created quickly if you have the money, or over time if you need to save a little from each paycheck, loan, or gift. You can use a financial planning tool similar to the one in section 10.1. Follow these steps: 1. Set an emergency fund goal. 2. Identify an amount to keep on hand. 3. Determine how to fund it, monthly or all at once. 4. Decide where you will keep your fund (e.g., a savings account), and set specific dates to deposit money in it. 5. Start now! ### Safety and Success: Bank on It! The banking system in the United States is one of the safest and most regulated banking systems in the world. A host of federal and state agencies regulate financial institutions to keep them from accidentally or purposefully losing customer money. ### Banks, Credit Unions, and Online Banking In the United States, financial institutions (FIs) are divided into multiple types of companies. The banking system is generally divided into banks and credit unions, which have similar offerings and are both regulated and insured by the federal government. ### Choosing a Bank or Credit Union When choosing a bank or credit union, it is important to understand what you are looking for and what benefits each company provides. Generally, large national banks offer the most advanced technology and a large network of branches. There are also smaller community banks that serve specific groups of people and may offer products to meet the specific needs of the community. For example, a community bank that serves Latino customers might make it easier to send money to family in South American countries, while a bank that focuses on small businesses will promote products specifically needed by business owners. Credit unions differ from banks in that they don’t have a profit motive. Instead, they are not-for-profit organizations that are owned by the people who bank with them. Each member of a credit union gets one vote for the board of directors, which runs the credit union. This means that whether you have $5 in your account or $5 million, you get the same vote. Credit unions tend to offer better rates and lower fees, on average, than banks. There is no single best answer for what bank or credit union you should choose. The most vital question to ask and answer about a financial institution is whether it meets both your current and your future needs. Use figure 10.3 to compare different options and determine the best one for you. Many banks and credit unions do not publish the interest rates paid on deposit accounts or charged on loans. While some colleges have their own bank or credit union right on campus, you should consider visiting at least one other bank or one credit union to compare. You may also explore at least one online bank, which will publish interest rates on their website. Consider interest rates, access to automated teller machines (ATMs), online transfers, automatic paycheck deposits, branch locations if you will use one, and other services important to you. Since you will select a bank or credit union that is insured, do not feel pressure to use any specific institution. ### Banking Products and Services Banks and credit unions offer a similar set of financial products or services, called account types. The difference between the account types lies primarily in how easy it is to put money into or take money out of an account. Regulations set maximum numbers of transactions (deposits or withdrawals) for each type of account at a bank or credit union. How you use these accounts is less about the rules and more about how long you plan to keep the money in the account. The main reason to use a bank is to keep your money safe and available. Banks may offer other services that benefit you, such as certificates of deposit (which allow you to earn higher interest over a longer time), retirement accounts, and car and home loans. ### Checking Checking accounts allow you to deposit money and take money out anytime you want. There are no government limits on the number of transactions, although a bank or credit union might begin to charge you if you make too many transactions. Checking accounts often don’t pay any interest or pay an extremely low rate of interest. They are used to keep money safe and pay bills conveniently. Checking accounts are ideal for depositing paychecks, cashing paper checks, buying everyday items, and paying your bills. The money you have in your checking account should be money you plan to spend by the end of the month. Any money you don’t plan to spend within a month should be transferred from your checking account to a savings account. Your savings account should be the first bill that you pay each month. You can still add extra at the end of the month! ### Savings Accounts Savings accounts allow you a specific number of transactions each month or each quarter. If you go over the maximum number of transactions, the bank won’t let you take any more money out or put any more money into the account until the next month. Savings accounts pay a small amount of interest on your money, but usually not enough to keep up with inflation or overcome banking fees (see below). This actually causes your savings to go backwards. If you earn 2 percent on a savings account but inflation is 3 percent per year, you are losing 1 percent of purchasing power each year. For this reason, money in a savings account should be money you plan to spend within the next 12–48 months. The only exception to this is money you have saved for an emergency, called an emergency fund. Since you never know when an emergency (such as losing your job) is going to happen, you want the money to be available to you in a savings account. ### Debit Cards When you get a checking account, you’ll also get a debit card, or check card. This card allows you to access the money in your checking account (and savings account at an ATM) using a plastic card similar to a credit card. But it is not a credit card. A debit card only uses money available in your account. Paying with a debit card is like paying with a paper check, but more immediate and convenient. You will have the option of selecting overdraft protection, which means the bank or credit union will allow you to buy stuff even if you don’t have enough money in your account; they’ll just charge you a fee, perhaps $25, for each event. This can be compared to a high-interest loan. Depending on how many things you buy in a week, overdraft protection could add many fees to your statement and use up your cash so it will not be available for your planned expenses. Consider opting out of overdraft protection and carefully keeping track of your account balance. This way you can only spend the money that you have. Be aware that by using your debit card at an ATM associated with a different bank, you can incur fees—sometimes from both banks! Debit cards offer a lot of security benefits over carrying around cash, including the ability to cancel a lost or stolen debit card. While the legal protections on debit cards are not as great as the legal protections on credit cards, you can’t go into debt using a debit card. This inability to go into significant debt is a major advantage for those who struggle with debt. ### Banking Fees Banks and credit unions charge fees to operate. Many charge fees for a checking or savings account, overdrafts, and other services. You should seek to avoid fees for which you receive no extra services or when you can get similar services elsewhere for free. Two areas that are most subject to fees are services and “triggered” events. Triggered events are primarily caused by actions such as overdrawing your account (an overdraft). Overdraft fees are avoidable. The best way to avoid an overdraft fee is to continually monitor your bank balance and only spend money that you have. Standard bank fees can often be avoided by taking one or more measures as specified by the bank, such as maintaining a minimum balance or using direct deposit. Avoid getting paid on a payroll or prepaid card unless you know all related costs or have a reason to want to be paid in that manner. Payroll cards often lead to ATM and banking fees, so federal law requires employers to offer you an alternative.Dratch, Dana. “It pays to know these five things about payroll cards.” Credit Cards.com. https://www.creditcards.com/credit-card-news/payroll_cards-fees-employer-1271.php Ask at your financial institution for assistance in setting up an account or accounts that are best for you. ### Online and Mobile Banking There are other important banking tools you should also consider. Online and mobile banking are among the most important activities in banking. You should list all the things you might want to do regularly with your bank accounts and make sure you can do them through the bank’s website and app. This might include making payments on loans, transferring money between your checking and savings accounts, paying bills through automated bill pay, and creating new savings accounts. Learn the rules of your account, and keep track of how you use it. This can help you keep costs down and develop a positive banking relationship. ### Earning Interest and Compound Interest Interest refers to money paid for the privilege of borrowing money. When banks use our money for their investments, they pay us interest. (Remember, our bank accounts are insured, so you can’t lose your money even when the banks use it.) When you take out a loan using the bank’s money, you pay the bank interest. Compound interest means that you earn interest on the money that you deposit, called the principal, first. After that, you earn money on your money plus all the interest that has been paid to your account. Your earnings are reinvested. Interest on interest! You are being paid on the basis of other people’s money—the interest that they paid you. Over time, this compound interest results in more and more money in your account. The same principle holds true for investing. Banks sometimes have investment services that pay higher interest but include risk to your money, which you typically access after completing your degree or certificate and obtaining full-time work. If you are employed full time and have access to investment, perhaps in a company-sponsored retirement account, see a brief section below on Investing and Buying Power. Consider the example below, and notice that the amount of interest paid each year is larger than the year before. That is compound interest. The only money deposited by the account owner was the first $2,000. In this example, at the end of four years, the account owner has put in $2,000 and has added $524.95 of other people’s money in earned interest! You can use online financial calculators to try scenarios for saving, buying a car or home, and even building a retirement account. One source is bankrate.com. Look under Calculators. Do not pursue marketing efforts on the sites suggested or used for examples in this chapter. Stick to the tools used.

# Understanding Financial Literacy ## Credit Cards and Other Debt Questions to Consider: 1. What do I need to know about student loans? 2. How dangerous is debt? 3. What should I think about when getting and using a credit card? Yes, taking on too much debt can (and does) have disastrous effects on people’s personal finances, but if used appropriately, debt can be a tool to help you build wealth. Debt is like fire. You can use it to keep yourself warm, cook food, and ward off animals—but if you don’t know how to control it, it’ll burn your house down. ### The Danger of Debt When you take out a loan, you take on an obligation to pay the money back, with interest, through a monthly payment. You will take this debt with you when you apply for auto loans or home loans, when you enter into a marriage, and so on. Effectively, you have committed your future income to the loan. While this can be a good idea with student loans, take on too many loans and your future self will be poor, no matter how much money you make. Worse, you’ll be transferring more and more of your money to the bank through interest payments. ### Compounding Interest While compounding works to make you money when you are earning interest on savings or investments, it works against you when you are paying the interest on loans. To avoid compounding interest on loans, make sure your payments are at least enough to cover the interest charged each month. The good news is that the interest you are charged will be listed each month on the loan account statements you are sent by the bank or credit union, and fully amortized loans will always cover the interest costs plus enough principal to pay off what you owe by the end of the loan term. The two most common loans on which people get stuck paying compounding interest are credit cards and student loans. Paying the minimum payment each month on a credit card will just barely cover the interest charged that month, while anything you buy with the credit card will begin to accrue interest on the day you make the purchase. Since credit cards charge interest daily, you’ll begin paying interest on the interest immediately, starting the compound interest snowball working against you. When you get a credit card, always pay the credit card balance down to $0 each month to avoid the compound interest trap. Student loans are another way you can be caught in the compound interest trap. When you have an unsubsidized student loan or put your loans into deferment, the interest continues to rack up on the loans. Again, you’ll be charged interest on the interest, not just on the original loan amount, forcing you to pay compound interest on the loan. ### Sacrificing Your Future Fun When you graduate college, you are most likely to graduate with student loan debt and credit card debt.Debt.org. “Demographics of Debt.” https://www.debt.org/faqs/americans-in-debt/demographics/ Many students use credit cards and student loans to allow them to pay for fun today, such as trips, clothing, and expensive meals. Getting into debt while in college forces you to sacrifice your future fun. Say you take out $100,000 in student loans instead of the $50,000 you need, doubling your monthly payment. You are not just making an extra $338 payment; you are also sacrificing anything else you can do with that money. You sacrifice that extra $338 a month, every month, for the next twenty-five years. You can’t use it to go to the movies, pay down other debt, save for a home, take a vacation, or throw a party. When you sign those papers, you sacrifice all those opportunities every month for decades. As a result, when you take out a loan, you should make sure it’s a good loan. ### How Much Good Debt to Take On A drink of water is refreshing on a hot day and is required to stay alive. Too much water, however, and you will drown. During college and for the first few years after graduation, most students should only have two loans: student loans and possibly a car loan. We’ve already discussed your student loans, which should be equal to or less than your first year’s expected salary after graduation. When you get a car, you should keep your car payment to between 10 and 20 percent of your monthly take-home pay. This means if your paycheck is $200 per week, your car payment should be no more than $80–$160 each month. In total, you want your debt payments (plus rent if you are renting) to be no more than 44 percent of your take-home pay. If you are planning to build wealth, however, you want to cap it at 30 percent of take-home pay. ### Signs You Have Too Much Debt You can consider yourself in too much debt if you have any of the following situations: 1. You cannot make your minimum credit card payments. 2. Your money is gone before your next paycheck. 3. Bill collectors are contacting you. 4. You are unable to get a loan. 5. Your paycheck is being garnished by creditor. 6. You are considering a debt consolidation loan with extra fees added. 7. Your items are repossessed. 8. You do not know your debt or financial situation. ### Getting and Using a Credit Card One of the most controversial aspects of personal finance is the use of credit cards. While credit cards can be an incredibly useful tool, their high interest rates, combined with the how easily credit cards can bury you in debt, make them extremely dangerous if not managed correctly. Reflect on Elan from the chapter introduction and how he felt. How would you (or did you) feel to hold a new credit card with a $2,000 spending limit? ### Benefits of a Credit Card There are three main benefits of getting a credit card. The first is that credit cards offer a secure and convenient method of making purchases, similar to using a debit card. When you carry cash, you have the potential of having the money lost or stolen. A credit card or debit card, on the other hand, can be canceled and replaced at no cost to you. Additionally, credit cards offer greater consumer protections than debit cards do. These consumer protections are written into law, and with credit cards you have a maximum liability of $50. With a debit card, you are responsible for transfers made up until the point you report the card stolen. In order to have the same protections as with credit cards, you need to report the card lost or stolen within 48 hours. The longer you wait to report the loss of the card, or the longer it takes you to realize you lost your card, the more money you may be responsible for, up to an unlimited amount.Federal Trade Commission. “Lost Or Stolen Credit, ATM, and Debit Cards.” 2012. The final benefit is that a credit card will allow you to build your credit score, which is helpful in many aspects of life. While most people associate a credit score with getting better rates on loans, credit scores are also important to getting a job, lowering car insurance rates, and finding an apartment.Purposeful Finance. “Four Surprising Ways Your Credit Score Will Affect Your Life.” https://www.purposefulfinance.org/home/Articles/2016/four-surprising-ways-your-credit-score-will-affect-your-life ### What Is a Good Credit Score? Most credit scores have a 300–850 score range. The higher the score, the lower the risk to lenders. A “good” credit score is considered to be in the 670–739 score range. ### Components of a Credit Score and How to Improve Your Credit Credit scores contain a total of five components. These components are credit payment history (35 percent), credit utilization (30 percent), length of credit history (15 percent), new credit (10 percent), and credit mix (10 percent). The main action you can take to improve your credit score is to stop charging and pay all bills on time. Even if you cannot pay the full amount of the credit card balance, which is the best practice, pay the minimum on time. Paying more is better for your debt load but does not improve your score. Carrying a balance on a credit card does not improve your score. Your score will go down if you pay bills late and owe more than 30 percent of your credit available. Your credit score is a reflection of your willingness and ability to do what you say you will do—pay your debts on time. ### How to Use a Credit Card All the benefits of credit cards are destroyed if you carry credit card debt. Credit cards should be used as a method of paying for things you can afford, meaning you should only use a credit card if the money is already sitting in your bank account and is budgeted for the item you are buying. If you use credit cards as a loan, you are losing the game. Every month, you should pay your credit card off in full, meaning you will be bringing the loan amount down to $0. If your statement says you charged $432.56 that month, make sure you can pay off all $432.56. If you do this, you won’t pay any interest on the credit card. But what happens if you don’t pay it off in full? If you are even one cent short on the payment, meaning you pay $432.55 instead, you must pay daily interest on the entire amount from the date you made the purchases. Your credit card company, of course, will be perfectly happy for you to make smaller payments—that’s how they make money. It is not uncommon for people to pay twice as much as the amount purchased and take years to pay off a credit card when they only pay the minimum payment each month. What to Look for in Your Initial Credit Card 1. Find a Low-Rate Credit Card Even though you plan to never pay interest, mistakes will happen, and you don’t want to be paying high interest while you fix a misstep. Start by narrowing the hundreds of card options to the few with the lowest APR (annual percentage rate). 2. Avoid Cards with Annual Fees or Minimum Usage Requirements Your first credit card should ideally be one you can keep forever, but that’s expensive to do if they charge you an annual fee or have other requirements just for having the card. There are many options that won’t require you to spend a minimum amount each month and won’t charge you an annual fee. 3. Keep the Credit Limit Equal to Two Weeks’ Take-Home Pay Even though you want to pay your credit card off in full, most people will max out their credit cards once or twice while they are building their good financial habits. If this happens to you, having a small credit limit makes that mistake a small mistake instead of a $5,000 mistake. 4. Avoid Rewards Cards Everyone loves to talk about rewards cards, but credit card companies wouldn’t offer rewards if they didn’t earn them a profit. Rewards systems with credit cards are designed by experts to get you to spend more money and pay more interest than you otherwise would. Until you build a strong habit of paying off your card in full each month, don’t step into their trap.

# Understanding Financial Literacy ## Education Debt: Paying for College Questions to Consider: 1. What choices should you consider when taking on student debt? 2. How do you match debt to postgraduate income? 3. What types of financial aid are available? 4. How do you apply for financial aid? 5. What are the best repayment strategies? As you progress through your college experience, the cost of college can add up rapidly. Worse, your anxiety about the cost of college may rise faster as you hear about the rising costs of college and horror stories regarding the “student loan crisis.” It is important to remember that you are in control of your choices and the cost of your college experience, and you do not have to be a sad statistic. ### Education Choices Education is vital to living. Education starts at the beginning of our life, and as we grow, we learn language, sharing, and to look both ways before crossing the street. We also generally pursue a secular or public education that often ends at high school graduation. After that, we have many choices, including getting a job and stopping our education, working at a trade or business started by our parents and bypassing additional schooling, earning a certificate from a community college or four-year college or university, earning a two-year or associate degree from one of the same schools, and completing a bachelor’s or advanced degree at a college or university. We can choose to attend a public or private school. We can live at home or on a campus. Each of these choices impacts our debt, happiness, and earning power. The average income goes up with an increase in education, but that is not an absolute rule. The New York Federal Reserve Bank reported in 2017 that approximately 34 percent of college graduates worked in a job that did not require a college degree,https://www.forbes.com/sites/prestoncooper2/2017/07/13/new-york-fed-highlights-underemployment-among-college-graduates/#55be172f40d8 and in 2013, CNN Money reported on a study from Georgetown University’s Center on Education and the Workforce showing that nearly 30 percent of Americans with two-year degrees are now earning more than graduates with bachelor’s degrees.https://www.communitycollegereview.com/blog/studies-show-community-college-may-offer-superior-roi-to-some-four-year-schools Of course, many well-paying occupations do require a bachelor’s or master’s degree. You have started on a path that may be perfect for you, but you may also choose to make adjustments. College success from a financial perspective means that you must: 1. Know the total cost of the education 2. Consider job market trends 3. Work hard at school during the education 4. Pursue ways to reduce costs Most importantly: Buy only the amount of education that returns more than you invest. According to US News & World Report, the average cost of college (including university) tuition and fees varies widely. In-state colleges average $9,716 while out-of-state students pay $21,629 for the same state college. Private colleges average $35,676. The local community college averages approximately $3,726. On-campus housing and meals, if available, can add approximately $10,000 per year.https://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/paying-for-college/articles/what-you-need-to-know-about-college-tuition-costs See the table below, and create your own chart after you research. You may need to adjust your college plan as circumstances change for you and in the job market. You can modify plans based on funding opportunities available to you (see next sections) and your location. You may prefer a community-college-only education, or you may complete two years at a community college and then transfer to a university to complete a bachelor’s degree. Living at home for the first two years or all of your college education will save a lot of money if your circumstances allow. Be creative! ### Key to Success: Matching Student Debt to Postgraduation Income Students and parents often ask, “How much debt should I have?” The problem is that the correct answer depends on your personal situation. A big-firm attorney in a major city might make $120,000 in their first year as a lawyer. Having $100,00 or even $200,000 in student debt in this situation may be reasonable. But a high school teacher making $40,000 in their first year would never be able to pay off the debt. The amount of debt you take on should be tied to the income you expect. ### Research Your Starting Salary Begin by researching your expected starting salary when you graduate. Most students expect to make significantly more than they will actually make.Hess, Abigail. “College Grades expect to earn $60,000.” 2019. CNBC. https://www.cnbc.com/2019/02/15/college-grads-expect-to-earn-60000-in-their-first-job----few-do.html As a result, your salary expectations are likely much higher than reality. Ask professors at your college what is typical for a recent graduate in your field, or do informational interviews with human resource managers at local companies. Explore the US Bureau of Labor Statistics’ . PayScale also has a handy tool for getting general information based on your personal experience and location. Search websites and talk to employees of companies that interest you for future employment to identify real starting salaries. ### Undergraduate Degree: 1 x Annual Salary For students working toward a bachelor’s or associate degree, both forms of undergraduate degrees, you should try to keep your student loans equal to or less than your expected first year’s salary. So if, based on research, you expect to make $40,000 in your first year out of college, then $33,000 in student loans would be a reasonable amount for you to pay out of a monthly budget with some sacrifice. ### Advanced Degrees: 1–2 x Annual Salary Once you’ve graduated with your bachelor’s degree, you may want to get an advanced degree such as a master’s degree, a law degree, a medical degree, or a doctorate. While these degrees can greatly increase your income, you still need to match your student debt to your expected income. Advanced degrees can often double your expected annual salary, meaning your total debt for all your degrees should be equal to or less than twice your expected first job income. A lower number for the debt portion of your education would be more manageable. Your goal should be to pay for college using multiple methods so your student loan debt can be as small as possible, rather than just making low monthly payments on a large loan that will lead to a higher overall cost. ### Types of Financial Aid: How to Pay for College The true cost of college may be more than you expected, but you can make an effort to make the cost less than many might think. While the price tag for a school might say $40,000, the net cost of college may be significantly less. The net price for a college is the true cost a family will pay when grants, scholarships, and education tax benefits are factored in. The net cost for the average family at a public in-state school is only $3,980. And for a private school, free financial aid money reduces the cost to the average family from $32,410 per year to just $14,890. If you haven’t visited your college’s financial aid office recently, it’s probably worth it to talk with them. You must seek out opportunities, complete paperwork, and learn and meet criteria, but it can save you thousands of dollars. ### Grants and Scholarships Grants and scholarships are free money you can use to pay for college. Unlike loans, you never have to pay back a grant or a scholarship. All you have to do is go to school. And you don’t have to be a straight-A student to get grants and scholarships. There is so much free money, in fact, that billions of dollars go unclaimed every year.https://www.usatoday.com/story/college/2015/01/20/29-billion-unused-federal-grant-awards-in-last-academic-year/37399897/ While some grants and scholarships are based on a student’s academic record, many are given to average students based on their major, ethnic background, gender, religion, or other factors. There are likely dozens or hundreds of scholarships and grants available to you personally if you look for them. ### Federal Grants Federal Pell Grants are awarded to students based on financial need, although there is no income or wealth limit on the grant program. The Pell Grant can give you more than $6,000 per year in free money toward tuition, fees, and living expenses.https://studentaid.ed.gov/sa/types/grants-scholarships/pell If you qualify for a Pell Grant based on your financial need, you will automatically get the money. Federal Supplemental Educational Opportunity Grants (FSEOGs) are additional free money available to students with financial need. Through the FSEOG program, you can receive up to an additional $4,000 in free money. These grants are distributed through your school’s financial aid department on a first-come, first-served basis, so pay close attention to deadlines. Teacher Education Assistance for College and Higher Education (TEACH) Grants are designed to help students who plan to go into the teaching profession. You can receive up to $4,000 per year through the TEACH Grant. To be eligible for a TEACH Grant, you must take specific classes and majors and must hold a qualifying teaching job for at least four years after graduation. If you do not fulfill these obligations, your TEACH Grant will be converted to a loan, which you will have to pay back with both interest and back interest. There are numerous other grants available through individual states, employers, colleges, and private organizations. State Grants Most states also have grant programs for their residents, often based on financial need. Eleven states have even implemented free college tuition programs for residents who plan to continue to live in the state. Even some medical schools are beginning to be tuition free. Check your school’s financial aid office and your state’s department of education for details. College/University Grants and Scholarships Most colleges and universities have their own scholarships and grants. These are distributed through a wide variety of sources, including the school’s financial aid office, the school’s endowment fund, individual departments, and clubs on campus. Private Organization Grants and Scholarships A wide variety of grants and scholarships and are awarded by foundations, civic groups, companies, religious groups, professional organizations, and charities. Most are small awards under $4,000, but multiple awards can add up to large amounts of money each year. Your financial aid office can help you find these opportunities. Employer Grants and Scholarships Many employers also offer free money to help employees go to school. A common work benefit is a tuition reimbursement program, where employers will pay students extra money to cover the cost of tuition once they’ve earned a passing grade in a college class. And some companies are going even further, offering to pay 100 percent of college costs for employees. Check to see whether your employer offers any kind of educational support. ### Additional Federal Support The federal government offers a handful of additional options for college students to find financial support. ### Education Tax Credits The IRS gives out free money to students and their parents through two tax credits, although you will have to choose between them. The American opportunity tax credit (AOTC) will refund up to $2,500 of qualifying education expenses per eligible student, while the lifetime learning credit (LLC) refunds up to $2,000 per year regardless of the number of qualifying students. While the AOTC may be a better tax credit to choose for some, it can only be claimed for four years for each student, and it has other limitations. The LLC has fewer limitations, and there is no limit on the number of years you can claim it. Lifetime learners and nontraditional students may consider the LLC a better choice. Calculate the benefits for your situation. The IRS warns taxpayers to be careful when claiming the credits. There are potential penalties for incorrectly claiming the credits, and you or your family should consult a tax professional or financial adviser when claiming these credits. ### Federal Work-Study Program The Federal Work-Study Program provides part-time jobs through colleges and universities to students who are enrolled in the school. The program offers students the opportunity to work in their field, for their school, or for a nonprofit or civic organization to help pay for the cost of college. If your school participates in the program, it will be offered through your school’s financial aid office. ### Student Loans Federal student loans are offered through the US Department of Education and are designed to give easy and inexpensive access to loans for school. You don’t have to make payments on the loans while you are in school, and the interest on the loans is tax deductible for most people. Direct Loans, also called Federal Stafford Loans, have a competitive fixed interest rate and don’t require a credit check or cosigner. ### Direct Subsidized Loans Direct Subsidized Loans are federal student loans on which the government pays the interest while you are in school. Direct Subsidized Loans are made based on financial need as calculated from the information you provide in your application. Qualifying students can get up to $3,500 in subsidized loans in their first year, $4,500 in their second year, and $5,500 in later years of their college education. ### Direct Unsubsidized Loans Direct Unsubsidized Loans are federal loans on which you are charged interest while you are in school. If you don’t make interest payments while in school, the interest will be added to the loan amount each year and will result in a larger student loan balance when you graduate. The amount you can borrow each year depends on numerous factors, with a maximum of $12,500 annually for undergraduates and $20,500 annually for professional or graduate students. There are also aggregate loan limits that apply to put a maximum cap on the total amount you can borrow for student loans. ### Direct PLUS Loans Direct PLUS Loans are additional loans a parent, grandparent, or graduate student can take out to help pay for additional costs of college. PLUS loans require a credit check and have higher interest rates, but the interest is still tax deductible. The maximum PLUS loan you can receive is the remaining cost of attending the school. Parents and other family members should be careful when taking out PLUS loans on behalf of a child. Whoever is on the loan is responsible for the loan forever, and the loan generally cannot be forgiven in bankruptcy. The government can also take Social Security benefits should the loan not be repaid. ### Private Loans Private loans are also available for students who need them from banks, credit unions, private investors, and even predatory lenders. But with all the other resources for paying for college, a private loan is generally unnecessary and unwise. Private loans will require a credit check and potentially a cosigner, they will likely have higher interest rates, and the interest is not tax deductible. As a general rule, you should be wary of private student loans or avoid them altogether. ### Repayment Strategies Payments on student loans will begin shortly after you graduate. While many websites, financial “gurus,” and talking heads in the media will encourage you to pay off your student loans as quickly as possible, you should give careful consideration to your repayment options and how they may impact your financial plans. Quickly paying off your student loans or refinancing your student loans into a private loan may be the worst option available to you. ### Payment Plans The federal government has eight separate loan repayment programs, each with their own way of calculating the payment you owe. Five of the programs tie loan payments to your income, which can make it easier to afford your student loans when you are just starting off in your career. The programs are described briefly below, but you should seek the help of a licensed fiduciary financial adviser familiar with student loans when making decisions related to student loan payment plans. The standard repayment plan sets a consistent monthly payment to pay off your loan within 10 years (or up to 30 years for consolidated loans). You can also choose a graduated repayment plan, which will begin with lower payments and then increase the payment every two years. The graduated plan is also designed to pay off your student loans in 10 years (or up to 30 years for consolidated loans). A third option is the extended repayment plan, which provides a fixed or graduated payment for up to 25 years. However, none of these programs are ideal for individuals planning to seek loan forgiveness options, which are discussed below. Beyond the “normal” repayment options, the government offers five income-based repayment options: (1) the Pay As You Earn (PAYE) repayment plan, (2) the Revised Pay As You Earn (REPAYE) repayment plan, (3) the Income-Based Repayment (IBR) plan, (4) the Income-Contingent Repayment (ICR) plan, and (5) the Income-Sensitive Repayment (ISR) plan. Each program has its method of calculating payments, along with specific requirements for eligibility and rules for staying eligible in the program. Many income-based repayment plans are also eligible for loan forgiveness after a set period of time, assuming you follow all the rules and remain eligible. ### Loan Forgiveness Programs Many income-based repayment options also have a loan forgiveness feature built into the repayment plan. If you make 100 percent of your payments on time and follow all the other plan rules, any remaining loan balance at the end of the plan repayment term (typically 20 to 30 years) will be forgiven. This means you will not have to pay the remainder on your student loans. This loan forgiveness, however, comes with a catch: taxes. Any forgiven balance will be counted and taxed as income during that year. So if you have a $100,000 loan forgiven, you could be looking at an additional $20,000 tax bill that year (assuming you were in the 20 percent marginal tax rate). Another option is the Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) program for students who go on to work for a nonprofit or government organization. If eligible, you can have your loans forgiven after working for 10 years in a qualifying public service job and making 120 on-time payments on your loans. A major advantage of PSLF is that the loan forgiveness may not be taxed as income in the year the loan is forgiven. ### Consider Professional Advice The complexity of the payment and forgiveness programs makes it difficult for nonexperts to choose the best strategy to minimize costs. Additionally, the strict rules and potential tax implications create a minefield of potential financial problems. In 2017, the first year graduates were eligible for the PSLF program, 99 percent of applicants were denied due to misunderstanding the programs or having broken one of the many requirements for eligibility.https://www.forbes.com/sites/zackfriedman/2019/05/01/99-of-borrowers-rejected-again-for-student-loan-forgiveness/ ### Your Rights as a Loan Recipient As a recipient of a federal student loan, you have the same rights and protections as you would for any other loan. This includes the right to know the terms and conditions for any loan before signing the paperwork. You also have the right to know information on your credit report and to dispute any loan or information on your credit file. If you end up in collections, you also have several rights, even though you have missed loan payments. Debt collectors can only call you between 8 a.m. and 9 p.m. They also cannot harass you, threaten you, or call you at work once you’ve told them to stop. The United States doesn’t have debtors’ prisons, so anyone threatening you with arrest or jail time is automatically breaking the law. Federal student loans also come with many other rights, including the right to put your loan in deferment or forbearance (pushing pause on making payments) under qualifying circumstances. Deferment or forbearance can be granted if you lose your job, go back to school, or have an economic hardship. If you have a life event that makes it difficult to make your payments, immediately contact the student loan servicing company on your loan statements to see if you can pause your student loan payments. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) has created a series of sample letters you can use to respond to a debt collector. You can also file a complaint with the CFPB if you believe your rights have been violated. ### Applying for Financial Aid, FAFSA, and Everything Else Take this first step—you will need to do it. The federal government offers a standard form called the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA), which qualifies you for federal financial aid and also opens the door for nearly all other financial aid. Most grants and scholarships require you to fill out the FAFSA, and they base their decisions on the information in the application. The FAFSA only requests financial aid for the specific year you file your application. This means you will need to file a FAFSA for each year you are in college. Since your financial needs will change over time, you may qualify for financial aid even if you did not qualify before. You can apply for the FAFSA through your college’s financial aid office or at studentaid.gov if you don’t have access to a financial aid office. Once you file a FAFSA, any college can gain access to the information (with your approval), so you can shop around for financial aid offers from colleges. ### Maintaining Financial Aid To maintain your financial aid throughout your college, you need to make sure you meet the eligibility requirements for each year you are in school, not just the year of your initial application. The basic requirements include being a US citizen or eligible noncitizen, having a valid Social Security number, and registering for selective service if required. Undocumented residents may receive financial aid as well and should check with their school’s financial aid office. You also must make satisfactory academic progress, including meeting a minimum grade-point average, taking and completing a minimum number of classes, and making progress toward graduation or a certificate. Your school will have a policy for satisfactory academic progress, which you can get from the financial aid office. ### What to Do with Extra Financial Aid Money One expensive mistake that students make with financial aid money is spending the money on noneducation expenses. Students often use financial aid, including student loans, to purchase clothing, take vacations, or dine out at restaurants. Nearly 3 percent spend student loan money on alcohol and drugs.https://studentloanhero.com/featured/smart-dumb-money-moves-students/ These noneducation expenses are major contributors to student loan debt, which will make it harder for you to afford a home, take vacations, or save for your retirement after you graduate. When you have extra student loan money, consider saving it for future education expenses. Just like you will need an emergency fund all your adult life, you will want an emergency fund for college when expensive books or travel abroad programs present unexpected costs. If you make it through your college years with extra money in your savings, you can use the money to help pay down debt.

# Understanding Financial Literacy ## Defending against Attack: Securing Your Identity and Accounts Questions to Consider: 1. How should you manage passwords and online security? 2. What’s the best way to deal with identity theft? 3. How can you get help and avoid scams? Identity theft is one of the fastest growing crimes in the United States, and the FBI estimates that more than 10 million new victims are harmed each year.https://archives.fbi.gov/archives/news/stories/2004/october/preventidt_102104 Among the problems contributing to this rapid increase in identity theft are the significant amount of data stored online and the poor security practices of both individuals and companies. In 2017, Equifax announced that their security had been breached and the data of every adult in the country was likely compromised.https://www.purposefulfinance.org/home/Articles/2017/understanding-the-equifax-security-breach ### Passwords and Security The first line of defense to prevent identity theft is to create strong passwords and take other security measures with your online accounts. An important factor in the strength of a password is the length of the password.Information Security Institute. “Password Security:Complexity Versus Length.” 2019. https://resources.infosecinstitute.com/password-security-complexity-vs-length/ This means a password of 12 characters or more is desirable. Consider using pass phrases, or short sentences, rather than passwords. You should vary your pass phrases for each site so a hacker that gets your password can only use it for a single site. Government agencies and security experts are recommending password management software such as LastPass to help with remembering all of these differing passwords. Another important strategy is to implement two-factor authentication (TFA) on all your online accounts. TFA adds another method of identifying you in addition to your password. Many TFA systems use your cell phone and will text you a code to allow you to log in to your account. A criminal would then need both your password and access to your cell phone to log in. Check the settings on your email, bank website, and other accounts to see how to enable two-factor authentication. ### Preventing and Dealing with Identity Theft Setting strong passwords and enabling two-factor authentication will help keep criminals out of your online banking, email, and other important accounts. Many criminals use lower-tech methods of stealing your identity, however, including tricking or scaring you into giving out information or simply digging through your trash to find account statements. ### Never Give Info to Someone Who Contacts You Never provide a person with personal information unless you initiated the contact. If someone calls you asking for personal information, tell them you’ll call them back. Then ignore the phone number or website they give you, and instead look up the phone number for the organization on their official website. A legitimate company or government agency will never require you to stay on the line with them to solve the problem. ### Shred Everything You should also purchase an inexpensive cross-cut shredder and get in the habit of shredding all paperwork and mail before you throw it away. A good rule of thumb is that if the paper has your name on it, you should shred it before throwing it out. ### Order Your Credit Report Annually At least once per year, you should get your credit report from the credit reporting agencies through annualcreditreport.com, which is the only website approved by the Federal and State governments. The three major agencies -- Transunion, Equifax, and Experian -- all provide the legally mandated free report through this website. Learn how to read a credit report from one of these agencies. Look for incorrect information or accounts you don’t recognize. If you see accounts you didn’t open on your credit report, file a report with the local police and the local FBI field office. You can also file a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission and Internet Crime Complaint Center. ### Creating Strong Alliances: Getting Help and Avoiding Scams As you’ve read through this chapter, it may have dawned on you that this personal finance stuff is a lot more complicated than it seems. There are people who have devoted their entire educations and careers to mastering single areas of personal finance, such as taxes, investing, and estate planning. When you feel it’s time to get professional help, there are many qualified professionals who can assist you. Not everyone who calls themselves a financial adviser is actually looking out for your best interest, however. The terms financial adviser, financial planner, wealth manager, and many other impressive-sounding job titles are not regulated by the government. Anyone can put these job titles on their business cards. You need to be able to differentiate between a qualified professional and those who are untrained product salespeople, predatory financial businesses, or outright scams. ### Predatory Practices Aimed at College Students As a college student, you are a prime target for predatory practices designed to make the adviser or company rich at your expense. ### Annuities and Life Insurance Annuities and life insurance products are often aggressively sold to college students. They are generally inappropriate for college students and even most college graduates because they have high fees and lower returns than many other investment options, and the benefits are rarely needed by young people.North American Securities Administrators Association. Top Investor Threats. ttp://www.nasaa.org/top-investor-threats / ### Investment Schemes Regulators identify specialized investments, such as promissory notes, real estate, oil and gas, and gold, as a major threat to investors. Investing systems, including stock picking and buying or selling strategies, are also a concern. Academic research has continually disproven these strategies.Kadan, Maduriera, Wang and Zach. “Stock Picking, Industry Picking, and Market Timing in Sell-Side Research.” Singapore Management University. 2012. If someone is pitching you on their special system or secret strategy, be extremely skeptical. Legitimate investments are regulated by government agencies and are therefore never a secret. ### Sources of Good Information and Help With all the high-cost, predatory, and scam financial advice out there, it is important to know where to turn for help. ### Personal Finance Classes One option is to look for a personal finance class, which will take the concepts found in this chapter and expand on them for an entire semester. Your college may have a financial literacy, personal finance, or money management class available. Be wary of personal finance or investing classes offered through other sources, however, as many include hidden sales agendas and aggressive pitches to buy a company’s financial products. Never make an investment decision, buy a product, or sign a contract at a class, and always seek advice from others on any opportunity. ### Websites and Government Resources There are a ridiculous number of websites available to the public to help with your personal finances. When choosing a website for help, lean toward sites run by a legitimate government agencies or nonprofit organizations. The first place you should look for help with finances is the official website of related government agencies. If you have a question about insurance, look to your state’s insurance commissioner website. If you are having problems with your apartment, contact your city’s housing authority. Government agencies not only have the authoritative word on any legal matter, but are also generally unbiased. The downside to government websites is that they can be hard to understand, with legal wording taken directly from the law. Some government agencies are also prohibited from giving advice to the public, leaving it up to you to apply the information they provide. There are also many nonprofit organizations that have been established to assist the public with finances. Nonprofit organizations may have information that is easier to understand, and they may also be able to offer personal advice. Official Government Websites 1. Personal Finance: Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, consumerfinance.gov 2. Taxes: Internal Revenue Service, irs.gov 3. Retirement: Social Security Administration, ssa.gov 4. Investing: Securities Exchange Commission, sec.gov 5. Investing: North American Securities Administrators Association, nasaa.org (state and provincial investment regulators) Nonprofit Organization Websites 1. National Endowment for Financial Education, nefe.org 2. National Foundation for Credit Counseling, nfcc.org 3. Consumer Reports, consumerreports.org (national consumer advocacy organization) 4. Purposeful Finance, purposefulfinance.org (a nonprofit organization run by this chapter’s author) ### Your College’s Financial Aid Office The financial aid or student aid office of your college may also be a good place to look for financial help, especially surrounding student loans. It is important to realize, however, that a conflict of interest exists between you and the financial aid adviser. Your college’s financial aid office is charged with helping you find the money to go to college, but it isn’t charged with making sure you don’t take on too much student debt. It is possible to get good advice on getting money to pay for college that is also bad advice for your future finances. College financial aid counselors are also generally not trained in other areas of finance and should not be relied on for advice on investing, taxes, noncollege debt, or other financial matters. To get help with these areas, consult a qualified professional who can guide you with fewer conflicts of interest, such as the professionals listed below. ### Chapter Summary There are a lot of benefits to good financial management. Primarily, it generally allows you to do more of what you want with your life. When you have poor financial habits, too much of your money goes into other people’s pockets. But when you have good financial management habits, you can afford to do more because you have worked hard, separated needs from wants, saved and invested, and avoided credit card and debt pitfalls. Search the articles at PurposefulFinance.org and find one you deem interesting. Why do you find it interesting, and how can you apply it to your life? How does the article relate to the concepts in this chapter? Revisit the questions you answered at the beginning of the chapter, and consider one concept or practice you learned in this chapter that might change your answer to one of them. 1. I actively and regularly plan and/or monitor my finances. 2. I understand the benefits and risks of credit. 3. I have a plan to repay my student loans. 4. I regularly take steps to protect my identity and assets. ### Where Do You Go from Here? Financial literacy is a topic that many college students struggle with, but good financial planning habits will benefit you long after your college days are behind you. What would you like to learn more about? Choose a topic from the list below, and create an annotated bibliography that would direct further research. 1. Marrying personal finance goals with financial planning 2. Creating a saving and spending plan 3. Best practices concerning credit cards 4. Financing a college education

# Engaging in a Healthy Lifestyle ## Introduction ### Student Survey How do you feel about health and wellness? These questions will help you determine how the chapter concepts relate to you right now. As we are introduced to new concepts and practices, it can be informative to reflect on how your understanding changes over time. We’ll revisit these questions at the end of the chapter to help you identify opportunities for improved health. Take this quick survey to figure it out, ranking questions on a scale of 1–4, 1 meaning “least like me” and 4 meaning “most like me.” 1. I eat enough fruits and vegetables every day. 2. I get enough sleep. 3. I have, for the most part, healthy relationships with friends and family. 4. I feel like I know how to manage stress. You can also take the Chapter 11 survey anonymously online. ### About this Chapter This chapter explores the many ways your health is impacted by your lifestyle choices. The goal of this material is to help you do the following: 1. Describe actions you can take to improve your physical health. 2. Identify ways to maintain and enhance your emotional health. 3. Understand mental health risks and warning signs. 4. Articulate reasons and ways to maintain healthy relationships. 5. Outline steps you can take to be more safety conscious. Recent headlines were buzzing with news about a 17-year-old boy who lost his eyesight because of a poor diet. While the boy ate enough food and his weight was considered normal, when doctors investigated, they discovered he didn’t eat enough - food. A self-described picky eater, the teen’s daily diet consisted of sausage, deli ham, white bread, Pringles, and french fries. His food choices led to numerous nutritional deficiencies of several essential vitamins and minerals, causing nutritional optic neuropathy.Harrison, Warburton, Lux, and Atan. Blindness caused by a junk food diet. Have you heard the saying “you are what you eat”? If so, likely a parent or someone who loves you said it while coaxing you to eat your vegetables. Are we really what we eat, and what does this phrase actually mean? While the example of the boy who lost his vision may be extreme, the food we eat does impact our physical and mental health. What’s at the end of our fork can keep us healthy or eventually make us sick. Every 27 days, our skin replaces itself and our body makes new cells from the food we eat.https://www.webmd.com/beauty/cosmetic-procedures-overview-skin#1 And according to Dr. Libby Weaver, every three months we completely rebuild and replace our blood supply. What you eat becomes you. It’s not only what you eat that impacts your health but also how much you exercise, how effectively you deal with stress, how well you sleep, your work habits, and even your relationships—these things all have an impact on your well-being. There are two primary reasons we become unhealthy. First, we do not deliver enough nutrients for our cells to operate properly, and second, our cells are bombarded with too many toxins. Keeping it simple, good health is proper nutrients in, toxins out. Toxins come from a host of sources—certain foods, the environment, stressful relationships, smoking, vaping, and alcohol and drug use. And if we don’t sleep and exercise enough, toxins can hang around long enough to cause us harm. As a first-year college student you will make many choices without parental oversight, including the food you eat and the way you take care of your body and brain. Some choices put you on a path to health, and other choices can lead you down a path toward illness. There is a strong connection between success in college and your ability to stay healthy. Health is more than a strong body that doesn’t get sick. Health also includes your overall sense of well-being (mental, emotional) and healthy relationships. Good health is about making positive choices in all of these areas, and avoiding destructive choices. It’s about learning to be smart, to set boundaries, to watch out for your safety, and to take care of the one body that will carry you through life. While health and wellness are often interchanged, it is important to differentiate the two concepts. a state of physical, mental, and social well-being, while is a process through which people become aware of and make choices toward a healthy and fulfilling life.

# Engaging in a Healthy Lifestyle ## Taking Care of Your Physical Health Questions to Consider: 1. What is healthy eating? 2. Why is it important to stay hydrated? 3. How important is exercise to a healthy body? 4. Are you getting enough sleep to be healthy? 5. What are toxins, and how can they affect your health? You have one body. Treat it well so as to maximize its ability to serve you throughout your life. Often physical health gets moved to the bottom of the priority list when we are busy. Taking care of your physical health doesn’t mean six-pack abs or training for a marathon. It means honoring your physical needs so your body can function properly, feeding your cells the nutrients that will keep your body working well your entire life, and minimizing exposure to toxins to reduce your risk of disease. ### Healthy Eating While it’s not the only thing that contributes to great health, what you eat makes a huge difference. We have 37 trillion cells in our body. The only way they function optimally is with good nutrition. As a college student, you will be surrounded by temptations to eat poorly or even to overeat. It’s now up to you to make wise choices in the face of these temptations. Your dining hall is likely full of many healthy foods and just as many unhealthy foods. You may grab food on the run while racing to class or order a pizza at midnight while studying for a test. Lobby vending machines or a stash of snacks in your room should not turn into a substitute for real meals. The downside of fast food and easy access treats is that many are loaded with sugar, salt, or both. The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) updated their Healthy Plate Guidelines in 2011. MyPlate illustrates five different food groups considered the building blocks for a healthy diet—vegetables, fruits, protein, grains, and dairy. It’s also important to know what is not a healthy plate. A healthy plate is low in refined carbohydrates (donuts, pastries, pasta, cookies), low in sugar, and low in saturated fat (although we need healthy fats like avocado and nuts). You can learn more at https://www.myplate.gov/. While the USDA’s MyPlate was revised to reflect some key findings at that time, nutritionists at Harvard felt it didn’t offer the most complete picture when it comes to basic nutrition guidelines. They created The Healthy Eating Plate, which is based on what they consider to be the best available science. Similar to MyPlate, half the plate is vegetables and fruit. Aim for eight servings of veggies or fruits a day, more veggies than fruits. It’s important to note that the Harvard version was created without the political pressure from food industry lobbyists (for example, the dairy industry). Note that grains are further defined as whole grains, protein is now healthy protein, and water is emphasized over dairy/milk. What other differences do you see? This table provides more detail on how The Healthy Eating plate compares to USDA’s MyPlate. Healthy eating also includes choosing organic fruits and vegetables when possible. By choosing organic, you help lower the amount of toxins your body encounters (since conventional fruits and vegetables are often sprayed with pesticides). Organic foods may not be readily available on your campus or in your local grocery store, so strive to choose the best options possible given availability and your budget. Many college and universities are adding organic food as a result of student demand. If healthy eating is something you are passionate about, consider organizing an effort to influence the dining options on your campus. When shopping on your own, the Dirty Dozen list provided by the Environmental Working Group (EWG) is a good guide of which produce is most important to eat organic, as these are the fruits and vegetables with the most pesticide residue. The EWG also compiles a Clean 15 list of the vegetables and fruits with the least amount of pesticides. ### Whole Foods vs. Processed Foods Choose whole foods. Whole foods are any foods that have not been processed, packaged, or altered in any way. Whole foods are an essential part of a healthy diet because they contain the vitamins and minerals our bodies need. Examples of whole foods include the following: 1. Vegetables: Carrots, broccoli, kale, avocados, cauliflower, spinach, peppers 2. Fruits: Apples, bananas, blueberries, strawberries, grapes, melons, peaches 3. Grains: Brown rice, oatmeal, barley, buckwheat, quinoa, millet 4. Beans: Black, pinto, kidney, black-eyed peas, chickpeas Minimize non-whole foods. These are foods that have been processed, such as cookies, hot dogs, chips, pasta, deli meat, and ice cream. Even seemingly healthy foods like yogurt, granola, and protein bars are processed and should be checked for added sugar and other unhealthy ingredients. The average American eats 62 percent of their daily calories from processed foods.Dr. Joel Furhman https://www.mensjournal.com/features/joel-fuhrman-the-doctor-is-out-there-20121107/ In order for your body to be as healthy as possible, it’s extremely important to include lots of whole foods in your diet. ### How to Read a Food Label The U.S. government requires food manufacturers to put a label on every processed food product. This is so we, as consumers, know what we are putting into our bodies and can make good dietary choices. A quick review of the label will provide a lot of important information about what you are eating, yet most people don’t take the time to read the label. This is a big mistake. Think of the front of the package as a marketing billboard. Don’t be fooled by the marketing. Every day millions of dollars are spent to persuade us to eat foods that are not healthy for us. Through visuals (like the strawberry on the bottle of dressing below) and words (like natural, healthy, or gluten free), the food industry wants us to make assumptions about the nature of a food product without looking at the facts. For example, many people eat protein bars thinking they are a healthy choice, but protein bars can have up to 30 grams of sugar! Understanding the nutrition information and ingredients will help you make healthier choices. When you take the time to read the labeled ingredients, you are no longer being marketed to—you are staring at the facts. Look at the label on the back of what appears to be a healthy item: fruit salad or fruit cocktail. One of the first things to look for is the amount of sugar. 12 grams equals just under 2.5 teaspoons. The serving size indicated is 2/3 cups, so if you have double that amount, it’s the equivalent of spooning out 5 teaspoons of sugar. The lower the sugar the better. It’s also important to avoid high amounts of sodium, to minimize saturated fats, and to avoid all trans fats. Trans fats are unhealthy substances made through the process of solidifying liquid oils to increase the shelf life of foods. Also called partially hydrogenated oil, trans fats are often found in margarine, microwave popcorn, crackers, cookies, and frozen pizza. Saturated fat usually comes from animal products like butter and meat fat. Saturated fat tends to raise the level of cholesterol in the blood, and while some is OK, moderation is best. Dietary fiber is a good thing; the higher the number the better. Fiber has virtually no calories, but it holds water in your stomach, makes you feel full, and helps with digestion. Vitamins are very important. Aim to get to 100 percent of your recommended daily value through the food you eat throughout the day. Next, look at the ingredient list that can be found at the bottom of the nutrition label. A long list of ingredients likely contains fillers and preservatives you should avoid. If you can’t pronounce an ingredient, you can generally assume it is not a healthy option. And it’s not only what you eat, it’s what you don’t eat. As a rule, the fewer the ingredients, the better. This video on how to read a food label is a helpful overview on what else to look for. You can also download the Fooducate app, which allows you to scan the bar code of any food item and quickly see a report card and suggestions for healthier alternatives. ### What You Drink What is your go-to drink when you are thirsty? Soda? Juice? Coffee? How about water? Most of your blood and every cell in your body is composed of water. In fact, water makes up 60 to 80 percent of our entire body mass, so when we don’t consume enough water, all kinds of complications can occur. To function properly, all the cells and organs in our body need water. Proper hydration is key to overall health and well-being. By the time you feel thirsty, you are already dehydrated. Dehydration is when your body does not have as much water and fluids as it needs. Researchers at Virginia Polytechnic discovered that mild dehydration (as little as losing 1 to 2 percent of body water) can impair cognitive performance.University of Virginia https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4207053/ Water increases energy and relieves fatigue, helps maintain weight, flushes toxins, improves skin complexion, improves digestion, and is a natural headache remedy (your brain is 76 percent water). Headaches, migraines, and back pains are commonly caused by dehydration. Your body will also let you know it needs water by messaging through muscle cramps, achy joints, constipation, dry skin, and of course a dry mouth. Aside from feeling thirsty, the easiest way to tell if you are dehydrated is to check your urine. If it is a dark shade of yellow, your urine is over-concentrated with waste. This happens because water helps flush out waste and when you’re hydrated there’s a higher ratio of water to waste, turning your urine a lighter color. One of the best habits you can develop is to drink a large glass of water first thing in the morning. Your body becomes a little dehydrated as you sleep. Drinking water first thing in the morning allows your body to rehydrate, which helps with digestion and helps move the bowels for regularity in the morning. It also helps to eliminate the toxins your liver processed while you slept. Check out this video for more benefits of drinking water. Staying hydrated is important to keep your body healthy, energized, and running properly. As a general guideline, aim to drink eight glasses of water a day, although a more helpful guide is to drink half your body weight in ounces (for example, if you weigh 150 lb, try to drink 75 oz of water a day). One of the best ways to remind yourself to drink throughout the day is to buy a reusable bottle and bring it everywhere you go. There are two reasons to use a refillable water bottle instead of a plastic bottle: 1. Your own health. Most plastic water bottles have a chemical called bisphenol A (BPA), which is added to plastics to make them more durable and pliable. BPA is known to disrupt hormones and has been linked to sperm dysfunction. 2. The health of the planet. Do you know that every time you drink from a plastic water bottle and casually toss it in the trash, it can stay on the planet approximately 450 years?https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/01/10/stark-truth-long-plastic-footprint-will-last-planet/ Even when you recycle, the complex nature of recycling doesn’t guarantee your plastic bottle will make it through the process. Americans purchase about 50 billion water bottles per year, averaging 13 bottles a month for each of us. By using a reusable water bottle, you can save an average of 156 plastic bottles annually.https://www.earthday.org/2018/03/29/fact-sheet-single-use-plastics/#_ftn5 “But I don’t like the taste of water!” It may take time, but eventually you will. Add a little more each day, and eventually your body will feel so fantastic fully hydrated that you will have water cravings. In the meantime, you can visit the dining hall in the morning and add lemon, lime, berries, watermelon, cucumbers, or whatever taste you enjoy that will add a little healthy flavor to the water. While water is undeniably the healthiest beverage you can drink, it is unrealistic to assume that is all you will drink. Be careful to minimize your soda intake, as most sodas are loaded with sugar or artificial sweeteners (which can be even worse than sugar). And unless you are squeezing your own fruit juice, you are also likely drinking a lot of sugar. Many fruit juices sold in supermarkets contain only a small percentage of real fruit juice, and have added sugar and other unhealthy sweeteners like high-fructose corn syrup. A 12-oz glass of orange juice can contain up to 9 teaspoons of sugar, about the same as a 12-oz can of Coke! Hot or cold herbal teas are a wonderful addition to your diet. ### Exercise Many people exercise to maintain or lose weight, or increase cardiovascular health, but physical outcomes are only one potential benefit of exercise. Regular exercise can improve the quality of your sleep, strengthen your bones, increase your energy levels, and reduce your risk of high blood pressure, diabetes, and even some forms of cancer.Harvard Medical School https://www.health.harvard.edu/newsletter_article/Exercise_as_medicine Regular exercise is key to living a long, healthy life. There are three basic types of exercise—flexibility, strength training, and cardiovascular. 1. Flexibility is the range in motion of the joints in your body, or the ability for your muscles to move freely. Without adequate flexibility, daily activities can become difficult to do. Stretching increases your body’s flexibility, improves circulation, and sends more blood to your muscles. Just a few minutes a day of deep stretching can have a powerfully positive impact on your health. Yoga and Tai Chi are other wonderful ways to improve your flexibility. 2. Strength is the body’s ability to produce force. Strength training helps improve muscle strength and muscle mass, which will become increasingly important as you age. Increased muscle helps your body burn calories more efficiently. Strength training also helps maintain bone strength. In addition to lifting weights, other ways to build strength include push-ups, pull-ups, squats, lunges, and yoga. 3. Cardiovascular is the body’s ability to use oxygen efficiently during exercise. As one’s ability to use oxygen improves, daily activities can be performed with less fatigue. Great cardiovascular modes of exercise include jogging, swimming, biking, and HIIT (high intensity interval training). HIIT is short bursts of intense activity followed by a rest period. With HIIT, you can squeeze a lot of benefit into a short period of time. Click here for an example of HITT workouts. Research indicates that regular aerobic exercise can support memory and cognition. In these studies, aerobic exercise generally increases the number of new neurons created in the brain’s memory center and also reduces inflammation.Kelty, Journal of Applied Physiology Inflammation in the brain may contribute to the development of dementia and other neurodegenerative conditions. It might be good timing to take a jog before you sit down to study for a test! It’s important to move throughout the day, and every day. Aim to exercise for 150 minutes a week. You don’t have to be the king or queen of CrossFit; it’s the daily movement that is most important. While it is best to integrate all three types of exercise, the best exercise is the one you will actually do. Find and commit to a form of exercise you will enjoy. ### Toxins We live in an increasingly toxic world. Since the Industrial Revolution, we have released thousands of man-made chemicals into the environment. These chemical toxins are in our food (pesticides, conventional fertilizers), in food packaging, in household products, and in our personal care products. Many of these chemicals have been linked to infertility, asthma, migraines, ADHD, and cancer. The complicated thing about these chemicals is that their effects can take years or even decades to appear. The chemicals build up over time and they interact with each other,which can result in problems that are not considered by “single chemical” testing (which is the majority of the limited testing that is done). Now the good news—there are simple things you can do right now to limit the amount of toxins in your environment. First, it is best to avoid any products with “artificial colors” or “fragrance.” 1. Artificial colors: Synthetic dyes like Yellow 10, Blue 1, and Red 28 may contain carcinogens and neurotoxins and can be absorbed by your skin and go directly into your bloodstream. 2. Fragrance: Have you ever walked down the cleaning and laundry soap aisle and been assaulted by so many fragrances you couldn’t get to the next aisle fast enough? Claiming trade secrets, companies don’t have to tell us what’s in “fragrance,” which can include highly toxic ingredients, hormone disruptors, and carcinogens. Fragranced products come in the form of soaps, cleaners, air fresheners, hand sanitizers, laundry detergents, and personal care products. Studies have repeatedly shown that the synthetic fragrances and other toxic chemicals included in these products are causing a range of health problems.https://www.ewg.org/ There is a long and ever-growing list of common chemicals to avoid, but it’s hard to remember the names when you are shopping. That’s where a handy app like Healthy Living from the EWG comes in. Simply scan the bar code of any products you use and learn about any potential health hazards. Your skin is your largest organ, and in seconds will absorb what you put on it. It’s important to be wary of conventional skin care products that could potentially leak toxins into your body. Think of your skin as one giant mouth. If you wouldn’t eat the ingredients in your products, think twice before applying them to your skin.

# Engaging in a Healthy Lifestyle ## Sleep Questions to Consider: 1. How much sleep is enough? 2. What are the impacts of sleep deprivation? 3. Which strategies and support can enhance sleep? How often do you wake up filled with energy, eager to embrace the day? How often do you wake up still tired, with heavy eyes that just don’t want to open? Your answer to these questions has a direct bearing on the quality of your decisions, your ability to use good judgement, the extent to which you can focus in the classroom, and ultimately your long-term health. A great night’s sleep begins the minute you wake up. The choices you make throughout the day impact how quickly you fall asleep, whether you sleep soundly, and whether your body is able to successfully complete the cycle of critical functions that only happen while you sleep. Sleep is the foundation of amazing health, yet almost 40 percent of adults struggle to get enough sleep.https://news.gallup.com/poll/166553/less-recommended-amount-sleep.aspx Lack of sleep affects mental and physical performance and can make you more irritable. The diminished energy that results from too little sleep often leads us to make poor decisions about most things, including food. Think about the last time you were really tired. Did you crave pizza, donuts, and fries—or a healthy salad? Studies have shown that people who sleep less are more likely to eat fewer vegetables and eat more fats and refined carbohydrates, like donuts.Cleveland Clinic, https://health.clevelandclinic.org/lack-sleep-make-crave-junk-food/ With sufficient sleep it is easier to learn, to remember what you learned, and to have the necessary energy to make the most of your college experience. Without sufficient sleep it is harder to learn, to remember what you learned, and to have the energy to make the most of your college experience. It’s that simple. ### What Happens When We Sleep? Sleep is a time when our bodies are quite busy repairing and detoxifying. While we sleep we fix damaged tissue, toxins are processed and eliminated, hormones essential for growth and appetite control are released and restocked, and energy is restored. Sleep is essential for a healthy immune system. How many colds do you catch a year? How often do you get the flu? If you are often sick, you do not have a healthy immune system, and sleep deprivation may be a key culprit. A review of hundreds of sleep studies concluded that most adults need around eight hours of sleep to maintain good health. Some people may be able to function quite well on seven and others may need closer to nine, but as a general rule, most people need a solid eight hours of sleep each night. And when it comes to sleep, both quantity and quality are important. When sleep is cut short, the body doesn’t have time to complete all the phases needed for the repair and detoxification. A tiny lobe called the pineal gland helps us fall asleep. The pineal gland secretes melatonin to calm the brain. The pineal gland responds to darkness. If you are watching TV until the minute you go to bed and then sleep with the artificial light from smartphones and other devices, your brain is tricked into thinking it is still daylight; this makes it difficult for the pineal gland to do its job. In addition, if the TV shows you watch before bed are violent or action-packed, your body will release cortisol (the stress hormone). Anything that creates stress close to bedtime will make it more difficult to fall asleep. A bedtime practice of quiet activities like reading, journaling, listening to music, or meditation will make it much easier to fall asleep. ### What Happens If You Don’t Get Enough Sleep? Lack of sleep has a big impact on your overall state of health and well-being. Studies have linked poor sleep to a variety of health problems. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have identified sleep deprivation as a public health epidemic. A lack of sleep can change the way your genes express themselves. One notable study involved a group of healthy adults limited to six hours of sleep for one week. Researchers then measured the change in gene activity compared to the prior week when these same people were getting a full eight hours of sleep a night. The lack of sleep caused the activity of 711 genes to become distorted. About half of the genes were switched off by a lack of sleep, and these genes were associated with the immune system. The other half of the genes experienced increased activity from a lack of sleep, and these were genes associated with the promotion of tumors, genes associated with long-term chronic inflammation, and stress genes.Archer, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23440187 Some of the health risks of insufficient sleep include the following: Increased risk of heart attack and stroke: In his book Why We Sleep, Matthew Walker, PhD, shares Japanese research showing that male workers who average six hours of sleep or less are 400 to 500 percent more likely to suffer one or more cardiac arrests than those getting more than six hours of sleep each night. Another study of women between the ages of 20 and 79 found that those who had mild sleep disturbance such as taking longer to fall asleep or waking up one or more times during the night were significantly more likely to have high blood pressure than those who fell asleep quickly and slept soundly.Matthew Walker, PhD Impaired cognitive function: Even one night of sleeping less than six hours can impact your ability to think clearly the next day. Increased risk of accidents: Sleep deprivation slows your reaction time, which increases your risk of accidents. You are three times more likely to be in a car crash if you are tired. According to the American Sleep Foundation, 40 percent of people admitted to falling asleep behind the wheel at least once. A Governor’s Highway Safety Association report estimates there are 6,400 fatal drowsy driving crashes each year. Fifty percent of these crashes involve drivers under the age of 25.Governors Highway Safety Association Driving after 20 hours without sleep is the equivalent of driving with a blood-alcohol concentration of 0.08 percent—the U.S. legal limit for drunk driving. Weight gain/increased risk for obesity: Sleep helps balance your appetite by regulating hormones that play a role in helping you feel full after a meal. Also, cortisol is released during times of anxiety, and exhaustion causes your body to produce more cortisol. This can stimulate your appetite. Increased risk of cancer: Tumors grow up to three times faster in laboratory animals with severe sleep dysfunctions. Researchers believe this is because of disrupted melatonin production, as melatonin has both antioxidant and anticancer activity. Increased emotional intensity: The part of the brain responsible for emotional reactions, your amygdala, can be 60 percent more reactive when you've slept poorly, resulting in increased emotional intensity. For more information on the advantages and health risks of sleep watch this TED Talk by Matt Walker, PhD, Director of the Sleep Center at U California Berkeley. ### Tips to Improve the Quality of Your Sleep Now that you are more aware of the ways insufficient sleep harms your body, let’s review some of the things you can do to enhance your sleep. Make sleep a priority. It can be challenging in college, but try to get on a schedule where you sleep and wake at the same time every day to get your body accustomed to a routine. This will help your body get into a sleep rhythm and make it easier to fall asleep and get up in the morning. Sleep in a cool, quiet, dark room. Create a sleeping environment that is comfortable and conducive to sleep. If you can control the temperature in your room, keep it cool in the evening. Scientists believe a cool bedroom (around 65 degrees) may be best for sleep, since it mimics our body's natural temperature drop. Exposure to bright light suppresses our body’s ability to make melatonin, so keep the room as dark as possible. A 2010 study in The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism found that individuals exposed to room light “during the usual hours of sleep suppressed melatonin by greater than 50%.”JCEM, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3047226/ Even the tiniest bit of light in the room (like from a clock radio LCD screen) can disrupt your internal clock and your production of melatonin, which will interfere with your sleep. A sleep mask may help eliminate light, and earplugs can help reduce noise. Avoid eating late or drinking alcohol or caffeine close to bedtime. It is best to finish eating at least two hours before bedtime and avoid caffeine after lunch. While not everyone is affected in the same way, caffeine hangs around a long time in most bodies. Although alcohol will make you drowsy, the effect is short-lived and you will often wake up several hours later, unable to fall back to sleep. Alcohol can also keep you from entering the deeper stages of sleep, where your body does most of the repair and healing. A 2013 Scientific Research study concluded that “energy drinks, other caffeinated beverages and alcoholic beverages are risk factors of poor sleep quality.” It’s important to finish eating hours before bedtime so your body is able to heal and detoxify and it is not spending the first few hours of sleep digesting a heavy meal. Start to wind down an hour before bed. There are great apps to help with relaxation, stress release, and falling asleep. Or you can simply practice 4-7-8 breathing to calm your nervous system—breathe in to the count of 4, hold your breath for a count of 7, and release your breath slowly to the count of 8. Consider the Insight Timer app, or any of the free apps listed by the American Sleep Association. Exercise for 30 minutes a day. One of the biggest benefits of exercise is its effect on sleep. A study from Stanford University found that 16 weeks in a moderate-intensity exercise program allowed people to fall asleep about 15 minutes faster and sleep about 45 minutes longer. Walking, yoga, swimming, strength training, jumping rope—whatever it is, find an exercise you like and make sure to move your body every day. Improve your diet. Low fiber and high saturated fat and sugar intake is associated with lighter, less restorative sleep with more wake time during the night. Processed food full of chemicals will make your body work extra hard during the night to remove the toxins and leave less time for healing and repair. Sleep affects how we look, feel, and function on a daily basis and is vital to our health and quality of life. When you get the sleep your body needs, you look more vibrant, you feel more vibrant, and you have the energy to live your best life. Now, with a better understanding of the benefits of getting the recommended hours of nightly sleep and the health risks of not getting enough sleep, what changes can you make to improve the quality and quantity of your sleep? ### What If I’m Doing All These Things and I Still Have Trouble Sleeping? People that have trouble falling asleep also often have low magnesium levels (sources suggest that over half of the adults in the United States are magnesium deficient). You can ask your doctor to check your magnesium levels, but you can also focus on eating magnesium-rich foods to help. One of the best magnesium-rich snacks is pumpkin seeds. Other great sources are almonds, sesame seeds, and walnuts. Difficulty sleeping may be a sign that you have a clinical sleep problem, such as insomnia or sleep apnea. If you are doing all the right things and still have trouble falling or staying asleep, talk to your doctor. These are some resources for insomnia: 1. Healthy Sleep, Harvard Medical School Division of Sleep Medicine 2. Insomnia Treatment, American Association of Sleep Medicine 3. Sleep Medicine, Society of Behavioral Sleep Medicine

# Engaging in a Healthy Lifestyle ## Taking Care of Your Emotional Health Questions to Consider: 1. What are some of the ways to tell if you are holding onto stress? 2. How do mindfulness and gratitude encourage emotional health? ### Identifying and Managing Stress According to a 2018 report from the American College Health Association, in a 12-month period 42 percent of college students reported that they have felt so depressed it was difficult to function, and 63 percent reported feeling overwhelming anxiety.American College Health Association 2018 report https://www.acha.org/documents/ncha/NCHA-II_Spring_2018_Reference_Group_Executive_Summary.pdf Your ability to manage stress, maintain loving relationships, and rise to the demands of school and work all impact your emotional health. Stress is not always bad. In fact, some stress is helpful. Good stress is stress in amounts small enough to help you meet daily challenges. It’s also a warning system that produces the fight-or-flight response, which increases blood pressure and your heart rate so you can avoid a potentially life-threatening situation. Feeling stressed can be perfectly normal, especially during exam time. It can motivate you to focus on your work, but it can also become so overwhelming you can’t concentrate. It’s when stress is chronic (meaning you always feel stressed) that it starts to damage your body. ### What Chronic Stress Does to Your Body Do you find it difficult to concentrate or complete your work? Are you frequently sick? Do you have regular headaches? Are you more anxious, angry, or irritable than usual? Do you have trouble falling asleep or staying awake? If you answered yes to any or all of these questions, you may be holding on to too much stress. Stress that hangs around for weeks or months affects your ability to concentrate, makes you more accident-prone, increases your risk for heart disease, can weaken your immune system, disrupts your sleep, and can cause fatigue, depression, and anxiety. To learn more about what stress does to your body, click here: apa.org/helpcenter/stress. Some people refer to the time we are living in as the age of overload. It’s easy to get worn down by social media and the constant news cycle, and to be overwhelmed by too many choices. We live in a fast-paced, always-on world with a lot of pressures. The military created the VUCA acronym for the world we currently live in. VUCA stands for volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous, and as a result of living in this VUCA world, many of us are in a constant state of overdrive. You will have stress. Stress is inevitable. It’s how you deal with it that can make all the difference. One of the most important things you can do is to keep perspective on your stressors. When feeling stressed, ask yourself, on a scale of 1 to 100, how stressful a situation is this? Will I even remember this three years from now? When facing potential stressors, the way you view what you're experiencing can intensify your stress or minimize it. There are many ways to manage stress. Take a look at some of the ideas in the stress toolkit below. Which ones have you tried? Which ones do you want to try? It’s helpful to have different tools for different situations—for example, a calming yoga pose in your dorm room and deep breathing in the classroom. ### Mindfulness and Gratitude Deep breathing, mindfulness, and a practice of gratitude are some of the most effective ways to manage stress and take care of your emotional health. ### Mindfulness Mindfulness means being present with your thoughts, feelings, bodily sensations, and surrounding environment. Mindfulness is also without judgement—meaning there is no right or wrong way to think or feel in a given moment. When we practice mindfulness, our thoughts tune into what we’re sensing in the present moment rather than rehashing the past or imagining the future.Moran, Joan; University of California at Los Angeles, http://newsroom.ucla.edu/stories/gratitude-249167 Anything that keeps you present in the moment and gives your prefrontal cortex (the reasoning and thinking part of your brain) a break is practicing mindfulness. Mindfulness can be a slow walk; looking intently at the grass, trees, flowers, or buildings; and being aware of what you are sensing and feeling. Mindfulness can be sitting quietly—even sitting still in a quiet place for as little as a few minutes can reduce heart rate and blood pressure.The Greater Good Science Center, UC Berkeley https://ggia.berkeley.edu/practice/ Developing a practice of mindfulness is easier than you may think: 1. Slow down. From brushing your teeth, to washing your face, to shampooing your hair—can you take the speed out of getting ready in the morning? Focus on the activity, pay attention to what you are doing, stay present (this means don’t think about what happened last night or what’s in store for the day, just stay focused on the activity), and take your time. 2. Focus on your breath. How fast are you breathing? Is your breath coming from your chest or your belly? Can you feel the air come through your nose on the inhale? Can you slow down the exhale? Can you feel your body relax when you slow the exhale? 3. Connect to your environment. Walk for a few minutes, focused on the world around you—look at the leaves on the trees or the light at the corner, listen to the sounds around you, stay with your surroundings, and observe what you see and hear around you. ### Deep Breathing When people hear mindfulness they often think meditation. While meditation is one method of mindfulness, there are many others that may be simpler and easier for you to practice. Deep breathing helps lower stress and reduce anxiety, and it is simple yet very powerful. A daily mindful breathing practice has been shown to reduce test anxiety in college students.Levitin, Time Special Edition 2018, The New Mindfulness A 2-4-6-8 breathing pattern is a very useful tool that can be used to help bring a sense of calm and to help mild to moderate anxiety. It takes almost no time, requires no equipment, and can be done anywhere: 1. Start by quickly exhaling any air in your lungs (to the count of 2). 2. Breathing in through your nose, inhale to the count of 4. 3. Hold your breath for a count of 6. 4. Slowly exhale through your mouth to the count of 8. This is one round. Do not repeat the quick exhale again. Instead start round two with an inhale through your nose to the count of 4, hold for 6, and exhale to 8. Repeat for three more rounds to relax your body and mind. With practice, 2-4-6-8 breathing will become a useful tool for times when you experience tension or stress. ### Meditation Dan Harris, a news reporter at ABC, fell into drug use and suffered a major panic attack on national television. Following this embarrassing period in his life, he learned to meditate and found that it made him calmer and more resilient. He’s now on a mission to make meditation approachable to everyone. Dan used to be a skeptic about meditation but now says that if he learned to meditate, anyone can learn to meditate! Dan reminds us that we ARE going to get lost, and our mind IS going to stray, and that’s ok. Simply notice when you’re lost and start over. Every time your mind strays and your start over, it is like a bicep curl for your brain. Start with 3 minutes and slowly work your way up to 15 or 20. To hear more about Dan’s journey, watch this video, and for a simple meditation to get started, you can try one of the videos on the meditation Youtube channel. Some great meditation apps include Insight Timer, CALM, and Headspace. ### Gratitude Too often people think it is the external factors that bring us joy and happiness, when really it’s all related to internal work. According to UCLA’s Mindfulness Awareness Research Center, “Having an attitude of gratitude changes the molecular structure of the brain, and makes us healthier and happier. When you feel happiness, the central nervous system is affected. You are more peaceful, less reactive and less resistant.”2016 Study Journal of PLoS One, https://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.1000316 Numerous studies show that people who count their blessings tend to be happier and less depressed. In a UC Berkeley study, researchers recruited 300 people who were experiencing emotional or mental health challenges and randomly divided them into three groups. All three groups received counseling services. The first group also wrote a letter of gratitude every week for three weeks. The second group wrote about their thoughts and feelings with negative experiences. The third group received only counseling. The people in the group who wrote gratitude letters reported significantly better mental health for up to 12 weeks after the writing exercise ended. This would suggest that a healthy emotional self-care practice is to take note of good experiences or when you see something that makes you smile. Think about why the experience feels so good. According to Rick Hanson, author of Resilient, “Each day is strewn with little jewels. The idea is to see them and pick them up. When you notice something positive, stay with the feeling for 30 seconds. Feel the emotions in your whole body. Maybe your heart feels lighter or you’re smiling. The more you can deepen and lengthen positive experiences the longer those positivity neurons in your brain are firing—and the longer they fire the stronger the underlying neural networks become. Repeat that process a half dozen times a day and you’ll feel stronger, more stable and calmer within a few weeks.”

# Engaging in a Healthy Lifestyle ## Taking Care of Your Mental Health Question to consider: 1. What is mental health? 2. How can I take care of it? The World Health Organization ranks mental health conditions as the leading cause of disability in the United States. One in four adults experience a diagnosable mental health disorder in any given year, yet more than half will not seek treatment. The primary reason people don’t seek the help they need is shame and fear of judgment from friends, family, and coworkers. It is important to remove any stigma associated with mental health and encourage those who need help to seek support. ### What Is Mental Health? Mental health is “the level of psychological well-being or an absence of mental illness. It is the state of someone who is functioning at a satisfactory level of emotional and behavioral adjustment.”Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mental_health According to NAMI (National Alliance on Mental Illness), a mental illness is a condition that affects a person's thinking, feeling, or mood. The condition may affect a person’s ability to relate to others and function throughout the day. A mental health condition isn’t the result of one event; it is most often the result of multiple overlapping causes. Environment, lifestyle, and genetic predisposition can all be factors in whether someone develops a mental health condition. Traumatic life events or stressful experiences may make some people more susceptible, and brain biochemistry may play a role as well. Mental health conditions show up in many ways. Anxiety, depression, and eating disorders are some of the most common. ### Anxiety Disorders We all experience the occasional feeling of anxiety, which is quite normal. New situations, meeting new people, driving in traffic, and public speaking are just a few of the common activities that can cause people to feel anxious. It is important to seek help when these feelings become overwhelming, cause fear, or keep us from doing everyday activities. Anxiety disorders are the most common mental health concern in the United States, and while there are many types of anxiety disorders, they all have one thing in common: “persistent, excessive fear or worry in situations that are not threatening.”NAMI, https://www.nami.org/NAMI/media/NAMI-Media/Images/FactSheets/Anxiety-Disorders-FS.pdf Physically, your heart may race, and you may experience shortness of breath, nausea, or intense fatigue. Talk with a mental health care professional if you experience a level of anxiety that keeps you from your regular daily activities. ### Eating Disorders Eating disorders are not uncommon among students. Stress or anxiety may create a desire for some students to overeat, while others may develop a concern about body shape or weight and significantly reduce their food intake. Anorexia nervosa is a potentially fatal illness marked by self-starvation. People with anorexia usually have an irrational concern about body shape or weight and eat a very restricted diet. They may also feel the need to exercise all the time, even when they are sick or exhausted. Binge eating is frequent consumption of large amounts of food in a short period of time. People who binge regularly (more than once a week) and feel a lack of control over their eating may have binge eating disorder (BED). It is important to seek treatment if you suspect there is an issue with binge eating. Treatment can address any underlying psychological issues that will help control urges to binge eat. Bulimia involves cycles of excessive eating followed by eliminating food through vomiting or with laxatives. Eating disorders can lead to many complications, some of them very serious, like heart conditions and kidney failure. It is crucial for anyone with an eating disorder to stabilize their health, then continuing medical care and counseling to reach full recovery. Eating disorders can be treated successfully with medical care, psychotherapy, counseling, or coaching. If you think you might have an eating disorder, visit a doctor or your campus health center. The National Eating Disorders Association also offers information, help, and support. ### Depression Most people feel sad at times. This is a normal reaction to loss or struggles we face. Being sad is not the same as having depression. When intense sadness lasts for several days or even weeks and you are no longer interested in activities you once enjoyed, it may be depression. Depression can lead to a variety of emotional and physical problems and can decrease a person’s ability to function at work and at home. Depression does not have a single cause. It can follow a life crisis or physical illness, but it can also occur spontaneously. Several factors including trauma, a significant life change, brain injury, and drug and alcohol misuse may contribute to depression. Depression is a treatable medical condition. Talk with a mental health care professional if you experience an ongoing level of sadness that keeps you from your regular daily activities. ### Suicidal Behavior Suicide is when people direct violence at themselves with the intent to end their lives, and they die because of their actions.NIMH, https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/publications/suicide-faq/index.shtml People who contemplate suicide often experience a deep feeling of hopelessness. They often don’t feel they can cope with challenging life events and are not able to see solutions to problems. In the moment, they are unable to see that the challenges are really only temporary. Most survivors of suicide attempts go on to live wonderful, full lives. Help is available all day, every day, for anyone who might be in crisis. By offering immediate counseling to everyone that may need it, crisis centers provide invaluable support at the most critical times. If you or someone you know has warning signs of suicide, get help as soon as possible. Family and friends are often the first to recognize any warning signs and can help take the first step in finding treatment. If someone is telling you that they are going to kill themselves, do not leave them alone. The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK (8255) is available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. A Crisis Text Line is also available 24/7 by texting HOME to 741741, 85258, or 686868. There are also near-term plans to implement a 988 suicide hotline number that will work similarly to 911. Depression is a key risk factor for suicide, along with substance abuse, chronic debilitating pain, mental health disorders, and a family history of suicide. These are some of the warning signs to help you determine if a friend or loved one is at risk for suicide, especially if the behavior is new, has increased, or seems related to a painful event: 1. talking about wanting to die or to kill themselves 2. looking for a way to kill themselves, like searching online or buying a gun 3. talking about feeling hopeless or having no reason to live 4. talking about feeling trapped or in unbearable pain 5. talking about being a burden to others 6. increasing the use of alcohol or drugs 7. acting anxious or agitated; behaving recklessly 8. sleeping too little or too much 9. withdrawing or isolating themselves 10. showing rage or talking about seeking revenge 11. extreme mood swingshttps://suicidepreventionlifeline.org/how-we-can-all-prevent-suicide/; https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/publications/suicide-faq/index.shtml ### Additional Resources Because entering college is such a big transition, it is important to know what health services are available on your campus. Some help may be beyond the scope of a college counseling program, and if this is the case, your college health center can refer you to off-campus resources to support you. Regardless of where you attend college, OK2TALK and NAMI offer online, text, and phone support. 1. OK2TALK is a community for young adults struggling with mental health problems. It offers a safe place to talk. 2. Call the NAMI helpline at 800-950-6264, or txt NAMI to 741741.

# Engaging in a Healthy Lifestyle ## Maintaining Healthy Relationships Questions to Consider: 1. How does self-care benefit relationships? 2. Why is community so important to healthy relationships? 3. What is sexual health? Relationships are key to happy and healthy lives. According to Dr. Robert Waldinger, director of the Harvard Study of Adult Development, people with the best health outcomes were people who “leaned into relationships, with family, with friends, with community.” The quality of our relationships is important, however. What makes a relationship healthy? Relationships come in many forms: lovers, family, friends, coworkers, team members, and neighbors. Think of a relationship where you have mutual respect and trust, supporting each other in tough times, celebrating the good times, and communicating with ease and honesty. This is a healthy relationship. Do you have someone in mind? On the other hand, if communication is often tense or strained, confidences are broken, or you don’t feel listened to, appreciated, or valued, these are signs of an unhealthy relationship. Unhealthy relationships can have both immediate and longer-term health impacts. If you are unhappy in a relationship, try to improve the relationship, or end it. Do not stay in a relationship for the wrong reasons, such as fear of being alone or guilt. If a partner tries to force you to do something sexually, harms you physically, or is verbally abusive, you are in an unhealthy relationship. Even if you believe the person loves you, it does not make up for the harm they are doing to you. End the relationship. Take a moment to assess the health of your relationships. Who are the people who make you smile, who boost your confidence, who truly listen when you need to talk, and who want only the best for you? Investing in these relationships is likely to make you happier and healthier. Relationships are two-way streets. How committed are you to your relationships? How much effort do you put into nurturing your relationships? ### Self-Care Healthy relationships start with healthy individuals. Self-care is learning to take good care of yourself and to prioritize your own needs. Self-care involves any activity that nurtures and refuels you, such as taking a walk in the woods, going to a yoga class, attending a sporting event, reading a good book, or spending time with friends. When you are feeling calm and nourished, you are going to look forward to your day, and despite how busy it is, you will prioritize time with friends and family. If you don’t take care of and learn to love yourself, you will never be able to bring your best self to any relationship. An important dynamic you bring to any relationship is how you feel about yourself. Self-esteem is about loving yourself and being happy for who you are. Building healthy self-esteem impacts how you see yourself, which can drastically improve your relationships. While low self-esteem won’t keep us from romantic love, it can act as a barrier to a healthy relationship. If you do not believe you are good enough, how can you expect your partner to think so? When you feel secure in yourself, this allows you and your partner to feel more secure about the relationship. If you have insecurities, it may show in your relationship as jealousy, defensiveness, or tension that leads to unnecessary arguments. Healthy self-esteem goes hand in hand with self-confidence, and feeling confident about yourself will translate into a stronger and more satisfying relationship. If you are experiencing low self-esteem, you may give your partner too much credit or stay in a relationship that is not healthy for you. If you find yourself changing your personality for someone else, that is never a sign of a healthy relationship. You can reverse negative self-talk and build your self-esteem. If you catch yourself thinking you are unlovable, unattractive, or not good enough, it’s important to start talking to yourself in a positive way and to celebrate all that is uniquely you. Self-care includes self-forgiveness. We all make mistakes. A misstep isn’t the end of the world. Pick yourself up, put things in perspective, acknowledge any lessons to be learned, focus on all that makes you special, and move forward. Be kind to yourself. ### The Importance of Community The Nicoya Peninsula in Costa Rica is home to some of the highest number of centenarians (people who are 100 years old or older) in the world. Costa Ricans in general report a high level of life satisfaction. Dan Buettner, author of the Blue Zones study of the longest living populations in the world, explains that Costa Rica “is a place where religion, family, and social interaction are the main values, unlike trying to get ahead, or financial security, or status. Their cities are set up so they’re bumping into each other all day long. They walk to the markets, where they have conversations with people.”https://www.bluezones.com/2017/10/costa-rica-singapore-two-happiest-places-earth/ In many families in Costa Rica, multiple generations live together under the same roof or nearby where they can be involved in each other’s lives. Neighbors are like extended family, and people often stop in for a visit and go out of their way to help one another. While this isn’t the way many of us live in the United States, the lessons from the Blue Zone study underscore the importance of community and the health benefits of connecting to and staying close to a community. What communities do you belong to? Is your dorm a community? A sports team? A club or people you volunteer with? When you start seeing the social circles you connect to as communities and prioritize your time to develop more closeness with those communities, you will experience many physical, mental, and emotional health benefits. According to an analysis of research on college students (Joe Cuseo, The Most Potent, Research-Based Principles of College Success), college students who have a higher sense of belonging and are more involved in their college community are more successful. Additionally, college students who are involved in extracurricular, volunteer, and part-time work experiences outside the classroom (less than 20 hours per week) earn higher grades than students who do not get involved in any out-of-class activities at all. Research has shown that friends provide a sense of meaning or purpose in our lives, and that having a healthy social life is important to staying physically healthy. In a meta-analysis of the research results from 148 studies of over 300,000 participants, researchers found that social relationships are important in improving our lifespan. Social support has been linked to lower blood pressure and better immune system functioning. The meta-analysis also showed that social support operates on a continuum: the greater the extent of the relationships, the lower the health risks.Holt-Lunstad, According to a 2018 report from the American College Health Association, in a 12-month period, 63 percent of college students have felt very lonely. If you are feeling lonely or having a hard time making friends, know that the majority of people around you have also felt this way. Joining a group or a club of people who share your interests and passions is one of the best ways to make great friends and stay connected. ### Sexual Health Affection, love, and sexual intimacy all play an important role in healthy relationships, and a responsible approach to intimacy is essential for sexual health. Whether you are already sexually active or become sexually active in the future, your choices can affect your safety as well as the health and safety of your sexual partners. It’s important to understand what you can do to protect yourself from sexually transmitted infections (STIs). ### How You Can Protect Yourself against STIs The surest way to protect yourself against STIs is to practice abstinence. This means not having any vaginal, anal, or oral sex. There are many things to consider before having sex, and it’s okay to say no if you are not ready. If you do decide to have sex, you and your partner should both get tested beforehand and make sure you always use a condom. It’s not safe to stop using condoms unless you’ve both been tested, know your status, have another form of birth control, and are in a mutually monogamous relationship. Mutual monogamy means that you and your partner both agree to only have sexual contact with each other. This can help protect against STIs as long as you’ve both been tested and know you’re STI-free. Visit this website to find a confidential STI testing location near you. Before you have sex, talk with your partner about how you will prevent STIs and pregnancy. If you think you’re ready to have sex, you need to be ready to protect your body and your future. You should also talk to your partner ahead of time about what you will and will not do sexually. Your partner should always respect your right to say no to anything that doesn’t feel right. Sex should always be consensual and respectful. It’s important to discuss treatment with your doctor and begin treatment as soon as possible if you find out you have an STI. If you are living with an STI, it’s important to tell your partner before you have sex. Although it may be uncomfortable to talk about your STI, open and honest conversation can help your partner make informed decisions to protect his or her health.

# Engaging in a Healthy Lifestyle ## Your Safety Questions to Consider: 1. What makes a person safety conscious? 2. How can you improve your personal safety? ### Safety Consciousness To be safety conscious means you have an awareness of potential hazards and an alertness to danger. Simply, you are conscious of being safe. This includes being smart about your physical surroundings and careful with drug and alcohol use. A drug is a chemical substance that can change how your body and mind work and how you feel. Some drugs are illegal (like cocaine or heroin), and while others may be legal, they can still harm your body and brain. Even prescription medicines can be abused when taken to get high or to a point of dependency. Why do people abuse drugs? The answer varies for different people, but most want to feel good and escape any bad feelings they are experiencing. Or they want to improve in an area of their life—for example, to get better grades. This may lead them to start taking drugs for more energy, to stay awake longer, or to stay focused while studying. This short-term boost is not worth the health risks and the potential for addiction. ### Alcohol The statistics are sobering. Thirty-two percent of college students who drank alcohol reported doing something they later regretted, 27 percent forgot where they were or what they did, and 11 percent physically hurt themselves. Many people consume alcohol to relax, socialize, or celebrate, but there are serious health effects attributed to too much alcohol consumption. You do not need to be an alcoholic for alcohol to interfere with your health and life, and the potential to become addicted to alcohol is a serious problem that can affect anyone. Alcohol is classified as a drug and is a known depressant, making it the most widely used drug in the world. Alcohol interferes with the brain’s communication pathways and can affect the way the brain looks and works. These disruptions can change your mood and behavior and make it harder to think clearly and move with coordination. This is why it is critical to never drive a vehicle if you have been drinking. Drinking can weaken your immune system and damage your heart, increasing your risk for stroke and high blood pressure. Heavy drinking also harms the liver and pancreas. The National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism offers the following guidelines: 1. Moderate alcohol consumption: up to one drink per day for women and up to two drinks per day for men 2. Binge drinking: typically occurs after four drinks for women and five drinks for men in a two-hour period that brings blood alcohol concentration levels to 0.08 g/dL 3. Heavy drinking: drinking five or more drinks on the same occasion on each of five or more days in the past 30 days Alcohol is a part of the social scene on many college campuses. If you choose to drink, you can avoid the devastating consequences of alcohol addiction by drinking responsibly and in moderation. The quality of your schoolwork can suffer dramatically if you drink beyond moderation. Too much alcohol can result in missing classes, performing poorly on exams, and falling behind in assignments. Have you ever decided to drink instead of study even though you had a big test the next day? Have you missed a class because you were too hungover to get out of bed? Did you hand in a project or paper late or not at all due to a series of nights spent drinking? If you answered yes to any of these questions, you are at risk of negatively impacting your success in college because of alcohol. ### Tobacco and Vaping Cigarettes and other forms of tobacco are also drugs. Tobacco contains nicotine, which excites the parts of the brain that make you feel good. Nicotine gives you a mild rush of pleasure and energy but soon wears off, which makes you want more. The more frequently you smoke, the faster your body and brain get addicted. Tobacco is not healthy. Cigarette smoke causes lung cancer and emphysema. If you live with someone who smokes, you are also susceptible to these diseases, even if you are a nonsmoker. This is called secondhand smoke. Smokers are more likely to suffer heart attacks. Chewing tobacco can lead to cancer of the mouth. If you currently smoke, there are medicines and various treatments, as well as hotlines, to help you quit. Electronic cigarettes are marketed as a way to help people stop smoking. Unfortunately, while they do contain less nicotine, they have many health risks. E-cigarettes are battery-operated devices that people use to inhale an aerosol containing nicotine, flavors, and other chemicals. When you smoke an e-cigarette (also called vaping), the nicotine is absorbed from the lungs into the bloodstream, where it stimulates the adrenal glands to release the hormone epinephrine. Epinephrine (also known as adrenaline) stimulates the central nervous system and increases blood pressure, breathing, and heart rate. Like other addictive substances, nicotine activates the brain’s reward circuits and increases dopamine. This pleasure causes some people to use nicotine with increased frequency, despite risks to their health and well-being. The FDA (Food and Drug Administration) has alerted the public to reports of serious lung illnesses and several deaths associated with vaping. While the manufacturers of e-cigarettes would like us to believe they are less harmful than cigarettes, nicotine is a highly addictive drug. It is best to stay away from it in any form. E-cigarettes are not an FDA-approved smoking cessation aid, and there is no conclusive scientific evidence on the effectiveness of e-cigarettes to help stop smoking. Smoking e-cigarettes also exposes the lungs to chemicals. A study of some e-cigarette products found that the vapor contains known carcinogens and toxic chemicals, and the device itself can contain toxic metals. If you are still in your teens or early adulthood, these years are critical for brain development. If you use nicotine in any form, or for that matter any substances, you are putting yourself at risk for long-lasting effects. ### Marijuana Marijuana comes from the cannabis plant. It can be rolled up and smoked like a cigarette, called a joint. It can also be smoked in a pipe, and edibles are becoming increasingly common. Marijuana can make you feel relaxed, silly, or for some people, nervous. Marijuana makes it harder to pay attention and to remember things that just happened a few minutes ago. If you smoke before class, it is going to make it more challenging to learn. A recent study showed that if you begin regular marijuana use as a teen, you can lose an average of eight IQ points, and you do not get them back, even if you stop using.NIDA’s DrugFacts: Electronic Cigarettes (e-Cigarettes) Using marijuana makes the heart beat fast and raises your risk of having a heart attack. Marijuana smoke can hurt your lungs. One of the biggest risks is drugged driving, which is driving when you are high. Marijuana makes it harder to pay attention on the road, and your reactions to traffic signs and sounds are slowed. It is dangerous to smoke and drive. ### Prescription Pain Medicine Pain medicines help relieve pain from surgery or injuries. Prescription pain medicines are legal and helpful to use when ordered by a doctor to treat a specific medical problem within a specific time frame. It is vitally important to take any prescriptions according to your doctor’s instructions, and to carefully read all risks and food/medicine counteractions. Unfortunately, people sometimes take pills without a doctor’s prescription to get high, believing they are safer than street drugs. Make no mistake, prescription pain pill abuse can be just as dangerous as heroin or cocaine. Drug dealers sell these pills just like they sell heroin or cocaine. The abuse of oxycodone has become well documented—sometimes it goes by the brand names OxyContin or Percocet. Hydrocodone is also often abused and is best known under the brand name Vicodin. Prescription pain pill abuse can lead to many problems. Pain medicine abuse can slow down or even stop your breathing. Signs of a pain medicine overdose are cold and sweaty skin, confusion, shaking, extreme sleepiness, and trouble breathing. More people overdose from pain medicines every year than from heroin and cocaine combined. If your doctor prescribes any pain relief pills for you, it is important to ask a lot of questions and understand why your doctor is prescribing them. If after consideration you decide to take pain-relief pills, stop taking them as soon as you possibly can. The longer you take them, the higher the possibility of getting addicted. ### Cocaine and Heroin Cocaine and heroin are both powders, often snorted up the nose, smoked, or mixed with water and injected with a needle. It is easy to become addicted to both drugs, and many people who seek treatment find it hard to stay off the drug. It is not uncommon to feel strong cravings for heroin or cocaine years after seeking treatment. People who inject the drug using a shared needle put themselves at further risk of contracting blood-borne viruses, such as hepatitis or HIV. Cocaine can make people feel full of energy for a period of time, but it can also bring about feelings of restlessness and anger. Cocaine raises blood pressure and makes the heart beat faster, which could lead to a heart attack or stroke. Heroin brings a rush of good feelings after it’s taken. The feeling then wears off, and users often feel a strong urge to take more. The reason so many people overdose on heroin is because they can’t tell how strong it is until they take it. Heroin can slow or stop your breathing. It can kill you. Signs of a heroin overdose are slow breathing; blue lips and fingernails; cold, clammy skin; and shaking. There are medicines that can help people recover from addiction, but the best course is to not start. Avoid any temptation to try heroin or cocaine. Experimentation can be deadly. ### Methamphetamine (Meth) Meth is a white powder that is sometimes made into a pill or rock. Meth powder can be eaten or snorted up the nose. Like cocaine and heroin, it can also be mixed with liquid and injected into your body with a needle. Crystal meth is smoked in a small glass pipe. Meth at first causes a rush of good feelings, but then users feel edgy, overly excited, angry, or afraid. Meth causes many problems. It can make your body temperature so hot that you pass out and could die. If you look at pictures of meth users, you will notice how quickly the drug ages them. Teeth become stained, break, and rot. As the teeth go bad the mouth looks sunken. Meth users burn a lot of energy and don’t eat well, which leads to degeneration and a sickly appearance. The skin turns dull, and sores and pimples that won’t heal are common. Meth use can quickly lead to addiction and cause cognitive or emotional problems that don’t go away or that come back again even after you quit using. For instance, some users feel, hear, or see things that aren’t there and think that people are out to get them. This is a dangerous drug that should be avoided at all costs. ### Other Drugs There are many other drugs of abuse, including Ecstasy, K2 (or Spice), LSD, PCP, and roofies. It’s best to avoid all of them. If your use of drugs or alcohol is interfering with your life and negatively impacting your health, school, relationships, or finances—it’s time to quit and find help. The first semester is an especially critical and vulnerable time for most first-year students. It is often a time of heavy drinking and partying. The transition to college is often difficult, and while partying may feel like it is helping to ease the transition, the health risks are real: about one-third of first-year students fail to enroll for their second year. If you are concerned about your drug or alcohol use, or you need help quitting, visit the student health center or talk with your college counselor. If you need additional resources, the following can help: 1. Drug Information Online 2. Drug and Alcohol Treatment Hotline: 1-800-662-HELP ### Personal Safety For many students, their first year in college is also the first time they have lived away from home, or for commuting students, often the most time they have spent away from home. This new freedom can feel really exciting. College should be a time for fun, experimentation (in healthy ways), and growth. It’s important to be smart about your safety and conscious that you don’t put yourself in any high-risk situations. It’s also important to know what to do if any problems arise. Here are some ways to remain safe while enjoying your college experience: 1. 2. 3. It is easy for anyone to slip a date-rape drug in your drink. Never leave your drink unattended, and never accept a drink from someone you do not trust. 4. 5. It’s also wise to install safety apps. These apps can automatically alert police and your emergency contacts in the event of an emergency. Always let your roommates and friends know your plans for the evening and when you expect to return. ### If You Are a Victim of a Crime Most college students report feeling safe on campus. College administrators are fully committed to making your campus experience as safe as possible. If you are attacked, it is important to know what to do: 1. If possible, get to a safe place. Move to a well-lit area to call for help. 2. Call 911 or have someone call 911 for you. 3. Follow the operator's instructions. 911 operators will instruct you until police or paramedics arrive. 4. Contact a trusted friend or family member. You will want emotional support and also somewhere to go after all the official procedures are complete. 5. Take time to heal. If you are a victim of crime or assault, it can be traumatic. The healing process will take time. Check with your campus mental health services about how they can help in your recovery. ### If You Are a Victim of Sexual Assault or Rape Sexual assault is any type of sexual activity you don’t agree to. This can include inappropriate touching, sexual intercourse, attempted rape, and rape. Most people are surprised to learn that 80 percent of rapes are committed by someone the victim knows. Take the following steps if you or someone you know has been raped: 1. Get medical care. Go to the nearest rape crisis center, hospital, or student health service center. Do not go to the bathroom, shower, brush your teeth, wash your hands, or change clothes before you go. It’s important to preserve any evidence. 2. Ask the hospital or center to take a urine sample to test for date-rape drugs. 3. Call the police from the hospital. Tell the police exactly what you remember. File a report. 4. Arrange for follow-up counseling. A counselor can help you work through the many emotions you may feel following a sexual assault, which is important to the healing process. You can get help from the National Sexual Assault Hotline at 800-656-HOPE. Under Title IX legislation, sexual harassment and sexual violence are forms of gender discrimination and are prohibited. This includes off-campus incidents or incidents that involve people who are not students. If you experience a hostile environment, sexual harassment, or sexual assault, schools have a responsibility to stop the discrimination, prevent its recurrence, and address its effects. Schools also have a responsibility to protect people who report sexual harassment or assault from retaliation from other students, school administrators, or faculty. The Clery Act, a federal law that intersects with Title IX, requires colleges and universities to do the following for survivors of campus sexual assault: 1. Notify survivors of counseling resources. 2. Notify survivors of the option to report a case to the school and law enforcement. 3. Provide requested accommodations, such as changing dorms or classes. 4. Notify survivors of the final outcome of a disciplinary proceeding. ### Chapter Summary In this chapter you have been introduced to the wide range of factors that impact your health. Health is much more than keeping your physical body in good shape. Good health also includes your mental and emotional health, quality relationships, and prioritizing your personal safety. The contributors to physical health include eating clean, non-processed food; staying hydrated; moving your body daily; and getting sufficient sleep. You now understand why it is necessary to prioritize sleep, and that quality sleep is also dependent on the way you eat and exercise. You have identified ways to improve what you eat and how you sleep. With these changes you should be able to fall asleep with ease, stay asleep all night, and wake up feeling energized. Your mind will be clear and sharp. and you’ll get more done in less time, massively increasing your productivity and your success in college. You now understand that a certain level of stress is to be expected. Chronic stress, however, is damaging to the body, so it’s important to have a variety of tools to manage stress. Practicing mindfulness, deep breathing, and gratitude can have a powerful impact on your emotional, mental, and physical health. At the beginning of this chapter, you were introduced to a simple way of thinking about your health—nutrients in, toxins out. This means eating plenty of fruits and vegetables and avoiding junk food, soda, and other sugary beverages. If you move often throughout the day, drink plenty of clean water, and prioritize your sleep, you will help your body detoxify. Reduce your exposure to toxins by paying attention to what you put in and on your body. If you wouldn’t eat it, don’t put it on your skin or hair. A helpful way to remember to take care of your health is to follow the rule of eights: aim each day for eight hours of sleep, eight servings of fruits and vegetables, eight glasses of water, eight minutes of mindfulness, and eight meaningful connections, and incorporate any one of these eight ways to move—walking, aerobic exercise, strength training, yoga, Tai Chi, stretching, HIIT, or dancing. Is putting in longer hours at work an effective strategy for meeting workplace demands? Read this article about managing your energy instead of your time. ### Rethinking Student Survey Revisit the questions you answered at the beginning of the chapter, and consider one option you learned in this chapter that might make you rethink how you answered each one. Has this chapter prompted you to consider changing any of your habits? Rank the following questions on a scale of 1–4. 1 = “least like me” and 4 = “most like me.” 1. I eat enough fruits and vegetables every day. 2. I get enough sleep. 3. I have, for the most part, healthy relationships with friends and family. 4. I feel like I know how to manage stress. ### Where Do You Go from Here? It’s easy to lose focus on your own health and wellness during the tumultuous first year in college. But the benefits of developing strategies to improve and maintain your emotional, physical, and mental health will only increase as you age. What would you like to learn more about? Choose a topic from the list below, and create an annotated bibliography that would direct further research. 1. simple strategies to improve physical health 2. daily opportunities to maintain and improve emotional well-being 3. mental health risks and warning signs 4. steps to take to be more safety conscious

# Planning for Your Future ## Introduction ### Student Survey How ready are you to plan your career? Take this quick survey to figure it out, ranking questions on a scale of 1–4, 1 meaning “least like me” and 4 meaning “most like me.” 1. I am feeling certain about my major (or my ability to choose a major soon). 2. I know what kinds of jobs I can get with my major. 3. I have a good idea of what I need to do in each year of college to achieve career success as I graduate. 4. I am aware of what resources are on campus to help me create a career plan. You can also take the Chapter 12 survey anonymously online. ### About This Chapter In earlier chapters of this book (1, 3, 4), you learned more about setting the foundation for college and career success by gaining a deeper understanding of why you are attending college, how to set goals and priorities, and how to begin your academic and life planning. By the time you complete this chapter, you should be able to do the following: 1. Learn what a career is and how it applies to you. 2. Identify resources on campus that can help you explore careers and develop a plan. 3. Increase your self-awareness relative to your career aspirations, and map productive steps forward.

# Planning for Your Future ## Why Worry about a Career While I'm in College? Questions to Consider: 1. What should I consider when choosing a career? 2. How do I separate career myths from reality? CAREER (noun) Definition of career (Entry 1 of 2) 1: a profession for which one trains and which is undertaken as a permanent calling a career in medicine —often used before another noun a career diplomat 2: a field for or pursuit of consecutive progressive achievement especially in public, professional, or business life Washington’s career as a soldierhttps://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/career Throughout your life, you’ve probably heard about getting a “good job” after you graduate. Everyone might define that differently. Many people say a good job is one where you can make a lot of money, but is that true? And is that true for you? Consider the definition of “career” above. Does it seem exciting? Are there parts that sound intimidating? How can you navigate both parts of the responsibility of having a career? Many people believe that just because they have had a job, they know how to have a career. Getting a job is a single transaction. Crafting a career takes more strategy and time. ### What Is the Difference Between a Job and a Career? A universal definition of a job is “work that you do in exchange for money.” It can also be a particular role or title. Going back to our definition of career above, a career is something for which we train, something that we intend to do permanently—which in actuality means long-term and over time, not necessarily for the rest of your life. It is a field or area in which we have achievement. It occurs progressively and usually consecutively. Here is how some current college students have defined “career”: 1. “A career is long-term; you do it until you can’t anymore.” 2. “Something you love . . . a dream job.” 3. “What you plan and strive for while you work.” 4. “When you are more invested in the activities of the job than just getting a paycheck.”Canisius College Student Interviews, Buffalo, NY, September 2019 ### Shira When Shira was in college, she had a job at a local ice-cream stand. She made very good money in the summertime, so she could work less during the school year. She also learned a lot about customer service and working with her coworkers as a team. Shira eventually took on more responsibility as a supervisor, creating work schedules and interviewing prospective new employees. She really enjoyed this part of her job because she liked tasks involving helping people do well at work. Her boss, customers, and coworkers told her she was good at it. Unbeknownst to her at the time, this was the beginning of Shira’s career in human resources. How did this happen? As she took classes in psychology and business, Shira saw her courses in organizational psychology and management as applicable to her work. She enjoyed learning about how people interact in the workplace. She learned about human resources, which is typically defined as the department of a business or organization that deals with the hiring, administration, and training of people. She wanted to learn even more, so she got an internship in the human resources department of a bank before she graduated and loved it. After getting her Bachelor of Science degree in psychology, Shira got her first career-oriented job, as a recruiting specialist at a health insurance company. After about two years of working diligently, Shira got promoted to a job as a human resource generalist, with responsibility for recruiting strategy and process; recruiting specialists now report to her. In addition to working full-time, Shira also is active in her local chapter of the Society for Human Resource Management and will begin studying to take the national certification exams offered through this organization, giving her a highly sought-after professional credential. Within 5 to 10 years, Shira hopes to become a human resources director. Shira’s career path is a straightforward one. She learned a lot about herself early in her college career. She got some experience and studied academic subjects she was interested in. Shira was nervous and uncertain at times, but she remained positive and adjusted her course as needed. She worked hard and made plans to be sure she could get a “good job.” ### Career Myths and Realities Because you are a student, many people will want to give you advice as you make your way through college. Older family members like to talk about how things were when they were in and graduated from college. Your parents might have very definite ideas about what you should major in and the best way to get a job (or perhaps they don’t know at all, and you wish they did). Your friends, particularly those already in college, might tell you what their experience is, but maybe yours will be very different. Then there are all kinds of things you hear about in the news as to whether there are jobs out there. The economy can be very confusing at times. The stock market is up, then down. Government statistics tell us that the unemployment rate is lower than ever before, but many people say it is still very difficult to get a job. Students have seen their parents or grandparents get laid off, then hear that there is a new company in town that will hire thousands of people. Any and all of these things can be true, and all at the same time. So what does that mean for college students looking to begin their careers? MYTH #1: “Because I am getting a college degree, I will have no problem getting hired and making a lot of money.” REALITY: As you learned in chapters 1 and 10, your chances of making more money over the course of your lifetime are greater when you have a college degree. However, employers expect more than just a diploma. They also expect that you did well in your studies and engaged in activities and experiences that demonstrate you can put learning into context in a work setting. Internships, practicums, service learning, community-based research, part-time or summer jobs, and more prove to employers that you are capable and eager to begin your career. MYTH #2: “There is one perfect job for me” or “I will be happy if I find the right career.” REALITY: Finding the right career is not like waving a magic wand or a ticket to living your best Instagram life all of the time. There are jobs and careers for which you might be well-suited based on a combination of features and attributes. The better you know yourself, the better you can make a good match. Additionally, those features and attributes change over time, and by learning good career planning skills, you can adapt easily. MYTH #3: “I can’t get a good job with (fill in the name of a major).” REALITY: There are some majors that traditionally result in jobs that earn more than others do. These are usually because the education for these occupations is often rigorous, and both training for and working in the occupation require a high level of skill and knowledge, even over time (engineering, computer science, accounting). However, anybody can get a “good” job with their major. The key is to understand what knowledge, skills, and abilities are required for the jobs you would like and to take action to make sure you have them. People who have a problem getting employment in their field after college may not have fully understood the requirements for being hired, they may have been unable to make the sacrifices necessary for that to happen, or they may have had unrealistic expectations. MYTH #4: “I should base my major on ‘hot’ careers that will pay well.” REALITY: Just because a major or career field is “hot” doesn’t mean that you will enjoy it or even be any good at it. Better to choose a career based on your interests, abilities, values, and personality. Additionally, which careers and fields are popular and well-paying can change quickly based on supply of candidates and economic situations. Thus, those who choose a hot field must be eager to learn new skills to keep up with the evolution of such a career. MYTH #5: “It is too late to change my career.” REALITY: It is almost never “too late” to make a career change. There are millions of people who have made career changes, some by going to college in their 30s, 40s, 50s, or even older. In many cases, the best time to make a change is when you are older, because you have more to offer employers, have gained different experiences, and have become more settled in your personal life. Many college students find they are well-positioned to make the most of their college studies when they are more mature. MYTH #6: “No one will hire me because I am ‘just a student’; I won’t be able to compete with people with more experience.” REALITY: Employers often like to hire recent graduates or people who are early in their careers because their learning is fresh, and they know how to learn new material and adapt quickly. Additionally, many employers believe that hiring new graduates allows them to train people the way that they would like. New graduates of all ages show persistence and flexibility by having earned a college degree and shown willingness to start something new. MYTH #7: “I should be passionate about my work. If not, I am doing something wrong. “ REALITY: “Do what you love and you’ll never work a day in your life” and “Do what you love and the money will follow” are terrible advice. No one loves their work every minute of every day, and passion is a very high standard to meet. There are many things about which we might be passionate that would make for jobs that are completely unsuitable for us. What most people who are happy with their work have in common are that they can do it well; it has some impact on people, organizations, information, or things; and they find satisfaction in it. It is often through discovering this that passion for one’s work follows. MYTH #8: “My career path should follow a neat, straight line.” REALITY: For almost everyone, a career path is more like a winding road than a straight highway. Recall the story of Shira building a career off of her summer job, and know that Shira’s experience is one path of many. Not everyone has a clear idea of how to find a job that fulfills an interest and then how to move from that job to a career. It is not always so straightforward. For example, there is great value in choosing a major in the natural sciences, social sciences, arts, or humanities, but sometimes these fields do not obviously transfer to a career. Yet with the right guidance, practice, and commitment, these majors provide many routes to a fulfilling career and life. Based on information, experiences, and skills you gather along the way, you will find that you need and want to adapt and adjust. There is no “right” or “wrong” way to get into a career. MYTH #9: “There are not many jobs out there with good pay and benefits, so why bother looking?” REALITY: The way in which we work has changed in the last twenty years. There are many more flexible work arrangements available. The “gig economy” refers to jobs that are independent of being an employee and are often time-limited. These positions give people multiple options for generating personal income and are good options for a “side hustle.” At the present time, the job market is also considered to be a “job seeker’s market,” meaning employers are having difficulty finding candidates for their openings. Every day, thousands of people get jobs that advance their status. ### What Should I Be? Have you ever heard statements like these? 1. “You are so good at math . . . you should be an accountant.” 2. “Your best grades have always been in art, but it isn’t really practical to become an artist.” 3. “You like kids so much! You should be a teacher!” Many people tend to first think of careers based on images they see in society or the media. Prestigious and high-visibility occupations are what many young people aspire to when they are young. How many of you first wanted to be a doctor, firefighter, entertainer, professional athlete, or teacher? As we grow up and get to know the world better, we are exposed to a greater universe of jobs. However, young people in middle and high school also tend to look at careers based on the subjects they are good at (or not good at) in school. These self-perceptions and interests can last long into adulthood. But education and the work world can be extremely different environments with different purposes and expectations. The realities of jobs and careers we choose are vastly more complex than the courses we like or don’t and whether we perform well in them in high school. Though we may have some images for “what we are” and “who we should be,” there are also many different options, and the choices can be overwhelming. How do we ensure that we make career decisions that are productive for us?

# Planning for Your Future ## Your Map to Success: The Career Planning Cycle Questions to Consider: 1. What steps should I take to learn about my best opportunities? 2. What can I do to prepare for my career while in college? 3. What experiences and resources can help me in my search? The Career Planning Cycle helps us apply some concrete steps to figuring out where we might fit into the work world. If you follow the steps, you will learn about who you truly are, and can be, as a working professional. You will discover important knowledge about the work world. You will gain more information to help you make solid career decisions. You will get experience that will increase your qualifications. You will be more prepared to reach your professional goals. And the good news is that colleges and universities are set up nicely to help you utilize this process. ### Learn About Yourself To understand what type of work suits us and to be able to convey that to others to get hired, we must become experts in knowing who we are. Gaining self-knowledge is a lifelong process, and college is the perfect time to gain and adapt this fundamental information. Following are some of the types of information that we should have about ourselves: 1. Interests: Things that we like and want to know more about. These often take the form of ideas, information, knowledge, and topics. 2. Skills/Aptitudes: Things that we either do well or can do well. These can be natural or learned and are usually skills—things we can demonstrate in some way. Some of our skills are “hard” skills, which are specific to jobs and/or tasks. Others are “soft” skills, which are personality traits and/or interpersonal skills that accompany us from position to position. 3. Values: Things that we believe in. Frequently, these are conditions and principles. 4. Personality: Things that combine to make each of us distinctive. Often, this shows in the way we present ourselves to the world. Aspects of personality are customarily described as qualities, features, thoughts, and behaviors. In addition to knowing the things we can and like to do, we must also know how well we do them. What are our strengths? When employers hire us, they hire us to do something, to contribute to their organization in some way. We get paid for what we know, what we can do, and how well or deeply we can demonstrate these things. Think of these as your Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities (KSAs). As working people, we can each think of ourselves as carrying a “tool kit.” In our tool kit are the KSAs that we bring to each job. As we gain experience, we learn how best to use our tools. We gain more tools and use some more often than others, but all the tools we gather during our career stay with us in some form. Because you’re expected to spend your time in college focusing on what you learn in your classes, it might seem like a lot of extra work to also develop your career identity. Actually, the ideal time to learn about who you are as a worker and a professional is while you are so focused on learning and personal development, which lends itself to growth in all forms. College helps us acquire and develop our KSAs daily through our coursework and experiences. What might be some ways you can purposefully and consciously learn about yourself? How might you get more information about who you are? And how might you learn about what that means for your career? Awareness of the need to develop your career identity and your vocational worth is the first step. Next, undertaking a process that is mindful and systematic can help guide you through. This process will help you look at yourself and the work world in a different way. You will do some of this in this course. Then, during your studies, some of your professors and advisors may integrate career development into the curriculum, either formally or informally. Perhaps most significantly, the career center at your school is an essential place for you to visit. They have advisors, counselors, and coaches who are formally trained in facilitating the career development process. Often, career assessment is of great assistance in increasing your self-knowledge. It is most often designed to help you gain insight more objectively. You may want to think of assessment as pulling information out of you and helping you put it together in a way that applies to your career. There are two main types of assessments: formal assessments and informal assessments. ### Formal Assessments Formal assessments are typically referred to as “career tests.” There are thousands available, and many are found randomly on the Internet. While many of these can be fun, “free” and easily available instruments are usually not credible. It is important to use assessments that are developed to be reliable and valid. Look to your career center for their recommendations; their staff has often spent a good deal of time selecting instruments that they believe work best for students. Here are some commonly used and useful assessments that you may run across: 1. Interest Assessments: Strong Interest Inventory, Self-Directed Search, Campbell Interest and Skill Survey, Harrington-O’Shea Career Decision-Making System 2. Personality Measures: Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, CliftonStrengths (formerly StrengthsQuest), Big Five Inventory, Keirsey Temperament Sorter, TypeFocus, DiSC 3. Career Planning Software: SIGI 3, FOCUS 2 ### Informal Assessments Often, asking questions and seeking answers can help get us information that we need. When we start working consciously on learning more about any subject, things that we never before considered may become apparent. Happily, this applies to self-knowledge as well. Some things that you can do outside of career testing to learn more about yourself can include: ### Self-Reflection: 1. Notice when you do something that you enjoy or that you did particularly well. What did that feel like? What about it made you feel positive? Is it something that you’d like to do again? What was the impact that you made through our actions? 2. Most people are the “go to” person for something. What do you find that people come to you for? Are you good with advice? Do you tend to be a good listener, observing first and then speaking your mind? Do people appreciate your repair skills? Are you good with numbers? What role do you play in a group? 3. If you like to write or record your thoughts, consider creating a career journal that you update regularly, whether it’s weekly or by semester. If writing your own thoughts is difficult, seek out guided activities that help prompt you to reflect. 4. Many colleges have a career planning course that is designed to specifically lead you through the career decision-making process. Even if you are decided on your major, these courses can help you refine and plan best for your field. ### Enlist Others: 1. Ask people who know you to tell you what they think your strengths are. This information can come from friends, classmates, professors, advisors, family members, coaches, mentors, and others. What kinds of things have they observed you doing well? What personal qualities do you have that they value? You are not asking them to tell you what career you should be in; rather, you are looking to learn more about yourself. 2. Find a mentor—such as a professor, an alumnus, an advisor, or a community leader—who shares a value with you and from whom you think you could learn new things. Perhaps they can share new ways of doing something or help you form attitudes and perceptions that you believe would be helpful. 3. Get involved with one or more activities on campus that will let you use skills outside of the classroom. You will be able to learn more about how you work with a group and try new things that will add to your skill set. 4. Attend activities on and off campus that will help you meet people (often alumni) who work in the professional world. Hearing their career stories will help you learn about where you might want to be. Are there qualities that you share with them that show you may be on a similar path to success? Can you envision yourself where they are? 5. No one assessment can tell you exactly what career is right for you; the answers to your career questions are not in a test. The reality of career planning is that it is a discovery process that uses many methods over time to strengthen our career knowledge and belief in ourselves. ### Explore Jobs and Careers Many students seem to believe that the most important decision they will make in college is to choose their major. While this is an important decision, even more important is to determine the type of knowledge you would like to have, understand what you value, and learn how you can apply this in the workplace after you graduate. For example, if you know you like to help people, this is a value. If you also know that you’re interested in math and/or finances, you might study to be an accountant. To combine both of these, you would gain as much knowledge as you can about financial systems and personal financial habits so that you can provide greater support and better help to your clients. The four factors of self-knowledge (interests, skills/aptitudes, values, and personality), which manifest in your KSAs, are also the factors on which employers evaluate your suitability for their positions. They consider what you can bring to their organization that is at once in line with their organization’s standards and something they need but don’t have in their existing workforce. Along with this, each job has KSAs that define it. You may think about finding a job/career as looking like the figure below. The importance of finding the right fit cannot be overstated. Many people don’t realize that the KSAs of the person and the requirements of the job have to match in order to get hired in a given field. What is even more important, though, is that when a particular job fits your four factors of self-knowledge and maximizes your KSAs, you are most likely to be satisfied with your work! The “fit” works to help you not only get the job, but also enjoy the job. So if you work to learn about yourself, what do you need to know about jobs, and how do you go about learning it? In our diagram, if you need to have self-knowledge to determine the YOU factors, then to determine the JOB factors, you need to have workplace knowledge. This involves understanding what employers in the workplace and specific jobs require. Aspects of workplace knowledge include: 1. Labor Market Information: Economic conditions, including supply and demand of jobs; types of industries in a geographic area or market; regional sociopolitical conditions and/or geographic attributes. 2. Industry Details: Industry characteristics; trends and opportunities for both industry and employers; standards and expectations. 3. Work Roles: Characteristics and duties of specific jobs and work roles; knowledge, skills, and abilities necessary to perform the work; training and education required; certifications or licenses; compensation; promotion and career path; hiring process. This “research” may sound a little dry and uninteresting at first, but consider it as a look into your future. If you are excited about what you are learning and what your career prospects are, learning about the places where you may put all of your hard work into practice should also be very exciting! Most professionals spend many hours not only performing their work but also physically being located at work. For something that is such a large part of your life, it will help you to know what you are getting into as you get closer to realizing your goals. How Do We Gain Workplace Knowledge? 1. Understand that there is a wide range of occupations and industries that fit together so that we can see how all jobs contribute to the workplace. With the use of formal career assessments, it will be easy to see where you fit in using the map below. 2. Learn the “textbook” definitions of what is involved in the jobs you are considering. In Chapter 4, you used the Occupational Outlook Handbook to learn more about the requirements for occupations. Its sister site, will help show you more specific job titles. 3. Read online information that is relevant to the professions you are interested in. Good sources for this include professional associations. Just “googling” information is risky. Look for professional and credible information. The Occupational Outlook Handbook has links to many of these sources. Your career center can also guide you. 4. Whether you are just choosing your major or are already in a major and want to know what options it offers in terms of future work, look for this specific information. Your department may have this information; your campus career center definitely will. One very good site is What Can I Do With This Major? 5. Join professional clubs on campus. Many of these organizations have guest speakers who come to meetings and talk about what their jobs are like. Often, they also sponsor field trips to different companies and organizations. 6. As mentioned earlier, attend campus networking events and programs such as job fairs and recruiting information sessions so that you can talk to people who actually do the work and get their insights. Something to keep in mind as you make choices about your major and career is that the training is not the job. What you learn in your college courses is often foundational information; it provides basic knowledge that you need for more complex concepts and tasks. For example, a second-year student who is premed has the interests and qualities that may make her a good physician, but she is struggling to pass basic chemistry. She starts to think that medical school is no longer an appropriate goal because she doesn’t enjoy chemistry. Does it make sense to abandon a suitable career path because of one 15-week course? In some ways, yes. In the case of medical school, the education is so long and intensive that if the student can’t persevere through one introductory course, she may not have the determination to complete the training. On the other hand, if you are truly dedicated to your path, don’t let one difficult course deter you. The example above describes Shantelle. They weren’t quite sure which major to choose, and they were feeling pressure because the window for making their decision was closing. They considered their values and strengths—they love helping people and have always wanted to pursue work in medical training. As described above, Shantelle struggled in general chemistry this semester and found that they actually didn’t enjoy it at all. They’ve heard nightmare stories about organic chemistry being even harder. Simultaneously, Shantelle is taking Intro to Psychology, something they thought would be an easier course but that they enjoy even though it’s challenging. Much to their surprise, they found the scientific applications of theory in the various types of mental illness utterly fascinating. But given that their life dream was to be a physician, Shantelle was reluctant to give up on medicine because of one measly chemistry course. With the help of an advisor, Shantelle decided to postpone choosing a major for one more semester and take a course in clinical psychology. Since there are so many science courses required for premed studies, Shantelle also agreed to take another science course. Their advisor helped Shantelle realize that it was likely not a wise choice to make such an important decision based on one course experience. ### Focus Your Path When you know yourself and know what to expect from a workplace and a job, you have information to begin to make decisions. As we’ve discussed throughout this book, you’re not attending college solely to get a job. But this is likely one of your goals, and your time in school offers a tremendous opportunity to both prepare for your career (or careers) and make yourself more attractive to organizations where you want to work. Successfully learning the content of your classes and earning good grades are among the most important. Beyond these priorities, you’ll learn the most about yourself and your potential career path if you engage in activities that will help you make decisions. Simply sitting back and thinking about the decision doesn’t always help you take action. ### Take Advantage of Every Resource You Can While in School Your college has a wealth of departments, programs, and people dedicated to your success. The more you work to discover and engage with these groups, the more successfully you’ll establish networks of support and build skills and knowledge for your career. Make plans to drop by your career services or a related office early in your time in school. There, you’ll learn about events you can attend, and you’ll get to know some of the people there who can help you. The department may offer the formal assessments discussed earlier in this chapter, including aptitude testing, which can help you discover some of your areas of strength and give you insight into some high-potential career destinations. Career services may also have skills/interest inventories. These can help you match your attributes and ambitions with potential careers and suggest additional resources to explore. Your college is also likely to have a resource that goes far beyond the campus itself: the alumni association. College alumni often maintain a relationship with the school and with their fellow graduates. Just by attending the same college, you have something in common with them. You chose the same place, maybe for similar reasons, and you might be having similar experiences. Often, alumni are eager to help current students by offering their professional insights and making career connections. You can find out about alumni events on your campus website, at the career center, and in the alumni department. These events can be fun and beneficial to attend, especially those involving networking opportunities. Note that specific departments or campus organizations may have their own alumni groups, whether formal or informal. Try to find former students who majored in your field or who have a job similar to the one you’d like one day. Remember, members of alumni organizations make a choice to be involved; they want to be there. It’s very likely they’ll be interested in offering you some help, mentoring, or even introductions to the right people. Alumni may often attend events at your college, such as visiting guest speakers, art show openings, homecoming, or sporting events. You can find and talk with them there (under the right circumstances) and enjoy the event at the same time. Networking is such a critical part of professional life that nearly every city or region has organizations and events devoted to it. Meetups are occasions for people with shared interests, skills, and professions to gather together and talk about their experiences and insights. The events might involve a brief talk or demonstration, a discussion or question-and-answer period, and then plenty of time for mingling. You can likely find these events with a quick search. But before you go, carefully review the guidelines and limits on who can attend. Some meetups may not be open to students or others not formally employed in a field; they may also be held in bars or involve alcohol, preventing those under 21 from attending. Don’t be offended by these barriers—the meetup organizers have specific goals and members to consider—but if you find one you can attend, try it out. You can also network with people right at your college. Many of your college faculty likely have (or had) other roles and positions. A computer science professor may have worked for a tech company before moving into academia. Accounting faculty, especially certified public accountants, might take on tax work every spring. Nursing faculty likely maintain a role with a hospital or other medical office. Learn from them what the job is like and how you can better prepare for it. And don’t forget to talk to adjunct instructors; they may have an entirely separate career on top of their teaching role that gives them access to a network of potential mentors and employers. Finally, you’ll likely encounter graduate students or preprofessional students, some of whom may be in the workforce or have work experience. While they themselves are still working on their education, they may have insights, connections, and ideas regarding your career. ### Try Things Out In the first two steps of the Career Planning Cycle, you gather information. You may have some ideas about jobs and careers that you may like, but you also may wonder if you will really like them. How will you know? How can you be more certain? Take an interest or a skill, and try it out in an experience. By putting it to work for you in any one of a number of different environments, you can get practice and learn more about who you are and just how much you can do. It’s a great idea to try out a new skill or career field before you commit to it fully. You might find out that the field isn’t right for you, but you also may find that you are heading in the right direction and want to keep pursuing it. Experiences help you become more qualified for positions. One exciting aspect of college is that there is a huge variety of learning experiences and activities in which to get involved. The following are some ways that you can try things out and get experience. ### Community Involvement, Volunteering, and Clubs You’re in college to develop yourself as an individual. You’ll gain personally satisfying and enriching experience by becoming more involved with your college or general community. Organizations, clubs, and charities often rely on college students because of their motivation, knowledge, and increasing maturity. The work can increase your skills and abilities, providing valuable experience that will lead to positive results. Participate in clubs and volunteer in areas that appeal to your interests and passions. It’s just as important that you enjoy them and make a difference as it is to increase career potential through networking and skill-building. But of course, it’s great to do both. Once you join a club or related organization, take the time to learn about their leadership opportunities. Most campus clubs have some type of management structure—treasurer, vice president, president, and so on. You may “move up the ranks” naturally, or you may need to apply or even run for election. Some organizations, such as a campus newspaper, radio station, or dance team, have skill-based semiprofessional or roles such as advertising manager, sound engineer, or choreographer. These opportunities may not always be available to you as freshmen, but you can take on shorter-term roles to build your skills and make a bigger impact. Managing a fundraiser, planning an event, or temporarily taking on a role while someone else is busy are all ways to engage further. Volunteering can be an important way to access a profession and get a sense for whether you will enjoy it or not, even before you do an internship. And in certain arenas, such as politics, it might be the only readily accessible approach, especially if you have no prior experience. In all of these cases, you can build important skills and increase your experience working with people in your chosen field. Spend time reflecting on and recording your experiences so that you’re better prepared to talk about them and utilize what you learned. ### Internships and Related Experiences Many employers value experience as much as they do education. Internships and similar fieldwork allow you to use what you’ve learned and, sometimes more importantly, see how things work “in the real world.” These experiences drive you to communicate with others in your field and help you understand the day-to-day challenges and opportunities of people working in similar areas. Even if the internship is not at a company or organization directly in your field of study, you’ll focus on gaining transferable skills that you can apply later on. Speaking to career or academic counselors and planning your major will help you learn about internship requirements and recommendations. You’ll find out how, where, and when to apply, the level of commitment required, and any limitations or guidelines your college indicates. If you’re going to receive credit for your internship or fieldwork, it must be directly related to your field of study. When you intern, you are usually treated like you work there full-time. It’s not just learning about the job; it’s doing the job, often similarly to an entry-level employee. The level of commitment may vary by the type of internship and may be negotiable based on your schedule. Be very clear about what’s required and what you can handle given your other commitments, because you want to leave a very good impression. (Internship managers are your top resource for employment references and letters of recommendation.) Note that while internships and similar positions may seem to involve low-level work, you maintain your rights and should be treated properly. Getting coffee, organizing shelves, and copying papers are often part of the work. Your internship should be structured with duties, responsibilities, and goals for learning that are mutually agreed upon by both you and the internship site, as well as approved by an internship supervisor from your college or university. This will help ensure a positive and productive experience for both you and your internship sponsor. Students who take internships generally report them to be worthwhile experiences. In a survey of students taken by the National Association of Colleges and Employers, approximately 75 percent of students responding to the survey said their professionalism/work ethic, teamwork/collaboration, and oral/written communication skills were “very” to “extremely” improved by their internship/coop experience, and 66 percent said the same of their critical thinking/problem-solving skills. There are many and varied types of experiential learning opportunities that can help you learn more about different career opportunities. These are fully discussed in Chapter 4. The table below provides a brief overview. ### Productive Downtime Throughout this book, we’ve discussed all the work required for a successful and productive college experience. And in this chapter, we’ve outlined a wide range of extracurricular activities that are likely necessary to achieve your career goals. But as we’ve also made clear, balance and rest are critical for success and well-being. Everyone needs time off. So, when you have a school break, relax. Spend time with the people who motivate and help you—family and friends—or take a trip if that’s possible. If you work during school and school breaks, the decrease in your school responsibilities should help recharge your batteries. Another way you might spend your time off from school is to find an employment and/or experiential opportunity, especially during a longer time off. Winter break may afford a weeklong volunteer opportunity or a brief externship. Summer break is particularly helpful for formal internships and other experiences. If you do seek a summer internship or related activity, be aware that they can be very competitive. With many college students off for the summer, they may be targeting the same opportunities as you are. Work with your academic or career advisors to start the process early and put yourself in the best position to get an internship. Consider all of the application components, including essays, portfolio items, and letters of recommendation; all of these may take time to generate. If possible, pursue multiple opportunities to increase your chances. Just be clear on the application policies, and be sure to inform them if you take another position. Summer jobs, whether related to your field or not, may also be hard to come by without prior planning. If you go away to school and need a job at home over the summer, be sure to connect with the potential employer early. Get them the application, resume, and any certifications or recommendations with plenty of time for them to process and contact you for clarification or follow-up. Employers who regularly employ college students will likely be comfortable working via email or by phone, but ask if an in-person interview is necessary, and see if you can schedule it during a spring break or as soon as you get back from school. Even if you don’t go away to school, plan and connect early. You wouldn’t want all the other students to come home and take your opportunity when you’ve been there all along. While you're not focused on your schoolwork, or even after you graduate, you can keep learning. Beyond the different types of degrees and certificates discussed in the Academic Pathways chapter, you'll be more prepared and more attractive to a potential employer if you demonstrate a continued thirst and effort to gain knowledge and "remain current." Find the leaders in your field and read their articles or books (your future employers may be familiar with them). Or consider more formal summer courses, short-courses, or online learning opportunities. Each profession has its own resources. For example, in the software and computing field, Thinkful offers courses and mentoring for students and professionals. ### Transferable Skills Whether or not your internship or other experiences are directly connected to your career, you should focus as much as possible on building and improving transferable skills. These are abilities and knowledge that are useful across an array of industries, job types, and roles. They can be transferred—hence the name—from where you learned them to another career or area of study. Examples of transferable skills include communication, personnel management/leadership, teamwork, computation/quantitative literacy, information technology, research/analysis, foreign language, and so on. If you search for lists of transferable skills, you’ll see that some sites only include compilations of a few very broad areas, such as communication, while others provide longer and more specific lists, such as breaking down communication into writing, verbal, and listening skills. Employers believe that transferable skills are critical to the success of their recent college graduate new hires. The top four career competencies that employers want are critical thinking/problem solving, teamwork/collaboration, professionalism/work ethic, and oral/written communication.National Association of Colleges and Employers. “The Four Career Competentices Employers Value Most.” 2019. https://www.naceweb.org/career-readiness/competencies/the-four-career-competencies-employers-value-most/ If you remember the statistics noted above, students said that all four of these skills were significantly improved through their internship experiences. These are considered skills because they are not simply traits or personality elements; they are abilities and intelligences you can develop and improve. Even if you’re a great writer before starting an internship, you may need to learn how to write in a more professional manner—becoming more succinct, learning the executive summary, conforming to templates, and so on. Once you establish that skill, you can not only mention it on a resume or interview, but also discuss the process by which you improved, demonstrating your adaptability and eagerness to learn. Not everyone can land an internship or perform fieldwork. Perhaps you need to work nearly full-time while in school. If so, focus on developing transferable skills in that environment. Take on new challenges in areas where you don’t have experience. For example, if you work in retail, ask your manager if you can help with inventory or bookkeeping (building quantitative literacy skills). If you’re a waiter, help the catering manager plan a party or order food (building organizational skills). Remember, extending yourself in this way is not simply a means to enhance your resume. By taking on these new challenges, you’ll see a side of the business you hadn’t before and learn things that you can apply in other situations. Whether or not it’s required as a part of your internship or other experience, be sure to reflect on your time there—what you did, what you learned, where you excelled, where you didn’t excel. Maintaining a journal of some sort will enable you to share your experiences and employ your transferable skills in your college courses and other activities. Jot down some anecdotes, events, and tasks you performed. Any materials or documents you produced can go into your portfolio, and the record of your experience will serve you well while searching for a job. Consider that it is customary to be asked during a job interview to share a personal strength and a weakness. Sharing a strength is often more expected and, thus, easier to plan for. While it may seem reasonable to say that your weakness is that you’re always late, it’s better to provide a weakness within the context of work experience. For example, if you have had a part-time job where one of your colleagues was always slacking off and putting the load on others, you may have felt frustrated and even expressed your anger. Rather than view this as a negative, consider the positive benefit and craft this into a solid answer to the likely interview question. For example, “I have found that I’m rather impatient with colleagues who take shortcuts to a solution and don’t really apply themselves. My weakness is impatience. However, rather than call it out in a negative way, I share my observation as constructive feedback and let it go. My colleague can take it or leave it, but I’m not carrying it with me.” If you wrote about this experience around the time that it occurred, it will be easier to shape into a thoughtful response later. Continuing to work on your transferable skills will allow you to improve them and make a better impression on faculty, advisors, and potential employers. ### What to Do to Get Ready Being prepared to find a job means putting evidence of your KSAs together in a way that employers will understand. It is one thing to say you can do something; it is another to show that you can. The following are things that you will want to compile as a part of your college career. ### Resumes and Profiles: The College Version You may already have a resume or a similar profile (such as LinkedIn), or you may be thinking about developing one. Usually, these resources are not required for early college studies, but you may need them for internships, work-study, or other opportunities. When it comes to an online profile, something that is a public resource, be very considerate and intentional when developing it. Resume A resume is a summary of your education, experience, and other accomplishments. It is not simply a list of what you’ve done; it’s a showcase that presents the best you have to offer for a specific role. While most resumes have a relatively similar look and feel, there are some variations in the approach. Especially when developing your first résumé or applying in a new area, you should seek help from resources such as career counselors and others with knowledge of the field. Websites can be very helpful, but be sure to run your résume by others to make sure it fits the format and contains no mistakes. A resume is a one-page summary (two, if you are a more experienced person) that generally includes the following information: 1. Name and contact information 2. Objective and/or summary 3. Education—all degrees and relevant certifications or licenses 4. Work or work-related experience—usually in reverse chronological order, starting with the most recent and working backward. (Some resumes are organized by subject/skills rather than chronologically.Writing@CSU. “Organizing Your Resume.” https://writing.colostate.edu/guides/page.cfm?pageid=1517&guideid=77) 5. Career-related/academic awards or similar accomplishments 6. Specific work-related skills While you’re in college, especially if you went into college directly after high school, you may not have formal degrees or significant work experience to share. That’s okay. Tailor the résumé to the position for which you’re applying, and include high school academic, extracurricular, and community-based experience. These show your ability to make a positive contribution and are a good indicator of your work ethic. Later on in this chapter, we’ll discuss internships and other programs through which you can gain experience, all of which can be listed on your resume. Again, professionals and counselors can help you with this. If you have significant experience outside of college, you should include it if it’s relatively recent, relates to the position, and/or includes transferable skills (discussed above) that can be used in the role for which you’re applying. Military service or similar experience should nearly always be included. If you had a long career with one company quite some time ago, you can summarize that in one resume entry, indicating the total years worked and the final role achieved. These are judgment calls, and again you can seek guidance from experts. Digital Profiles An online profile is a nearly standard component of professional job seeking and networking. LinkedIn is a networking website used by people from nearly every profession. It combines elements of résumés and portfolios with social media. Users can view, connect, communicate, post events and articles, comment, and recommend others. Employers can recruit, post jobs, and process applications. Alternatives include Jobcase, AngelList, Hired, and Nexxt. These varying sites work in similar ways, with some unique features or practices. Some professions or industries have specific LinkedIn groups or subnetworks. Other professions or industries may have their own networking sites, to be used instead of or in addition to LinkedIn. Industry, for example, is a networking site specifically for culinary and hospitality workers. As a college student, it might be a great idea to have a LinkedIn or related profile. It can help you make connections in a prospective field, and provide access to publications and posts on topics that interest you. Before you join and develop a public professional profile, however, keep the following in mind: 1. Be professional. Write up your profile information, any summary, and job/education experience separately, check for spelling and other errors, and have someone review before posting. Be sure to be completely honest and accurate. 2. Your profile isn’t a contest. As a college student, you may only have two or three items to include on your profile. That’s okay. Overly long LinkedIn profiles—like overly long resumes—aren’t effective anyway, and a college student’s can be brief. 3. Add relevant experience and information as you attain it. Post internships, summer jobs, awards, or work-study experiences as you attain them. Don’t list every club or organization you’re in if it doesn’t pertain to the professional field, but include some, especially if you become head of a club or hold a competitive position, such as president or member of a performance group or sports team. 4. Don’t “overconnect.” As you meet and work with people relevant to your career, it is appropriate to connect with them through LinkedIn by adding a personal note on the invite message. But don’t send connection invites to people with whom you have no relationship, or to too many people overall. Even alumni from your own school might be reluctant to connect with you unless you know them relatively well. 5. Professional networking is not the same as social media. While LinkedIn has a very strong social media component, users are often annoyed by too much nonprofessional sharing (such as vacation/child pictures); aggressive commenting or arguing via comments is also frowned upon. As a student, you probably shouldn’t be commenting or posting too much at all. Use LinkedIn as a place to observe and learn. And in terms of your profile itself, keep it professional, not personal. 6. LinkedIn is not a replacement for a real resume. There’s no need to rush to build and post an online professional profile—certainly not in your freshman year. But when the time is right, it can be a useful resource for you and future employers. ### Social Media and Online Activity Never Go Away While thinking about LinkedIn and other networks, it’s a good time to remember that future employers, educational institutions, internship coordinators, and anyone else who may hire or develop a relationship with you can see most of what you’ve posted or done online. Companies are well within their rights to dig through your social media pages, and those of your friends or groups you’re part of, to learn about you. Tasteless posts, inappropriate memes, harassment, pictures or videos of high-risk behavior, and even aggressive and mean comments are all problematic. They may convince a potential employer that you’re not right for their organization. Be careful of who and what you retweet, like, and share. It’s all traceable, and it can all have consequences. For other activities on social media, such as strong political views, activism, or opinions on controversial topics, you should use your judgment. Most strong organizations will not be dissuaded from working with you because you’re passionate about something within the realm of civility, but any posts or descriptions that seem insensitive to groups of people can be taken as a reason not to hire you. While you have freedom of speech with regard to the government, that freedom does not extend to private companies’ decisions on whether to hire you. Even public institutions, such as universities and government agencies, can reject you for unlawful activity (including threats or harassment) revealed online; they can also reject you if you frequently post opinions that conflict with the expectations of both your employer and the people/organizations they serve. With those cautions in mind, it’s important to remember that anything on your social media or professional network profiles related to federally protected aspects of your identity—race, national origin, color, disability, veteran status, parental/pregnancy status, religion, gender, age, or genetic information (including family medical history)—cannot be held against you in hiring decisions. ### Building Your Portfolio Future employers or educational institutions may want to see the work you’ve done during school. Also, you may need to recall projects or papers you wrote to remember details about your studies. Your portfolio can be one of your most important resources. Portfolio components vary according to field. Business students should save projects, simulations, case studies, and any mock companies or competitions they worked on. Occupational therapy students may have patient thank-you letters, summaries of volunteer activity, and completed patient paperwork (identities removed). Education majors will likely have lesson plans, student teaching materials, sample projects they created, and papers or research related to their specialization. Other items to include a portfolio: 1. Evidence of any workshops or special classes you attended. Include a certificate, registration letter, or something else indicating you attended/completed it. 2. Evidence of volunteer work, including a write-up of your experience and how it impacted you. 3. Related experience and work products from your time prior to college. 4. Materials associated with career-related talks, performances, debates, or competitions that you delivered or took part in. 5. Products, projects, or experiences developed in internships, fieldwork, clinicals, or other experiences (see below). 6. Evidence of “universal” workplace skills such as computer abilities or communication, or specialized abilities such as computation/number crunching. A portfolio is neither a scrapbook nor an Instagram story. No need to fill it with pictures of your college experience unless those pictures directly relate to your career. If you’re studying theology and ran a religious camp, include a picture. If you’re studying theology and worked in a food store, leave it out. Certain disciplines, such as graphic design, music, computer science, and other technologies, may have more specific portfolio requirements and desired styles. You’ll likely learn about that in the course of your studies, but be sure to proactively inquire about these needs or seek examples. Early in your college career, you should be most focused on gathering components for your portfolio, not formalizing it for display or sharing. ### Preparing to Network Throughout this chapter, we have discussed how important relationships are to your career development. It can sometimes be a little intimidating to meet new people in the professional environment. But with preparation and understanding, these encounters can be not only helpful, but also rewarding. Here are some ideas to consider when meeting new people who can be helpful to your career: 1. Be yourself. You’re your own best asset. If you’re comfortable with who you are and where you come from, others will be, too. 2. Remember, you’re in college and they know it. Don’t try to impress everyone with what you know; alumni or faculty know more. Instead, talk about what you’re learning—your favorite class, the project you’re most proud of, or even the ones by which you’ve been most challenged. 3. Be polite, not too casual. If your goal is to become a professional, look and sound the part. 4. Listen. 5. Think of some questions ahead of time. Don’t aim for difficult questions or anything too personal, but asking people how they got into their career, with whom they studied in college, what their job is like, and similar questions will both start conversations and provide you with meaningful insight. 6. Don’t stress. Remember, if alumni, even highly successful ones, are speaking to you, it’s usually because they want to. An encounter over finger food or a brief meetup in the Rad Tech department office isn’t going to make or break your job prospects. 7. If appropriate and timely, ask if you can keep in touch. Be prepared with a polished email address and phone number. For example, if your current address is “fortnitefan@gmail.com,” consider creating a second account that’s more professional. 8. Say thank you. No need to go on and on, but thank them for any advice they give or simply for taking the time to talk with you ### Making Your Case through the Words of Others: Letters of Recommendation Whether you go on to graduate school or directly into the workforce (or both at the same time), decision makers will want to learn more about you. Your grades, interviews, test scores, and other performance data will tell them a lot. But sometimes they’ll want to hear from others. Letters of recommendation are often a standard component of convincing people you’re the right person to join their organization. Some positions or institutions require a certain quantity of letters and may have specific guidance on who should write them. Other companies will accept them as additional evidence that you’re a great candidate. Either way, gathering such letters or having a few people whom you can ask for them will put you in a better position. Note that internships, especially competitive ones, may also require letters of recommendation. Whom to ask for a letter? They’re usually written by instructors, department chairs, club advisors, managers, coaches, and others with whom you’ve had a good relationship. Maybe it’s someone who taught two or three of your courses, or someone you helped in a volunteer or work-study capacity. Just by taking the time to write the letter, a faculty member is sending a message: “The person about whom I’m writing impressed me.” So the first step is to make a good impression on the person you’re asking to write a letter. You may do this in many ways. Getting a good grade in the class is important, but a faculty member may be more impressed by your perseverance, improvement over time, or creativity in meeting challenges. How to ask? Be straightforward and direct. The appeal is best made in person, but be prepared for the person you’re asking to ask for some time to make the decision. People who get frequent requests may have a policy or even a form to fill out. They may ask you to provide more information about yourself so that they can write an original letter. If they do so, be thorough but prompt—you don’t want to keep them waiting. And if you have a deadline, tell them. When to ask? If you encounter a faculty member early in your college career who you think would be the best person to write a letter for you, ask them what they think toward the end of your course or soon after. They may feel it’s too early or not specific enough to simply hand you a general letter at that time. If so, ask if you can come back when you are applying to internships, jobs, or grad schools. If you wait until you’re applying or you’re about to graduate, you may have a more specific subject or reason for a letter. Be sure to tell the writer where you’re applying and what type of career you’re going into, so they can tailor the recommendation to that area. Thank-you notes. They wrote you a letter, so you should write them one in return. A brief and personal thank-you note is appropriate and necessary. ### Steps to Success ### Preparing for Change and Being Open to Opportunities Earlier in this text, we discussed managing change, adapting to the unexpected, and handling setbacks. These are critical skills that, while difficult during the process, ultimately build a better—and more employable—you. While you can’t prepare for every obstacle or surprise, you can be certain that you’ll encounter them. You may go through all of college, and even high school, with one job in mind. You may apply early to a specific program, successfully complete all the requirements, and set yourself on a certain career path. And then something may change. As described above, changes in your interests or goals are a natural part of developing your career; they’re nothing to be ashamed of. Most college students change majors several times. Even once they graduate, many people find themselves enjoying careers they didn’t envision. Ask the people around you, and many will share stories about how they took a meandering or circuitous path to their profession. Some people end up in jobs or companies that they didn’t know existed when they started school. What’s most important is that you build on your successes and failures, consider all your experiences, and pursue your purpose and overarching personal goals. For example, if you want to become a police officer but cannot complete all of the degree requirements on time, taking a job as a security officer or even an unrelated job in the meantime might lead to a great deal of satisfaction and set you on a different path. If, after that, you still want to pursue law enforcement, you can build it into your plan—managing your priorities, gaining the required experience and credentials, and applying for jobs closer to your chosen career. This early in your college experience, you shouldn’t be too worried about how to conduct job interviews or explain employment gaps or changing directions. However, you may need or want to explain the thinking behind your future plans to academic advisors, internship managers, your peers, and your family. You should feel free to do so openly, but you’ll probably be better prepared if you revisit some of the ideas discussed earlier in this chapter. Consider how a shift in your plans, whether slight or significant, reflects who you are now and who you hope to be in the future. Knowing yourself as an emerging and new professional by discovering and developing your interests, skills, values, personality, and strengths is something that everyone should do on an ongoing basis throughout their lives. Explore job opportunities or career paths available to people in your new major or discipline area. Think about whether you need to handle any financial impacts, such as paying for additional education or delaying employment. Employers, for their part, are often unfazed by changes or even mistakes. Remember, when they ask about your greatest weakness or failure, they want to hear something genuine. Just like the alumni you meet or the faculty you’re asking for recommendations, interviewers may be more impressed by how and what you’ve learned rather than how you followed a preplanned path. Remember, most jobs are a continuous thread of situations to think through, information to analyze, and problems to solve. Your ability to solve your own problems, and reflect and discuss them later, will show that you’re ready to do the same for an employer.

# Planning for Your Future ## Where Can You Go from Here? Hopefully you’ve noticed that we’ve ended each chapter of this book with a subsection called “Where Do You Go from Here?” In many of those cases, the story or reflection was aimed at giving you some ideas about how you could apply the topics and skills from that chapter to college and your career. Now we’re at the last chapter, and the question is even more personal and a little different: Where can you go? Where do you want to go? And, perhaps more importantly, why? The provided ideas and methods regarding choosing your career are proven winners. Learning about yourself, whether through simple reflection or formal analysis, is important to find your place. But consider the importance and reality of change and your openness to it. Regardless of your major, you will embark on a job and a career that will change many times over the course of your life. You’ll likely change responsibilities, roles, companies, and even industries. Even if you join a company one week after graduation and stay with it until you retire, the job and the company won’t remain the same. The world moves far too quickly for that, which is a good thing. All of those changes are opportunities to improve yourself and get closer to the “why” of your work: your purpose. Your purpose is the answer to all types of questions that people may ask you. “Do you like your job?” “How did you get into that?” “Is it worth it?” But more importantly, your purpose is the answer to all types of questions that you should ask yourself. If you keep asking yourself those questions and give yourself time to answer, you’ll have the best understanding of not only what you want to do, but why. You may find out that no single job or career is going to fulfill your purpose. If your foremost goal—your ideal—is being a good parent, your job might simply be the financial means to help accomplish that. If you want to eradicate poverty, you may do that through a job plus volunteer work plus a management position at a foundation. Don’t think, however, that you can’t fulfill your purpose within your career. It may take a few tries and restarts, but you can make a widespread impact in a number of ways. Furthermore, if you’re having trouble entering a career-oriented purpose through the “front door,” your skills and abilities might get you in through the side door. For example, if your purpose is to help eradicate racial and socioeconomic differences in America, you can work toward that in dozens of ways. At first it may seem that being a social worker, political activist, civil rights lawyer, or educator is the primary entryway—the front door. But what if none of these work out for you? What if you don’t fit any of these molds, but you’re the best salesperson most people have ever met? Every sales job you’ve taken, you’ve blown past your goal and earned top awards and bonuses. You’ve come so far that giving up your career would be financially devastating. So how can you use your skills and experience toward your purpose? Well, you could volunteer to use your sales skills to raise money or convince lawmakers to change things. Or you could get a job where you’re selling products or services that help people in the exact situations you are trying to improve. You could sell low-cost telecommunication systems to towns and school systems so that residents have better access to the Internet, helping them learn and stay connected. You could sell building safety systems to keep people secure. You could sell educational technology, financial services, or even low-cost solar paneling to improve the lives and independence of people in impoverished areas. Your work would be similar to what you’ve done your whole life, but you would feel personally fulfilled and connected to a purpose. In psychology, advertising, education, and other disciplines, researchers and professionals use a concept called Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. In essence, it’s a progression that starts with satisfying our most basic, physical needs (food, shelter) and moves through our more social and societal needs (cooperation, belonging) to our highest needs—feeling fulfilled and complete. (This brief description oversimplifies a rather detailed theory.) Given this base introduction, consider how Maslow’s theory applies to your future. At the bottom, your most basic needs are fulfilled by a job. It pays the bills, keeps you secure, and puts food on your table. At the next level is your career. Your career is more consistent; you invest more in it and probably are more heavily rewarded. In your career, you’ll likely build up relationships over time, both professional and personal, creating a sense of community and belonging. Some people will come to associate you with your career, and you may feel partly defined by it. But it likely won’t fulfill you all on its own. At the highest level, the level that allows you to become more fulfilled and complete, is your purpose. That’s the piece you strive for, the piece that helps you navigate your path. It’s what you may see yourself still moving toward in a later part of your life. It’s what you most want or even need to accomplish. Just as you’ll likely have more than one job and even more than one career, you will have more than one purpose. You will even have them at the same time. You can be 100 percent driven to be the best possible therapist and 100 percent driven to be the best possible older sibling, all while being 100 percent driven to continually deepen your knowledge of yoga. Your time and your focus will be split between them, but they will still each fulfill you. As you get older and gain experiences, both positive and negative, your priorities may change. But you’ll be successful as long as you adhere to the principles we’ve discussed and the qualities, values, and abilities you’ve identified in yourself. College offers you the opportunity to keep asking yourself the best, most challenging questions, all while you have many people dedicated to helping you find the answers. Those answers may surprise you, but the important thing is to keep asking and keep learning.

# Getting into College ## Introduction ### Student Survey How do you feel about the process of applying for college? These questions will help you determine how the chapter concepts relate to you right now. As we are introduced to new concepts and practices, it can be informative to reflect on how your understanding changes over time. Take this quick survey to figure it out, ranking questions on a scale of 1—4, 1 meaning “least like me” and 4 meaning “most like me.” Don’t be concerned with the results. If your score is low, you will most likely gain even more from this book. 1. I am confident that I know the process for applying for college and selecting the right school for me. 2. I know how to increase my chances of getting into a college that fits my needs and long-term goals. 3. I am on track now to be prepared for applying for scholarships and figuring out how to pay for college. 4. I feel comfortable with my goal of going to college. You can also take the Chapter 1 survey anonymously online. ### About This Chapter Deciding to go to college can be an exciting and nerve-wracking time. Will you be able to balance your high school work and activities with the process of applying to college? Will you find a school that you want to go to? Will you be able to afford it? Will you make new friends and feel comfortable there? How far away from home will you be and will a new community feel welcoming? All of the thoughts and the accompanying emotions will come and go as you move through high school and towards making a decision as to what you want to do after earning a diploma. Be assured that you can complete the requirements for getting through high school and plan for setting yourself on the pathway to what we call “postsecondary” education, or the training program or college that you attend after you complete the 12th grade or earn a general education diploma (GED). In this chapter, you will learn about the purpose of a college education, the process of applying to college and what you need to think about to make the most of the time you have now to prepare yourself. By the time you complete this chapter, you should be able to do the following: 1. Understand the benefits of a college education. 2. Describe how to create your academic and personal story. 3. Identify institutions and their characteristics so that you can determine the right “fit.” 4. List the steps for applying to college.

# Getting into College ## What Are the Benefits of College? Questions to Consider: 1. Why is college a good opportunity to become a learner? 2. How can a college education help me develop as a person? Usually, when we talk about the benefits of college, we make the argument that people who graduate with a degree are more likely to earn higher salaries or amass more lifetime earnings, experience better health and wellness outcomes, and embrace a more positive outlook on life. However, there are more rewards for going to college than just these long-term gains. In fact, you may have already identified a few that are motivating you to consider college: You get to study topics and develop skills that interest you; you get to live on your own (or with a roommate); and you get to have more control over what you do and when you do it. These are all good reasons to go to college, but there are other ways that college can benefit you. ### College Allows You to Become a Learner In his book, Becoming a LearnerSanders, M. (2018). , Matthew Sanders (2018) makes the argument that the fundamental purpose of college is not to fill you with specific knowledge or give you a set of career skills that you can take with you directly on the job. Its purpose, instead, is to help you “become a learner.” Sanders points out that learning to learn while taking a variety of required courses will help you develop the very skills that will help you reach your long-term goals and adapt to the changing world of work after you graduate. According to Sanders, your time in college is best spent if you approach the courses that you are taking as opportunities to develop your learning skills and your character. In other words, college will give you the chance to challenge and ultimately strengthen your values and beliefs, develop an awareness of who you are and what you want, embrace and learn from adversity, and demonstrate integrity and work ethic. College is not the only place for you to grow in these ways, but it is specially designed to allow you to do so with minimal repercussions. In order for you to make the most of the college experience, consider making the shift from student to learner by adopting the behaviors and habits that are presented in . Becoming a learner doesn’t happen overnight if you have had the habits of a student for many years. It will be a process of determining what your professors expect of you and making changes to your approaches to learning. In some cases, you may fail a test, an assignment, or a course. But those experiences will be helpful to you if you choose to see them as additional educational opportunities. ### College Allows You to Explore and Grow In addition to helping you become a learner, college is a good place to explore who you are and who you want to be. Experts in student development theory believe that your early adult years (ages 18-23) are the optimal time to determine your values, beliefs, and goals—or at least work through the options and learn more about what you like and don’t like. Two researchers developed a theory about the ways in which students in college develop. Arthur W. Chickering and Linda Reisser (1993) published their theory of identity development Chickering, A. W. & Reisser, L. (1993). for young adults. While it sounds mysterious, plainly stated, it is a theory about how and in what capacity you will grow and change while in college. The following seven components, or “vectors,” of the theory can provide you with a preview of what you will experience: 1. Developing competence. This means that you will improve as you gain knowledge and skills through learning activities and through challenges and setbacks. 2. Managing emotions. You will get many chances to learn how to identify how you are feeling and why and act on those emotions in a mature way. 3. Moving through autonomy to interdependence. This sounds like a complicated process, but it refers to your ability to become an adult in all ways by taking ownership of your choices and their consequences and for recognizing that you have a role in society to ask for help and to help others. 4. Developing mature relationships. In college, you will get many chances to establish relationships with a variety of different people—professors, mentors, classmates, friends—and you will benefit from learning how to communicate clearly and openly. 5. Establishing identity. Each one of us has multiple identities, or lenses through which we view ourselves and the world. College allows you to explore those identities—and maybe even discover new ones—and develop your sense of self and improve your self-esteem. 6. Developing a purpose. Setting goals, seeing yourself as someone who wants to help others, demonstrating a commitment to your future are all parts of developing a sense of purpose. In college, your courses, interactions with professors and classmates, and participation in activities will help you develop a sense of purpose. 7. Developing integrity. This is more than just doing the right thing. Integrity includes living your values and beliefs and respecting the values and beliefs of others. Now that you have an idea of how college will likely change you and help you grow as a person, let’s look at the opportunities you will have to move through these stages during college. ### College Courses Whether you decide to earn a certificate, associate degree, or a bachelor’s degree, you will take courses not related to your intended major. In some cases, you may have to take 10 or more courses in a variety of areas (or disciplines). These courses are often referred to as “general education courses,” but other names include “core courses,” or “liberal arts courses.” Each higher education institution is different in how many and what courses they require. You may have to take courses in writing, mathematics, sciences, arts, humanities, and social and behavioral sciences such as psychology or sociology. These courses may seem to stand in your way of learning about topics that directly relate to a major, but they are important to helping you develop yourself as a learner and build competence in your skills. When you register for classes once you are admitted to college, view your first academic terms as an opportunity to explore different topics and push yourself outside your comfort zone. You don’t know why taking a biology class will help you if you are a business major? Recall the section above about becoming a learner: adopting a “learner” mindset can help you frame the experience productively. Instead of feeling disconnected from such a course when your major is something different, think about how scientists, and their ways of thinking, provide us with ways in which to improve our health and environment. Or think of taking these courses that are not aligned with your major as opportunities to develop a broad range of learning and thinking skills that you will rely on for the rest of your life. At the very least, you will be a stronger learner and at the most, you may discover that what you really love to learn is something you had never considered studying before. ### Organizations and Extracurricular Activities During high school, you may have participated in school activities and organizations for the social aspect, for the opportunity to effect a chance and serve the community, or for the ability to develop important skills. These reasons don’t change much when you go to college. Most institutions offer a wide variety of clubs, organizations, societies, and Greek fraternities and sororities for the same reasons: to help students develop socially, personally, and professionally. Once you determine where you are going and what you will be studying, you will also want to take the time to decide how, what, where, and when you want to get involved. There is a balance, of course, and you don’t want to be so involved socially that you forget to go to class! Instead, look for organizations that fit your interests and find out what the commitment level is. Some will be very casual, meeting only once a semester or only for social interaction. Others will be more involved and may even cost a considerable amount of money each term (e.g., fraternities and sororities). Even before you choose an institution to attend, check out their list of opportunities to get involved. Then, when you make your choice, make a goal of exploring your options further. Here are some things to consider: 1. Making friends. You will most likely find many clubs and organizations that serve as social gatherings, usually organized around an interest or hobby. A film appreciation club, for example, could be a great way to meet people and enjoy something you like to do, like watching movies. 2. Exploring your values and beliefs. Most college campuses have faith-based or politically-affiliated groups that give you the chance to connect with others who share your values. Consider pushing yourself outside of your comfort zone, however, and look for groups that also provide a different perspective. 3. Developing leadership skills. One of the benefits of participating in clubs and organizations is that you can have the chance to develop key leadership skills. Most groups need a leader or several to carry out their missions. Student government associations or councils or advisory boards are great ways to get involved in significant ways. 4. Staying physically active. A climbing or hiking club or intramural sports are great ways to incorporate physical activity into your life. If you want to learn a new skill or sport (pickleball, anyone?), these are good ways to try them out. 5. Improving communication and project management skills. Any group you join will most likely have an event they put on or participate in, and your involvement will allow you to grow as a person in meaningful ways and help you develop career skills. ### Setbacks and Failure You will read more about how to deal with adversity throughout the rest of the chapters of this book, but it is worth mentioning here how setbacks and failures can help you to learn and grow. You may have already had some experiences with stumbling academically or personally up to this point. While it seems cruel to suggest that there will be more of these negative experiences in your future, being prepared for disappointments can help you prepare for them. The first setback you may experience with college is not getting into your dream school—or getting in but not being able to afford it, or it is too far away for you to attend, or it does not have the major you want. One way to handle these obstacles successfully is to consider the following: 1. Recognize that everyone slips up, makes mistakes, and fails before, during, and after college. It is normal and not fatal. You can and will recover. 2. How you handle yourself—your attitude, your emotions, and your reaction—is the key to staying focused on bouncing back. You can’t always control what happens to you, but you can control how you react when it does. 3. Sometimes you may need to ask for help. Some setbacks, such as a failing grade on a test in college, may indicate that you need someone to show you how to study more effectively. Use the experience to assess what kind of help you need and then ask for it. 4. View the failure as a learning experience. If you don’t get what you want, then ask yourself “What can I learn from this?” Experiencing a failure, setback, obstacle, or disappointment should not derail you from your goal, but it can help you rethink your approach and give you information about what is not working or what you can do differently the next time.

# Getting into College ## Your Academic Journey and Personal Story Questions to Consider: 1. How can your academic journey develop skills needed for college success? 2. How can your personal story prepare you for applying to college? ### Your Academic Journey Now that you have a better understanding of what college can do for you, it is time to focus on how high school is preparing you for college, or better yet, how you can prepare yourself in high school to become college ready. It is clear that what you do (or don’t do) in high school can affect your ability to get into the colleges of your choice, but there is more to preparing yourself than just earning a high GPA or class rank. Your high school education can provide you with ample opportunity to help you hone your academic skills. ### Take Difficult Courses Any student who is serious about applying to college should consider taking challenging classes while in high school. Why? Because those classes can help lay a foundation of high expectations and hard work and they are often highly regarded by college admissions counselors. These classes are sometimes called Advanced Placement (AP), International Baccalaureate (IB), or honors/advanced classes. If you are considering taking such courses, talk to your guidance counselor or current teachers. They may be able to offer suggestions for how to get selected (if there is an application process) and give you a realistic picture of what will be expected. There is no need to take all AP, IB, or advanced classes to prove you are ready for college, but taking a few can provide a college admissions committee evidence that you are open to challenge. ### Manage Time and Tasks If there is one skill that you can develop now that will help you throughout your college career, it is the ability to manage your time and complete tasks. If you already use a planner to track what you need to do and when it is due, then you are on the right track. You can enhance these skills by setting reminders for yourself—and not relying on teachers or parents to tell you when to complete or submit an assignment. The most important part of managing your time and tasks effectively is to build in time well before something is due to complete the work and to overestimate (at least initially) how long you need, which can provide time “buffers” that will keep you from rushing through work to finish it. ### Learn to Learn Earlier, you were introduced to the argument that the purpose of college is to become a learner. You don’t have to wait until college, though, to figure out how best to learn different subject matters. This is one reason you should consider taking challenging classes–they require that you put more time and effort in them to learn the material. And those skills will make transitioning to college much easier. How can you “learn to learn”? You may have little control over what you are learning and how you are tested, but you can control how you approach the learning. One way to learn how to learn is to space out your learning over time (as best as you can—sometimes teachers like to give you a pop quiz when you least expect it!). Reviewing a bit of material for a short amount of time over several days (as opposed to cramming it in right before a test) produces better results. Another way to learn how to learn is to monitor how well your learning strategies work. Did you do well on a test? Take some time to reflect on what you did that resulted in a good grade. Did you space out your studying? Did you look for connections in the material? Likewise, if you do poorly on a test, determine what led to the result. The more you can identify what works and doesn’t for you, the easier it is to make improvements in your learning strategies. ### Demonstrate Integrity and Ownership of Learning Being a high school student often means having a lot on your plate. It can be easy to put off homework and studying, not do it at all, or cut corners to complete the work. While you may be able to get away with some stumbles like forgetting to turn in an assignment, other behaviors, such as getting someone (including Artificial Intelligence software) to do your homework or write a paper for you can get you into trouble. Now is the time to build the skills you will need later in college. Taking full responsibility for your learning as well as demonstrating integrity in all assignments no matter how big or small are the foundation of those skills. How do you do this? For one, you acknowledge that every action or inaction will produce a result. If you put in the work to write the paper, you will earn the grade you receive. If you do not put in the work or find a way to shortcut the process by using someone else’s writing, then you have missed an opportunity to improve your writing, your thinking, and your project management skills. Plus, you may get into trouble for academic dishonesty, which could mean failing an assignment or a course, or getting a more substantial punishment, such as expulsion. The stakes only get higher when you are in college. ### Keep Test Scores in Perspective You will learn more about standardized test scores and their purpose for getting into college later in this chapter, but it is worth noting that while what you make on the ACT, SAT, or equivalent standardized test, may factor into your ability to get into and pay for the college of your dreams, it is not necessarily a reflection of who you are and what you are capable of. Definitely do all you can to raise your test scores through practicing, prepping, and doing your best on the day of the test. But do not assume that a low test score will be the end of your long-term goals or educational journey. They are just one piece of information by which an institution may evaluate your potential, but it shouldn’t be the only thing that tells who you are. ### Your Personal Story Just as important as your academic journey is your personal story. You will need to develop and reflect on both for your applications to college and scholarships. Those who read about you will want to know not only about your accomplishments, but also your challenges and how you have overcome them. ### What Makes You Unique It may seem cliché to say “There is only one you!” But there is some truth in the fact that you are unique—there is no one else like you. To that end, you may want to draw upon those unique characteristics as you begin to shape the story that you will share with college admissions staff and scholarship committees. Will you be the first in your family to go to college? Do you live on a working farm and feed the goats, cows, and horses every morning before school? Can you ride a unicycle or juggle or both? There may be both personal characteristics as well as experiences that make you stand out from others, and if there are, consider weaving these details into the tapestry of your story. Start by making a list of your characteristics—no trait is too small or typical at this point. You can eliminate items later when you start building your story, but for now, create the list and add to it as you think of new things that you are or can do. ### Getting Gritty Many college essay prompts include an opportunity to share a time in your life in which you faced adversity and overcame it. For some students, this prompt is difficult for they have either not experienced a life-changing setback or not considered themselves challenged. It is important to remember that any setback or disappointment—no matter how inconsequential it may seem to you—can be the basis for an essay that responds to such a prompt. There is no need to embellish the circumstance if it is truly not harrowing, but it is acceptable to frame the experience as something that was difficult for you. Most readers of essays are less looking for a made-for-Hollywood story and more wanting to see someone who has demonstrated tenacity, resilience, and reflection no matter how big or small the adversity is. Even if you are not required to write an essay on a time in your life in which you failed or experienced disappointment, having a story handy for interviews (for scholarships, internships, or jobs) can help you share insight into your personality and strengths in a succinct way. ### Finding the Themes of Your Life In Katharine Brooks’ (2010) book You Majored in What?Brooks, K.(2010). she shares a writing and reflecting activity called “Wandering Pathways and Butterfly Moments” that guides readers through a series of prompts to develop a list of life experiences for the purpose of discovering what career pathway may be most fruitful for them to pursue. These life experiences could be as monumental as moving to a new state and starting a new school or they can be as mundane as spending the summers fishing. The goal of the exercise is to record what you have done or what has happened to you to get a sense of a “story.” These stories are built upon the connections and themes that you see in the experiences. Here are some of the life experiences Brooks wants you to consider when you are crafting your personal story. 1. What have you done during the summer or holiday breaks from school? 2. What did you play when you were a young child? 3. What are some of your major life experiences (e.g. family events such as births, deaths, marriages, divorces)? 4. What do people say you do well or have a talent for or seek you out for? 5. What do you consider your greatest achievements? 6. What jobs have you had? 7. What groups have you belonged to? 8. What awards have you won? 9. What lessons have you learned? 10. What do you like to do for fun? 11. What kind of “secret” talent do you have? The goal of answering the questions is to capture as much about who you are and how you have been shaped to develop clear connections among the life elements and create themes. These themes can drive your personal story that can share on a deeper level who you are or who you are becoming. Consider this scenario: Raphael has taken the time to write down his life experiences so he can build his personal narrative. Some of the answers to the questions above include the following: 1. Raphael’s jobs: lifeguard, babysitter for his nieces and nephews, tutor, art teacher for elementary students 2. Raphael’s hobbies and interests: watching old movies, volunteering at the library, creating original jewelry from natural objects 3. Raphael’s awards and accolades: he won a writing contest in 11th grade, his friends come to him for advice, he has earned high grades in all of his classes 4. Raphael’s major life events: parents divorced when he was 6 years old, he started a new school in junior high, his aunt passed away when he was 14 years old From this short list, Raphael can begin to draw out themes that he can use to create a detailed picture of who he is. He has found himself in teaching roles with his jobs. He has a love for the arts as evidenced by his hobbies. He is a good communicator evidenced by his awards and accolades, and relationships are an important part of his life. Raphael can use those themes—and details from his experiences—to craft his story as someone who has demonstrated an interest in connecting with and helping others by sharing his expertise and experience. Recognizing the themes in your life helps you to describe how you've become the person you are now, and helps you to understand who you will become.

# Getting into College ## Finding the Right "Fit" Questions to Consider: 1. What are the characteristics of different types of colleges and universities? 2. What questions should you ask yourself when researching schools? 3. What should you do when you visit a school? Finding the right “fit” means choosing a pathway after high school that meets your current and long-term needs. It also means feeling as if you belong and can be successful. Of course, every new college student doubts themselves the first few weeks of the first year, but overall, a college, university, technical program, or military experience should feel right to you, as if it will be a place that you can thrive. To help you determine if your final choice is the right one, you need to know what your options are. This section provides you with information about all the different ways that a college or university can provide you with an experience that helps you succeed. ### Characteristics of Colleges and Universities The terms “college” and “university” are often used interchangeably, but it is good to know what they mean and how diverse the options are when you are looking for the right institution of higher education. “College” is often used when the institution is smaller and only enrolls undergraduate students; community or technical colleges enroll first- and second-year students who will go on to earn certificates or associate degrees (often called “two-year” degrees); and liberal arts colleges enroll first-year students through seniors who will earn bachelor’s (often called “four-year”) degrees. “University” is used to refer to larger institutions that offer bachelor’s degrees and master’s degrees and even doctorate degrees. Familiarizing yourself with the different characteristics of colleges and universities is the first step to making a decision about where to apply and eventually where to go. You don’t have to narrow your choice just now, but think about which characteristics are more appealing to you and use those to determine which institutions you will research and then consider as part of your process. As you start the process of researching, visiting, and deciding on where to apply and eventually go to college, you may want to revisit this section and think more about the type of institution and how it fits into your long-term goals. ### Additional Considerations Now that you have a better understanding of the different types of schools you may attend, the next step is thinking through additional considerations. Each institution is unique because of its mission, its student population, programs of study, and opportunities for getting involved. Some students want to go to a college with a high-profile sports team while others want to live and study in a specific city or area of the country. To help you determine your best fit for a college or university, you will want to spend some time creating questions to ask yourself, your family, your guidance counselor, and campus representatives. With these questions in hand, you can start gathering more detailed information about the schools that you may want to attend. Here are just a few additional areas or characteristics that you will want to consider as you do your research. ### Mission of the institution Each institution has a unique mission, and doing a little research to determine what this is will help you narrow your college choices. For example, if it is important for you to attend a religiously-affiliated or religiously-focused institution, reviewing the mission of the university will help you determine if the institution is a good fit for you. Some mission statements reflect a teaching focus, which means that faculty value teaching and learning and may offer a rich in-class experience for students; some mission statements reflect a research focus, which means that faculty place a greater value on their research projects, which may offer a unique experience for students who are interested in participating in the development of knowledge. Questions to ask: What is the mission of the institutions that you are considering? How do you think the mission will affect your experience at the institution? ### Graduation rates When you choose a college or university, you are making the commitment to graduate from that institution. Therefore, it is important to know how well a school does when it comes to graduation rates. There are many reasons that students may not graduate—some decide college is not the path they want to take, some transfer to another school, and others find that putting a pause on their studies makes more sense for them. A high graduation rate (60% or higher) usually indicates that there are many opportunities to stay on track and graduate within four or five years. More and more institutions are providing additional support to students so that they can graduate, so it is worth asking what measures they have in place to help. Questions to ask: What are the institution’s four-year and six-year graduation rates? What support systems does the institution have in place to help students who struggle to graduate on time? ### Cost of attendance Cost of attendance refers to the total amount of estimated costs that you will have in college. Each institution’s costs of attendance will differ based on tuition, fees, room, and board (also known as “meals”), but many also estimate the costs of transportation and books and supplies. For public institutions, be sure to look at the in-state costs versus the out-of-state costs. If you attend a public school within your state, the tuition and fees should be lower than if someone from out of state were to attend. Tuition, fees, room, and board are institutional costs and will be paid directly to the school you attend. The personal costs are ones that you will be responsible for and are variable, which means they will depend on your circumstances. For example, you may not have substantial transportation costs if you are going to a school in your hometown. Be sure to note that an estimated cost of attendance does not equal the total amount that you or family may pay each year because it doesn’t factor in scholarships, grants, loans, and direct payments. However, it does provide you with a realistic starting point as you do more research on where you may want to attend. The table below shows an example of the cost of attendance at an in-state university for an undergraduate student living on campus. To get a better sense of what you and your family may actually pay, locate the Net Price Calculator on each institution’s website. The Net Price Calculator allows you to put in specific information about your academic credentials (e.g., test scores, high school GPA) and demographic data as well as your family’s estimated financial contributions. The result of your calculations will give you a much more realistic picture of what you may have to pay. Questions to ask: What are my options for reducing the cost of attendance? How does the institution help students meet the cost of attendance? ### Programs of study Programs of study refers to the types of degrees, majors, and minors that are available to you. Some institutions provide very specialized programs while others may offer similar degrees as many other institutions. If you have some idea of what kind of career you want or what you want to study, you can scan the list of majors at each institution and rule out any that don’t offer what you want. For example, if you want to be a cybersecurity expert, you will want to look for programs that provide a major if not specific coursework that would prepare you for this career. Not all institutions will have a direct pathway to certain, specialized careers, so doing your homework by reviewing their list of majors will help you narrow down your options. If you do not know what you want to study, you may want to look for programs of study that provide a wide variety of choices so that you know you have options should you decide after you are enrolled. Questions to ask: What programs of study does the institution have that set it apart from similar institutions? What are the institution’s most popular programs of study and why? ### Diversity of student body Diversity may be a relative term, but it is worth considering if you are interested in getting to know people from different backgrounds and experiences. A student who goes to an urban, diverse, and large high school that attracts students from different countries may find a small, rural liberal arts college in the middle of the country less diverse while another student with a different high school experience may find the same school much more diverse. There is more to diversity than race and ethnicity although those are two measures.. If you are looking to live and learn amongst a wide variety of people, review the demographic data (usually on the college’s website), but also look at the faculty and staff demographic data as well as the types of clubs, events, and organizations that are available to students. Questions to ask: What kinds of diversity will I find on your campus? What is your commitment to supporting diverse students? ### Opportunities to get involved Don’t judge a book by its cover: A small, rural, liberal arts college that is located on a mountain, an hour’s drive from a town can offer a large number of activities, organizations, clubs, and events to keep you engaged the entire four years. Larger institutions located in metropolitan areas don’t always have more opportunities. Instead of assuming that size matters when it comes to student involvement, consider how the colleges and universities that you are researching address the student need to develop leadership, work within the community, network with alumni, and offer partner programs with other institutions. You may, for example, choose a college that has a strong internship program that can place you directly into the field or company where you want to work after graduation. Questions to ask: What unique opportunities to get involved or connected does your institution offer? How can a student make the most of the involvement opportunities that are available? ### Location and proximity to home You may have heard the real estate phrase “location, location, location” that reflects the importance of where a piece of property is relative to its value. The same may be said about colleges and universities. For some students, the where is as important as the what. You want to eventually work in government and politics? An institution close to Washington, D.C., may be a good choice for you. You want to work in the film industry? An institution with ties to Hollywood may be the best fit. Want to enjoy outdoor activities such as snow skiing, hiking, and rock climbing? An institution in Colorado or Utah may address your needs. For some students, moving to a different part of the country or even a different country—far away from friends and family—is exciting. For others, they want or need to choose a college that is close to home or within commuting distance. Thus, when you start to research your college options, make location an explicit part of the discussion. There could be added costs to moving across the country or it may affect your ability to come back home over holiday breaks as well as out-of-state tuition and fees. Factor in the logistics of getting there (and back) and the costs before you make your final decision. Questions to ask: How many of your students are at least 50 miles away from home? Do students stay on campus over the weekends and during breaks or do they head home? ### Planning a Campus Visit Once you make a list of what is important to you and you start exploring the many options you have, it is time to consider a campus visit. The institution may offer a student preview day in which they invite high school juniors and seniors on campus to take tours and learn more about their programs and amenities, or you may be part of a group or a class that takes a field trip to local institutions to explore what they have to offer. Regardless of the occasion, there are some things to consider that will help you make the most of the visit. The more you can plan ahead—if you have the ability—for the visit, the more likely you will come away with valuable information. Consider the following when visiting: 1. Time of year. When you visit is important. If you visit on a holiday break or during the summer, you may not get an accurate feel for the campus community. Try to visit during a fall, winter, or spring term to get a sense of how busy the college is. 2. First impressions. What you feel when you first arrive—for good or bad—can influence how you feel about the entire visit. First impressions go a long way. 3. Are people friendly and helpful? Is it easy to navigate the campus? Can you see yourself living and learning there? 4. Class atmosphere. If there is an option to sit in on a class, consider doing it. You will get a feel for how students interact with faculty and what kinds of learning they are involved in. Don’t be intimidated if the content or discussion seems complicated. By the time you are sitting in the same seat, you will be prepared. 5. Faculty/student viewpoints. Some campus visits include talks from faculty and students. Colleges often choose well-spoken and positive representatives who can provide you with a sense of what it is like to be a student. Be sure to ask about challenges that students often face and what supports are available for those in need of help. 6. Amenities. Chances are good that you will visit a typical residential hall room and eat a meal in the dining hall. These experiences are designed to give you a good idea of what it feels like to live on campus. You may also get a chance to tour other special amenities such as fitness facilities, grassy lawns, or hiking pathways. Take it all in as part of the atmosphere of the campus. 7. Campus resources. Any good tour of campus should include visits to key campus resources. Does the institution have a health center, tutoring lab, library facility, office of accessibility resources? All of these support sources will be essential to your success in and out of the classroom, so be sure to check them out. 8. Neighborhood. After you take a walk around campus, circle the block. Where is the campus located? Is it easy to access public transportation or friendly to walkers and cyclists? Do you feel safe and comfortable? If you have questions about navigating the area around the school, talk to students and staff about your concerns and ask for advice. If you are unable to visit a campus in person, you may be able to do a “virtual” visit by scheduling a conference call with admissions counselors, financial aid staff, faculty, and students. Some institutions provide webinars in which you can learn more about the campus culture and ask questions of the speakers. Even if you have to check out video, interactive maps, and social media, you may be able to get a good idea of what the experience and opportunities can be for you. You have so many ways to explore colleges and universities without having to set foot on the lawn, so be sure to take advantage of all that you can do to learn more.

# Getting into College ## Applying for College and Making Your Decision Questions to Consider: 1. What is the process for applying to college? 2. What do I need to consider when making a decision about what college to attend? In the previous sections in this chapter, you learned about the types of colleges and universities and what to consider as you begin researching where you would like to go. This section focuses on the steps for applying to college and what you can do to prepare to make an informed decision. No matter how many months or years you have before you enroll in a college or university, you can start now to get organized and prepare. ### Getting Your Application Ready The first step to applying to college involves getting organized. You may want to use a spreadsheet or a series of online folders to keep track of your applications, resumes, and essays, but you can also use the old-fashioned paper folders. As long as you faithfully place your important documents within the folders, it doesn’t matter whether you store them. ### Personal Information Collecting information about your activities and accomplishments is the first step in getting ready to apply. You may even consider creating a resume that lists your personal information along with your activities, leadership positions, and awards. While not all applications require a formal resume, creating one can help you capture what you have been doing over the past four years and help you stay organized. Because you may be applying for scholarships, grants, college admissions, and even internships or other selective programs, it will be important to maintain a list of not only what you have accomplished, but also what you have gained from those experiences. Consider creating a table, such as below, to help you capture your achievements as well as the effect they have had on you. ### Transcripts Official high school transcripts are records of the courses you have taken and the grades you have earned. They also include your high school GPA (at the time) as well as your class rank. Colleges will need your official transcript prior to admitting you. Oftentimes, your high school guidance counselor submits your transcripts on your behalf and usually before your final semester in high school is complete. Thus, colleges will be judging you for admissions and scholarships based on your 9th, 10th, 11th, and part of 12th grade work. When you request that your transcripts be sent to colleges and universities be sure to build in enough time for the transcript to get there, double check the correct address of the registrar’s office at the campus, and be sure you are requesting an official transcript, which may be sealed or stamped to guarantee its authenticity. Even though you will likely be admitted to college based on an incomplete high school transcript, your ability to enroll in classes will depend on your final, official transcript that will be sent after you graduate. Those last few weeks of the semester matter! ### Test Scores In the past few years, more and more schools are dropping admission requirements for SAT and ACT (or equivalent) scores; however, many still require that you submit them to be considered for scholarships or before you enroll. This can be good news for students who feel that standardized test scores are not a true reflection on their abilities or potential. Taking the SAT or ACT may still provide you with an advantage when applying for college. Be sure, though, to read each institution’s policies and deadlines for submitting scores should you want them as part of your application package. In some cases, institutions that were test score optional for a few years may decide to return to requiring test scores. ### Essays Many college admissions and scholarship applications require an essay. Even if the essay is considered optional, you are better off submitting one. A well-written, authentic essay can help the reader get to know you in ways that your list of accomplishments cannot. As mentioned above, your personal story helps to show who you are. Think of the essay as the color and shape to a picture of who you are. There are many ways that you can approach the college essay, but here are some simple rules to follow to ensure that, at the very least, the essay is easy to read, clearly written, and a true representation of who you are: 1. Read the prompt. And then probably read it again. Make sure you understand what the instructions are and you follow them completely. 2. Note the word count. All essay prompts will include a maximum (and some cases a minimum) word count. The word count is used to help you focus and the fewer the words, the more you need to make each word count. 3. Open with a hook. Your first few sentences should entice, or hook, the reader to continue reading. The reader of your essay will no doubt have read tens if not hundreds of essays and won’t spend much time on yours if it doesn’t grab them within the first few seconds of reading. 4. Be specific. As writing professors often tell their students: Show, don’t tell. This means that you should provide vivid details. If you were disappointed that you didn’t make the soccer team, then write about the knot in your stomach and the red splotches on your cheeks when you realized you lost a chance to play your senior year. 5. Be authentic. Always, always write your own essay using the words that you would use. You don’t have to write fancy, long sentences with big words. Concise and clear—and authentic—are always preferable. And you don’t have to experience extreme adversity to share a compelling story about how you overcame a challenge. 6. Check your work. Read it aloud and share it with others who can help proofread and catch any spelling or grammatical errors. ### Recommendation Letters Recommendation letters will be a necessary component of your application, especially if you are also applying for scholarships. Most of the time, you can ask high school teachers if they would be willing to write you a good letter of recommendation. You may also consider asking adults who lead organizations that you have participated in. For example, a coach, youth group leader, or community service coordinator may be willing to write you a detailed letter that attests to your attitude and work ethic. When you ask for a recommendation, consider the following as ways to ensure that the letters are high quality and completed on time: 1. Ask someone who knows you well. You don’t have to be the varsity captain or class valedictorian to get a good letter of recommendation, but you do need to be visible to the person you are asking. This means that they know who you are and have observed your best characteristics. This will allow them to write a specific, detailed and positive letter. 2. Ask someone you can rely on. Be sure that if you ask someone to write a letter of recommendation that you can rely on them to do so in a timely manner. 3. Hand them your resume. One way to help someone write a good letter of recommendation is to hand them a resume or a list of your accomplishments. 4. Give them “focus” points. Share with the recommender what you need them to focus on in their letter. Is it academic ability or leadership qualities? Be sure to give them specific guidelines especially if the application requires them to. 5. Share all the details. Your letter writer will need to know what, when, where, and how to submit the letter. The more details, the more likely you will get the letter you need. For example, your letter writer may need to submit the recommendation on school letterhead and postmark it by a certain date. Or they may be required to submit an electronic evaluation of you that will be sent to their email address. 6. Keep it confidential. Letters of recommendation should be confidential unless otherwise stated. Don’t ask to read the letter or keep a copy unless it is required as part of the application process. Some letter writers may want to share the recommendations with you or allow you to save a copy in case you need it for something else; of course, if the recommender suggests it and it does not violate a rule of the application process, you can do so. 7. Show gratitude. Last but not least, when someone writes a letter of recommendation for you, provide a statement of thanks. You can express your gratitude in a note card (preferable), through an email, or in person. Be sure to tell the writer that you appreciate the time they took to communicate your strengths. ### Application Fees Most colleges and universities require that you submit an application fee—$25 to almost $100. Applying to several schools can add up quickly. Some institutions offer fee waivers for low-income or first-generation college students, for example, or provide an “admission fee waiver” day when you can apply for no charge on a designated date. Talk to your guidance counselor or speak to an admissions officer at the institution to see if the schools you are applying to offer free or reduced fees. ### Making Decisions about College You may feel relieved when you submit all your application materials and ready to wait for the offers to roll in. But the process has just started. You will soon need to review your acceptances (in addition to waitlists and rejections) to determine what the institution requires you to do to move forward. Typically, May 1 is considered “National Decision Day,” so you may find that you have only a few weeks to determine your next steps. This section provides an overview of the multiple considerations you will need to make before you can start classes as a college student. ### Determining Next Steps The days of simply being accepted or rejected are over. Because of the exponential increase in the number of students applying to multiple colleges, more and more institutions are placing qualified applicants on waitlists, or a list of applicants that may be admitted if students who have been accepted decline their spot in the next college class. In some cases, applicants are not waitlisted exactly, but are granted admission that is contingent on their first attending another school such as a community college and transferring in. 1. Accepted. Review all the information regarding deadlines for accepting admission, financial aid, and housing (if you are living on campus). You will need to formally accept the offer of admission and may need to pay a deposit to secure residential housing. 2. Waitlisted. Determine where you are on the waitlist (some institutions provide you with your number on the list) and how likely you would be to accept admission should you get off the waitlist. If you don’t want to attend the school, be sure to let the institution know to take you off the waitlist. There are no hard and fast rules about being waitlisted and it is nearly impossible to predict if you will get a chance to be admitted eventually. Your chances may increase after May 1 and the closer you get to the start of classes. At some point, however, you may want to move on. 3. Offered Delayed Enrollment. This option is becoming more common as a way for institutions to increase student enrollment at times, usually the second and third years, when students often leave. Review the length of the delay as it could be one semester, one year, or two years as well as the requirements that will guarantee that you are eventually accepted. Do you need to enroll at any other institution or a satellite campus? Do you need to earn a certain number of credit hours and GPA? 4. Rejected. Even if you are rejected, you will want to ensure that you have read all the information about what you may be able to do should you want to reapply. Some institutions allow prospective students to appeal their rejection, but require them to complete the appeal by a certain date. The student may also have to write a statement as to why they are appealing the rejection as well as specific documentation such as a letter of recommendation. ### Calculating Costs In an earlier section, you learned about the cost of attendance and how to calculate net price. Once you get an acceptance letter, you will also be given a financial aid package to review. This will contain the information about scholarships, grants, loans, and other methods of paying your bill and provide you with a more realistic picture of what you will owe. The table below shows the net price, or the price you will likely pay, after you calculate the financial aid that you will receive. Institutions that may seem out of reach because of high tuition and fees may actually be your most affordable option because of the amount of scholarship and grant aid that they offer. Before you make any decisions, carefully review both the total estimated costs as well as the total estimated financial aid that you are offered. ### Reviewing Programs of Study Before you make your final decision, take one more look at the programs of study that the institution offers. Do they have the major that you are most interested in? Or do they have enough options that you feel you can find something that will fit your long-term plans? If you have been accepted to multiple institutions, you will want to review your notes and impressions on many different aspects of the experience, but subjects you can study will most likely be an important part of your decision. Reach back out to professors, advisors, or students to ask for clarification if you have any lingering questions. ### Meeting Pre-Enrollment Requirements When you get that acceptance letter and let the institution know you are going to be enrolling in a few short months, you will determine what else you will need to do. For sure, you will need to submit a final transcript after you graduate; you may also need to provide test scores or updated test scores if you need them before registering for courses; you may need to register for advising and orientation; and you may also need to choose a housing option, select a roommate, and pay a deposit for housing or a fee for summer events. You will most likely not have to pay your bill until you get much closer to the beginning of the semester. Nonetheless, be sure you are aware of the upcoming deadlines for completing important tasks including paying for college. ### Dealing with Uncertainty and Disappointment In an earlier section, you learned about handling setbacks and obstacles, and the same advice will hold true if you find that your hopes and dreams for life after high school are dashed because you didn’t get accepted to your first choice or the financial aid you are offered doesn’t meet your needs. If you had hoped to attend a specific school and are not able to, take some time to reflect on the experience, talk with friends and family about how you feel, and focus on the pathways that are open to you. You will find a way forward and it may be better than you could have imagined. Making your final decision doesn’t have to be so, well, final. You still have the opportunity to make a change up until classes start. This is not to say that there may not be consequences when you change your mind at the last minute, but you do have the power to go in a different direction. In the few months between graduation and starting your first year of college, you may experience a change of heart or your family situation may change drastically. If something influences your decision in this way, always reach out to the institution first to talk through your options as soon as possible. In some cases, you may need to drop classes and officially unenroll or cancel housing. You can then use the steps outlined above to start the process anew. ### Friends & Family Matter JT is reapplying to college after taking a break to work and earn enough money to pay his expenses. The work that he does now is not challenging and certainly not what he wants to do the rest of his life. Although, he is not sure what he wants to do—maybe something in health care or in finance. Either way, he wants to make more money so he can afford the things he wants most: a house, a new car, and the ability not to worry about how to afford all of life’s surprises. His family and friends, however, are having a hard time understanding why he wants to go to college. They all live in a small community and help each other out when needed. They don’t see why JT wants to go to college even if it means he could get a job that he really enjoys and makes him money. They are afraid he will change, maybe even not want to maintain a relationship with them, and they have been very vocal about their lack of support. When JT makes the decision to apply and asks a close friend for help with the application, his friend tells him that he is not going to help him because he doesn’t support his decision; his friend is concerned they won’t have time to hang out like they do now. He then asks his family if he could move in with them while he goes to college so he can save some of the money he earns to pay for his expenses. They, too, refuse to help him because they think he would be burdening them. ### Let’s Think About It JT has several options. Think through the consequences of each one, and choose the best option or create your own option. 1. JT tells his family and family that he needs to make this decision for himself and doesn’t appreciate their negative feedback. 2. JT explains why he wants to go to college and what he thinks it would do for him in terms of a career and life that he wants and acknowledges that they may not be supportive, but he hopes they will be some day. 3. JT promises his family that he will keep them up to date on what he is doing and why, and he will also make his best effort to stay connected to them and help them when needed. ### Let’s Talk About It JT’s dilemma regarding whether or not to apply to college may be something you are considering as well. You may be thinking, ”Is it better to work now and attend later or not attend at all?” Here are some suggestions for communicating with others about the dilemma that JT is facing. 1. “I have been working for a few years now, and I have a better idea of what I want to do for a career; a degree will help me achieve a long-term goal.” 2. “I know you may be disappointed that you won’t be able to see me as often as usual, but the degree will take only a few years and then I can participate more in family events.” 3. “While earning a degree may change me in certain ways, I am committed to maintaining our relationships and hope that you will grow and change with me.” This chapter provides an overview of the benefits of college or how college can shape you into an educated person. Next, the chapter introduces strategies for creating your unique story from your academic and personal journeys, which will help you craft the narratives needed for college applications. The chapter also describes different types of institutions for the purpose of helping you determine what kinds of colleges and universities are the right “fit” for your needs. The chapter ends with the steps to applying to college and making an informed decision. Now that you have read and reflected on the main ideas of the chapter, consider developing a plan to help you prepare for applying to college. Review the list below and commit to working on one or more of the concepts this term and beyond. 1. Research the types of institutions that you may want to attend. List the characteristics of each that you are considering and ask yourself what the benefits and drawbacks are for each. 2. Begin to craft your personal story by making a list of your unique characteristics and experiences. Use these details to write essays about how you are and what you want to become. 3. Create a net-price spreadsheet of the colleges you want to attend. Use their Tuition and Fees Calculator and their Net Price Calculators to determine the estimates of what you may be paying to attend. 4. Organize your application process by creating folders and keeping track of your correspondence with the institutions.

# Transitioning to College ## Introduction ### Student Survey How do you feel about your ability to meet the expectations of college? These questions will help you determine how the chapter concepts relate to you right now. As we are introduced to new concepts and practices, it can be informative to reflect on how your understanding changes over time. Take this quick survey to figure it out, ranking questions on a scale of 1—4, 1 meaning “least like me” and 4 meaning “most like me.” Don’t be concerned with the results. If your score is low, you will most likely gain even more from this book. 1. I am fully aware of the expectations of college and how to meet them. 2. I know why I am in college and have clear goals that I want to achieve. 3. Most of the time, I take responsibility for my learning new and challenging concepts. 4. I feel comfortable working with faculty, advisors, and classmates to accomplish my goals. You can also take the Chapter 2 survey anonymously online. ### About This Chapter In this chapter, you will learn about what you can do to get ready for college. By the time you complete this chapter, you should be able to do the following: 1. Recognize the purpose and value of college. 2. Describe the transitional experience of the first year of college. 3. Discuss how to handle college culture and expectations. 4. List the benefits of adopting a learning mindset. While Reginald and Madison have had different experiences before and certainly have different motivations for enrolling in college, they have quite a bit in common. They are both committed to this new chapter in their lives, and they are both connected to their families in ways that can influence their commitment to this pursuit. What they don’t know just yet—because they haven’t started their classes—is that they will have even more in common as they move through each term, focus on a major, and plan for life after graduation. And they have a lot in common with you as well because you are in a similar position—starting the next chapter of the rest of your life. In this chapter, you will first learn more about identifying the reason you are in college. This is an important first step because knowing your why will keep you motivated. Next, the chapter will cover the transitions that you may experience as a new college student. Then, the chapter will focus on how you can acclimate to the culture and meet the expectations—all of which will make the transition to a full-fledged college student easier. Adopting a learning mindset is covered next and will provide you with research-based information that can help you develop the beliefs and habits that will result in success. Finally, the chapter will provide you with strategies for overcoming the challenges that you may face by providing information about how to find and access resources.

# Transitioning to College ## Why College? Questions to Consider: 1. Why are you in college? 2. What are the rewards and value of a college degree? This chapter started with the profiles of two students, Reginald and Madison, but now we turn to who you are and why you are going to college. Starting this chapter with you, the student, seems to make perfect sense. Like Reginald and Madison, you are probably full of emotions as you begin a journey toward a degree and the fulfillment of a dream. Are you excited about meeting new people and finally getting to take classes that interest you? Are you nervous about how you are going to handle your courses and all the other activities that come along with being a college student? Are you thrilled to be making important decisions about your future? Are you worried about making the right choice when deciding on a major or a career? All these thoughts, even if contradictory at times, are normal. And you may be experiencing several of them at the same time. ### Why Are You in College? We know that college is not mandatory—like kindergarten through 12th grade is—and it is not free. You are making a choice to commit several years of hard work to earn a degree or credential. In some cases, you may have had to work really hard to get to this point by getting good grades and test scores in high school and earning money to pay for tuition and fees and other expenses. Now you have more at stake and a clearer path to achieving your goals, but you still need to be able to answer the question. To help answer this question, consider the following questioning technique called “The Five Whys” that was originally created by Sakichi Toyoda, a Japanese inventor, whose strategy was used by the Toyota Motor Company to find the underlying cause of a problem. While your decision to go to college is not a problem, the exercise is helpful to uncover your underlying purpose for enrolling in college. The process starts with a “Why” question that you want to know the answer to. Then, the next four “Why” questions use a portion of the previous answer to help you dig further into the answer to the original question. Here is an example of “The Five Whys,” with the first question as “Why are you in college?” The answers and their connection to the next “Why” questions have been underlined so you can see how the process works. While the example is one from a student who knows what she wants to major in, this process does not require that you have a specific degree or career in mind. In fact, if you are undecided, then you can explore the “why” of your indecision. For example, you may consider the following “Why” questions: Is it because you have lots of choices, or is it because you are not sure what you really want out of college? Do you see how this student went beyond a standard answer about the degree that she wants to earn to connect her degree to an overall purpose that she has to help others in a specific way? Had she not been instructed to delve a little deeper with each answer, it is likely that she would not have so quickly articulated that deeper purpose. And that understanding of “why” you are in college—beyond the degree you want or the job you envision after graduation—is key to staying motivated through what will most likely be some challenging times. How else does knowing your “why,” or your deeper reason for being in college, help you? According to Angela Duckworth (2016), a researcher on grit—what it takes for us to dig in deep when faced with adversity and continue to work toward our goal—knowing your purpose can be the booster to grit that can help you succeed.Duckworth, A. (2016). Other research has found that people who have a strong sense of purpose are less likely to experience stress and anxiety (Burrow, 2013)Burrow, A.L. & Hill, P.L. (2013). Derailed by diversity? Purpose buffers the relationship between ethnic composition on trains and passenger negative mood. and more likely to be satisfied in their jobs (Weir, 2013).Weir, K. (2013). More than job satisfaction: Psychologists are discovering what makes work meaningful--and how to create value in any job. Therefore, being able to answer the question “Why are you in college?” not only satisfies the person asking, but it also has direct benefits to your overall well-being. But don’t worry if you don’t know your purpose, or why, for being in college just yet. You can use your time taking classes and developing relationships to figure it out. ### What Are the Rewards and Value of a College Degree? Once you have explored your “why” for enrolling in college, it may be worth reviewing what we know about the value of a college degree. There is no doubt you know people who have succeeded in a career without going to college. Famous examples of college dropouts include Bill Gates (the cofounder and CEO of Microsoft) and Ellen DeGeneres (comedian, actor, and television producer, among her many other roles). These are two well-known, smart, talented people who have had tremendous success on a global scale. They are also not the typical profile of a student who doesn’t finish a degree. For many students, especially those who are first-generation college students, a college degree helps them follow a career pathway and create a life that would not have been possible without the credential. Even in this time of rapid change in all kinds of fields, including technology and education, a college degree is still worth it for many people. Consider the following chart that shows an average of lifetime earnings per level of education. As you can see, the more education you receive, the greater the increase in your average lifetime earnings. Even though a degree costs a considerable amount of money on the front end, if you think about it as an investment in your future, you can see that college graduates receive a substantial return on their investment. To put it into more concrete terms, let’s say you spend $100,000 for a four-year degree (Don’t faint! That is the average sticker cost of a four-year degree at a public university if you include tuition, fees, room, and board). The return on investment (ROI) over a lifetime, according to the information in the figure below, is 1,500%! You don’t have to be a financial wizard to recognize that a 1,500% return is fantastic. Making more money over time is not the only benefit you can earn from completing a college degree. College graduates are also more likely to experience the following: 1. Greater job satisfaction. That’s right! College graduates are more likely to get a job that they like or to find that their job is more enjoyable than not. 2. Better job stability. Employees with college degrees are more likely to find and keep a job, which is comforting news in times of economic uncertainty. 3. Improved health and wellness. College graduates are less likely to smoke and more likely to exercise and maintain a healthy weight. 4. Better outcomes for the next generation. One of the best benefits of a college degree is that it can have positive influences for the graduate’s immediate family and the next generations. One last thing: There is some debate as to whether a college degree is needed to land a job, and there are certainly jobs that you can get without a college degree. However, there are many reasons that a college degree can give you an edge in the job market. Here are just a few reasons that graduating with a degree is still valuable: 1. More and more entry-level jobs will require a college degree. According to Georgetown University’s Center on Education and the Workforce, in 2020, 35% of jobs will require a college degree.Carnevale, A.P., Smith, N., & Strohl, J. (2013). Recover: Job growth and education requirements through 2020. Georgetown University's Center on Education and the Workforce. Retrieved from https://cew.georgetown.edu/cew-reports/recovery-job-growth-and-education- requirements-through-2020/. 2. A credential from a college or university still provides assurance that a student has mastered the material. Would you trust a doctor who never went to medical school to do open-heart surgery on a close relative? No, we didn’t think so. 3. College provides an opportunity to develop much-needed soft skills. The National Association of Colleges and Employers has identified eight career-readiness competencies that college students should develop: critical thinking/problem solving, oral/written communication, teamwork/collaboration, digital technology, leadership, professionalism/work ethic, career management, and global/intercultural fluency.National Association of Colleges and Employers. (2019). Career readiness defined. Retrieved from https://www.naceweb.org/career-readiness/competencies/career-readiness-defined/. There are few occasions that will provide you the opportunity to develop all these skills in a low-stakes environment (i.e., without the fear of being fired!). You will learn all of this and more in your classes. Seems like a great opportunity, doesn’t it? If you find yourself asking the question “What does this course have to do with my major?” or “Why do I have to take that?” challenge yourself to learn more about the course and look for connections between the content and your larger educational, career, and life goals.

# Transitioning to College ## The First Year of College Will Be an Experience Questions to Consider: 1. How will you adjust to college? 2. What are the common college experiences you will have? ### Adjustments to College Are Inevitable College not only will expand your mind, but it may also make you a little uncomfortable, challenge your identity, and at times, make you doubt your abilities. It is hard to truly learn anything without getting messy. This is what education does: it transforms us. For that to happen, however, means that we will need to be open to the transformation and allow the changes to occur. Flexibility, transition, and change are all words that describe what you will experience. Laurie Hazard and Stephanie Carter (2018)Hazard, L., & Carter, S. (2018). A framework for helping families understand the college transition. use the word adjustment. Hazard and Carter (2018) believe there are six adjustment areas that first-year college students experience: academic, cultural, emotional, financial, intellectual, and social. Of course, you won’t go through these adjustments all at once or even in just the first year. Some will take time, while others may not even feel like much of a transition. Let’s look at them in brief as a way of preparing for the road ahead: 1. Academic adjustment. No surprises here. You will most likely—depending on your own academic background—be faced with the increased demands of learning in college. This could mean that you need to spend more time learning to learn and using those strategies to master the material. 2. Cultural adjustment. You also will most likely experience a cultural adjustment just by being in college because most campuses have their own language (syllabus, registrar, and office hours, for example) and customs. You may also experience a cultural adjustment because of the diversity that you will encounter. Most likely, the people on your college campus will be different than the people at your high school—or at your workplace. 3. Emotional adjustment. Remember the range of emotions presented at the beginning of the chapter? Those will likely be present in some form throughout your first weeks in college and at stressful times during the semester. Knowing that you may have good days and bad—and that you can bounce back from the more stressful days—will help you find healthy ways of adjusting emotionally. 4. Financial adjustment. Most students understand the investment they are making in their future by going to college. Even if you have all your expenses covered, there is still an adjustment to a new way of thinking about what college costs and how to pay for it. You may find that you think twice about spending money on entertainment or that you have improved your skills in finding discounted textbooks. 5. Intellectual adjustment. Experiencing an intellectual “a-ha!” moment is one of the most rewarding parts of college, right up there with moving across the graduation stage with a degree in hand. Prepare to be surprised when you stumble across a fascinating subject or find that a class discussion changes your life. At the very least, through your academic work, you will learn to think differently about the world around you and your place in it. 6. Social adjustment. A new place often equals new people. But in college, those new relationships can have even more meaning. Getting to know professors not only can help you learn more in your classes, but it can also help you figure out what career pathway you want to take and how to get desired internships and jobs. Learning to reduce conflicts during group work or when living with others helps build essential workplace and life skills. provides a succinct definition for each of the areas as well as examples of how you can demonstrate that you have adjusted. Think about what you have done so far to navigate these transitions in addition to other things you can do to make your college experience a successful one.

# Transitioning to College ## College Culture and Expectations Questions to Consider: 1. What language and customs do you need to know to succeed in college? 2. What is the hidden curriculum? 3. What is your responsibility for learning in college? 4. What resources will you use to meet these expectations? 5. What are the common challenges in the first year? ### College Has Its Own Language and Customs Going to college—even if you are not far from home—is a cultural experience. It comes with its own language and customs, some of which can be confusing or confounding at first. Just like traveling to a foreign country, it is best if you prepare by learning what words mean and what you are expected to say and do in certain situations. Let’s first start with the language you may encounter. In most cases, there will be words that you have heard before, but they may have different meanings in a college setting. Take, for instance, “office hours.” If you are not in college, you would think that it means the hours of a day that an office is open. If it is your dentist’s office, it may mean Monday through Friday from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. In college, “office hours” can refer to the specific hours a professor is in her office to meet with students, and those hours may be only a few each day: for example, Mondays and Wednesdays from 1 p.m. until 3 p.m. “Syllabus” is another word that you may not have encountered, but it is one you will soon know very well. A syllabus is often called the “contract of the course” because it contains information about what to expect—from the professor and the student. It is meant to be a roadmap for succeeding in the class. Understanding that office hours are for you to ask your professor questions and the syllabus is the guide for what you will be doing in the class can make a big difference in your transition to college. The table on Common College Terms, below, has a brief list of other words that you will want to know when you hear them on campus (see ). In addition to its own language, higher education has its own way of doing things. For example, you may be familiar with what a high school teacher does, but do you know what a professor does? It certainly seems like they fulfill a very similar role as teachers in high school, but in college, professors’ roles are often much more diverse. In addition to teaching, they may also conduct research, mentor graduate students, write and review research articles, serve on and lead campus committees, serve in regional and national organizations in their disciplines, apply for and administer grants, advise students in their major, and serve as sponsors for student organizations. You can be assured that their days are far from routine. See the table below for just a few differences between high school teachers and college professors. The relationships you build with your professors will be some of the most important ones you create during your college career. You will rely on them to help you find internships, write letters of recommendation, nominate you for honors or awards, and serve as references for jobs. You can develop those relationships by participating in class, visiting during office hours, asking for assistance with coursework, requesting recommendations for courses and majors, and getting to know the professor’s own academic interests. One way to think about the change in how your professors will relate to you is to think about the nature of relationships you have had growing up. In You and Your Relationships Before College you will see a representation of what your relationships probably looked like. Your family may have been the greatest influencer on you and your development. In college, your networks are going to expand in ways that will help you develop other aspects of yourself. As described above, the relationships you will have with your professors will be some of the most important. But they won’t be the only relationships you will be cultivating while in college. Consider , You and Your Relationships During College, and think about how you will go about expanding your network while you are completing your degree. Your relationships with authority figures, family, and friends may change while you are in college, and at the very least, your relationships will expand to peer networks—not friends, but near-age peers or situational peers (e.g., a first-year college student who is going back to school after being out for 20 years)—and to faculty and staff who may work alongside you, mentor you, or supervise your studies. These relationships are important because they will allow you to expand your network, especially as it relates to your career. As stated earlier, developing relationships with faculty can provide you with more than just the benefits of a mentor. Faculty often review applications for on-campus jobs or university scholarships and awards; they also have connections with graduate programs, companies, and organizations. They may recommend you to colleagues or former classmates for internships and even jobs. Other differences between high school and college are included in , Differences between High School and College. Because it is not an exhaustive list of the differences, be mindful of other differences you may notice. Also, if your most recent experience has been the world of work or the military, you may find that there are more noticeable differences between those experiences and college. ### Some of What You Will Learn Is “Hidden” Many of the college expectations that have been outlined so far may not be considered common knowledge, which is one reason that so many colleges and universities have classes that help students learn what they need to know to succeed. The term hidden curriculum, which was coined by sociologists,P.P. Bilbao, P. I. Lucido, T. C. Iringan and R. B. Javier. (2008). describes unspoken, unwritten, or unacknowledged (hence, hidden) rules that students are expected to follow that can affect their learning. Situation: According to your syllabus, your history professor is lecturing on the chapter that covers the stock market crash of 1929 on Tuesday of next week. Sounds pretty straightforward. Your professor lectures on a topic and you will be there to hear it. However, there are some unwritten rules, or hidden curriculum, that are not likely to be communicated. Can you guess what they may be? 1. What is an unwritten rule about what you should be doing before attending class? 2. What is an unwritten rule about what you should be doing in class? 3. What is an unwritten rule about what you should be doing after class? 4. What is an unwritten rule if you are not able to attend that class? Some of your answers could have included the following: The expectations before, during, and after class, as well as what you should do if you miss class, are often unspoken because many professors assume you already know and do these things or because they feel you should figure them out on your own. Nonetheless, some students struggle at first because they don’t know about these habits, behaviors, and strategies. But once they learn them, they are able to meet them with ease. ### Working Within the Hidden Curriculum The first step in dealing with the hidden curriculum is to recognize it and understand how it can influence your learning. After any specific situation has been identified, the next step is to figure out how to work around the circumstances to either take advantage of any benefits or to remove any roadblocks. Let’s review some other ways that you may encounter the hidden curriculum. Prevailing Opinions. Simply put, you are going to encounter instructors and learning activities that you sometimes agree with and sometimes do not. The key is to learn from them regardless. In either case, take ownership of your learning and even make an effort to learn about other perspectives, even if it is only for your own education on the matter. There is no better time to expose yourself to other opinions and philosophies than in college. In fact, many would say that this is a significant part of the college experience. With the right mindset, it is easy to view everything as a learning opportunity. Classroom Circumstances. These kinds of circumstances often require a more structured approach to turn the situation to your advantage, but they also usually have the most obvious solutions. In a large class, you might find yourself limited in the ability to participate in classroom discussions because of so many other students. The way around that would be to speak to several classmates and create your own discussion group. You could set up a time to meet, or you could take a different route by using technology such as an online discussion board, a Zoom session, or even a group text. Several of the technologically-based solutions might even be better than an in-class discussion since you do not all have to be present at the same time. The discussion can be something that occurs all week long, giving everyone the time to think through their ideas and responses. Again, the main point is to first spot those things in the hidden curriculum that might put your learning at a disadvantage and devise a solution that either reduces the negative impact or even becomes a learning advantage. ### Learning Is Your Responsibility As you may now realize by reviewing the differences between high school and college, learning in college will be your responsibility. Before you read about the how and why of being responsible for your own learning, complete the Activity below. Taking responsibility for your learning will take some time if you are not used to being in the driver’s seat. However, if you have any difficulty making this adjustment, you can and should reach out for help along the way. ### What to Expect During the First Year While you may not experience every transition within your first year, there are rhythms to each semester of the first year and each year you are in college. Knowing what to expect each month or week can better prepare you to take advantage of the times that you have more confidence and weather through the times that seem challenging. Review the table on First-Year College Student Milestones. There will be milestones each semester you are in college, but these will serve as an introduction to what you should expect in terms of the rhythms of the semester. The first few weeks will be pretty exhilarating. You will meet new people, including classmates, college staff, and professors. You may also be living in a different environment, which may mean that a roommate is another new person to get to know. Overall, you will most likely feel both excited and nervous. You can be assured that even if the beginning of the semester goes smoothly, your classes will get more challenging each week. You will be making friends, learning who in your classes seem to know what is going on, and figuring your way around campus. You may even walk into the wrong building, go to the wrong class, or have trouble finding what you need during this time. But those first-week jitters will end soon. Students who are living away from home for the first time can feel homesick in the first few weeks, and others can feel what is called “imposter syndrome,” which is a fear some students have that they don’t belong in college because they don’t have the necessary skills for success. Those first few weeks sound pretty stressful, but the stress is temporary. After the newness of college wears off, reality will set in. You may find that the courses and assignments do not seem much different than they did in high school (more on that later), but you may be in for a shock when you get your graded tests and papers. Many new college students find that their first grades are lower than they expected. For some students, this may mean they have earned a B when they are used to earning As, but for many students, it means they may experience their first failing or almost-failing grades in college because they have not used active, effective study strategies; instead, they studied how they did in high school, which is often insufficient. This can be a shock if you are not prepared, but it doesn’t have to devastate you if you are willing to use it as a wake-up call to do something different. By the middle of the semester, you’ll likely feel much more confident and a little more relaxed. Your grades are improving because you started tutoring and using better study strategies. You are looking ahead, even beyond the first semester, to start planning your courses for the next term. If you are working while in college, you may also find that you have a rhythm down for balancing it all; additionally, your time management skills have likely improved. By the last few weeks of the semester, you will be focused on the increasing importance of your assignments and upcoming finals and trying to figure out how to juggle that with the family obligations of the impending holidays. You may feel a little more pressure to prepare for finals, as this time is often viewed as the most stressful period of the semester. All of this additional workload and need to plan for the next semester can seem overwhelming, but if you plan ahead and use what you learn from this chapter and the rest of the course, you will be able to get through it more easily. ### Don’t Do It Alone Think about our earlier descriptions of two students, Reginald and Madison. What if they found that the first few weeks were a little harder than they had anticipated? Should they have given up and dropped out? Or should they have talked to someone about their struggles? Here is a secret about college success that not many people know: successful students seek help. They use resources. And they do that as often as necessary to get what they need. Your professors and advisors will expect the same from you, and your college will have all kinds of offices, staff, and programs that are designed to help. This bears calling out again: you need to use those resources. These are called “help-seeking behaviors,” and along with self-advocacy, which is speaking up for your needs, they are essential to your success. As you get more comfortable adjusting to life in college, you will find that asking for help is easier. In fact, you may become really good at it by the time you graduate, just in time for you to ask for help finding a job! Review the table on Issues, Campus Resources, and Potential Outcomes for a few examples of times you may need to ask for help. See if you can identify where on campus you can find the same or a similar resource. ### Common Challenges in the First Year It seems fitting to follow up the expectations for the first year with a list of common challenges that college students encounter along the way to a degree. If you experience any—or even all—of these, the important point here is that you are not alone and that you can overcome them by using your resources. Many college students have felt like this before, and they have survived—even thrived—despite them because they were able to identify a strategy or resource that they could use to help themselves. At some point in your academic career, you may do one or more of the following: 1. Feel like an imposter. There is actually a name for this condition: imposter syndrome. Students who feel like an imposter are worried that they don’t belong, that someone will “expose them for being a fake.” This feeling is pretty common for anyone who finds themselves in a new environment and is not sure if they have what it takes to succeed. Trust the professionals who work with first-year college students: you do have what it takes, and you will succeed. Just give yourself time to get adjusted to everything. 2. Worry about making a mistake. This concern often goes with imposter syndrome. Students who worry about making a mistake don’t like to answer questions in class, volunteer for a challenging assignment, and even ask for help from others. Instead of avoiding situations where you may fail, embrace the process of learning, which includes—is even dependent on—making mistakes. The more you practice courage in these situations and focus on what you are going to learn from failing, the more confident you become about your abilities. 3. Try to manage everything yourself. Even superheroes need help from sidekicks and mere mortals. Trying to handle everything on your own every time an issue arises is a recipe for getting stressed out. There will be times when you are overwhelmed by all you have to do. This is when you will need to ask for and allow others to help you. 4. Ignore your mental and physical health needs. If you feel you are on an emotional rollercoaster and you cannot find time to take care of yourself, then you have most likely ignored some part of your mental and physical well-being. What you need to do to stay healthy should be non-negotiable. In other words, your sleep, eating habits, exercise, and stress-reducing activities should be your highest priorities. 5. Forget to enjoy the experience. Whether you are 18 years old and living on campus or 48 years old starting back to college after taking a break to work and raise a family, be sure to take the time to remind yourself of the joy that learning can bring.

# Transitioning to College ## It’s All in the Mindset Questions to Consider: 1. What is a growth mindset, and how does it affect my learning? 2. What are performance goals versus learning goals? In the previous sections in this chapter, you learned about the differences between high school and college and what to expect from your course work, professors, and classmates. There is one more element of the experience that will improve your ability to meet the expectations and new challenges: Your belief in your abilities to learn, grow, and change. No doubt that you have enrolled in college because you want to do those very things, but it is easy to get discouraged and revert to old ways of thinking about your abilities if you are not mindful of what kinds of thoughts you have about yourself. This section covers the concept of a fixed mindset, or the belief that you are born with certain unchangeable talents, and growth mindset, or the belief that with effort you can improve in any area. Understanding the role that your beliefs play in the eventual outcomes of your learning can help you get through those challenges that you may encounter. ### Performance vs. Learning Goals Much of our ability to learn is governed by our motivations and goals. Sometimes hidden goals or mindsets can impact the learning process. In truth, we all have goals that we might not be fully aware of, or if we are aware of them, we might not understand how they help or restrict our ability to learn. An illustration of this can be seen in a comparison of a student that has performance-based goals with a student that has learning-based goals. If you are a student with strict performance goals, your primary psychological concern might be to appear intelligent to others. At first, this might not seem to be a bad thing for college, but it can truly limit your ability to move forward in your own learning. Instead, you would tend to play it safe without even realizing it. For example, a student who is strictly performance-goal-oriented will often only say things in a classroom discussion when they think it will make them look knowledgeable to the instructor or their classmates. Likewise, a performance-oriented student might ask a question that they know is beyond the topic being covered (e.g., asking about the economics of Japanese whaling while discussing the book Moby Dick in an American literature course). Rarely will they ask a question in class because they actually do not understand a concept. Instead they will ask questions that make them look intelligent to others or in an effort to “stump the teacher.” When they do finally ask an honest question, it may be because they are more afraid that their lack of understanding will result in a poor performance on an exam rather than simply wanting to learn. If you are a student who is driven by learning goals, your interactions in classroom discussions are usually quite different. You see the opportunity to share ideas and ask questions as a way to gain knowledge quickly. In a classroom discussion you can ask for clarification immediately if you don’t quite understand what is being discussed. If you are a person guided by learning goals, you are less worried about what others think since you are there to learn and you see that as the most important goal. Another example where the difference between the two mindsets is clear can be found in assignments and other coursework. If you are a student who is more concerned about performance, you may avoid work that is challenging. You will take the “easy A” route by relying on what you already know. You will not step out of your comfort zone because your psychological goals are based on approval of your performance instead of being motivated by learning. This is very different from a student with a learning-based psychology. If you are a student who is motivated by learning goals, you may actively seek challenging assignments, and you will put a great deal of effort into using the assignment to expand on what you already know. While getting a good grade is important to you, what is even more important is the learning itself. If you find that you sometimes lean toward performance-based goals, do not feel discouraged. Many of the best students tend to initially focus on performance until they begin to see the ways it can restrict their learning. The key to switching to learning-based goals is often simply a matter of first recognizing the difference and seeing how making a change can positively impact your own learning. What follows in this section is a more in-depth look at the difference between performance- and learning- based goals. This is followed by an exercise that will give you the opportunity to identify, analyze, and determine a positive course of action in a situation where you believe you could improve in this area. ### Fixed vs. Growth Mindset The research-based model of these two mindsets and their influence on learning was presented in 1988 by Carol Dweck. In Dweck’s work, she determined that a student’s perception about their own learning accompanied by a broader goal of learning had a significant influence on their ability to overcome challenges and grow in knowledge and ability. This has become known as the Fixed vs. Growth Mindset model. In this model, the performance-goal-oriented student is represented by the fixed mindset, while the learning-goal- oriented student is represented by the growth mindset. In the following graphic, based on Dr. Dweck’s research, you can see how many of the components associated with learning are impacted by these two mindsets. ### The Growth Mindset and Lessons About Failing Something you may have noticed is that a growth mindset would tend to give a learner grit and persistence. If you had learning as your major goal, you would normally keep trying to attain that goal even if it took you multiple attempts. Not only that, but if you learned a little bit more with each try you would see each attempt as a success, even if you had not achieved complete mastery of whatever it was you were working to learn. With that in mind, it should come as no surprise that Dweck found that those people who believed their abilities could change through learning (growth vs. a fixed mindset) readily accepted learning challenges and persisted despite early failures. ### Improving Your Ability to Learn As strange as it may seem, research into fixed vs. growth mindset has shown that if you believe you can learn something new, you greatly improve your ability to learn. At first, this may seem like the sort of feel-good advice we often encounter in social media posts or quotes that are intended to inspire or motivate us (e.g., believe in yourself!), but in looking at the differences outlined between a fixed and a growth mindset, you can see how each part of the growth mindset path can increase your probability of success when it comes to learning. ### Friends & Family Matter Ana is the first in her family to go to college and they have been mostly supportive of her decision to go to college. She enjoys texting and calling them almost every day, and they like hearing what she is doing. She especially likes video-chatting with her younger brother. He had a hard time when she left, because he relied on her to help him with his homework. Because she is having a hard time during the first few weeks of class, she has shared with her parents that she doesn’t feel like she fits in and feels like she has made a bad decision. At first her parents encouraged her to stay and join an organization to meet other people. “It will take some time to get used to being away, but it will get better,” they assured her. After some time, Ana began to feel better about being away and started making friends in her classes. When Ana calls to check on her brother at mid-term, her parents tell her that her father has been very sick, and has had to take time off work. Her mother has not been able to care for him and her little brother at the same time as her father needs daily treatments and weekly doctor’s appointments. Between his being off work and the mounting costs of his treatment, the family is concerned about being able to pay for Ana’s college expenses. They ask Ana if she can come home for a few weeks to take her brother to school and help around the house, and want to talk to her about what to do next semester. ### Let’s Think About It Ana has several options. Think through the consequences of each one, and choose the best option or create your own option. 1. Ana goes home immediately and stays with her family until they no longer need her, even if that means she misses her classes and does not complete any work. 2. Ana meets with her professors and asks if she can stay on top of her work until she gets back, and then she heads home with her books and laptop. 3. Ana explains to her parents that if she leaves during the middle of the semester, she may jeopardize her progress so far, earn bad grades, and lose her scholarship, so she tells them she cannot do that. ### Let’s Talk About It Ana’s situation—having to make a choice about whether to continue her studies or focus on a personal matter—is not unusual. You may also experience tension pulling you in different directions. Here are some strategies for communicating what you need to make the best choice based on Ana's dilemma: 1. “I know that this is important to our family, and I want to be there to help, but I need to check with my professors about what they will allow me to do. The work I have done so far may be wasted if I just leave without sharing my plans and figuring out a way to stay on top of my work.” 2. “I am worried about dad’s health, and I would like to come home over the weekend to check in with everyone and see what I can do to help find additional support when I have to go back to school.” 3. “What kind of compromise can we make so that you get the support you need and I can stay focused on the work I have to do before the end of the semester?” Whatever choice you would make in this situation, it is always best to communicate clearly your needs, your concerns, and even your uncertainties. ### Summary and Next Steps to College Success This chapter provides an introduction to the transition to college by first asking “Why are you in college?” Understanding your “why” and what a college degree can do for you is the foundation of making a smooth transition. These experiences are part of being in college, and this chapter provides you with information about what to expect and how to handle the changes you will go through. Now that you have read and reflected on the main ideas of the chapter, consider developing a plan to help you achieve college success by considering what you want to know more about that could help you? Review the list below and commit to working on one or more of the concepts this term and beyond. 1. Research the long-term value of your college major or degree. Look at potential careers associated with your major and reflect on what you will learn during college that will help you with your career. 2. Identify the hidden curriculum or unwritten rules at your institution. What do your professors expect but don’t explicitly state? What are your strategies for uncovering the hidden curriculum during your college experience? 3. Create a list of resources to help you in college. Choose one or more to use this term to engage and determine how well the resource helped you with a challenge. 4. Reflect on the occasions in which you have exhibited a fixed mindset. What will you commit to doing that would help you exhibit a growth mindset? ### Checking In: Your College Readiness Checklist ### Fall

# Managing Your Time and Priorities ## Introduction ### Student Survey How do you feel about your time management abilities? Take this quick survey to figure it out, ranking questions on a scale of 1—4, 1 meaning “least like me” and 4 meaning “most like me.” These questions will help you determine how the chapter concepts relate to you right now. As you are introduced to new concepts and practices, it can be informative to reflect on how your understanding changes over time. 1. I regularly procrastinate completing tasks that don't interest me or seem challenging. 2. I use specific time management strategies to complete tasks. 3. I find it difficult to prioritize tasks because I am not sure what is really important. 4. I am pleased with my ability to manage my time. You can also take the Chapter 3 survey anonymously online. ### About This Chapter In this chapter you will learn about two of the most valuable tools used for academic success: prioritizing and time management. By the time you complete this chapter, you should be able to do the following: 1. Outline the reasons and effects of procrastination and provide strategies to overcome it. 2. Describe ways to evaluate your own time management skills. 3. Discuss the importance and the process of prioritization. 4. Detail strategies and specific tactics for managing your time.

# Managing Your Time and Priorities ## Time Management in College Questions to Consider: 1. Is time management different in college from what I am used to? 2. How different is college schoolwork from high school or on-the-job work? You may find that time management in college is very different from anything you have experienced previously. For high school students, almost all school time is managed by educators and parents. In many cases, even after-school time may be set by scheduled activities (such as athletics) and by nightly homework that is due the next day. In the workplace, the situation is not very different, with activities and time on task being monitored by the company and its management. An employee may also not have much say in what needs to be done and when. This is so much a part of the working environment that many companies research how much time each task should take, and they hold employees accountable for the time spent on these job functions. In fact, having good time and task management skills will help you stand out on the job and in job interviews. See the table below for a comparison of high school students and college students with regard to time and task management. In college, there is a significant difference because a great deal of time management is left up to you. While it is true that there are assignment due dates and organized classroom activities, learning at the college level requires more than just the simple completion of work. It involves decision-making and the ability to evaluate information. This is best accomplished when you are an active partner in your own learning activities. As an example of how this works, think about an assignment that involves giving a classroom presentation. To complete the assignment, you are given time to research and reflect on the information found. As a part of the assignment, you must reach your own conclusions and determine which information that you have found is best suited for the presentation. While the date of the actual presentation and how long it will last are usually determined by the instructor, how much time you spend gathering information, the sources you use, and how you use them are left to you. ### You Have Lots of Time to Manage For college-level learning, this approach is important enough that you can expect to spend much more time on learning activities outside the classroom than you will in the classroom. In fact, the estimated time you should spend will be at least two hours of outside learning for every one hour of lecture. Some weeks may be more intense, depending on the time of the semester and the courses you are taking. If those hours are multiplied over several courses in a given session, you can see how there is a significant amount of time to manage. Unfortunately, many students do not always take this into consideration, and they spend far less time than is needed to be successful. The results of poor time management are often a shock to them. ### The Nature of What You Have to Do Has Changed Returning to our example of the classroom-presentation assignment, you can see that the types of learning activities in college can be very different from what you have experienced previously. While there may have been similar assignments in high school, such as presentations or written papers, the level of expectation with length and depth is significantly different in college. This point is made very clear when comparing facts about the requirements of high school work to the type of work students produce in college. A study conducted by the Pew Research Center, found that 82 percent of teens report that their typical high school writing assignments were only a single paragraph to one page in length.Pew Research Center. (2008).“Writing, Technology, and Teens. http://www.pewinternet.org/2008/04/24/writing-technology-and-teens/ This is in stark contrast to a number of sources that say that writing assignments in lower-level college courses are usually 5–7 pages in length, while writing assignments in upper-level courses increase to 15–20 pages. It is also interesting to note that the amount of writing done by a college student can differ depending on their program of study. The table below indicates the estimated average amount of writing assigned in several disciplines. To estimate the number of pages of assigned writing, the average number of writing assignments of a given page length was multiplied by an approximate number of pages for the assignment type (see for time on task estimates.) High school homework often consists of worksheets or tasks based on reading or classroom activities. In other words, all the students are doing the same tasks, at relatively the same time, as directed by their teachers. Using the earlier example of the presentation assignment, not only will what you do be larger in scale, but the depth of understanding and knowledge you will put into it will be significantly more than you may have encountered in previous assignments. This is because there are greater expectations required of college graduates in the workplace. Nearly any profession that requires a college degree has with it a level of responsibility that demands higher-level thinking and therefore higher learning. An often-cited example of this is the healthcare professional. The learning requirements for that profession are strict because we depend on those graduates for our health and, in some cases, our lives. While not every profession may require the same level of study needed for healthcare, most do require that colleges maintain a certain level of academic rigor to produce graduates who are competent in their fields.

# Managing Your Time and Priorities ## Procrastination: The Enemy Within Questions to Consider: 1. Why do we procrastinate? 2. What are the effects of procrastination? 3. How can we avoid procrastination? We all know about procrastination, the act of delaying some task that needs to be completed, because most of us have procrastinated at some point in our lives. For most people, a little procrastination is not a cause for great concern. But there are situations where procrastination can become a serious problem with a lot of risk. These include when it becomes a chronic habit, when there are a number of tasks to complete and little time, or when the task being avoided is very important. In college, students who procrastinate often report that they feel more stress and are more likely to do poorly than those who have learned to manage their time and their projects effectively. Because we all procrastinate from time to time, we usually do not give it much thought, let alone think about its causes or effects. Ironically, many of the psychological reasons for why we avoid a given task also keep us from using critical thinking to understand why procrastination can be extremely detrimental, and in some cases difficult to overcome. To succeed at time management, you must understand some of the hurdles that may stand in your way. Procrastination is often one of the biggest. What follows is an overview of procrastination with a few suggestions on how to avoid it. ### The Reasons Behind Procrastination There are several reasons we procrastinate, and a few of them may be surprising. On the surface we often tell ourselves it is because the task is something we do not want to do, or we make excuses that there are other things more important to do first. In some cases this may be true, but there can be other contributors to procrastination that have their roots in our physical well-being or our own psychological motivations. ### Lack of Energy Sometimes we just do not feel up to a certain task. It might be due to discomfort, an illness, or just a lack of energy. If this is the case, it is important to identify the cause and remedy the situation. It could be something as simple as a lack of sleep or improper diet. Regardless, if a lack of energy is continually causing you to procrastinate to the point where you are beginning to feel stress over not getting things done, you should definitely assess the situation and address it. ### Lack of Focus Much like having low physical energy, a lack of mental focus can be a cause of procrastination. This can be due to mental fatigue, being disorganized, or allowing yourself to be distracted by other things. Again, like low physical energy, this is something that may have farther-reaching effects in your life that go beyond the act of simply avoiding a task. If it is something that is recurring, you should properly assess the situation. ### Fear of Failure This cause of procrastination is not one that many people are aware of, especially if they are the person avoiding tasks because of it. To put it in simple words, it is a bit of trickery we play on ourselves by avoiding a situation that makes us psychologically uncomfortable. Even though they may not be consciously aware of it, the person facing the task is afraid that they cannot do it or will not be able to do it well. If they fail at the task, it will make them appear incompetent to others or even to themselves. Where the self-trickery comes in is by avoiding the task. In the person’s mind, they can rationalize that the reason they failed at the task was because they ran out of time to complete it, not that they were incapable of doing it in the first place. It is important to note that a fear of failure may not have anything to do with the actual ability of the person suffering from it. They could be quite capable of doing the task and performing well, but it is the fear that holds them back. ### The Effects of Procrastination In addition to the causes of procrastination, you must also consider what effects it can have. Again, many of these effects are obvious and commonly understood, but some may not be so obvious and may cause other issues. ### Loss of Time The loss of time as an effect of procrastination is the easiest to identify since the act of avoiding a task comes down to not using time wisely. Procrastination can be thought of as using the time you have to complete a task in ways that do not accomplish what needs to be done. ### Loss of Goals Another of the more obvious potentially adverse effects of procrastination is the loss of goals. Completing a task leads to achieving a goal. These can be large or small (e.g., from doing well on an assignment to being hired for a good job). Without goals you might do more than delay work on a task—you may not complete it at all. The risk for the loss of goals is something that is very impactful. ### Loss of Self-Esteem Often, when we procrastinate we become frustrated and disappointed in ourselves for not getting important tasks completed. If this continues to happen, we can begin to develop a low opinion of ourselves and our own abilities. We begin to suffer from low self-esteem and might even begin to feel like there is something wrong with us. This can lead to other increasingly negative mental factors such as anger and depression. As you can see, it is important for our own well-being to avoid this kind of procrastination effect. ### Stress Procrastination causes stress and anxiety, which may seem odd since the act of procrastination is often about avoiding a task we think will be stressful in itself! Anyone who has noticed that nagging feeling when they know there is something else they should be doing is familiar with this. On the other hand, some students see that kind of stress as a boost of mental urgency. They put off a task until they feel that surge of motivation. While this may have worked in the past, they quickly learn that procrastinating when it comes to college work almost always includes an underestimation of the tasks to be completed— sometimes with disastrous results. ### Strategies for Psyching Ourselves Out and Managing Procrastination Now that you understand a few of the major problems procrastination can produce, let’s look at methods to manage procrastination and get you on to completing the tasks, no matter how unpleasant you think they might be. ### Get Organized Much of this chapter is dedicated to defining and explaining the nature of time management. The most effective way to combat procrastination is to use time and project management strategies such as schedules, goal setting, and other techniques to get tasks accomplished in a timely manner. ### Put Aside Distractions Several of the methods discussed in this chapter deal specifically with distractions. Distractions are time-killers and are the primary way people procrastinate. It is too easy to just play a video game a little while longer, check out social media, or finish watching a movie when we are avoiding a task. Putting aside distractions is one of the primary functions of setting priorities. ### Reward Yourself Rewarding yourself for the completion of tasks or meeting goals is a good way to avoid procrastination. An example of this would be rewarding yourself with the time to watch a movie you would enjoy after you have finished the things you need to do, rather than using the movie to keep yourself from getting things done. ### Be Accountable A strong motivational tool is to hold ourselves accountable by telling someone else we are going to do something and when we are going to do it. This may not seem like it would be very effective, but on a psychological level we feel more compelled to do something if we tell someone else. It may be related to our need for approval from others, or it might just serve to set a level of commitment. Either way, it can help us stay on task and avoid procrastination—especially if we take our accountability to another person seriously enough to warrant contacting that person and apologizing for not doing what we said we were going to do.

# Managing Your Time and Priorities ## How to Manage Time Questions to Consider: 1. How can I use time-on-task estimates to improve time management? 2. What behaviors can help or hinder when it comes to managing time? In this next section you will learn about managing time and prioritizing tasks. This is not only a valuable skill for pursuing an education, but it can become an ability that follows you through the rest of your life, especially if your career takes you into a leadership role. ### How to Manage Time The simplest way to manage your time is to accurately plan for how much time it will take to do each task, and then set aside that amount of time. How you divide the time is up to you. If it is going to take you five hours to study for a final exam, you can plan to spread it over five days, with an hour each night, or you can plan on two hours one night and three hours the next. What you would not want to do is plan on studying only a few hours the night before the exam and find that you fell very short on the time you estimated you would need. If that were to happen, you would have run out of time before finishing, with no way to go back and change your decision. In this kind of situation, you might even be tempted to “pull an all-nighter,” which is a phrase that has been used among college students for decades. In essence it means going without sleep for the entire night and using that time to finish an assignment. While this method of trying to make up for poor planning is common enough to have a name, rarely does it produce the best work. Of all the parts of time management, accurately predicting how long a task will take is usually the most difficult—and the most elusive. Part of the problem comes from the fact that most of us are not very accurate timekeepers, especially when we are busy applying ourselves to a task. The other issue that makes it so difficult to accurately estimate time on task is that our estimations must also account for things like interruptions or unforeseen problems that cause delays. When it comes to academic activities, many tasks can be dependent upon the completion of other things first, or the time a task takes can vary from one instance to another, both of which add to the complexity and difficulty of estimating how much time and effort are required. For example, if an instructor assigned three chapters of reading, you would not really have any idea how long each chapter might take to read until you looked at them. The first chapter might be 30 pages long while the second is 45. The third chapter could be only 20 pages but made up mostly of charts and graphs for you to compare. By page count, it might seem that the third chapter would take the least amount of time, but actually studying charts and graphs to gather information can take longer than regular reading. To make matters even more difficult, when it comes to estimating time on task for something as common as reading, not all reading takes the same amount of time. Fiction, for example, is usually a faster read than a technical manual. But something like the novel Finnegan’s Wake by James Joyce is considered so difficult that most readers never finish it. ### Knowing Yourself While you can find all sorts of estimates online as to how long a certain task may take, it is important to know these are only averages. People read at different speeds, people write at different speeds, and those numbers even change for each individual depending on the environment. If you are trying to read in surroundings that have distractions (e.g., conversations, phone calls, etc.), reading 10 pages can take you a lot longer than if you are reading in a quiet area. By the same token, you may be reading in a quiet environment (e.g., in bed after everyone in the house has gone to sleep), but if you are tired, your attention and retention may not be what it would be if you were refreshed. In essence, the only way you are going to be able to manage your time accurately is to know yourself and to know how long it takes you to do each task. But where to begin? Below, you will find a table of common college academic activities. This list has been compiled from a large number of different sources, including colleges, publishers, and professional educators, to help students estimate their own time on tasks. The purpose of this table is to both give you a place to begin in your estimates and to illustrate how different factors can impact the actual time spent. You will notice that beside each task there is a column for the unit, followed by the average time on task, and a column for notes. The unit is whatever is being measured (e.g., pages read, pages written, etc.), and the time on task is an average time it takes students to do these tasks. It is important to pay attention to the notes column, because there you will find factors that influence the time on task. These factors can dramatically change the amount of time the activity takes. Again, these are averages, and it does not mean anything if your times are a little slower or a little faster. There is no “right amount of time,” only the time that it takes you to do something so you can accurately plan and manage your time. There is also another element to look for in the table. These are differentiations in the similar activities that will also affect the time you spend. A good example of this can be found in the first four rows. Each of these activities involves reading, but you can see that depending on the material being read and its complexity, the time spent can vary greatly. Not only do these differences in time account for the different types of materials you might read (as you found in the comparative reading exercise earlier in this chapter), but also they also take into consideration the time needed to think about what you are reading to truly understand and comprehend what it is saying.

# Managing Your Time and Priorities ## Prioritization Questions to Consider: 1. Why is prioritization important? 2. What are the steps involved in prioritization? 3. How do I deal with situations where others’ priorities are not the same as my own? 4. What do I do when priorities conflict? 5. What are the best ways to make sure I complete tasks? Another key component in time management is that of prioritization. Prioritization can be thought of as ordering tasks and allotting time for them based on their identified needs or value. This next section provides some insight into not only helping prioritize tasks and actions based on need and value, but also how to better understand the factors that contribute to prioritization. ### How to Prioritize The enemy of good prioritization is panic, or at least making decisions based on strictly emotional reactions. It can be all too easy to immediately respond to a problem as soon as it pops up without thinking of the consequences of your reaction and how it might impact other priorities. It is very natural for us to want to remove a stressful situation as soon as we can. We want the adverse emotions out of the way as quickly as possible. But when it comes to juggling multiple problems or tasks to complete, prioritizing them first may mean the difference between completing everything satisfactorily and completing nothing at all. ### Make Certain You Understand the Requirements of Each Task One of the best ways to make good decisions about the prioritization of tasks is to understand the requirements of each. If you have multiple assignments to complete and you assume one of those assignments will only take an hour, you may decide to put it off until the others are finished. Your assumption could be disastrous if you find, once you begin the assignment, that there are several extra components that you did not account for and the time to complete will be four times as long as you estimated. Or, one of the assignments may be dependent on the results of another—like participating in a study and then writing a report on the results. If you are not aware that one assignment depends upon the completion of the other before you begin, you could inadvertently do the assignments out of order and have to start over. Because of situations like this, it is critically important to understand exactly what needs to be done to complete a task before you determine its priority. ### Make Decisions on Importance, Impact on Other Priorities, and Urgency After you are aware of the requirements for each task, you can then decide your priorities based on the importance of the task and what things need to be finished in which order. To summarize: the key components to prioritization are making certain you understand each task and making decisions based on importance, impact, and urgency. ### Who Is Driving Your Tasks? Another thing to keep in mind when approaching time management is that while you may have greater autonomy in managing your own time, many of your tasks are being driven by a number of different individuals. These individuals are not only unaware of the other things you need to do, but they often also have goals that are in conflict with your other tasks. This means that different instructors, your manager at work, or even your friends may be trying to assert their needs into your priorities. An example of this might be a boss who would like for you to work a few hours of overtime, but you were planning on using that time to do research for a paper. Just like assessing the requirements and needs for each priority, doing the same with how others may be influencing your available time can be an important part of time management. In some cases, keeping others informed about your priorities may help avert possible conflicts (e.g., letting your boss know you will need time on a certain evening to study, letting your friends know you plan to do a journal project on Saturday but can do something on Sunday, etc.). It will be important to be aware of how others can drive your priorities and for you to listen to your own good judgment. In essence, time management in college is as much about managing all the elements of your life as it is about managing time for class and to complete assignments. ### Making the Tough Decision When It Is Needed Occasionally, regardless of how much you have planned or how well you have managed your time, events arise where it becomes almost impossible to accomplish everything you need to by the time required. While this is very unfortunate, it simply cannot be helped. As the saying goes, “things happen.” Finding yourself in this kind of situation is when prioritization becomes most important. You may find yourself in the uncomfortable position of only being able to complete one task or another in the time given. When this occurs with college assignments, the dilemma can be extremely stressful, but it is important to not feel overwhelmed by the anxiety of the situation so that you can make a carefully calculated decision based on the value and impact of your choice. ### What Do You Do When Faced with Priority Conflicts? As an illustration, imagine a situation where you think you can only complete one of two assignments that are both important and urgent, and you must make a choice of which one you will finish and which one you will not. This is when it becomes critical to understand all the factors involved. While it may seem that whichever assignment is worth the most points to your grade is how you make the choice, there are actually a number of other attributes that can influence your decision in order to make the most of a bad situation. For example, one of the assignments may only be worth a minimal number of points toward your total grade, but it may be foundational to the rest of the course. Not finishing it, or finishing it late, may put other future assignments in jeopardy as well. Or the instructor for one of the courses might have a “late assignment” policy that is more forgiving—something that would allow you to turn in the work a little late without too much of a penalty. If you find yourself in a similar predicament, the first step is to try to find a way to get everything finished, regardless of the challenges. If that simply cannot happen, the next immediate step would be to communicate with your instructors to let them know about the situation. They may be able to help you decide on a course of action, or they may have options you had not thought of. Only then can you make the choices about prioritizing in a tough situation. The key here is to make certain you are aware of and understand all the ramifications to help make the best decision when the situation dictates you make a hard choice among priorities. ### Completing the Tasks Another important part of time management is to develop approaches that will help you complete tasks in a manner that is efficient and works for you. Most of this comes down to a little planning and being as informed about the specifics of each task as you can be. ### Knowing What You Need to Do As discussed in previous parts of this chapter, many learning activities have multiple components, and sometimes they must occur in a specific order. Additionally, some elements may not only be dependent on the order they are completed, but can also be dependent on how they are completed. To illustrate this we will analyze a task that is usually considered to be a simple one: attending a class session. In this analysis we will look at not only what must be accomplished to get the most out of the experience, but also at how each element is dependent upon others and must be done in a specific order. The below shows the interrelationship between the different activities, many of which might not initially seem significant enough to warrant mention, but it becomes obvious that other elements depend upon them when they are listed out this way. As you can see from the graphic above, even a task as simple as “going to class” can be broken down into a number of different elements that have a good deal of dependency on other tasks. One example of this is preparing for the class lecture by reading materials ahead of time in order to make the lecture and any complex concepts easier to follow. If you did it the other way around, you might miss opportunities to ask questions or receive clarification on the information presented during the lecture. Understanding what you need to do and when you need to do it can be applied to any task, no matter how simple or how complex. Knowing what you need to do and planning for it can go a long way toward success and preventing unpleasant surprises. ### Knowing How You Will Get It Done After you have a clear understanding of what needs to be done to complete a task (or the component parts of a task), the next step is to create a plan for completing everything. This may not be as easy or as simple as declaring that you will finish part one, then move on to part two, and so on. Each component may need different resources or skills to complete, and it is in your best interest to identify those ahead of time and include them as part of your plan. A good analogy for this sort of planning is to think about it in much the same way you would preparing for a lengthy trip. With a long journey you probably would not walk out the front door and then decide how you were going to get where you were going. There are too many other decisions to be made and tasks to be completed around each choice. If you decided you were going by plane, you would need to purchase tickets, and you would have to schedule your trip around flight times. If you decided to go by car, you would need gas money and possibly a map or GPS device. What about clothes? The clothes you will need are dependent on how long you will be gone and what the climate will be like. If it is far enough away that you will need to speak another language, you may need to either acquire that skill or at least come with something or someone to help you translate. What follows is a planning list that can help you think about and prepare for the tasks you are about to begin. ### What Resources Will You Need? The first part of this list may appear to be so obvious that it should go without mention, but it is by far one of the most critical and one of the most overlooked. Have you ever planned a trip but forgotten your most comfortable pair of shoes or neglected to book a hotel room? If a missing resource is important, the entire project can come to a complete halt. Even if the missing resource is a minor component, it may still dramatically alter the end result. Learning activities are much the same in this way, and it is also important to keep in mind that resources may not be limited to physical objects such as paper or ink. Information can be a critical resource as well. In fact, one of the most often overlooked aspects in planning by new college students is just how much research, reading, and information they will need to complete assignments. For example, if you had an assignment in which you were supposed to compare and contrast a novel with a film adapted from that novel, it would be important to have access to both the movie and the book as resources. Your plans for completing the work could quickly fall apart if you learned that on the evening you planned to watch the film, it was no longer available. ### What Skills Will You Need? Poor planning or a bad assumption in this area can be disastrous, especially if some part of the task has a steep learning curve. No matter how well you planned the other parts of the project, if there is some skill needed that you do not have and you have no idea how long it will take to learn, it can be a bad situation. Imagine a scenario where one of your class projects is to create a poster. It is your intent to use some kind of imaging software to produce professional-looking graphics and charts for the poster, but you have never used the software in that way before. It seems easy enough, but once you begin, you find the charts keep printing out in the wrong resolution. You search online for a solution, but the only thing you can find requires you to recreate them all over again in a different setting. Unfortunately, that part of the project will now take twice as long. It can be extremely difficult to recover from a situation like that, and it could have been prevented by taking the time to learn how to do it correctly before you began or by at least including in your schedule some time to learn and practice. ### What Deadlines Will You Create? Of course, the best way to approach time management is to set realistic deadlines that take into account which elements are dependent on which others and the order in which they should be completed. Giving yourself two days to write a 20- page work of fiction is not very realistic when even many professional authors average only 6 pages per day. Your intentions may be well founded, but your use of unrealistic deadlines will not be very successful. Setting appropriate deadlines and sticking to them is very important—so much so that several sections in the rest of this chapter touch on effective deadline practices. ### How Will You Be Flexible? It is ironic that the item on this list that comes just after a strong encouragement to make deadlines and stick to them is the suggestion to be flexible. The reason that being flexible has made this list is because even the best-laid plans and most accurate time management efforts can take an unexpected turn. The idea behind being flexible is to readjust your plans and deadlines when something does happen to throw things off. The worst thing you could do in such a situation is panic or just stop working because the next step in your careful planning has suddenly become a roadblock. The moment when you see that something in your plan may become an issue is when to begin readjusting your plan. Adjusting a plan along the way is incredibly common. In fact, many professional project managers have learned that it seems something always happens or there is always some delay, and they have developed an approach to deal with the inevitable need for some flexibility. In essence, you could say that they are even planning for problems, mistakes, or delays from the very beginning, and they will often add a little extra time for each task to help ensure an issue does not derail the entire project or that the completion of the project does not miss the final due date. ### The Importance of Where You Do Your Work A large part of ensuring that you can complete tasks on time comes to setting up conditions that will allow you to do the work well. Much of this has to do with the environment where you will do your work. This not only includes physical space such as a work area, but other conditions like being free from distractions and your physical well-being and mental attitude. ### What Space Will You Use? Simple things, like where you are set up to do your work, can not only aid in your efficiency but also affect how well you can work or even if you can get the work completed at all. One example of this might be typing on a laptop. While it might seem more comfortable to lie back on a couch and type a long paper, sitting up at a desk or table actually increases your typing speed and reduces the number of mistakes. Even the kind of mouse you use can impact how you work, and using one you are comfortable with can make a big difference. There are a host of other factors that can come into play as well. Do you have enough space? Is the space cluttered, or do you have the room to keep reference materials and other things you might need within arm’s reach? Are there other ways you could work that might be even more efficient? For example, buying an inexpensive second monitor—even secondhand—might be the key to decreasing the amount of time you spend when you can have more than one document displayed at a time. The key is to find what works for you and to treat your work space as another important resource needed to get the task finished. ### How Will You Eliminate Distractions? Few things are more frustrating than trying to do work while distractions are going on around you. If other people are continually interrupting you or there are things that keep pulling your attention from the task at hand, everything takes longer and you are more prone to mistakes.https://en.calameo.com/read/00009178915b8f5b352ba Many people say they work better with distractions—they prefer to leave the television or the radio on—but the truth is that an environment with too many interruptions is rarely helpful when focus is required. Before deciding that the television or talkative roommates do not bother you when you work, take an honest accounting of the work you produce with interruptions compared to work you do without. If you find that your work is better without distractions, it is a good idea to create an environment that reduces interruptions. This may mean you have to go to a private room, use headphones, or go somewhere like a library to work. Regardless, the importance of a distraction-free environment cannot be emphasized enough. ### What Are the Best Times for You to Work? Most people are subject to their own rhythms, cycles, and preferences throughout their day. Some are alert and energetic in the mornings, while others are considered “night owls” and prefer to work after everyone else has gone to sleep. It can be important to be aware of your own cycles and to use them to your advantage. Rarely does anyone do their best work when they are exhausted, either physically or mentally. Just as it can be difficult to work when you are physically ill, it can also be a hindrance to try to learn or do mental work when you are tired or emotionally upset. Your working environment definitely includes your own state of mind and physical well-being. Both have a significant influence on your learning and production ability. Because of this, it is not only important to be aware of your own condition and work preferences, but to actually try to create conditions that help you in these areas. One approach is to set aside a specific time to do certain kinds of work. You might find that you concentrate better after you have eaten a meal. If that is the case, make it a habit of doing homework every night after dinner. Or you might enjoy reading more after you are ready for bed, so you do your reading assignments just before you go to sleep at night. Some people find that they are more creative during a certain time of the day or that they are more comfortable writing with subtle lighting. It is worth taking the time to find the conditions that work best for you so that you can take advantage of them.

# Managing Your Time and Priorities ## Enhanced Strategies for Time and Task Management Questions to Consider: 1. What strategy helps me prioritize my top tasks? 2. How do I make the best use of my time when prioritizing? 3. How do I make sure I tackle unpleasant tasks instead of putting them off? 4. What’s the best way to plan for long-term tasks? 5. How do I find time in a busy schedule? Over the years, people have developed a number of different strategies to manage time and tasks. Some of the strategies have proven to be effective and helpful, while others have been deemed not as useful. The good news is that the approaches that do not work very well or do not really help in managing time do not get passed along very often. But others, those which people find of value, do. What follows here are three unique strategies that have become staples of time management. While not everyone will find that all three work for them in every situation, enough people have found them beneficial to pass them along with high recommendations. ### Daily Top Three The idea behind the daily top three approach is that you determine which three things are the most important to finish that day, and these become the tasks that you complete. It is a very simple technique that is effective because each day you are finishing tasks and removing them from your list. Even if you took one day off a week and completed no tasks on that particular day, a daily top three strategy would have you finishing 18 tasks in the course of a single week. That is a good amount of things crossed off your list. ### Pomodoro Technique The Pomodoro Technique was developed by Francesco Cirillo. The basic concept is to use a timer to set work intervals that are followed by a short break. The intervals are usually about 25 minutes long and are called pomodoros, which comes from the Italian word for tomato because Cirillo used a tomato-shaped kitchen timer to keep track of the intervals. In the original technique there are six steps: 1. Decide on the task to be done. 2. Set the timer to the desired interval. 3. Work on the task. 4. When the timer goes off, put a check mark on a piece of paper. 5. If you have fewer than four check marks, take a short break (3–5 minutes), then go to Step 1 or 2 (whichever is appropriate). 6. After four pomodoros, take a longer break (15–30 minutes), reset your check mark count to zero, and then go to Step 1 or 2. There are several reasons this technique is deemed effective for many people. One is the benefit that is derived from quick cycles of work and short breaks. This helps reduce mental fatigue and the lack of productivity caused by it. Another is that it tends to encourage practitioners to break tasks down to things that can be completed in about 25 minutes, which is something that is usually manageable from the perspective of time available. It is much easier to squeeze in three 25-minute sessions of work time during the day than it is to set aside a 75- minute block of time. ### Eat the Frog Of our three quick strategies, eat the frog probably has the strangest name and may not sound the most inviting. The name comes from a famous quote, attributed to Mark Twain: “Eat a live frog first thing in the morning and nothing worse will happen to you the rest of the day.” Eat the Frog is also the title of a best- selling book by Brian Tracy that deals with time management and avoiding procrastination. How this applies to time and task management is based on the concept that if a person takes care of the biggest or most unpleasant task first, everything else will be easier after that. Although stated in a humorous way, there is a good deal of truth in this. First, we greatly underestimate how much worry can impact our performance. If you are continually distracted by anxiety over a task you are dreading, it can affect the task you are working on at the time. Second, not only will you have a sense of accomplishment and relief when the task you are concerned with is finished and out of the way, but other tasks will seem lighter and not as difficult. ### Breaking Down the Steps and Spreading Them Over Shorter Work Periods Above, you read about several different tried-and-tested strategies for effective time management—approaches that have become staples in the professional world. In this section you will read about two more creative techniques that combine elements from these other methods to handle tasks when time is scarce and long periods of time are a luxury you just do not have. The concept behind this strategy is to break tasks into smaller, more manageable units that do not require as much time to complete. As an illustration of how this might work, imagine that you are assigned a two-page paper that is to include references. You estimate that to complete the paper—start to finish—would take you between four and a half and five hours. You look at your calendar over the next week and see that there simply are no open five-hour blocks (unless you decided to only get three hours of sleep one night). Rightly so, you decide that going without sleep is not a good option. While looking at your calendar, you do see that you can squeeze in an hour or so every night. Instead of trying to write the entire paper in one sitting, you break it up into much smaller components and schedule them over the week as shown in the two tables below: While this is a simple example, you can see how it would redistribute tasks to fit your available time in a way that would make completing the paper possible. In fact, if your time constraints were even more rigid, it would be possible to break these divided tasks down even further. You could use a variation of the Pomodoro Technique and write for three 25-minute segments each day at different times. The key is to look for ways to break down the entire task into smaller steps and spread them out to fit your schedule. ### Friends & Family Matter JT has worked many different jobs over the past few years to cover his living expenses and save up for college. Because he didn’t earn a scholarship and doesn’t want to take out loans, he knows he needs to continue to work to pay for school. In fact, JT has calculated how much he needs to earn each month to graduate on time. He doesn’t have much wiggle room—a few missed hours a week, and he will struggle to pay all his bills. At the beginning of the semester, JT has picked up extra shifts. In addition to wanting to earn extra money, he also has a hard time saying no even when he could use that time to study. His boss really values JT’s work ethic and has started expecting that JT will fill in whenever his co-workers ask for time off or, in some cases, just don’t show up. And JT feels that going the extra mile will help him get a promotion and raise, which would allow him to earn more without working more. In a few weeks, JT has several group projects and comprehensive exams coming up. This is also the busiest season at work and their boss sent a message to all the staff that they cannot ask for time off. JT is already concerned that he will be scheduled to work overtime, and won’t have much flexibility. JT is already stressed about getting all his work done and meeting his boss’s needs for covering shifts. ### Let’s Think About It JT has several options. Think through the consequences of each one, and choose the best option or create your own option. 1. JT quits the current job and finds something that offers more flexibility even if it takes a few weeks to find it. 2. JT explains to his boss that he needs to earn enough hours to pay his expenses but not be overworked; in other words, JT asks for better control over his schedule even if this means the boss will struggle to find others to cover the shifts. 3. JT works the schedule he is given and spends what little time and energy he has to complete his course work. ### Let’s Talk About It JT’s dilemma is common for students who must work while in college. You may also experience a situation when you have two very important responsibilities that conflict with one another. Here are some suggestions for communicating with others about the dilemma that JT is facing: 1. “I appreciate your giving me the opportunity to earn extra money by picking up additional shifts, but I need to reduce my hours in a few weeks because I need to spend time completing class projects and studying for my finals. Can we find a solution that works for both of us?” 2. “While I need to work enough each week to pay my bills, I also need time in the next few weeks to focus on my course work. I am not sure how to balance my commitment to the job with my commitment to college. Can we talk about it?” 3. “I want to be a valuable worker, and I am appreciative of the opportunities I have had to take on extra shifts and help the company meet its goals. The next few weeks will be challenging for me as I need to both work and spend more time on my course work. Would it be possible to reduce my hours during that time?” Whatever choice you would make in this situation, it is always best to communicate clearly your needs, your concerns, and even your uncertainties. ### Summary and Next Steps for College Success This chapter began by presenting why time management is important. Then, sections of the text covered how time management for college can be different from what students may have experienced before. Following this, the chapter contained several sections on how to effectively manage time (including predicting time on task), how to use technology to your advantage, and how to prioritize tasks. Other topics included specific strategies for time and task management and avoiding procrastination. Refining your time management skills based on an honest assessment is something that should never stop. The benefits of good time management skills are something that will apply to the rest of your life, and you will no doubt be working on improving those skills for years to come. Now that you have read and reflected on the main ideas of the chapter, consider developing a plan to help you achieve college success by considering what you want to know more about that could help you. Review the list below and commit to working on one or more of the concepts this term and beyond: 1. Develop better self-awareness about the psychological reasons for procrastinating and create a plan to reduce your procrastination. 2. Learn to predict accurately the time needed to complete tasks in college. 3. Eliminate technology and social media as distractions by setting specific times of the day you will engage in them. 4. Try out additional time management strategies to supplement what you already do. Choose one to use this week and reflect on what worked or not and why.

# Reading and Note-Taking ## Introduction ### Student Survey How confident are you in reading actively and critically and taking good notes? Take this quick survey to figure it out, ranking questions on a scale of 1—4, 1 meaning “least like me” and 4 meaning “most like me.” These questions will help you determine how the chapter concepts relate to you right now. As you are introduced to new concepts and practices, it can be informative to reflect on how your understanding changes over time. 1. I am reading on a college level. 2. I take good notes that help me study for exams. 3. I understand how to manage all the reading I need to do for college. 4. I recognize the need for different note-taking strategies for different college subjects. You can also take the Chapter 4 survey anonymously online. ### About This Chapter In this chapter we will explore two skills you probably think you already perform well—reading and note-taking. But first we will discuss what learning is and why the processes of reading and taking notes are integral to the learning process. The goal of this chapter, and your continued improvement on these skills, is to make sure you’ve honed them well enough to lead you to success in college. By the time you finish this chapter, you should be able to do the following: 1. Describe the learning process and how reading and note-taking are an important part of it. 2. Discuss the way reading differs in college and how to successfully adapt to that change. 3. Demonstrate the usefulness of strong note-taking while reading and during a lecture. Reading and consuming information are increasingly important today because of the amount of information we encounter. Not only do we need to read critically and carefully, but we also need to read with an eye to distinguishing fact from opinion and identifying solid sources. Reading helps us make sense of the world—from simple reminders to pick up milk to complex treatises on global concerns, we read to comprehend, and in so doing, our brains expand. An interesting study from Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, used MRI scans to track the brain conductivity while participants were reading. The researchers assert that a biological change to your brain actually happens when you read, and it lingers. If you want to read the study, published in the journal Brain Connectivity, you can find it online at https://openstax.org/l/brainconnectivity. In academic settings, as we deliberately work to become stronger readers and better notetakers, we are both helping our current situation and enhancing our abilities to be successful in the future. Seems like a win-win. Take advantage of all the study aids you have at hand, including human, electronic, and physical resources, to increase your performance in these crucial skill sets. Why? You need to read. It improves your thinking, your vocabulary, and your ability to make connections between disparate parts, which are all parts of critical thinking. Educational researchers Anne Cunningham and Keith Stanovich discovered after extensive study with college students that “reading volume [how much you read] made a significant contribution to multiple measures of vocabulary, general knowledge, spelling, and verbal fluency.” Research continues to assess and support the fact that one of the most significant learning skills necessary for success in any field is reading. You may have performed this skill for decades already, but learning to do it more effectively and practicing the skill consistently is critical to how well you do in all subjects. If reading isn’t your thing, strive to make that your challenge. Your academic journey, your personal well-being, and your professional endeavors will all benefit from your reading. Put forth the effort and make it your thing. The long-term benefits will far outweigh the sacrifices you make now.

# Reading and Note-Taking ## The Learning Process Questions to Consider: 1. What are the steps to learning something new? 2. How is the brain affected by learning? 3. What kinds of learning are expected in college? Have you ever thought about how we learn something new? Think back on a skill you have learned. Did you start with an interest in the topic or skill? Then, did you start practicing the skill or deepening your understanding of the topic? Perhaps you received feedback using the skill or sharing your knowledge and then you worked on refining that skill or understanding. If you participated in that process, then you did what Rita Smilkstein (2011) calls “The Natural Learning Process.”Smilkstein, R. (2011). We’re born to learn: Using the brain’s natural learning process to create today’s curriculum. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press. Here are the steps that she says we go through any time we learn: (1) motivation; (2) beginning practice; (3) advanced practice to build a foundation upon which control, creativity, and critical and abstract thinking can be applied; (4) skillfulness; (5) refinement; and (6) mastery. Another way to look at learning is through the biological lens. When we go through the learning process outlined above, our brains actually change. This is called neuroplasticity, or the brain’s ability to form or reorganize neural pathways in reaction to the learning process. This means that when you learn something new, and especially if you practice it and fail at getting it right the first time, your brain is changing. When you get better at a skill such as throwing a curve ball or learning how to solve for X, your brain is actually reorganizing itself so that you can perform those tasks more quickly. So what does this have to do with reading and note-taking? Your learning process has to begin somewhere before you can claim mastery of a concept. Too many students try to move quickly through reading or take only partial notes because they think that just by scanning a text or listening to a lecture and jotting down a few key ideas, they have adequately learned something. True, your brain is changing during those initial processes, but it will take much more practice (also known as studying) to help you recall that information at a later date. Moreover, your goal in college classes is not just to remember the information for a test, but it is to build on that foundational knowledge to learn different levels of thinking, which we will talk about in the next section. ### Bloom’s Taxonomy One aspect of learning in college is that different professors and different courses expect different types of learning from you. Figuring out how you need to learn the material and how you will be tested on it is part of learning the (sometimes) hidden curriculum. If you want some insight into the types of learning you will do in college, you will want to get to know the work of Dr. Benjamin Bloom, an educational psychologist best known for his classification of different levels of learning, and the concept called Bloom's TaxonomyBloom, B.S. (1980). All our children learning. NY: McGraw-Hill.. See for a list of the levels as well as verbs that demonstrate what you would do at each level. The bottom two levels, Remember and Understand, are called "lower levels” of Bloom's because they often take less effort than the others, and they are seen as foundational to the learning process. The remaining levels are considered "higher levels” of Bloom's because they often require you not only understand the information, but also do something with it: apply it to a new situation, analyze its components, evaluate its strengths and weaknesses, or create something new from your knowledge. Not all of your learning in college and the workplace will be at the higher levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy, but as you gain more knowledge and develop more sophisticated academic and workplace skills, you will move beyond merely remembering information. Let’s break down the different levels so you have a better understanding of them. The first and lowest level is “Remember.” At this level, you are attempting to recall information, such as definitions of terms or steps in a process. You don’t have to really understand (that will come next) the concepts at this level. For example, you may be able to memorize the steps of the Krebs Cycle by naming them in order, but that doesn’t mean you truly understand the processes involved and the effects of each step. The second level is “Understand.” This is the stage in which you can explain or describe a concept in your own words. Usually, if you have restated a term, concept, or process in your own words, you have a basic understanding of it. Again, these are lower levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy and are the fundamental first steps if you want to move higher up on the taxonomy. The next level is “Apply,” which indicates that you know the concept well enough to use it in a new context. Math classes often ask you to remember and understand the steps of a formula and the reason you would use it, but then ask that you use that formula in a new problem. The levels in which you “Analyze” and “Evaluate” require that you be able to examine the concepts in depth and be able to, for example, compare and contrast a concept with another concept (Analyze) or choose the best concept among others (Evaluate). The final level is “Create,” which, according to Bloom, is the pinnacle of learning: If you can create (or recreate) something new based on what you have learned, you have demonstrated understanding of a concept, idea, or skill. We will revisit Bloom’s Taxonomy in the chapter on studying, but it is worth introducing in relation to reading and note-taking because students who read texts and take notes on their readings or the professor’s lectures are often capturing information to remember it later. This is a good first step to the learning process, but as you will see later, that is not the only or final step to learning.

# Reading and Note-Taking ## The Nature and Types of Reading Questions to Consider: 1. How can distinguishing between reading types help you academically and personally? 2. How can you best prepare to read for college? Research supports the idea that reading is good for you. Students who read at or above reading level throughout elementary and secondary school have a higher chance of starting—and more importantly, finishing—college. Educational researchers convincingly claim that reading improves everything from grades to vocabulary.Cunningham, A. and Stanovich, K. (1998). “What reading does for the mind.” The American Federation of Teachers. If you don’t particularly enjoy reading, don’t despair. We read for a variety of reasons, and you may just have to step back and take a bigger picture of your reading habits to understand why you avoid engaging in this important skill. The myriad distractions we now face as well as the intense information overload we can suffer on a daily basis in all aspects of our lives can combine to make it difficult to slow down to read, an activity that demands at least a modicum of attention in a way that most television and music do not. You may need to adjust your schedule for more reading time, especially in college, because every class you take will expect you to read more pages than you probably have in the past. One last suggestion about reading: Many students report that they don’t like to read unless they are already interested in the topic. This is understandable when considering that many assigned texts in college may be something students are not familiar with, don’t immediately see the benefit of knowing, and are written in a less-than-engaging manner. Your goal when assigned reading that seems “uninteresting” is to develop your curiosity about the subject and approach your reading like a detective looking for clues to solve a larger mystery. Asking yourself “What will I gain from reading this?” and “How will this reading help me develop skills that I will need now and in the future?” are good places to start with developing curiosity. You may be surprised that you are interested in the topic and want to expand your knowledge by reading more about it. ### Types of Reading You may read small items purely for immediate information, such as notes, e-mails, or directions to an unfamiliar location. You can find all sorts of information online about how to fix a faucet or tie a secure knot. You won’t have to spend too much time reading these sorts of texts because you have a specific goal in mind for them, and once you have accomplished that goal, you do not need to prolong the reading experience. These encounters with texts may not be memorable or stunning, but they don’t need to be. When we consider why we read longer pieces—outside of reading for pleasure—we can usually categorize the reasons into about two categories: 1) reading to introduce ourselves to new content, and 2) reading to more fully comprehend familiar content. ### Reading to Introduce New Content Consider the following scenario: Glenn felt uncomfortable talking with his new roommates because he realized very quickly that he didn’t know anything about their major—architecture. Of course he knew that it had something to do with buildings and construction sites, but the field was so different from his discipline of biology that he decided he needed to find out more so he could at least engage in friendly conversation with his roommates. Since he would likely not go into their field, he didn’t need to go into full research mode. Glenn's purpose for reading was specific to his situation. When we read to discover new content, we can start off small and increase to better and more sophisticated sources. Much of our further study and reading depends on the sources we originally read, our purpose for finding out about this new topic, and our interest level. Chances are, you have done this sort of exploratory reading before. You may read reviews of a new restaurant or look at what people say about a movie you aren’t sure you want to spend the money to see at the theater. This reading helps you decide. In academic settings, much of what you read in your courses may be relatively new content to you. You may have heard the word volcano and have a general notion of what it means, but until you study geology and other sciences in depth, you may not have a full understanding of the environmental origins, ecological impacts, and societal and historic responses to volcanoes. These perspectives will come from reading and digesting various material. When you are working with new content, you may need to schedule more time for reading and comprehending the information because you may need to look up unfamiliar terminology and you may have to stop more frequently to make sure you are truly grasping what the material means. When you have few ways to connect new material to your own prior knowledge, you have to work more diligently to comprehend it. ### Reading to Comprehend Familiar Content Reading about unfamiliar content is one thing, but what if you do know something about a topic already? Do you really still need to keep reading about it? Probably. For example, what if during the brainstorming activity in the activity above, you secretly felt rather smug because you know about the demotion of the one-time planet Pluto and that there is currently quite the scientific debate going on about that whole de-planet-ation thing. Of course, you didn’t say anything during the study session, mostly to spare your classmates any embarrassment, but you are pretty familiar with Pluto-gate. So now what? Can you learn anything new? Again—probably. When did Pluto’s qualifications to be considered a planet come into question? What are the qualifications for being considered a planet? Why? Who even gets to decide these things? Why was it called Pluto in the first place? On Amazon alone, you can find hundreds of books about the once-planet Pluto (not to be confused with the Disney dog also named Pluto). A Google search brings up over 34 million options for your reading pleasure. You’ll have plenty to read, even if you do know something or quite a bit about a topic, but you’ll approach reading about a familiar topic and an unfamiliar one differently. With familiar content, you can do some initial skimming to determine what you already know in the book or article, and mark what may be new information or a different perspective. You may not have to give your full attention to the information you know, but you will spend more time on the new viewpoints so you can determine how this new data meshes with what you already know. Is this writer claiming a radical new definition for the topic or an entirely opposite way to consider the subject matter, connecting it to other topics or disciplines in ways you have never considered? When college students encounter material in a discipline-specific context and have some familiarity with the topic, they sometimes can allow themselves to become a bit overconfident about their knowledge level. Just because a student may have read an article or two or may have seen a TV documentary on a subject such as the criminal mind, that does not make them an expert. What makes an expert is a person who thoroughly studies a subject, usually for years, and understands all the possible perspectives of a subject as well as the potential for misunderstanding due to personal biases and the availability of false information about the topic.

# Reading and Note-Taking ## Effective Reading Strategies Questions to Consider: 1. What methods can you incorporate into your routine to allow adequate time for reading? 2. What are the benefits and approaches to active and critical reading? 3. Do your courses or major have specific reading requirements? ### Allowing Adequate Time for Reading You should determine the reading requirements and expectations for every class very early in the semester. You also need to understand why you are reading the particular text you are assigned. Do you need to read closely for minute details that determine cause and effect? Or is your instructor asking you to skim several sources so you become more familiar with the topic? Knowing this reasoning will help you decide your timing, what notes to take, and how best to undertake the reading assignment. Depending on the makeup of your schedule, you may end up reading both primary sources—such as legal documents, historic letters, or diaries—as well as textbooks, articles, and secondary sources, such as summaries or argumentative essays that use primary sources to stake a claim. You may also need to read current journalistic texts to stay up to date in local or global affairs. A realistic approach to scheduling your time to allow you to read and review all the reading you have for the semester will help you accomplish what can sometimes seem like an overwhelming task. When you allow adequate time in your hectic schedule for reading, you are investing in your own success. Reading isn’t a magic pill, but it may seem like it when you consider all the benefits people reap from this ordinary practice. Famous successful people throughout history have been voracious readers. In fact, former U.S. president Harry Truman once said, “Not all readers are leaders, but all leaders are readers.” Writer of the U.S. Declaration of Independence, inventor, and also former U.S. president Thomas Jefferson claimed “I cannot live without books” at a time when keeping and reading books was an expensive pastime. Knowing what it meant to be kept from the joys of reading, 19th-century abolitionist Frederick Douglass said, “Once you learn to read, you will be forever free.” And finally, George R. R. Martin, the prolific author of the wildly successful Game of Thrones empire, declared, “A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies . . . The man who never reads lives only one.” You can make time for reading in a number of ways that include determining your usual reading pace and speed, scheduling active reading sessions, and practicing recursive reading strategies. ### Determining Reading Speed and Pacing To determine your reading speed, select a section of text—passages in a textbook or pages in a novel. Time yourself reading that material for exactly 5 minutes, and note how much reading you accomplished in those 5 minutes. Multiply the amount of reading you accomplished in 5 minutes by 12 to determine your average reading pace (5 times 12 equals the 60 minutes of an hour). Of course, your reading pace will be different and take longer if you are taking notes while you read, but this calculation of reading pace gives you a good way to estimate your reading speed that you can adapt to other forms of reading. In the table above, you can see three students with different reading speeds. So, for instance, if Marta was able to read 4 pages of a dense novel for her English class in 5 minutes, she should be able to read about 48 pages in one hour. Knowing this, Marta can accurately determine how much time she needs to devote to finishing the novel within a set amount of time, instead of just guessing. If the novel Marta is reading is 497 pages, then Marta would take the total page count (497) and divide that by her hourly reading rate (48 pages/hour) to determine that she needs about 10 to 11 hours overall. To finish the novel spread out over two weeks, Marta needs to read a little under an hour a day to accomplish this goal. Calculating your reading rate in this manner does not take into account days where you’re too distracted and you have to reread passages or days when you just aren’t in the mood to read. And your reading rate will likely vary depending on how dense the content you’re reading is (e.g., a complex textbook vs. a comic book). Your pace may slow down somewhat if you are not very interested in what the text is about. What this method will help you do is be realistic about your reading time as opposed to waging a guess based on nothing and then becoming worried when you have far more reading to finish than the time available. Chapter 2, “Managing Your Time and Priorities,” offers more detail on how best to determine your speed from one type of reading to the next so you are better able to schedule your reading. ### Scheduling Set Times for Active Reading Active reading takes longer than reading through passages without stopping. You may not need to read your latest sci-fi series actively while you’re lounging on the beach, but many other reading situations demand more attention from you. Active reading is particularly important for college courses. You are a scholar actively engaging with the text by posing questions, seeking answers, and clarifying any confusing elements. Plan to spend at least twice as long to read actively than to read passages without taking notes or otherwise marking select elements of the text. To determine the time you need for active reading, use the same calculations you use to determine your traditional reading speed and double it. Remember that you need to determine your reading pace for all the classes you have in a particular semester and multiply your speed by the number of classes you have that require different types of reading. The table below shows the differences in time needed between reading quickly without taking notes and reading actively. ### Practicing Recursive Reading Strategies One fact about reading for college courses that may become frustrating is that, in a way, it never ends. For all the reading you do, you end up doing even more rereading. It may be the same content, but you may be reading the passage more than once to detect the emphasis the writer places on one aspect of the topic or how frequently the writer dismisses a significant counterargument. This rereading is called recursive reading. For most of what you read at the college level, you are trying to make sense of the text for a specific purpose—not just because the topic interests or entertains you. You need your full attention to decipher everything that’s going on in complex reading material—and you even need to be considering what the writer of the piece may not be including and why. This is why reading for comprehension is recursive. Specifically, this boils down to seeing reading not as a formula but as a process that is far more circular than linear. You may read a selection from beginning to end, which is an excellent starting point, but for comprehension, you’ll need to go back and reread passages to determine meaning and make connections between the reading and the bigger learning environment that led you to the selection—that may be a single course or a program in your college, or it may be the larger discipline, such as all biologists or the community of scholars studying beach erosion. People often say writing is rewriting. For college courses, reading is rereading, but rereading with the intention of improving comprehension and taking notes. Strong readers engage in numerous steps, sometimes combining more than one step simultaneously, but knowing the steps nonetheless. They include, not always in this order: 1. bringing any prior knowledge about the topic to the reading session, 2. asking yourself pertinent questions, both orally and in writing, about the content you are reading, 3. inferring and/or implying information from what you read, 4. learning unfamiliar discipline-specific terms, 5. evaluating what you are reading, and eventually, 6. applying what you’re reading to other learning and life situations you encounter. Let’s break these steps into manageable chunks, because you are actually doing quite a lot when you read. ### Accessing Prior Knowledge When you read, you naturally think of anything else you may know about the topic, but when you read deliberately and actively, you make yourself more aware of accessing this prior knowledge. Have you ever watched a documentary about this topic? Did you study some aspect of it in another class? Do you have a hobby that is somehow connected to this material? All of this thinking will help you make sense of what you are reading. ### Asking Questions Humans are naturally curious beings. As you read actively, you should be asking questions about the topic you are reading. Don’t just say the questions in your mind; write them down. You may ask: Why is this topic important? What is the relevance of this topic currently? Was this topic important a long time ago but irrelevant now? Why did my professor assign this reading? You need a place where you can actually write down these questions; a separate page in your notes is a good place to begin. If you are taking notes on your computer, start a new document and write down the questions. Leave some room to answer the questions when you begin and again after you read. ### Inferring and Implying When you read, you can take the information on the page and infer, or conclude responses to related challenges from evidence or from your own reasoning. A student will likely be able to infer what material the professor will include on an exam by taking good notes throughout the classes leading up to the test. Writers may imply information without directly stating a fact for a variety of reasons. Sometimes a writer may not want to come out explicitly and state a bias, but may imply or hint at his or her preference for one political party or another. You have to read carefully to find implications because they are indirect, but watching for them will help you comprehend the whole meaning of a passage. ### Learning Vocabulary Vocabulary specific to certain disciplines helps practitioners in that field engage and communicate with each other. Few people beyond undertakers and archeologists likely use the term sarcophagus in everyday communications, but for those disciplines, it is a meaningful distinction. Looking at the example, you can use context clues to figure out the meaning of the term sarcophagus because it is something undertakers and/or archeologists would recognize. At the very least, you can guess that it has something to do with death. As a potential professional in the field you’re studying, you need to know the lingo. You may already have a system in place to learn discipline-specific vocabulary, so use what you know works for you. Two strong strategies are to look up words in a dictionary (online or hard copy) to ensure you have the exact meaning for your discipline and to keep a dedicated list of words you see often in your reading. You can list the words with a short definition so you have a quick reference guide to help you learn the vocabulary. ### Evaluating Intelligent people always question and evaluate. This doesn’t mean they don’t trust others; they just need verification of facts to understand a topic well. It doesn’t make sense to learn incomplete or incorrect information about a subject just because you didn’t take the time to evaluate all the sources at your disposal. When early explorers were afraid to sail the world for fear of falling off the edge, they weren’t stupid; they just didn’t have all the necessary data to evaluate the situation. When you evaluate a text, you are seeking to understand the presented topic. Depending on how long the text is, you will perform a number of steps and repeat many of these steps to evaluate all the elements the author presents. When you evaluate a text, you need to do the following: 1. Scan the title and all headings. 2. Read through the entire passage fully. 3. Question what main point the author is making. 4. Decide who the audience is. 5. Identify what evidence/support the author uses. 6. Consider if the author presents a balanced perspective on the main point. 7. Recognize if the author introduced any biases in the text. When you go through a text looking for each of these elements, you need to go beyond just answering the surface question; for instance, the audience may be a specific field of scientists, but could anyone else understand the text with some explanation? Why would that be important? ### Applying When you learn something new, it always connects to other knowledge you already have. One challenge we have is applying new information. It may be interesting to know the distance to the moon, but how do we apply it to something we need to do? If your biology instructor asked you to list several challenges of colonizing Mars and you do not know much about that planet’s exploration, you may be able to use your knowledge of how far Earth is from the moon to apply it to the new task. You may have to read several other texts in addition to reading graphs and charts to find this information. That was the challenge the early space explorers faced along with myriad unknowns before space travel was a more regular occurrence. They had to take what they already knew and could study and read about and apply it to an unknown situation. These explorers wrote down their challenges, failures, and successes, and now scientists read those texts as a part of the ever-growing body of text about space travel. Application is a sophisticated level of thinking that helps turn theory into practice and challenges into successes. ### Preparing to Read for Specific Disciplines in College Different disciplines in college may have specific expectations, but you can depend on all subjects asking you to read to some degree. In this college reading requirement, you can succeed by learning to read actively, researching the topic and author, and recognizing how your own preconceived notions affect your reading. Reading for college isn’t the same as reading for pleasure or even just reading to learn something on your own because you are casually interested. In college courses, your instructor may ask you to read articles, chapters, books, or primary sources (those original documents about which we write and study, such as letters between historic figures or the Declaration of Independence). Your instructor may want you to have a general background on a topic before you dive into that subject in class, so that you know the history of a topic, can start thinking about it, and can engage in a class discussion with more than a passing knowledge of the issue. If you are about to participate in an in-depth six-week consideration of the U.S. Constitution but have never read it or anything written about it, you will have a hard time looking at anything in detail or understanding how and why it is significant. As you can imagine, a great deal has been written about the Constitution by scholars and citizens since the late 1700s when it was first put to paper (that’s how they did it then). While the actual document isn’t that long (about 12–15 pages depending on how it is presented), learning the details on how it came about, who was involved, and why it was and still is a significant document would take a considerable amount of time to read and digest. So, how do you do it all? Especially when you may have an instructor who drops hints that you may also love to read a historic novel covering the same time period . . . in your spare time, not required, of course! It can be daunting, especially if you are taking more than one course that has time-consuming reading lists. With a few strategic techniques, you can manage it all, but know that you must have a plan and schedule your required reading so you are also able to pick up that recommended historic novel—it may give you an entirely new perspective on the issue. ### Strategies for Reading in College Disciplines No universal law exists for how much reading instructors and institutions expect college students to undertake for various disciplines. Suffice it to say, it’s a LOT. For most students, it is the volume of reading that catches them most off guard when they begin their college careers. A full course load might require 10–15 hours of reading per week, some of that covering content that will be more difficult than the reading for other courses. You cannot possibly read word-for-word every single document you need to read for all your classes. That doesn’t mean you give up or decide to only read for your favorite classes or concoct a scheme to read 17 percent for each class and see how that works for you. You need to learn to skim, annotate, and take notes. All of these techniques will help you comprehend more of what you read, which is why we read in the first place. We’ll talk more later about annotating and note-taking, but for now consider what you know about skimming as opposed to active reading. ### Skimming Skimming is not just glancing over the words on a page (or screen) to see if any of it sticks. Effective skimming allows you to take in the major points of a passage without the need for a time-consuming reading session that involves your active use of notations and annotations. Often you will need to engage in that painstaking level of active reading, but skimming is the first step—not an alternative to deep reading. The fact remains that neither do you need to read everything nor could you possibly accomplish that given your limited time. So learn this valuable skill of skimming as an accompaniment to your overall study tool kit, and with practice and experience, you will fully understand how valuable it is. When you skim, look for guides to your understanding: headings, definitions, pull quotes, tables, and context clues. Textbooks are often helpful for skimming—they may already have made some of these skimming guides in bold or a different color, and chapters often follow a predictable outline. Some even provide an overview and summary for sections or chapters. Use whatever you can get, but don’t stop there. In textbooks that have some reading guides, or especially in texts that do not, look for introductory words such as First or The purpose of this article . . . or summary words such as In conclusion . . . or Finally. These guides will help you read only those sentences or paragraphs that will give you the overall meaning or gist of a passage or book. Now move to the meat of the passage. You want to take in the reading as a whole. For a book, look at the titles of each chapter if available. Read each chapter’s introductory paragraph and determine why the writer chose this particular order. Depending on what you’re reading, the chapters may be only informational, but often you’re looking for a specific argument. What position is the writer claiming? What support, counterarguments, and conclusions is the writer presenting? Don’t think of skimming as a way to buzz through a boring reading assignment. It is a skill you should master so you can engage, at various levels, with all the reading you need to accomplish in college. End your skimming session with a few notes—terms to look up, questions you still have, and an overall summary. And recognize that you likely will return to that book or article for a more thorough reading if the material is useful. ### Active Reading Strategies Active reading differs significantly from skimming or reading for pleasure. You can think of active reading as a sort of conversation between you and the text (maybe between you and the author, but you don’t want to get the author’s personality too involved in this metaphor because that may skew your engagement with the text). When you sit down to determine what your different classes expect you to read and you create a reading schedule to ensure you complete all the reading, think about when you should read the material strategically, not just how to get it all done. You should read textbook chapters and other reading assignments before you go into a lecture about that information. Don’t wait to see how the lecture goes before you read the material, or you may not understand the information in the lecture. Reading before class helps you put ideas together between your reading and the information you hear and discuss in class. Different disciplines naturally have different types of texts, and you need to take this into account when you schedule your time for reading class material. For example, you may look at a poem for your world literature class and assume that it will not take you long to read because it is relatively short compared to the dense textbook you have for your economics class. But reading and understanding a poem can take a considerable amount of time when you realize you may need to stop numerous times to review the separate word meanings and how the words form images and connections throughout the poem. ### The SQ3R Reading Strategy You may have heard of the SQ3R method for active reading in your early education. This valuable technique is perfect for college reading. The title stands for Survey, Question, Read, Recite, Review, and you can use the steps on virtually any assigned passage. Designed by Francis Pleasant Robinson in his 1961 book Effective Study, the active reading strategy gives readers a systematic way to work through any reading material. Survey is similar to skimming. You look for clues to meaning by reading the titles, headings, introductions, summary, captions for graphics, and keywords. You can survey almost anything connected to the reading selection, including the copyright information, the date of the journal article, or the names and qualifications of the author(s). In this step, you decide what the general meaning is for the reading selection. Question is your creation of questions to seek the main ideas, support, examples, and conclusions of the reading selection. Ask yourself these questions separately. Try to create valid questions about what you are about to read that have come into your mind as you engaged in the Survey step. Try turning the headings of the sections in the chapter into questions. Next, how does what you’re reading relate to you, your school, your community, and the world? Read is when you actually read the passage. Try to find the answers to questions you developed in the previous step. Decide how much you are reading in chunks, either by paragraph for more complex readings or by section or even by an entire chapter. When you finish reading the selection, stop to make notes. Answer the questions by writing a note in the margin or other white space of the text. You may also carefully underline or highlight text in addition to your notes. Use caution here that you don’t try to rush this step by haphazardly circling terms or the other extreme of underlining huge chunks of text. Don’t over-mark. You aren’t likely to remember what these cryptic marks mean later when you come back to use this active reading session to study. The text is the source of information—your marks and notes are just a way to organize and make sense of that information. Recite means to speak out loud. By reciting, you are engaging other senses to remember the material—you read it (visual) and you said it (auditory). Stop reading momentarily in the step to answer your questions or clarify confusing sentences or paragraphs. You can recite a summary of what the text means to you. If you are not in a place where you can verbalize, such as a library or classroom, you can accomplish this step adequately by saying it in your head; however, to get the biggest bang for your buck, try to find a place where you can speak aloud. You may even want to try explaining the content to a friend. Review is a recap. Go back over what you read and add more notes, ensuring you have captured the main points of the passage, identified the supporting evidence and examples, and understood the overall meaning. You may need to repeat some or all of the SQR3 steps during your review depending on the length and complexity of the material. Before you end your active reading session, write a short (no more than one page is optimal) summary of the text you read. ### Reading Primary and Secondary Sources Primary sources are original documents we study and from which we glean information; primary sources include letters, first editions of books, legal documents, and a variety of other texts. When scholars look at these documents to understand a period in history or a scientific challenge and then write about their findings, the scholar’s article is considered a secondary source. Readers have to keep several factors in mind when reading both primary and secondary sources. Primary sources may contain dated material we now know is inaccurate. It may contain personal beliefs and biases the original writer didn’t intend to be openly published, and it may even present fanciful or creative ideas that do not support current knowledge. Readers can still gain great insight from primary sources, but readers need to understand the context from which the writer of the primary source wrote the text. Likewise, secondary sources are inevitably another person’s perspective on the primary source, so a reader of secondary sources must also be aware of potential biases or preferences the secondary source writer inserts in the writing that may persuade an incautious reader to interpret the primary source in a particular manner. For example, if you were to read a secondary source that is examining the U.S. Declaration of Independence (the primary source), you would have a much clearer idea of how the secondary source scholar presented the information from the primary source if you also read the Declaration for yourself instead of trusting the other writer’s interpretation. Most scholars are honest in writing secondary sources, but you as a reader of the source are trusting the writer to present a balanced perspective of the primary source. When possible, you should attempt to read a primary source in conjunction with the secondary source. The Internet helps immensely with this practice. ### Researching Topic and Author During your preview stage, sometimes called pre-reading, you can easily pick up on information from various sources that may help you understand the material you’re reading more fully or place it in context with other important works in the discipline. If your selection is a book, flip it over or turn to the back pages and look for an author’s biography or note from the author. See if the book itself contains any other information about the author or the subject matter. The main things you need to recall from your reading in college are the topics covered and how the information fits into the discipline. You can find these parts throughout the textbook chapter in the form of headings in larger and bold font, summary lists, and important quotations pulled out of the narrative. Use these features as you read to help you determine what the most important ideas are. Remember, many books use quotations about the book or author as testimonials in a marketing approach to sell more books, so these may not be the most reliable sources of unbiased opinions, but it’s a start. Sometimes you can find a list of other books the author has written near the front of a book. Do you recognize any of the other titles? Can you do an Internet search for the name of the book or author? Go beyond the search results that want you to buy the book and see if you can glean any other relevant information about the author or the reading selection. Beyond a standard Internet search, try the library article database. These are more relevant to academic disciplines and contain resources you typically will not find in a standard search engine. If you are unfamiliar with how to use the library database, ask a reference librarian on campus. They are often underused resources that can point you in the right direction. ### Understanding Your Own Preset Ideas on a Topic Consider this scenario: Laura really enjoys learning about environmental issues. She has read many books and watched numerous televised documentaries on this topic and actively seeks out additional information on the environment. While Laura’s interest can help her understand a new reading encounter about the environment, Laura also has to be aware that with this interest, she brings forward her preset ideas and biases about the topic. Sometimes these prejudices against other ideas relate to religion or nationality or even just tradition. Without evidence, thinking the way we always have is not a good enough reason; evidence can change, and at the very least it needs honest review and assessment to determine its validity. Ironically, we may not want to learn new ideas because that may mean we would have to give up old ideas we have already mastered, which can be a daunting prospect. With every reading situation about the environment, Laura needs to remain open-minded about what she is about to read and pay careful attention if she begins to ignore certain parts of the text because of her preconceived notions. Learning new information can be very difficult if you balk at ideas that are different from what you’ve always thought. You may have to force yourself to listen to a different viewpoint multiple times to make sure you are not closing your mind to a viable solution your mindset does not currently allow.

# Reading and Note-Taking ## Helpful Note-Taking Strategies Questions to Consider: 1. How can you prepare to take notes to maximize the effectiveness of the experience? 2. What are some specific strategies you can employ for better note-taking? 3. Why is annotating your notes after the note-taking session a critical step to follow? Beyond providing a record of the information you are reading or hearing, notes help you organize the ideas and help you make meaning out of something about which you may not be familiar, so note-taking and reading are two compatible skill sets. Taking notes also helps you stay focused on the question at hand. Taking notes during presentations or class lectures may allow you to follow the speaker’s main points and condense the material into a more readily usable format. Strong notes build on your prior knowledge of a subject, help you discuss trends or patterns present in the information, and direct you toward areas needing further research or reading. It is not a good habit to transcribe every single word a speaker utters—even if you have an amazing ability to do that. Most of us don’t have that court-reporter-esque skill level anyway, and if we try, we would end up missing valuable information. Learn to listen for main ideas and distinguish between these main ideas and details that typically support the ideas. Include examples that explain the main ideas, but do so using understandable abbreviations. Think of all notes as potential study guides. In fact, if you only take notes without actively working on them after the initial note-taking session, the likelihood of the notes helping you is slim. Research on this topic concludes that without active engagement after taking notes, most students forget 60–75 percent of material over which they took the notes—within two days! That sort of defeats the purpose, don’t you think? This information about memory loss was first brought to light by 19th-century German psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus. Fortunately, you do have the power to thwart what is sometimes called the Ebbinghaus Forgetting Curve by reinforcing what you learned through review at intervals shortly after you take in the material and frequently thereafter. If you are a musician, you’ll understand this phenomenon well. When you first attempt a difficult piece of music, you may not remember the chords and notes well at all, but after frequent practice and review, you generate a certain muscle memory and cognitive recall that allows you to play the music more easily. Note-taking may not be the most glamorous aspect of your higher-education journey, but it is a study practice you will carry throughout college and into your professional life. Setting yourself up for successful note-taking is almost as important as the actual taking of notes, and what you do after your note-taking session is equally significant. Well-written notes help you organize your thoughts, enhance your memory, and participate in class discussion, and they prepare you to respond successfully on exams. With all that riding on your notes, it would behoove you to learn how to take notes properly and continue to improve your note-taking skills. ### Preparing to Take Notes Preparing to take notes means more than just getting out your laptop or making sure you bring pen and paper to class. You’ll do a much better job with your notes if you understand why we take notes, have a strong grasp on your preferred note-taking system, determine your specific priorities depending on your situation, and engage in some version of efficient shorthand. Like handwriting and fingerprints, we all have unique and fiercely independent note-taking habits. These understandably and reasonably vary from one situation to the next, but you can only improve your skills by learning more about ways to take effective notes and trying different methods to find a good fit. The very best notes are the ones you take in an organized manner that encourages frequent review and use as you progress through a topic or course of study. For this reason, you need to develop a way to organize all your notes for each class so they remain together and organized. As old-fashioned as it sounds, a clunky three-ring binder is an excellent organizational container for class notes. You can easily add to previous notes, insert handouts you may receive in class, and maintain a running collection of materials for each separate course. If the idea of carrying around a heavy binder has you rolling your eyes, then transfer that same structure into your computer files. If you don’t organize your many documents into some semblance of order on your computer, you will waste significant time searching for improperly named or saved files. You may be interested in relatively new research on what is the more effective note-taking strategy: handwriting versus typing directly into a computer. While individuals have strong personal opinions on this subject, most researchers agree that the format of student notes is less important than what students do with the notes they take afterwards. Both handwriting notes and using a computer for note-taking have pros and cons. ### Managing Note-Taking Systems Whichever of the many note-taking systems you choose (and new ones seem to come out almost daily), the very best one is the one that you will use consistently. The skill and art of note-taking is not automatic for anyone; it takes a great deal of practice, patience, and continuous attention to detail. Add to that the fact that you may need to master multiple note-taking techniques for different classes, and you have some work to do. Unless you are specifically directed by your instructor, you are free to combine the best parts of different systems if you are most comfortable with that hybrid system. Just to keep yourself organized, all your notes should start off with an identifier, including at the very least the date, the course name, the topic of the lecture/presentation, and any other information you think will help you when you return to use the notes for further study, test preparation, or assignment completion. Additional, optional information may be the number of note-taking sessions about this topic or reminders to cross-reference class handouts, textbook pages, or other course materials. It’s also always a good idea to leave some blank space in your notes so you can insert additions and questions you may have as you review the material later. ### Note-Taking Strategies You may have a standard way you take all your notes for all your classes. When you were in high school, this one-size-fits-all approach may have worked. Now that you’re in college, reading and studying more advanced topics, your general method may still work some of the time, but you should have some different strategies in place if you find that your method isn’t working as well with college content. You probably will need to adopt different note-taking strategies for different subjects. The strategies in this section represent various ways to take notes in such a way that you are able to study after the initial note-taking session. ### Cornell Method One of the most recognizable note-taking systems is called the Cornell Method, a relatively simple way to take effective notes devised by Cornell University education professor Dr. Walter Pauk in the 1940s. In this system, you take a standard piece of note paper and divide it into three sections by drawing a horizontal line across your paper about one to two inches from the bottom of the page (the summary area) and then drawing a vertical line to separate the rest of the page above this bottom area, making the left side about two inches (the recall column) and leaving the biggest area to the right of your vertical line (the notes column). You may want to make one page and then copy as many pages as you think you’ll need for any particular class, but one advantage of this system is that you can generate the sections quickly. Because you have divided up your page, you may end up using more paper than you would if you were writing on the entire page, but the point is not to keep your notes to as few pages as possible. The Cornell Method provides you with a well-organized set of notes that will help you study and review your notes as you move through the course. If you are taking notes on your computer, you can still use the Cornell Method in Word or Excel on your own or by using a template someone else created. Now that you have the note-taking format generated, the beauty of the Cornell Method is its organized simplicity. Just write on one side of the page (the right-hand notes column)—this will help later when you are reviewing and revising your notes. During your note-taking session, use the notes column to record information over the main points and concepts of the lecture; try to put the ideas into your own words, which will help you to not transcribe the speaker’s words verbatim. Skip lines between each idea in this column. Practice the shortcut abbreviations covered in the next section and avoid writing in complete sentences. Don’t make your notes too cryptic, but you can use bullet points or phrases equally well to convey meaning—we do it all the time in conversation. If you know you will need to expand the notes you are taking in class but don’t have time, you can put reminders directly in the notes by adding and underlining the word expand by the ideas you need to develop more fully. As soon as possible after your note-taking session, preferably within eight hours but no more than twenty-four hours, read over your notes column and fill in any details you missed in class, including the places where you indicated you wanted to expand your notes. Then in the recall column, write any key ideas from the corresponding notes column—you can’t stuff this smaller recall column as if you’re explaining or defining key ideas. Just add the one- or two-word main ideas; these words in the recall column serve as cues to help you remember the detailed information you recorded in the notes column. Once you are satisfied with your notes and recall columns, summarize this page of notes in two or three sentences using the summary area at the bottom of the sheet. This is an excellent time to get with another classmate or a group of students who all heard the same lecture to make sure you all understood the key points. Now, before you move onto something else, cover the large notes column, and quiz yourself over the key ideas you recorded in the recall column. Repeat this step often as you go along, not just immediately before an exam, and you will help your memory make the connections between your notes, your textbook reading, your in-class work, and assignments that you need to succeed on any quizzes and exams. The main advantage of the Cornell Method is that you are setting yourself up to have organized, workable notes. The neat format helps you move into study-mode without needing to re-copy less organized notes or making sense of a large mass of information you aren’t sure how to process because you can’t remember key ideas or what you meant. If you write notes in your classes without any sort of system and later come across something like “Napoleon—short” in the middle of a glob of notes, what can you do at this point? Is that important? Did it connect with something relevant from the lecture? How would you possibly know? You are your best advocate for setting yourself up for success in college. ### Outlining Other note organizing systems may help you in different disciplines. You can take notes in a formal outline if you prefer, using Roman numerals for each new topic, moving down a line to capital letters indented a few spaces to the right for concepts related to the previous topic, then adding details to support the concepts indented a few more spaces over and denoted by an Arabic numeral. You can continue to add to a formal outline by following these rules. You don’t absolutely have to use the formal numerals and letter, but you have to then be careful to indent so you can tell when you move from a higher level topic to the related concepts and then to the supporting information. The main benefit of an outline is how organized it is. You have to be on your toes when you are taking notes in class to ensure you keep up the organizational format of the outline, which can be tricky if the lecture or presentation is moving quickly or covering many diverse topics. The following formal outline example shows the basic pattern: 1. Dogs (main topic–usually general) 2. Cats (main topic) Siamese You would just continue on with this sort of numbering and indenting format to show the connections between main ideas, concepts, and supporting details. Whatever details you do not capture in your note-taking session, you can add after the lecture as you review your outline. ### Chart or Table Similar to creating an outline, you can develop a chart to compare and contrast main ideas in a note-taking session. Divide your paper into four or five columns with headings that include either the main topics covered in the lecture or categories such as How?, What?, When used?, Advantages/Pros, Disadvantages/Cons, or other divisions of the information. You write your notes into the appropriate columns as that information comes to light in the presentation. The table below provides an example of a table that can help you organize topics in a science course. This format helps you pull out the salient ideas and establishes an organized set of notes to study later. (If you haven’t noticed that this reviewing later idea is a constant across all note-taking systems, you should take note of that.) Notes by themselves that you never reference again are little more than scribblings. That would be a bit like compiling an extensive grocery list so you stay on budget when you shop, work all week on it, and then just throw it away before you get to the store. You may be able to recall a few items, but likely won’t be as efficient as you could be if you had the notes to reference. Just as you cannot read all the many books, articles, and documents you need to peruse for your college classes, you cannot remember the most important ideas of all the notes you will take as part of your courses, so you must review. ### Concept Mapping and Visual Note-Taking One final note-taking method that appeals to learners who prefer a visual representation of notes is called mapping or sometimes mind mapping or concept mapping, although each of these names can have slightly different uses. Variations of this method abound, so you may want to look for more versions online, but the basic principles are that you are making connections between main ideas through a graphic depiction; some can get rather elaborate with colors and shapes, but a simple version may be more useful at least to begin. Main ideas can be circled or placed in a box with supporting concepts radiating off these ideas shown with a connecting line and possibly details of the support further radiating off the concepts. You can present your main ideas vertically or horizontally, but turning your paper long-ways, or in landscape mode, may prove helpful as you add more main ideas. You may be interested in trying visual note-taking or adding pictures to your notes for clarity. Sometimes when you can’t come up with the exact wording to explain something or you’re trying to add information for complex ideas in your notes, sketching a rough image of the idea can help you remember. According to educator Sherrill Knezel in an article entitled “The Power of Visual Note-taking,” this strategy is effective because “When students use images and text in note-taking, it gives them two different ways to pull up the information, doubling their chances of recall.” Don’t shy away from this creative approach to note-taking just because you believe you aren’t an artist; the images don’t need to be perfect. You may want to watch Rachel Smith’s TEDx Talk called “Drawing in Class” to learn more about visual note-taking. You can play with different types of note-taking suggestions and find the method(s) you like best, but once you find what works for you, stick with it. You will become more efficient with the method the more you use it, and your note-taking, review, and test prep will become, if not easier, certainly more organized, which can decrease your anxiety. ### Practicing Decipherable Shorthand Most college students don’t take a class in shorthand, once the domain of secretaries and executive assistants, but maybe they should. That almost-lost art in the age of computers could come in very handy during intense note-taking sessions. Elaborate shorthand systems do exist, but you would be better served in your college note-taking adventures to hone a more familiar, personalized form of shorthand to help you write more in a shorter amount of time. Seemingly insignificant shortcuts can add up to ease the stress note-taking can induce—especially if you ever encounter an “I’m not going to repeat this” kind of presenter! Become familiar with these useful abbreviations: See the table above for examples of common shorthand symbols and abbreviations. Do you have any other shortcuts or symbols that you use in your notes? Ask your parents if they remember any that you may be able to learn. ### Annotating Notes After the Initial Note-Taking Session Annotating notes after the initial note-taking session may be one of the most valuable study skills you can master. Whether you are highlighting, underlining, or adding additional notes, you are reinforcing the material in your mind and memory. Admit it—who can resist highlighting markers? Gone are the days when yellow was the star of the show, and you had to be very careful not to press too firmly for fear of obliterating the words you were attempting to emphasize. Students now have a veritable rainbow of highlighting options and can color-code notes and text passages to their hearts’ content. The only reason to highlight anything is to draw attention to it, so you can easily pick out that ever-so-important information later for further study or reflection. One problem many students have is not knowing when to stop. If what you need to recall from the passage is a particularly apt and succinct definition of the term important to your discipline, highlighting the entire paragraph is less effective than highlighting just the actual term. And if you don’t rein in this tendency to color long passages (possibly in multiple colors) you can end up with a whole page of highlighted text. Ironically, that is no different from a page that is not highlighted at all, so you have wasted your time. Your mantra for highlighting text should be less is more. Always read your text selection first before you start highlighting anything. You need to know what the overall message is before you start placing emphasis in the text with highlighting. Another way to annotate notes after initial note-taking is underlining significant words or passages. Albeit not quite as much fun as its colorful cousin highlighting, underlining provides precision to your emphasis. Some people think of annotations as only using a colored highlighter to mark certain words or phrases for emphasis. Actually, annotations can refer to anything you do with a text to enhance it for your particular use (either a printed text, handwritten notes, or other sort of document you are using to learn concepts). The annotations may include highlighting passages or vocabulary, defining those unfamiliar terms once you look them up, writing questions in the margin of a book, underlining or circling key terms, or otherwise marking a text for future reference. You can also annotate some electronic texts. Realistically, you may end up doing all of these types of annotations at different times. We know that repetition in studying and reviewing is critical to learning, so you may come back to the same passage and annotate it separately. These various markings can be invaluable to you as a study guide and as a way to see the evolution of your learning about a topic. If you regularly begin a reading session writing down any questions you may have about the topic of that chapter or section and also write out answers to those questions at the end of the reading selection, you will have a good start to what that chapter covered when you eventually need to study for an exam. At that point, you likely will not have time to reread the entire selection especially if it is a long reading selection, but with strong annotations in conjunction with your class notes, you won’t need to do that. With experience in reading discipline-specific texts and writing essays or taking exams in that field, you will know better what sort of questions to ask in your annotations. What you have to keep in the front of your mind while you are annotating, especially if you are going to conduct multiple annotation sessions, is to not overdo whatever method you use. Be judicious about what you annotate and how you do it on the page, which means you must be neat about it. Otherwise, you end up with a mess of either color or symbols combined with some cryptic notes that probably took you quite a long time to create, but won’t be worth as much to you as a study aid as they could be. This is simply a waste of time and effort. You cannot eat up every smidgen of white space on the page writing out questions or summaries and still have a way to read the original text. If you are lucky enough to have a blank page next to the beginning of the chapter or section you are annotating, use this, but keep in mind that when you start writing notes, you aren’t exactly sure how much space you’ll need. Use a decipherable shorthand and write only what you need to convey the meaning in very small print. If you are annotating your own notes, you can make a habit of using only one side of the paper in class, so that if you need to add more notes later, you could use the other side. You can also add a blank page to your notes before beginning the next class date in your notebook so you’ll end up with extra paper for annotations when you study. Professional resources may come with annotations that can be helpful to you as you work through the various documentation requirements you’ll encounter in college as well. Purdue University’s Online Writing Lab (OWL) provides an annotated sample for how to format a college paper according to guidelines in the Modern Language Association (MLA) manual that you can see, along with other annotations. ### Providing Needed Additional Explanations to Notes Consider this scenario: Marlon was totally organized and ready to take notes in a designated course notebook at the beginning of every philosophy class session. He always dated his page and indicated what the topic of discussion was. He had various colored highlighters ready to denote the different note purposes he had defined: vocabulary in pink, confusing concepts in green, and note sections that would need additional explanations later in yellow. He also used his own shorthand and an impressive array of symbols to indicate questions (red question mark), highly probable test material (he used a tiny bomb exploding here), additional reading suggestions, and specific topics he would ask his instructor before the next class. Doing everything so precisely, Marlon’s methods seemed like a perfect example of how to take notes for success. Inevitably though, by the end of the hour-and-a-half class session, Marlon was frantically switching between writing tools, near to tears, and scouring his notes as waves of yellow teased him with uncertainty. What went wrong? As with many of us who try diligently to do everything we know how to do for success or what we think we know because we read books and articles on success in between our course work, Marlon is suffering from trying to do too much simultaneously. It’s an honest mistake we can make when we are trying to save a little time or think we can multitask and kill two birds with one stone. Unfortunately, this particular error in judgment can add to your stress level exponentially if you don’t step back and see it for what it is. Marlon attempted to take notes in class as well as annotate his notes to get them ready for his test preparation. It was too much to do at one time, but even if he could have done all those things during class, he’s missing one critical point about note-taking. As much as we may want to hurry and get it over with, note-taking in class is just the beginning. Your instructor likely gave you a pre-class assignment to read or complete before coming to that session. The intention of that preparatory lesson is for you to come in with some level of familiarity for the topic under consideration and questions of your own. Once you’re in class, you may also need to participate in a group discussion, work with your classmates, or perform some other sort of lesson-directed activity that would necessarily take you away from taking notes. Does that mean you should ignore taking notes for that day? Most likely not. You may just need to indicate in your notes that you worked on a project or whatever other in-class event you experienced that date. Very rarely in a college classroom will you engage in an activity that is not directly related to what you are studying in that course. Even if you enjoyed every minute of the class session and it was an unusual format for that course, you still need to take some notes. Maybe your first note could be to ask yourself why you think the instructor used that unique teaching strategy for the class that day. Was it effective? Was it worth using the whole class time? How will that experience enhance what you are learning in that course? If you use an ereader or ebooks to read texts for class or read articles from the Internet on your laptop or tablet, you can still take effective notes. Depending on the features of your device, you have many choices. Almost all electronic reading platforms allow readers to highlight and underline text. Some devices allow you to add a written text in addition to marking a word or passage that you can collect at the end of your note-taking session. Look into the specific tools for your device and learn how to use the features that allow you to take notes electronically. You can also find apps on devices to help with taking notes, some of which you may automatically have installed when you buy the product. Microsoft’s OneNote, Google Keep, and the Notes feature on phones are relatively easy to use, and you may already have free access to those. ### Taking Notes on Non-Text Items (i.e., Tables, Maps, Figures, etc.) You may also encounter situations as you study and read textbooks, primary sources, and other resources for your classes that are not actually texts. You can still take notes on maps, charts, graphs, images, and tables, and your approach to these non-text features is similar to when you prepare to take notes over a passage of text. For example, if you are looking at the following map, you may immediately come up with several questions. Or it may initially appear overwhelming. Start by asking yourself these questions: 2. Who is the intended audience? 3. Where is it? 4. What time period does it depict? 5. What does the map’s legend (the explanation of symbols) include? 6. What other information do I need to make sense of this map? You may want to make an extra copy of a graphic or table before you add annotations if you are dealing with a lot of information. Making sense of all the elements will take time, and you don’t want to add to the confusion. ### Returning to Your Notes Later, as soon as possible after the class, you can go back to your notes and add in missing parts. Just as you may generate questions as you’re reading new material, you may leave a class session or lecture or activities with many questions. Write those down in a place where they won’t get lost in all your other notes. The exact timing of when you get back to the notes you take in class or while you are reading an assignment will vary depending on how many other classes you have or what other obligations you have in your daily schedule. A good starting place that is also easy to remember is to make every effort to review your notes within 24 hours of first taking them. Longer than that and you are likely to have forgotten some key features you need to include; must less time than that, and you may not think you need to review the information you so recently wrote down, and you may postpone the task too long. Use your phone or computer to set reminders for all your note review sessions so that it becomes a habit and you keep on top of the schedule. Your personal notes play a significant role in your test preparation. They should enhance how you understand the lessons, textbooks, lab sessions, and assignments. All the time and effort you put into first taking the notes and then annotating and organizing the notes will be for naught if you do not formulate an effective and efficient way to use them before sectional exams or comprehensive tests. The whole cycle of reading, note-taking in class, reviewing and enhancing your notes, and preparing for exams is part of a continuum you ideally will carry into your professional life. Don’t try to take short cuts; recognize each step in the cycle as a building block. Learning doesn’t end, which shouldn’t fill you with dread; it should help you recognize that all this work you’re doing in the classroom and during your own study and review sessions is ongoing and cumulative. Practicing effective strategies now will help you be a stronger professional. ### Friends & Family Matter After a challenging start to her first semester, Ana has made a few good friends and is feeling more like she belongs in college. She has been hanging out with people who are committed to their education and who study all the time. Ana has benefited from these regular study sessions and her grades have reflected the work that she has done. Her study group creates handwritten notes, flashcards, and elaborate mind maps that they use each time they meet. Ana’s roommate, Jasmine, a member of the rugby team, has not been as focused on her studies and is at risk of failing a few classes, especially the one that both of them have—General Psychology. She has shared with Ana that she is afraid she will fail, which will jeopardize her athletic scholarship. In an effort to help her, Ana has invited Jasmine to meet with her study group, but because Jasmine is a student athlete, she has little time to do more than go to practice, attend classes, and travel for games. Jasmine has not attended any of the sessions. While Ana is eating lunch with Jasmine one day, she asks Ana if she could have her notes and all the study materials Ana created with her study group, including the notes cards and elaborate mind maps that the group drew out. Jasmine has a big game over the weekend and wants to take the materials with her as she doesn’t have time to copy all of them. Jasmine is feeling desperate as she needs to make a high grade on the next test, or she will definitely fail the course. Ana is torn—she wants to help her roommate, but she also needs the materials to study herself, and she feels as if telling her “No” would not be good for their long-term relationship. ### Let’s Think About It Ana has several options. Think through the consequences of each one, and choose the best option or create your own option. 1. Ana gives her roommate the notes and materials for the weekend, and hopes that she has studied enough to do well herself. 2. Ana gives some of the materials that she knows the best (and doesn’t need to study) for the weekend, and keeps the rest for herself to study more. 3. Ana keeps the materials for herself, but offers to teach the material to her in person before she leaves and over a video conferencing service the evenings she is on the road. ### Let’s Talk About It Ana could have told Jasmine “No” and dealt with the consequences of the decision for the rest of the semester. However, as you read above, Ana did want to find a way to help her roommate. Here are some suggestions for communicating with others about the dilemma that Ana is facing: 1. “I would like to help you as I know you have struggled in this course, but because these study materials are part of my study group’s sessions and we are not finished studying, I don’t feel right giving them all to you. Is there another option that we can both feel good about?” 2. “I have invited you to study sessions before, but you have not had time because of your schedule. I have time to get you up to speed on some of the material before you leave, but if you can start to join us after you get back, you may find that it is much more effective than trying to learn the content in a short period of time.” 3. “Teaching you what I have learned so far will benefit us both–and I have time to do some of that over the next few days. Would that help you feel more comfortable when you study over the weekend?” Whatever choice you would make in this situation, it is always best to communicate clearly your needs, your concerns, and even your uncertainties. ### Summary and Next Steps for College Success Reading and note-taking are part of the foundation of college studying and learning. The expectation in college is that you read considerable amounts of text for each subject with the goal of learning more about the subjects. You may encounter reading situations, such as professional journal articles and long textbook chapters, that are more difficult to understand than texts you have read previously. As you progress through your college courses, you can employ reading strategies to help you complete your college reading assignments. Likewise, you will take notes in college that need to be complete so you can study and recall the information you learn in lectures and lab sessions. With so much significant information that you need to collect, study, and recall for your college courses, you need to be deliberate in your reading and note-taking. Honing these fundamental skills can only help you succeed in college and beyond because you will need to be able to take in and recall a vast amount of information. To that end, consider what else about reading and note-taking you would like to learn or practice. Choose one of the following to explore further this term: 1. Develop more curiosity about what you are reading by creating questions about what you will learn or how you will use the information. Look for articles, blog posts, podcasts, books, and films about what you are learning to help you develop more knowledge. 2. Explore the best reading strategy for your most challenging courses. Choose one of them, use it, and determine how well it worked. 3. Practice revising reading and lecture notes as part of organizing your study materials and developing a deeper understanding of the content. Check the results of this reorganization the next time you take a quiz or test. ### Checking In: Your College Readiness Checklist ### Winter

# Studying, Memory, and Test Taking ## Introduction ### Student Survey How confident are you in preparing for and taking tests? Take this quick survey to figure it out, ranking questions on a scale of 1—4, 1 meaning “least like me” and 4 meaning “most like me.” These questions will help you determine how the chapter concepts relate to you right now. As you are introduced to new concepts and practices, it can be informative to reflect on how your understanding changes over time. 1. I set aside enough time to prepare for tests. 2. If I don’t set aside enough time, or if life gets in the way, I can usually cram and get positive results. 3. I prefer to pull all-nighters. The adrenaline and urgency help me remember what I need come test time. 4. I study my notes, highlight book passages, and use flash cards, but I still don’t feel like I’m as successful as I should be on tests. You can also take the Chapter 5 Survey anonymously online. Deep learning is the long-term goal of college students, especially when they start taking classes in their major or that directly connect to their career field. However, deep learning doesn’t happen overnight. After you have read the texts and listened to the lectures, you will want to participate in activities that help you move your understanding from your short-term memory to your long-term memory. And there is only one way to learn deeply: through effective study practices and test taking in which you receive feedback on how well you have learned. ### About This Chapter By the time you finish this chapter, you should be able to do the following: 1. Describe the key components of deep learning. 2. Outline the importance of memory when studying and note some opportunities to strengthen memory. 3. Discuss specific ways to increase the effectiveness of studying. 4. Articulate test-taking strategies that minimize anxiety and maximize results. 5. Discuss the role that metacognition plays in the learning process. It makes sense that the better you are at studying and test taking, the better results you’ll see in the form of high grades and long-term learning and knowledge acquisition. And the more experience you have using your study and memorization skills and employing success strategies during exams, the better you’ll get at it. But you have to keep it up—maintaining these skills and learning better strategies as the content you study becomes increasingly complex is crucial to your success. Once you transition into a work environment, you will be able to use these same skills that helped you to be successful in college as you face the problem-solving demands and expectations of your job. Earning high grades is one goal, and certainly a good one when you’re in college, but true learning means committing content to long-term memory.

# Studying, Memory, and Test Taking ## Deepening Your Learning Questions to Consider: 1. Why is deepening your learning important in college? 2. What are the steps to deepening your learning? In the chapter that covers Reading and Note-taking, you were introduced to Bloom’s Taxonomy and its role in helping you plan your learning. As you may recall, college professors will expect learning at a higher level than just being able to recall or identify key terms or concepts. To learn deeply, you will need to do more with the content that you are learning besides reading or listening and taking good notes. This is a good first step, but only a first step! Beyond this step, deep learning requires that you will need to 1. Practice recalling the information (strengthening your memory), 2. Learn how to use the information at different levels (Bloom’s Taxonomy), 3. Use a variety of effective study strategies based on the type of course, content, or test you have, 4. Evaluate your learning process by reviewing feedback that you get from your professors, and 5. Make changes to your learning processes to ensure that you have indeed learned deeply. Let’s revisit Bloom’s Taxonomy to see how the different levels may show up in your learning process. The table below presents the levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy and show how it applies to the topic of note-taking methods. If you start at the bottom of the table, you will see that as you move up the taxonomy, the tasks differ. In some cases, they may get more difficult or more time intensive. However, if you only learn the definitions of these note-taking strategies, then you may find it challenging to complete the tasks that are higher-level Bloom’s. The rest of the chapter provides you with information and strategies that can help you “move up Bloom’s”. Many first-year college students study at the lowest levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy by only using flashcards or reviewing their notes so they are able to recognize key terms or ideas. They do not anticipate that they will be asked to put the information in a new context or demonstrate a detailed understanding of the content. This rest of this chapter provides extensive information about how to deepen your learning so that you know the content well enough to answer any type of question on an assignment or test. This information will also help you on the job when you need to learn new information to help your clients or you need to study for career certifications. Either way, you will continue to learn and use learning strategies beyond graduation.

# Studying, Memory, and Test Taking ## Memory Questions to Consider: 1. How does working memory work, exactly? 2. How do short-term and long-term memory function? 3. What obstacles exist to remembering? 4. When and how should you memorize things? 5. In what situations is it best to memorize, and what do you memorize? 6. What can you do consistently to improve both your short- and long-term memory? Memory is one of those cherished but mysterious elements in life. Everyone has memories, and some people are very good at rapid recall, which is an enviable skill for test takers. We know that we seem to lose the capacity to remember things as we age, and scientists continue to study how we remember some things but not others and what memory means, but we don’t know that much about memory, really. Nelson Cowan is one researcher who is working to explain what we do know about memory. His article “What Are the Differences between Long-Term, Short-Term, and Working Memory?” breaks down the different types of memory and what happens when we recall thoughts and ideas. When we remember something, we actually do quite a lot of thinking.NCBI. “What are the differences between long-term, short-term, and working memory?” https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2657600/ We go through three basic steps when we remember ideas or images: we encode, store, and retrieve that information. Encoding is how we first perceive information through our senses, such as when we smell a lovely flower or a putrid trash bin. Both make an impression on our minds through our sense of smell and probably our vision. Our brains encode, or label, this content in short-term memory in case we want to think about it again. If the information is important and we have frequent exposure to it, the brain will store it for us in case we need to use it in the future in our aptly named long-term memory. Later, the brain will allow us to recall or retrieve that image, feeling, or information so we can do something with it. This is what we call remembering. ### Foundations of Memory William Sumrall et al. in the International Journal of Humanities and Social Science explain the foundation of memory by noting: “Memory is a term applied to numerous biological devices by which living organisms acquire, retain, and make use of skills and knowledge. It is present in all forms of higher order animals. The most evolutionary forms of memory have taken place in human beings. Despite much research and exploration, a complete understanding of human memory does not exist.”Sumrall, William, et. al. “A Review of Memory Theory.” International Journal of Humanities and Social Science, 2016. Vol. 6. No. 5. ### Working Memory Working memory is a type of short-term memory, but we use it when we are actively performing a task. For example, nursing student Marilyn needs to use her knowledge of chemical reactions to suggest appropriate prescriptions in various medical case studies. She does not have to recall every single fact she learned in years of chemistry classes, but she does need to have a working memory of certain chemicals and how they work with others. To ensure she can make these connections, Marilyn will have to review and study the relevant chemical details for the types of drug interactions she will recommend in the case studies. In working memory, you have access to whatever information you have stored in your memory that helps you complete the task you are performing. For instance, when you begin to study an assignment, you certainly need to read the directions, but you must also remember that in class your professor reduced the number of problem sets the written instructions indicated you needed to finish. This was an oral addition to the written assignment. The change to the instructions is what you bring up in working memory when you complete the assignment. ### Short-Term Memory Short-term memory is a very handy thing. It helps us remember where we set our keys or where we left off on a project the day before. Think about all the aids we employ to help us with short-term memory: you may hang your keys in a particular place each evening so you know exactly where they are supposed to be. When you go grocery shopping, do you ever choose a product because you recall an advertising jingle? You see the box of cereal and you remember the song on the TV commercial. If that memory causes you to buy that product, the advertising worked. We help our memory along all the time, which is perfectly fine. In fact, we can modify these everyday examples of memory assistance for purposes of studying and test taking. The key is a deliberate use of strategies that are not so elaborate that they are too difficult to remember in our short-term memory. Harvard psychology professor George A. Miller in 1956 claimed humans can recall about five to nine bits of information in our short-term memory at any given time. Other research has come after this claim, but this concept is a popular one. Miller’s article is entitled “The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two” and is easily accessible online if you’re interested in learning more about this seminar report.Miller, George A. “The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two: Some Limits on Our capacity for Processing Information.” Psychological Review, 1956. Considering the vast amount of knowledge available to us, five to nine bits isn’t very much to work with. To combat this limitation, we clump information together, making connections to help us stretch our capacity to remember. Many factors play into how much we can remember and how we do it, including the subject matter, how familiar we are with the ideas, and how interested we are in the topic, but we certainly cannot remember absolutely everything, for a test or any other task we face. As such, we have to use effective strategies, like those we cover later in this chapter, to get the most out of our memories. ### Long-Term Memory Long-term memory is exactly what it sounds like. These are things you recall from the past, such as the smell of your elementary school cafeteria or how to pop a wheelie on a bicycle. Our brain keeps a vast array of information, images, and sensory experiences in long-term memory. Whatever it is we are trying to keep in our memories, whether a beautiful song or a list of chemistry vocabulary terms, must first come into our brains in short-term memory. If we want these fleeting ideas to transfer into long-term memory, we have to do some work, such as causing frequent exposure to the information over time (such as studying the terms every day for a period of time or the repetition you performed to memorize multiplication tables or spelling rules) and some relevant manipulation of the information. According to Alison Preston of the University of Texas at Austin’s Center for Learning and Memory, “A short- term memory’s conversion to a long-term memory requires changes within the brain . . . and result[s] in changes to neurons (nerve cells) or sets of neurons. . . . For example, new synapses—the connections between neurons through which they exchange information—can form to allow for communication between new networks of neurons. Alternatively, existing synapses can be strengthened to allow for increased sensitivity in the communication between two neurons.”Preston, Alison. “Ask the Experts: How do short-term memories become long-term memories?” Scientific American, Dec. 2017. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-do-short-term-memories-become-l/ When you work to convert your thoughts into memories, you are literally changing your mind. Much of this brain work begins in the part of the brain called the hippocampus. Preston continues, “Initially, the hippocampus works in concert with sensory-processing regions distributed in the neocortex (the outermost layer of the brain) to form the new memories. Within the neocortex, representations of the elements that constitute an event in our life are distributed across multiple brain regions according to their content. . . .When a memory is first formed, the hippocampus rapidly combines this distributed information into a single memory, thus acting as an index of representations in the sensory-processing regions. As time passes, cellular and molecular changes allow for the strengthening of direct connections among the neocortical regions, enabling access to the memory independent of the hippocampus.” We learn the lyrics of a favorite song by singing and/or playing the song over and over. That alone may not be enough to get that song into the coveted long-term memory area of our brain, but if we have an emotional connection to the song, such as a painful breakup or a life-changing event that occurred while we were listening to the song, this may help. Think of ways to make your study session memorable and create connections with the information you need to study. That way, you have a better chance of keeping your study material in your memory so you can access it whenever you need it. ### Obstacles to Remembering If remembering things for exams or for learning new disciplines were easy, no one would have problems with it, but students face several significant obstacles to remembering, including a persistent lack of sleep and an unrealistic reliance on cramming. Life is busy and stressful, so you have to keep practicing strategies to help you study and remember successfully, but you also must be mindful of obstacles to remembering. ### Lack of Sleep Sleep and college don’t always go well together. You have so much to do! All that reading, all those papers, all those extra hours in the science lab or tutoring center or library! And then we have the social and emotional aspects of going to school, which may not be the most critical aspect of your life as you pursue more education but are a significant part of who you are. When you consider everything you need to attend to in college, you probably won’t be surprised that sleep is often the first thing we give up as we search for more time to accomplish everything we’re trying to do. That seems reasonable—just wake up an hour earlier or stay up a little later. But you may want to reconsider picking away at your precious sleep time. Sleep benefits all of your bodily functions, and your brain needs sleep time to dream and rest through the night. You probably can recall times when you had to do something without adequate sleep. We say things like “I just can’t wake up” and “I’m walking around half asleep.” In fact, you may actually be doing just that. Lack of sleep impairs judgment, focus, and our overall mood. Do you know anyone who is always grumpy in the morning? A fascinating medical study from the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) claims that sleep deprivation is as dangerous as being drunk, both in what it does to our bodies and in the harm we may cause to ourselves and others in driving and performing various daily tasks.Nir, Yuval, et. al. “Selective neuronal lapses precede human cognitive lapses following sleep deprivation,” Nature Medicine volume23, pages 1474–1480 (2017). UCLA Health. “Drowsy Driving.” https://www.uclahealth.org/sleepcenter/drowsy-driving If you can’t focus well because you didn’t get enough sleep, then you likely won’t be able to remember whatever it is you need to recall for any sort of studying or test-taking situation. Most exams in a college setting go beyond simple memorization, but you still have a lot to remember for exams. For example, when Saanvi sits down to take an exam on introductory biology, she needs to recall all the subject-specific vocabulary she read in the textbook’s opening chapters, the general connections she made between biological studies and other scientific fields, and any biology details introduced in the unit for which she is taking the exam. Trying to make these mental connections on too little sleep will take a large mental toll because Saanvi has to concentrate even harder than she would with adequate sleep. She isn’t merely tired; her brain is not refreshed and primed to conduct difficult tasks. Although not an exact comparison, think about when you overtax a computer by opening too many programs simultaneously. Sometimes the programs are sluggish or slow to respond, making it difficult to work efficiently; sometimes the computer shuts down completely and you have to reboot the entire system. Your body is a bit like that on too little sleep. On the flip side, though, your brain on adequate sleep is amazing, and sleep can actually assist you in making connections, remembering difficult concepts, and studying for exams. The exact reasons for this is still a serious research project for scientists, but the results all point to a solid connection between sleep and cognitive performance. If you’re interested in learning more about this research, the American Academy of Sleep Medicine (AASM) is a good place to start. One article is entitled “College Students: Getting Enough Sleep Is Vital to Academic Success.” ### Downside of Cramming At least once in their college careers, most students will experience the well-known pastime called . Consider the following scenario: Shelley has lots of classes, works part-time at a popular restaurant, and is just amazingly busy, so she puts off serious study sessions day after day. She isn’t worried because she has set aside time she would have spent sleeping to cram just before the exam. That’s the idea anyway. Originally, she planned to stay up a little late and study for four hours from 10 p.m. to 2 a.m. and still get several hours of refreshing sleep. But it’s Dolphin Week or Beat State Day or whatever else comes up, and her study session doesn’t start until midnight—she’ll pull an all-nighter (to be more precise, this is actually an all-really-early- morning-er, but it doesn’t quite have the same ring to it). So, two hours after her original start time, she tries to cram all the lessons, problems, and information from the last two weeks of lessons into this one session. Shelley falls asleep around 3 a.m. with her notes and books still on her bed. After her late night, she doesn’t sleep well and goes into the morning exam tired. Shelley does okay but not great on the exam, and she is not pleased with her results. More and more research is showing that the stress Shelley has put on her body doing this, combined with the way our brains work, makes cramming a seriously poor choice for learning. One sleep researcher, Dr. Susan Redline from Boston, says, “Sleep deficiency can affect mood and the ability to make memories and learn, but it also affects metabolism, appetite, blood pressure, levels of inflammation in the body and perhaps even the immune response.”Redline, Susan https://abcnews.go.com/Health/Sleep/health-hazards-linked-lack-sleep/story?id=16524313 Your brain simply refuses to cooperate with cramming—it sounds like a good idea, but it doesn’t work. Cramming causes stress, which can lead to paralyzing test anxiety; it erroneously supposes you can remember and understand something fully after only minimal exposure; and it overloads your brain, which, however amazing it is, can only focus on one concept at a time and a limited number of concepts all together for learning and retention. Leading neuroscientist John Medina claims that the brain begins to wander at about 10 minutes, at which point you need a new stimulus to spark interest. That doesn’t mean you can’t focus for longer than 10 minutes; you just have to switch gears a lot to keep your brain engaged. Have you ever heard a speaker drone on about one concept for, say, 30 minutes without somehow changing pace to engage the listeners? It doesn’t take much to re-engage—pausing to ask the listeners questions or moving to a different location in the room will do it—but without these subtle attention markers, listeners start thinking of something else. The same thing happens to you if you try to cram all reading, problem-solving, and note reviewing into one long session; your brain will wander. ### Determining When/What to Memorize In the realm of learning and studying, some conditions warrant memorization as the most effective way to work with information. For instance, if you are expected to have a working knowledge of conversational French or Spanish, you will have to memorize some words. Simply knowing a long list of terms isn’t going to help you order food in a café or ask for directions in a foreign country because you also need to understand the other language’s grammar and have some sort of context for what needs to be said from your vocabulary list. But you cannot say the words in a different language if you cannot remember your vocabulary. From this scenario, you can assume that memorization is a good fit for some parts of language acquisition. If you approach all your studying as memorization, you will find your course tests difficult at best. Most college courses will ask you to apply, analyze, evaluate, and create with the information you are learning, which is discussed earlier in the chapter. Merely being able to memorize so that you can recognize or recall information will not get you far in your college classes. A worthwhile book on memory, thinking, and learning is a short study called Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning by Peter Brown, Henry Roediger, and Mark McDaniel. The authors conclude, after extensive research, that our attempts to speed up learning and make studying easier are not good ideas. Studying is hard work, and it should be. For learning to stick, we need to work hard to pull the information out of our memory and use it by continually pushing ourselves to accomplish increasingly difficult tasks.

# Studying, Memory, and Test Taking ## Studying Questions to Consider: 1. How do you prepare yourself and your environment for successful studying? 2. What study strategies will be most beneficial to you? 3. What are learning preferences and strategies and how can you leverage those to your advantage? ### Preparing to Study Studying is hard work, but you can still learn some techniques to help you be a more effective learner. Two major and interrelated techniques involve avoiding distractions to the best of your ability and creating a study environment that works to help you concentrate. ### Avoiding Distractions We have always had distractions—video games, television shows, movies, music, friends—even housecleaning can distract us from doing something else we need to do, like study for an exam. That may seem extreme, but sometimes vacuuming is the preferred activity to buckling down and working through calculus problems! Cell phones, tablets, and portable computers that literally bring a world of possibilities to us anywhere have brought distraction to an entirely new level. When was the last time you were with a large group of people when you didn’t see at least a few people on devices? When you study, your biggest challenge may be to block out all the competing noise. And letting go of that connection to our friends and the larger world, even for a short amount of time, can be difficult. Perhaps the least stressful way to allow yourself a distraction-free environment is to make the study session a definite amount of time: long enough to get a significant amount of studying accomplished but short enough to hold your attention. You can increase that attention time with practice and focus. Pretend it is a professional appointment or meeting during which you cannot check e-mail or texts or otherwise engage with your portable devices. We have all become very attached to the ability to check in—anonymously on social media or with family and friends via text, chat, and calls. If you set a specific amount of time to study without interruptions, you can convince your wandering mind that you will soon be able to return to your link to the outside world. Start small and set an alarm—a 30-minute period to review notes, then a brief break, then another 45-minute study session to quiz yourself on the material, and so on. When you prepare for your optimal study session, remember to do these things: 1. Put your phone out of sight—in another room or at least some place where you will not see or hear it vibrate or ring. Just flipping it over is not enough. 2. Turn off the television or music (more on that in the next section). 3. Unless you are deliberately working with a study group, study somewhere alone if possible, or at least far enough away from others to not hear them talking. If you live with lots of other people or don’t have access to much privacy, see if you can negotiate some space alone to study. Ask others to leave one part of the house or an area in one room as a quiet zone during certain hours. Ask politely for a specific block of time; most people will respect your educational goals and be willing to accommodate you. If you’re trying to work out quiet zones with small children in the house, the bathtub with a pillow can make a fine study oasis. ### Study Environment You may not always be in the mood or inspired to study. And if you have a long deadline, maybe you can blow off a study session on occasion, but you shouldn’t get into the habit of ignoring a strong study routine. Jane Austen once wrote in a letter, “I am not at all in a humor for writing; I must write on till I am.” Sometimes just starting is the hard part; go ahead and begin. Don’t wait around for your study muse; start working, and she’ll show up. Sometimes you just need to plop down and study whenever and wherever you can manage—in the car waiting for someone, on the bus, at the Little League field as you cheer on your shortstop. And that’s okay if this is the exception. For long-term success in studying, though, you need a better study setting that will help you get the most out of your limited study time. Whatever your space limitations, carve out a place that you can dedicate to reading, writing, note-taking, and reviewing. This doesn’t need to be elaborate and expensive—all you truly need is a flat surface large enough to hold either your computer or writing paper, book or notes, pens/pencils/ markers, and subject-specific materials you may need (e.g., stand-alone calculators, drawing tools, and notepads). Your space should be cool or warm enough for you to be comfortable as you study. What do you have now that you consider your study space? Is it set up for your optimal success? If it is at all possible, try to make this area exclusive to your study sessions and something you can leave set up all the time and a place out of the way of family or roommate traffic. For example, Martina thought setting up her study station on the dining room table was a good idea at first. The view was calming, and the table was big enough to spread out and could even hold all her materials to study architectural drawings, her favorite subject. But then she needed the table for a small family dinner party, so she had to find a cubbyhole to hide away her supplies with some needing to go into a closet in the next room. Now she was spread out over multiple study spaces. And the family TV was in an adjacent room, not visible from the table but certainly an auditory distraction. Martina ultimately decided to forgo her view and create a smaller station in an unused bedroom so she could leave her supplies out and have a quieter area. You may have to try out numerous places to determine what works best for you. In fact, if you have a few comfortable places to study, such as the library, a coffee shop, and your room, you will increase your ability to recall the information you are studying because these different environments will help you encode the information you are studying in multiple ways. The belief that you must study in the same place and in the same way is a myth: Varying your study spaces and your study strategies can help you encode, store, and retrieve the information more effectively. Wherever you study, try to make it a welcoming place you want to be in—not an uncomfortable environment that makes you want to just do the minimum you must complete and leave. You should include the basics: a good chair, a work surface, and whatever materials, books, notes, and other supplies you need for the subject you are studying. You don’t need an elaborate setting, but you may want to consider including a few effective additions if you have the space: 1. small bulletin board for often-used formulas 2. encouraging quotes or pictures of your goal 3. whiteboard for brainstorming 4. sticky notes for reminders in texts and notes 5. file holder for most-used documents 6. bookshelf for reference books ### Debunking Study Myths ### MYTH #1: You can multitask while studying. How many times do you eat in the car? Watch TV while you write out a grocery list? Listen to music while you cook dinner? What about type an e-mail while you’re on the phone with someone else and jot down notes about the call? The common term for this attempt to do more than one thing at a time is multitasking, and almost everyone does it at some point. On some days, you simply cannot accomplish all that you want to get done, so you double up. The problem is, multitasking doesn’t really work. Of course, it exists, and we do it. For instance, we walk and chew gum or drive and talk, but we are not really thinking about two or more distinct things or doing multiple processes simultaneously. You are far more likely to miss important details, and far less likely to retain information, if you try to multitask when studying. ### MYTH #2: Highlighting main points of a text is useful on its own. Another myth of studying that seems to have a firm hold is that the idea of highlighting text—in and of itself—is the best way to review study material. It is one way, and you can get some benefit from it, but don’t trick yourself into spending too much time on this surface activity and consider your study session complete. Annotating texts or notes is a first-step type of study practice. If you allow it to take up all your time, you may think you are fully prepared for an exam because you put in the time. Actually, you need much more time reviewing and retrieving your lessons and ideas from the text or class lecture as well as quizzing yourself to accomplish your goal of learning so you can perform well on the exam. Highlighting is a task you can do rather easily, and it makes you feel good because you are actively engaging with your text, but true learning needs more steps. ### MYTH #3: Studying effectively is effortless. There is nothing effortless, or even pleasant at times, about studying. This is why so many students don’t put in the time necessary to learn complex material: it takes time, effort, and, in some cases, a little drudgery. This is not to say that the outcome, learning—and maybe making an A—is not pleasant and rewarding. It is just that when done right, learning takes focus, deliberate strategies, and time. Think about a superstar athlete who puts in countless hours of drills and conditioning so that she makes her work on the field look easy. If you can also enjoy the studying, the skill development, and the knowledge building, then you will most likely be more motivated to do the work. ### Study Strategies Everyone wishes they had a better memory or a stronger way to use memorization. You can make the most of the memory you have by making some conscious decisions about how you study and prepare for exams. Incorporate these ideas into your study sessions: Practicing effective memorization is when you use a trick, technique, or strategy to recall something—for another class, an exam, or even to bring up an acquaintance’s name in a social situation. Really whatever works for you to recall information is a good tool to have. You can create your own quizzes and tests to go over material from class. You can use mnemonics to jog your memory. You can work in groups to develop unique ways to remember complex information. Whatever methods you choose to enhance your memory, keep in mind that repetition is one of the most effective tools in any memory strategy. Do whatever you do over and over for the best results. ### Using Mnemonics Mnemonics (pronounced new-monics) are a way to remember things using reminders that are linked to the content you are trying to remember. Did you learn the points of the compass by remembering NEWS (north, east, west, and south)? Or the notes on the music staff as FACE or EGBDF (every good boy does fine)? These are mnemonics, specifically , or words created out of the first letters of the terms you are trying to recall. When you’re first learning something and you aren’t familiar with the foundational concepts, these help you bring up the information quickly, especially for multistep processes or lists. After you’ve worked in that discipline for a while, you likely don’t need the mnemonics, but you probably won’t forget them either. There are a variety of mnemonics that work well for college students, but use them with caution as they are good for learning basic information and not complex material. In addition to acronyms, here are a few that college students have used to help them recall. 1. Acrostic sentences. These are sentences formed from the first letter of each item you are trying to remember. They work best for remembering steps in a process. For example, “Please Excuse My Dear Aunt Sally” is an acrostic sentence for the steps in the order of operations when solving an equation. Each word starts with a letter that corresponds to another word in the steps: Parentheses, Exponents, Multiplication, Division, Addition, and Subtraction. 2. Chunking. Grouping items together is another way to improve recall by organizing them by a characteristic they have in common. For example, you may need to remember the countries in Africa and could organize them by relative size, location (north, south, etc.), or letter they begin with. 3. Memory palace. This mnemonic device is more complicated than most because it requires a few steps to create, but many students have found that this strategy works well for them in classes where they must recall a large amount of content. The memory palace, also called a Roman Room or the loci method, requires you to think of a physical space, real or imagined, in which you can “place” items you need to recall within that location. For example, if you are thinking of your own bedroom as the space and you need to remember the parts of speech, you may place “verb” in front of the door to your room as you will need to use an action to open it up. Then, your bed may be where you place “noun” because it is where you add actions such as sleep, read, and daydream. The mirror on your wall may be where you place the term “adjective” because you look into it every day to see what you look like: sad, happy, sleepy. ### Practicing Concept Association When you study, you’re going to make connections to other things—that’s a good thing. It shows a highly intelligent ability to make sense of the world when you can associate like and even somewhat unlike components. If, for instance, you were reading Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” and you read the line that he had been in Birmingham, you may remember a trip you took with your family last summer through Alabama and that you passed by and visited the civil rights museum in Birmingham. This may remind you of the different displays you saw and the discussions you had with your family about what had happened concerning civil rights in the 1950s, ’60s, and ’70s in the United States. This is a good connection to make, but if your assignment is to critique the literary aspects of King’s long epistle, you need to be able to come back to the actual words of the letter and see what trends you can see in his writing and why he may have used his actual words to convey the powerful message. The connection is fine, but you can’t get lost in going down rabbit holes that may or may not be what you’re supposed to be doing at the time. Make a folder for this assignment where you can put things such as a short summary of your trip to Alabama. You may eventually include notes from this summary in your analysis. You may include something from a website that shows you information about that time period. Additionally, you could include items about Martin Luther King Jr.’s life and death and his work for civil rights. All of these elements may help you understand the significance of this one letter, but you need to be cognizant of what you’re doing at the time and remember it is not usually a good idea to just try to keep it all in your head. The best idea is to have a way to access this information easily, either electronically or in hard copy, so that if you are able to use it, you can find it easily and quickly. ### Generating Idea Clusters Like mnemonics, idea clusters are nothing more than ways to help your brain come up with ways to recall specific information by connecting it to other knowledge you already have. For example, Andrea is an avid knitter and remembers how to create complicated stitches by associating them with nursery rhymes she read as a child. A delicate stitch that requires concentration because it makes the yarn look like part of it is hiding brings to mind Red Riding Hood, and connecting it to that character helps Andrea recall the exact order of steps necessary to execute the design. You can do the same thing with song lyrics, lines from movies, or favorite stories where you draw a connection to the well-known phrase or song and the task you need to complete. ### Three Effective Study Strategies There are more than three study strategies, but focusing on the most effective strategies will make an enormous difference in how well you will be able to demonstrate learning (also known as “acing your tests”). Here is a brief overview of each of the three strategies: 1. Spacing—This has to do with when you study. Hint: Don’t cram; study over a period of days, preferably with “breaks” in between. 2. Interleaving—This has to do with what you study. Hint: Don’t study just one type of content, topic, chapter, or unit at a time; instead, mix up the content when you study. 3. Practice testing—This has to do with how you study. Hint: Don’t just reread content. You must quiz or test your ability to retrieve the information from your brain. ### Spacing We all know that cramming is not an effective study strategy, but do we know why? Research on memory suggests that giving yourself time in between study sessions actually helps you forget the information. And forgetting, which sounds like it would be something you don’t want to do, is actually good for your ability to remember information long-term. That’s because every time you forget something, you need to relearn it, leading to gains in your overall understanding and “storage” of the material. The table below demonstrates how spacing works. Assume you are going to spend about four hours studying for a sociology exam. Cramming would have you spending most of those four hours the night before the exam. With spacing, on the other hand, you would study a little bit each day. ### Interleaving One particular studying technique is called interleaving, which calls for students to mix up the content that is being studied. This means not just spending the entire study session on one sort of problem and then moving on to a different sort of problem at a later time. If you take the schedule we used for the spacing example above, we can add the interleaving concepts to it. Notice that interleaving includes revisiting material from a previous chapter or unit or revisiting different types of problems or question sets. The benefit is that your brain is “mixing up” the information, which can sometimes lead to short-term forgetting but can lead to long-term memory and learning. ### Practice Testing You can do a practice “test” in two ways. One is to test yourself as you are reading or taking in information. This is a great way to add a little variety to your studying. You can ask yourself what a paragraph or text section means as you read. To do this, read a passage in a text, cover up the material, and ask yourself, “What was the main idea of this section?” Recite aloud or write down your answer, and then check it against the original information. Another, more involved, way to practice test is to create flashcards or an actual test by writing a test. This takes more time, but there are online programs such as Quizlet that make it a little easier. Practice testing is an effective study strategy because it helps you practice retrieving information, which is what you want to be able to do when you are taking the real test. One of the best ways to learn something is to teach it to someone else, so ask a friend or family member if you can explain something to them, and teach them the lesson. You may find you know more about the subject than you thought or you may realize quickly that you need to do more studying. Why does teaching someone else rank as one of the most effective ways to learn something? It is a form of practice testing that requires you to demonstrate you know something in front of someone else! No one wants to look like they don’t know what they are talking about, even if your audience is another classmate. ### Recognizing Strengths/Weaknesses of Preferred Study Approaches Most people don’t learn to ride a bicycle by reading a manual; they learn by watching others, listening to instructions, and getting up on the seat and learning to balance—sometimes with training wheels or a proud parent holding on, but ultimately without any other support. They may fall over and feel insecure, but usually, they learn to make the machine go. Most of us employ multiple methods of study all the time. You usually only run into trouble if you stubbornly rely on just one way to learn or study and the material you’re studying or the task you want to accomplish doesn’t lend itself to that preference. You can practice specific strategies to help you learn in your preferred learning approach. Can you think of a time when the way you usually study a situation didn’t work? When deciding on a study approach, consider what you know about the material and the type of knowledge it involves. Is it a group of concepts related to problem-solving methods, such as those you’d find in a physics class? Or is it a literary analysis of a novel? Consider as many elements as possible about the material -- and the way the material will be assessed -- to help choose a study approach. You should also consider your instructor’s preferred method of teaching and learning. Watch the way they teach lessons or convey necessary course information to the class. Do they almost always augment lessons with video clips to provide examples or create a memorable narrative? Do they like to show you how something works by demonstrating and working with their hands—for instance, assembling a piece of equipment by taking it apart and putting it back together again? Echoing their teaching approach may help your studying approach. That doesn’t mean you have to change your entire learning approach to match your instructors’ methods. Many instructors understand that their students will have different ways of learning and try to present information in multiple ways. ### Practicing Active Continuous Improvement for All Preferences You can certainly learn through specific approaches or according to specific preferences, but you will also need to adapt to different situations, skills, and subject areas. Don’t limit yourself to thinking you can only learn one way or another. That mindset induces anxiety when you encounter a learning situation that doesn’t match your preference. What if your instructor only uses a spoken lecture to teach concepts in your chemistry class, and you consider yourself a visual learner? Or what if the only method presented to you for learning mathematical computations is to see videos of others working problems, and you’re more hands-on? You may have to concentrate in a different way or devise other strategies to learn, but you can do it. In fact, you should sometimes work on the styles/preferences that you feel are your least favorite; it will actually strengthen your overall ability to learn and retain information.Newton, Phillip M., & Miah, Mahallad. “Evidence-Based Higher Education—Is the Learning Style ‘Myth’ Important?” Dr. Stephen Covey, famous leadership coach and businessman, called this attention to knowing and honing all your skill sets, not just your favorites, sharpening the saw. He advised that people should be aware of their strengths but should always hone their weaknesses by saying, “We must never become too busy sawing to take time to sharpen the saw.”Covey, Stephen. The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People ® https://www.franklincovey.com/the-7-habits.html For instance, in the chemistry lecture example, you may need to take good notes from the spoken lecture and then review those notes as you sketch out any complex ideas or formulas. If the math videos are not enough for you to grasp difficult problems, you may ask for or find your own problems for additional practice covering that particular mathematical concept to solve on your own.

# Studying, Memory, and Test Taking ## Test Taking Questions to Consider: 1. What are the differences between test prep and taking the actual test? 2. How can you take a whole person approach to test taking? 3. What can you do on test day to increase your confidence and success? 4. What should you know about test anxiety? Once you are practicing good study habits, you’ll be better prepared for actual test taking. Since studying and test taking are both part of learning, honing your skills in one will help you in the other. Probably the most obvious differences between your preparation for an exam and the actual test itself is your level of urgency and the time constraints. A slight elevation in your stress level can actually be okay for testing—it keeps you focused and on your game when you need to bring up all the information, thinking, and studying to show what you’ve learned. Properly executed, test preparation mixed in with a bit of stress can significantly improve your actual test-taking experience. ### Preparation vs. Actual Test You can replicate the effective sense of urgency an actual test produces by including timed writing into your study sessions. You don’t need all of your study time to exactly replicate the test, but you would be well served to find out the format of the exam in advance and practice the skills you’ll need to use for the various test components. Consider this scenario: On one early exam in history, Stuart learned the prof was going to include several short-answer essay questions—one for each year of the time period covered. Stuart set up practice times to write for about 15 to 20 minutes on significant events from his notes because he estimated that would be about how much time he could devote out of the hour-long testing session to write one or two required short-answer questions. He would write a prompt from his notes, set a timer, and start writing. If you’re ready and you have practiced and know the material, 20 minutes is adequate to prepare, draft, and revise a short response, but you don’t have a lot of extra time. Likewise, in a math exam, you will need to know what kinds of problems you will have to solve and to what extent you’ll need to show your computational work on the exam. If you are able to incorporate this sort of timed problem-solving into your study time, you’ll be more prepared and confident when you actually come to the exam. Making yourself adhere to a timed session during your study can only help. It puts a sense of urgency on you, and it will help you to find out what types of problems you need to practice more than ones that perhaps you’re more comfortable solving. ### Leveraging Study Habits for Test Prep In your mind, you probably know what you need to do to be prepared for tests. Occasionally, something may surprise you—emphasis on a concept you considered unimportant or a different presentation of a familiar problem. But those should be exceptions. You can use all of your well-honed study habits to get ready for exams. is a checklist for study and test success for your consideration: Read this list with each separate class in mind, and check off the items you already do. Give yourself one point for every item you checked. If you always take the success steps—congratulations! They are not a guarantee, but doing the steps mindfully will give you a nice head start. If you do fewer than five of the steps—you have some work to do. But recognition is a good place to start, and you can incorporate these steps starting now. As strange as this may sound, you can find some interesting research articles online about using the taste or smell of peppermint to increase memory, recall, and focus. Read more at: http://naturalsociety.com/mint-scent-improve-brain-cognition-memory. While sucking on a peppermint disk won’t replace studying, why not experiment with this relatively easy idea that seems to be gaining some scientific traction? ### Whole Person Approach to Testing Just because you are facing a major exam in your engineering class (or math or science or English class) doesn’t mean everything else in your life comes to a stop. Perhaps that’s somewhat annoying, but that’s reality. Allergies still flare up, children still need to eat, and you still need to sleep. You must see your academic life as one segment of who you are—it’s an important segment, but just one aspect of who you are as a whole person. Consider this example: Neela tries to turn off everything else when she has exams coming up in her nursing program, which is pretty often. She ignores her health, puts off her family, tries to reschedule competing work tasks, and focuses all her energy on the pending exam. On the surface, that sounds like a reasonable approach, but if she becomes really sick by ignoring a minor head cold, or if she misses an important school deadline for one of her children, Neela risks making matters worse by attempting to compartmentalize so strictly. Taking care of her own health by eating and sleeping properly; asking for help in other aspects of her busy life, such as attending to the needs of her children; and seeing the big picture of how it all fits together would be a better approach. Pretending otherwise may work sporadically, but it is not sustainable for the long run. A whole person approach to testing takes a lot of organization, scheduling, and attention to detail, but the life- long benefits make the effort worthwhile. ### Establishing Realistic Expectations for Test Situations Would you expect to make a perfect pastry if you’ve never learned how to bake? Or paint a masterpiece if you’ve never tried to work with paints and brushes? Probably not. But often we expect ourselves to perform at much higher levels of achievement than that for which we’ve actually prepared. If you become very upset and stressed if you make any score lower than the highest, you probably need to reevaluate your own expectations for test situations. Striving to always do your best is an admirable goal. Realistically knowing that your current best may not achieve the highest academic ratings can help you plot your progress. Realistic continuous improvement is a better plan, because people who repeatedly attempt challenges for which they have not adequately prepared and understandably fail (or at least do not achieve the desired highest ranking) often start moving toward the goal in frustration. They simply quit. This doesn’t mean you settle for mediocre grades or refrain from your challenges. It means you become increasingly aware of yourself and your current state and potential future. Know yourself, know your strengths and weaknesses, and be honest with yourself about your expectations. ### Understanding Accommodations and Responsibilities As with so many parts of life, some people take exams in stride and do just fine. Others may need more time or change of location or format to succeed in test-taking situations. With adequate notice, most faculty will provide students with reasonable accommodations to assist students in succeeding in test situations. If you feel that you would benefit from receiving these sorts of accommodations, first speak with your instructor. You may also need to talk to a student services advisor for specific requirements for accommodations at your institution. If you need accommodations, you are responsible for understanding what your specific needs are and communicating your needs with your instructors. Before exams in class, you may be allowed to have someone else take notes for you, receive your books in audio form, engage an interpreter, or have adaptive devices in the classroom to help you participate. Testing accommodations may allow for additional time on the test, the use of a scribe to record exam answers, the use of a computer instead of handwriting answers, as well as other means to make the test situation successful. Talk to your instructors prior to the day of the test if you have questions about testing accommodations. ### Prioritizing Time Surrounding Test Situations Keep in mind that you don’t have any more or less time than anyone else, so you can’t make time for an activity. You can only use the time everyone gets wisely and realistically. Exams in college classes are important, but they are not the only significant events you have in your classes. In fact, everything leading up to the exam, the exam itself, and the post-exam activities are all one large continuum. Think of the exam as an event with multiple phases, more like a long-distance run instead of a 50-yard dash. Step back and look at the big picture of this timeline. Draw it out on paper. What needs to happen between now and the exam so you feel comfortable, confident, and ready? If your instructor conducts some sort of pre-exam summary or prep session, make sure to attend. These can be invaluable. If this instructor does not provide that sort of formal exam prep, create your own with a group of classmates or on your own. Consider everything you know about the exam, from written instructions to notes you took in class, including any experiential notes you may have from previous exams, such as the possibility of bonus points for answering an extra question that requires some time management on your part. You can read more about time management in Managing Your Time and Priorities. ### Test Day Once you get to the exam session, try your best to focus on nothing but the exam. This can be very difficult with all the distractions in our lives. But if you have done all the groundwork to attend the classes, completed the assignments, and scheduled your exam prep time, you are ready to focus intently for the comparatively short time most exams last. Arriving to class: Don’t let yourself be sidetracked right at the end. Beyond the preparation we’ve discussed, give yourself some more advantages on the actual test day: 1. Get to the testing location a few minutes early so you can settle into your place and take a few relaxing breaths. 2. Don’t let other classmates interrupt your calmness at this point. 3. Just get to your designated place, take out whatever supplies and materials you are allowed to have, and calm your mind. Taking the test: Once the instructor begins the test: 1. Listen carefully for any last-minute oral directions that may have changed some detail on the exam, such as the timing or the content of the questions. 2. As soon as you receive the exam sheet or packet, make a quick scan over the entire test. 3. Don’t spend a lot of time on this initial glance, but make sure you are familiar with the layout and what you need to do. 4. Using this first review, decide how you will allocate your available time for each section. 5. You can even jot down how many minutes you can allow for the different sections or questions. Then for each section, if the exam is divided this way, be sure you read the section directions very carefully so you don’t miss an important detail. For example, instructors often offer options—so you may have four short-answer questions from which to choose, but you only need to answer two of them. If you had not read the directions for that section, you may have thought you needed to provide answers to all four prompts. Working on extra questions for which you likely will receive no credit would be a waste of your limited exam time. The extra time you spend at the beginning is like an investment in your overall results. Answer every required question on the exam. Even if you don’t complete each one, you may receive some credit for partial answers. Whether or not you can receive partial credit would be an excellent question to ask before the exam during the preparation time. If you are taking an exam that contains multiple-choice questions, go through and answer the questions about which you are the most confident first. Read the entire question carefully even if you think you know what the stem (the introduction of the choices) says, and read all the choices. Skip really difficult questions or ones where your brain goes blank. Then you can go back and concentrate on those skipped ones later after you have answered the majority of the questions confidently. Sometimes a later question will trigger an idea in your mind that will help you answer the skipped questions. And, in a similar fashion to spending a few minutes right at the beginning of the test time to read the directions carefully and identify the test elements, allow yourself a few minutes at the end of the exam session to review your answers. Depending on what sort of exam it is, you can use this time to check your math computations, review an essay for grammatical and content errors, or answer the difficult multiple- choice questions you skipped earlier. Finally, make sure you have completed the entire test: check the backs of pages, and verify that you have a corresponding answer section for every question section on the exam. It can be easy to skip a section with the idea you will come back to it but then forget to return there, which can have a significant impact on your test results. ### After the Test As you leave the exam room, the last thing you may want to think about is that particular test. You probably have numerous other assignments, projects, and life obligations to attend to, especially if you pushed some of those off to study for this completed exam. Give yourself some space from this exam, but only for the duration of the time when your instructor is grading your exam. Once you have your results, study them—whether you did really well (Go, you!) or not as well as you had hoped (Keep your spirits up!). Both scenarios hold valuable information if you will use it. Consider this example: Thandie had a habit of going all-out for exams before she took them, and she did pretty well usually, but once the instructor passed back the graded tests, she would look at the letter grade, glance half-heartedly at the instructor’s comments, and toss the exam away, ready to move on to the next chapter, section, or concept. A better plan would be to learn from her exam results and analyze both what she did well and where she struggled. After a particularly unimpressive exam outing in her statistics class, Thandie took her crumpled-up exam to the campus tutoring center, where the tutor reviewed the test with her section by section. Together they discovered that Thandie did particularly well on the computational sections, which she admitted were her favorites, and not well at all on the short-answer essay questions that she did not expect to find in a stats class, which in her experience had been more geared toward the mathematical side of solving statistical problems. Going forward in this class, Thandie should practice writing out her explanations of how to compute the problems and talk to her instructor about ways to hone this skill. This tutoring session also proved to Thandie the benefit of holding on to important class papers—either electronically or in hard copy, depending on the class setup—for future reference. For some classes, you probably don’t need to keep every scrap of paper (or file) associated with your notes, exams, assignments, and projects, but for others, especially for those in your major, those early class materials may come in very handy in your more difficult later undergraduate courses or even in grad school when you need a quick refresher on the basic concepts. ### Test Anxiety Test anxiety is very real. You may know this firsthand. Almost everyone gets a little nervous before a major exam, in the same way most people get slightly anxious meeting a new potential date or undertaking an unfamiliar activity. We second-guess whether we’re ready for this leap, if we prepared adequately, or if we should postpone this potentially awkward situation. And in most situations, testing included, that reasonable level of nervous anticipation can be a good thing—enhancing your focus and providing you with a bit of bravado to get you through a difficult time. Test anxiety, however, can cause us to doubt ourselves so severely that we underperform or overcompensate to the point that we do not do well on the exam. Don’t despair; you can still succeed if you suffer from test anxiety. The first step is to understand what it is and what it is not, and then to practice some simple strategies to cope with your anxious feelings relative to test taking. Whatever you do, don’t use the label test anxiety to keep you from your dreams of completing your education and pursuing whatever career you have your eyes on. You are bigger than any anxiety. ### Understanding Test Anxiety If someone tries to tell you that test anxiety is all in your head, they’re sort of right. Our thinking is a key element of anxiety of any sort. On the other hand, test anxiety can manifest itself in other parts of our bodies as well. You may feel queasy or light-headed if you are experiencing test anxiety. Your palms may sweat, or you may become suddenly very hot or very cold for no apparent reason. At its worst, test anxiety can cause its sufferers to experience several unpleasant conditions including nausea, diarrhea, and shortness of breath. Some people may feel as though they may throw up, faint, or have a heart attack, none of which would make going into a testing situation a pleasant idea. You can learn more about symptoms of test anxiety from the Anxiety and Depression Association of America that conducts research on this topic.Reteguiz, Jo-Ann. “Relationship between anxiety and standardized patient test performance in the medicine clerkship.” Journal of general internal medicine vol. 21,5 (2006): 415-8. doi:10.1111/j.1525-1497.2006.00419. Back to our minds for a minute. We think constantly, and if we have important events coming up, such as exams, but other significant events as well, we tend to think about them seemingly all the time. Almost as if we have a movie reel looping in our heads, we can anticipate everything that may happen during these events—both sensational results and catastrophic endings. What if you oversleep on the test day? What if you’re hit by a bus on the way to campus? What if you get stung by a mysterious insect and have to save the world on the very day of your exam? How about the other way? You win the lottery! Your screenplay is accepted by a major publisher! You get a multimillion-dollar record deal! It could happen. Typically, though, life falls somewhere in between those two extremes, unless you live in an action movie. Our minds, however, (perhaps influenced by some of those action movies or spy novels we’ve seen and read) often gravitate to those black-and-white, all-or-nothing results. Hence, we can become very nervous when we think about taking an exam because if we do really poorly, we think, we may have to face consequences as dire as dropping out of school or never graduating. Usually, this isn’t going to happen, but we can literally make ourselves sick with anxiety if we dwell on those slight possibilities. You actually may encounter a few tests in your academic careers that are so important that you have to alter your other life plans temporarily, but truly, this is the exception, not the rule. Don’t let the most extreme and severe result take over your thoughts. Prepare well and do your best, see where you land, and then go from there. ### Using Strategies to Manage Test Anxiety You have to work hard to control test anxiety so it does not take an unhealthy hold on you every time you face a test situation, which for many of you will last well into your careers. One of the best ways to control test anxiety is to be prepared for the exam. You can control that part. You can also learn effective relaxation techniques including controlled breathing, visualization, and meditation. Some of these practices work well even in the moment: at your test site, take a deep breath, close your eyes, and smile—just bringing positive thoughts into your mind can help you meet the challenges of taking an exam without anxiety taking over. The tests in the corporate world or in other career fields may not look exactly like the ones you encounter in college, but professionals of all sorts take tests routinely. Again, being prepared helps reduce or eliminate this anxiety in all these situations. Think of a presentation or an explanation you have provided well numerous times—you likely are not going to feel anxious about this same presentation if asked to provide it again. That’s because you are prepared and know what to expect. Try to replicate this feeling of preparation and confidence in your test-taking situations. Many professions require participants to take frequent licensing exams to prove they are staying current in their rapidly changing work environments, including nursing, engineering, education, and architecture, as well as many other occupations. You have tools to take control of your thinking about tests. Better to face it head- on and let test anxiety know who’s in charge!

# Studying, Memory, and Test Taking ## Developing Metacognition Questions to Consider: 1. What is metacognition? 2. What contributes to poor metacognition? 3. What can you do to improve your metacognition and in turn your learning? Consider this scenario: Marcus has studied for his chemistry test by rereading the chapters and looking at his notes. He has spent several hours the night before doing this and feels ready for the test. The concepts are not particularly difficult, but there is a lot to recall. When he takes the test, he feels pretty confident that he has earned at least an 80% (B). He isn’t able to answer all the questions—and knows he could have studied longer—but he feels comfortable with his performance. When he gets the test back, he is surprised to learn he has earned a 54% (F). He has now realized that he didn’t really understand the material well enough to answer the types of questions his professor included. What happened to Marcus and what can he do differently next time? Deep learning, as described earlier in the chapter, is the goal you should be striving for in most if not all of your college classes. The learning process starts with taking in information—through reading, listening, or doing—organizing it in your brain for quick recall or use, and then demonstrating, usually through a test or assignment, that you know the information. However, learning doesn’t end there. As you learn and demonstrate your knowledge, you will receive feedback to help you adjust your learning strategies or reflect the level of learning that has occurred. Feedback can include the following: 1. A grade on a test in which you can see what questions you got right and what you got wrong. 2. Written feedback from an instructor or peer about what you have done well and what can be improved. 3. Immediate feedback on a skill (such as playing a note on an instrument) that indicates you did it correctly or not. 4. The ease or difficulty at which you can recall or explain information that you are learning. This feedback is what you need to help you develop which is the awareness of your own learning processes. When you have good metacognition, you can determine what you know and don’t know. You are also able to adjust your learning strategies to improve. Without this feedback, whether it is formal (e.g., a test grade) or informal (you stumble over defining terms), you will have more difficulty improving your awareness. In Marcus’ case, he had poor metacognition because his study strategy, rereading the text and his notes and studying the night before, did not provide him with feedback on what he knew well and what he didn’t. In fact, what Marcus did produced which is the belief that you know something better than you really do. This fluency illusion occurred because he reread the material and that made him confident that he knew the content. However, Marcus had poor metacognition. Now that Marcus has more feedback from his test, he can use that information to help him determine why he failed to learn the content well enough for the test. Here are the steps for improving your metacognition so that you can adjust your thinking and study strategies for maximum benefit: 1. Choose a study strategy or a combination of them such as the ones described in this chapter, but be sure to include testing yourself (e.g., practice tests, teaching someone else, trying to rewrite notes from memory). 2. As you study, track what you are able to recall easily and what you still struggle with and focus on those areas. 3. Take the test, complete the assignment, or perform the skill. 4. Review the feedback you receive and examine it for what went well and what didn’t. 5. Make adjustments to your study strategies before the next assessment. This feedback loop in which you use that information to make changes is essential to learning. If you don’t look at the grade or feedback and hope to “work harder” next time, you likely won’t be using the specific, effective, efficient learning strategies that could make a difference in the outcome and your grade. ### Friends & Family Matter Michael’s recently failed test in calculus has rocked his confidence, especially since he has begun to doubt his abilities. While Michael was a good student—As and Bs—in high school, he was initially concerned that he was not ready for the academic expectations of college. This grade made this concern more real. When Michael was in high school, his parents expected that he would never fail any assignment or any course. On the few occasions that he brought home a C or D on an assignment, they would ground him until he raised his grades. He believed he would not be ready for college if he did less than quality work. One time, his parents had a meeting with his high school biology teacher about his progress. They have been involved and concerned about his grades because they wanted the best from and for him. Now that Michael is away from home and doesn’t need to share his grades, he feels uncertain about how to deal with this experience. He knows that his parents cannot contact his professors about his grades, so he doesn’t feel obligated to tell them everything just yet, especially because he has the opportunity to raise his grade in calculus. However, he wants to be honest about what has happened, especially if he cannot raise his grade before the end of the semester and needs to drop the course. He doesn’t want to surprise them with the information. ### Let’s Think About It Michael has several options. Think through the consequences of each one, and choose the best option or create your own option. 1. Michael chooses not to share this failing grade with his family, so they are not aware of any of his struggles. 2. Michael shares his failing grade although he thinks it will cause undue stress with his family, and he will have to hear a lecture about not being ready for college. 3. Michael talks with his professor and a tutor about a plan to improve his studying and grades, and shares with his family what happened and how he plans to make changes. ### Let’s Talk About It Michael is not obligated to share his grades with his family unless he feels some obligation or has made a clear commitment to keeping them updated on his progress. Some families make a pact that they will continue to provide support when they see each term’s transcripts. Here are some suggestions for communicating with others about the dilemma that Michael is facing: 1. “I wanted to let you know that I failed a test in my calculus class recently. I don’t want you to be alarmed—many in the class messed up on the first test—but I don’t want you to be surprised if I have to spend more time bringing this grade up. I have a plan and feel confident I can improve.” 2. “I recently struggled on a test because I was overconfident and slacked off. I realize that now and have talked with the professor about what to do differently. He assured me that it was normal and not an indication that I won’t be successful.” 3. “Most of my classes are going well and my grades are good, but I did have a test that I failed. I was surprised, but I realized that I had not prepared appropriately and since then I have met with a tutor and have started studying for the next test now. I even went to see my professor to check my understanding and he confirmed I was studying better.” Whatever choice you would make in this situation, it is always best to communicate clearly your needs, your concerns, and even your uncertainties. ### Summary and Next Steps to College Success Deepening your learning happens when you study effectively and prepare adequately for taking tests. Learning how to do these well can only help you be more successful. Additionally, this chapter discusses the role that metacognition plays in helping you improve your learning processes. This chapter has provided a variety of tools, strategies, tips and information about how to develop skills that will be most effective for your experience. You can help yourself by taking these guidelines seriously and tracking your progress. If one strategy works better for you in some classes and another is more suited to a different course, keep that in mind when you begin to study. Use all the resources available to you, and you’ll be well on your way to success in college. Studying and test taking skills often need to evolve to meet the needs of college expectations. Even if you have solid skills your first year, you will need to continue to develop, hone, and add to them. To that end, consider what else about developing your memory, honing your study strategies, practicing good test-taking skills, or improving your metacognition you would like to learn or practice. Choose one of the following to explore further this term: 1. Develop a study plan that includes when, where, and how to study. 2. Incorporate spacing, interleaving, and practice testing as study strategies. 3. Eliminate test anxiety by implementing strategies to reduce stress. 4. Monitor self-awareness of how well you are learning and what needs to change.

# Building Relationships ## Introduction ### Student Survey How confident are you in building relationships and working with others in college? Take this quick survey to figure it out, ranking questions on a scale of 1—4, 1 meaning “least like me” and 4 meaning “most like me.” These questions will help you determine how the chapter concepts relate to you right now. As you are introduced to new concepts and practices, it can be informative to reflect on how your understanding changes over time. 1. I set healthy boundaries when developing relationships. 2. I have gotten to know at least one professor well. 3. I have developed relationships with my peers in college. 4. I can work productively in groups. You can also take the Chapter 6 survey anonymously online. ### About This Chapter By the time you finish this chapter, you should be able to do the following: 1. Determine the key components of healthy relationships 2. Discuss steps for managing conflict in relationships. 3. Develop a plan to maximize your relationships in college. 4. Identify the steps for working effectively in a group. Good relationships can mean the difference between an enjoyable college experience and a difficult one. Many students report within their first year that they have experienced loneliness or homesickness whether they live on campus or in another state or country or commute back and forth to college. The good news is that these states are temporary. With time, students who say they are lonely meet more people, get involved in study groups, and get to know their classmates and roommates better. The students who feel homesick or just miss their family, friends, and pets (yes, pets) also report that once the term gets busier with events, meetings, class work, and studying, they find that the homesickness goes away. This is not to say that quality relationships don't take time or work to develop. In fact, you will want to be mindful of what you can do to start relationships and improve them to create a more enjoyable college experience. This chapter offers specific suggestions that can help you get the most out of living and working with others.

# Building Relationships ## The Benefits of Healthy Relationships Questions to Consider: 1. How does self-care benefit relationships? 2. Why is community so important to healthy relationships? 3. What can I do to start developing relationships? Relationships are key to happy and healthy lives. According to Dr. Robert Waldinger, director of the Harvard Study of Adult Development, people with the best health outcomes were people who “leaned into relationships, with family, with friends, with community.”https://www.cnbc.com/2018/03/20/this-harvard-study-reveals-how-you-can-be-happier-and-more-successful.html#:~:text=%E2%80%9COur%20study%20has%20shown%20that,said%20in%20the%20TED%20Talk. Relationships come in many forms: classmates, family, friends, partners, coworkers, team members, and neighbors. Think of a relationship where you have mutual respect and trust, supporting each other in tough times, celebrating the good times, and communicating with ease and honesty. This is a healthy relationship. Do you have someone in mind? On the other hand, if communication is often tense or strained, confidences are broken, or you don’t feel listened to, appreciated, or valued, these are signs of an unhealthy relationship. Unhealthy relationships can have both immediate and longer-term health impacts. If you are unhappy in a relationship, try to improve the relationship, or end it. Do not stay in a relationship for the wrong reasons, such as fear of being alone or guilt. If a partner tries to force you to do something sexually, harms you physically, or is verbally abusive, you are in a particularly unhealthy or dangerous relationship. Even if you believe the person loves you, it does not make up for the harm they are doing to you. End the relationship. Take a moment to assess the health of your relationships. Who are the people who make you smile, who boost your confidence, who truly listen when you need to talk, and who want only the best for you? Investing in these relationships is likely to make you happier and healthier. Relationships are two-way streets. How committed are you to your relationships? How much effort do you put into nurturing your relationships? ### Self-Care Healthy relationships start with healthy individuals. Self-care is learning to take good care of yourself and to prioritize your own needs. Self-care involves any activity that nurtures and refuels you, such as taking a walk in the woods, going to a yoga class, attending a sporting event, reading a good book, or spending time with friends. When you are feeling calm and nourished, you are going to look forward to your day, and despite how busy it is, you will prioritize time with friends and family. If you don’t take care of and learn to love yourself, you will never be able to bring your best self to any relationship. An important dynamic you bring to any relationship is how you feel about yourself. Self-esteem is about loving yourself and being happy for who you are. Building healthy self-esteem impacts how you see yourself, which can drastically improve your relationships. While low self-esteem won’t keep us from romantic love, it can act as a barrier to a healthy relationship. If you do not believe you are good enough, how can you expect your partner to think so? When you feel secure in yourself, this allows you and your partner to feel more secure about the relationship. If you have insecurities, it may show in your relationship as jealousy, defensiveness, or tension that leads to unnecessary arguments. Healthy self-esteem goes hand in hand with self-confidence, and feeling confident about yourself will translate into a stronger and more satisfying relationship. If you are experiencing low self-esteem, you may give your partner too much credit or stay in a relationship that is not healthy for you. If you find yourself changing your personality for someone else, that is never a sign of a healthy relationship. You can reverse negative self-talk and build your self-esteem. If you catch yourself thinking you are unlovable, unattractive, or not good enough, it’s important to start talking to yourself in a positive way and to celebrate all that is uniquely you. Self-care includes self-forgiveness. We all make mistakes. A misstep isn’t the end of the world. Pick yourself up, put things in perspective, acknowledge any lessons to be learned, focus on all that makes you special, and move forward. Be kind to yourself. ### The Importance of Community The Nicoya Peninsula in Costa Rica is home to some of the highest number of centenarians (people who are 100 years old or older) in the world. Costa Ricans in general report a high level of life satisfaction. Dan Buettner, author of the Blue Zones study of the longest living populations in the world, explains that Costa Rica “is a place where religion, family, and social interaction are the main values, unlike trying to get ahead, or financial security, or status. Their cities are set up so they’re bumping into each other all day long. They walk to the markets, where they have conversations with people.”https://www.bluezones.com/2017/10/costa-rica-singapore-two-happiest-places-earth/ In many families in Costa Rica, multiple generations live together under the same roof or nearby where they can be involved in each other’s lives. Neighbors are like extended family, and people often stop in for a visit and go out of their way to help one another. While this isn’t the way many of us live in the United States, the lessons from the Blue Zone study underscore the importance of community and the health benefits of connecting to and staying close to a community. What communities do you belong to? Is your dorm a community? Is a sports team? Is a club or people you volunteer with? When you start seeing the social circles you connect to as communities and prioritize your time to develop more closeness with those communities, you will experience many physical, mental, and emotional health benefits. According to an analysis of research on college students (Joe Cuseo, The Most Potent, Research-Based Principles of College Success), college students who have a higher sense of belonging and are more involved in their college community are more successful. Additionally, college students who are involved in extracurricular, volunteer, and part-time work experiences outside the classroom (less than 20 hours per week) earn higher grades than students who do not get involved in any out-of-class activities at all. Research has shown that friends provide a sense of meaning or purpose in our lives, and that having a healthy social life is important to staying physically healthy. In a meta-analysis of the research results from 148 studies of over 300,000 participants, researchers found that social relationships are important in improving our lifespan. Social support has been linked to lower blood pressure and better immune system functioning. The meta-analysis also showed that social support operates on a continuum: the greater the extent of the relationships, the lower the health risks.Holt-Lunstad, According to a 2018 report from the American College Health Association, in a 12-month period, 63 percent of college students have felt very lonely.American College Health Association. (2018). Fall 2018 reference group executive summary https://www.acha.org/documents/ncha/NCHA-II_Fall_2018_Reference_Group_Executive_Summary.pdf If you are feeling lonely or having a hard time making friends, know that the majority of people around you have also felt this way. Joining a group or a club of people who share your interests and passions is one of the best ways to make great friends and stay connected. ### Taking the First Step in a Relationship Consider this scenario: John is a first-year student who has moved several hundred miles away from home to attend college. He is, by self-admission, shy and has difficulty making friends. When he steps into his first class for the term, he meets Praya, a second-year student who says “Hello” when he sits down next to her. She seems outgoing and engaged as she greets others in the class as if she has known them for a long time. He feels out of place. “Hi, Haley. How was your internship over the summer?” Praya asks one student. She asks another student, “Breylin, how do we always have a class together?” John sinks down in his seat, afraid she is going to ask him questions as well. He pulls out his phone and looks through social media to keep her from bothering him. As other students enter the class, some quiet and others talkative, John wonders if he will have to interact with them. Even though he has not met many people yet–and certainly has not had any deep conversations with anyone–he feels anxious about having to get to know strangers and feels most comfortable keeping to himself at least for now. John’s story is not unusual. As you read in the previous section, many first-year college students have difficulty developing relationships in the first few weeks and months of college. The issue is often exacerbated by the constant notifications and vibrations that come from phones, which pull us out of conversations with others. One way to improve your relationship-building skills is to learn the art of small talk, which is the first step in getting to know someone more deeply. Because we often turn to our phones or other distractions when faced with interacting with strangers – or even people we know well – it is no surprise that we haven’t quite developed solid communication skills. If you want to get more involved in campus organizations, feel more comfortable in your classes, and eliminate general awkwardness in most social situations, then practice small talk skills. What can you “small talk” about? Here are some topics that could get you started. 1. The weather–”Wow, the cooler temperatures were a surprise this morning. Are you ready for the snow?” 2. The latest sporting event–”How about our Bears? I can’t believe they won in the final seconds of the game.” 3. Plans for the weekend–”Did you hear about that Halloween party in the park? Have you thought about going?” 4. The current trend on social media–”Did you see that challenge on TikTok?” 5. Majors–”What are you majoring in?” or “Are you a marketing major?” 6. Careers–”What kind of job are you anticipating after graduation?” 7. Schedule–”What are you taking this term? Anything you recommend?” 8. Organizations–”I have been thinking about joining an organization. What are you participating in?” 9. Recreation–”I got to play a new video game last weekend. Are you a gamer?” 10. The class–”I struggled with that homework last night. Was it hard for you?” Of course, tried-and-true compliments work as well as long as you keep them neutral. Admiring someone’s clothing (“Great hoodie! Where did you get that?”) or course resources (“Nice laptop. Do you like using it?”) are safe bets. If you are not sure if you should ask the question or bring up the topic because you are concerned it may be controversial or not taken in the right way, then go with your instinct and choose something from the list above. Once you get to know people better, you can have deeper and more meaningful conversations. One last note about “small talk.” If you struggle with being friendly with others or coming up with something to say in those uncomfortable moments, then commit to practicing your small talk skills. Look for times during the day to try them out such as before class starts, when you are waiting in line, or when you attend an event and don’t know many people. With practice, it gets easier to talk to people you don’t know well. And, who knows? You may find someone who can become a friend.

# Building Relationships ## Building Relationships in College Questions to Consider: 1. What role will faculty play in my college experience? 2. What other kinds of relationships do I need to develop? provides an overview of the types of relationships you will develop in college. If you are aged 18- or 19-years old (often referred to as traditional college student age), you may look forward to expanding your relationship types beyond family and friends and authority figures to classmates (those who are in your classes), peers (those who are in college or near your age and have similar goals and activities), mentors (those who can help you develop skills or goals), and authority figures (those who direct and evaluate your work). If you are older than the traditional college student, you may also find that your circle of friends and colleagues will expand in some areas–and may even contract in others, at least while you are earning a degree. Some people, such as professors, may fill multiple roles at different times in your college career. For example, a professor of your first-year seminar may be seen as an authority figure who dictates the learning objectives, creates assignments, and evaluates you. That same professor may become a mentor when you take them again your junior year as you are working on your major or participating in undergraduate research with them. Finally, your professor can become a friend after you graduate, especially if you have developed a bond with them that transcends the work you did together. Because professors are an important part of the college experience, we will talk first about them and how to develop good relationships with them. ### What Professors Do Professors are more than just teachers. This may be a surprise if you think about your experiences with high school teachers where they have their own classroom and a set of responsibilities including leading their classes that they must do between set hours each day of the week. College professors, by contrast, have much more flexibility and autonomy in their schedules, their workload, and their responsibilities outside of class. Because of these differences, you will want to view them in light of their additional roles and activities. See the table for a breakdown of common responsibilities professors have. ### Developing Relationships with Professors Because your relationship with your professors is often the most visible and critical one to your learning and success in college, it is important that you take time to get to know your professors or at least remember their names, recognize them when you see them outside of class, and work diligently to meet their expectations. No one expects you to be best friends with them by the end of the semester, but you do want to view them differently than you may have viewed your high school teachers–as experts in their fields, partners in your learning, and mentors as you move through your degree. Here are a few ways that you can initiate and develop a relationship with your professors: 1. Get to know your professors. This means to learn their names and something about them. They may share a few personal stories or you may be able to view their resume (often called a CV or curriculum vitae), which will list their education and publications. It also means showing up early or staying after class to participate in small talk or stopping by their office hours to talk or schedule a time with them to connect virtually.. 2. Demonstrate interest. You don’t have to love the course, topic, or professor to demonstrate curiosity and focus in class. Nod when you agree or understand something or smile at your professor when they make a joke. You may find that pretending to be interested at first leads to genuine interest. 3. Participate in class. One of the best ways to develop a positive relationship with your professor is to ask and answer questions in class. Engaging in a class discussion demonstrates interest in the topic and can go a long way in helping you stand out. If you don’t feel comfortable speaking up in class, schedule a meeting outside of class to discuss key ideas. 4. Ask about expectations and assignments. A great strategy that is underutilized is meeting with a professor before a test or assignment to ask about the expectations or to get clarification. In some cases, your professor may provide feedback on a draft or suggestions for studying. 5. Speak up when you stumble or fail. Contrary to some college students’ beliefs, professors want to talk to you when you fail a test or get a low grade because you misunderstood or procrastinated. Speak up when this happens even if you know well what contributed to your setback. Professors like to see that students are invested in their learning and improving. 6. Say “thank you.” If a professor gives you an extension on your paper or you just enjoyed the class, feel free to show some gratitude. Saying “Thank you for helping me conquer my math anxiety” or “I learned so much this semester” can go a long way toward building a relationship. And professors never get tired of students who are truly appreciative of their work. As you read earlier in this section, professors have many different responsibilities in addition to teaching; however, they find joy and purpose in developing relationships with students who are engaged in their learning. While you don’t have to be on a first-name basis with all your professors by the time you graduate, you should consider identifying a few who have sparked your interest in their courses or research to get to know them better. It would be a shame to graduate and not be able to recall one professor you had! ### Managing Conflict with a Professor Now that you know how to develop a meaningful connection with your professors, let’s address how to deal with some common issues that can arise and how to communicate clearly and professionally. While college is often portrayed as freedom, exploration, and fun, there may be a time (or multiple times) that is stressful or discouraging. These times can occur when you are not happy with an assignment, classmate, discussion topic, a response to something you did or did not do, feedback on your work, or a grade. Any time you find yourself worried, upset, or angry about an event or experience with a professor, take these steps so that you can resolve the issue quickly and positively. Step 1. Take a deep breath and write down what happened. Do this before you speak to your professor. Both activities, breathing and writing, will help you calm down and focus. It will also help you gather your thoughts. Step 2. Make an appointment with your professor. Don’t try to resolve the issue before, during, or after class as those are not ideal times to talk about an important issue unless it is the only availability you and the professor have. Explain why you want to meet to help the professor prepare. This is especially helpful if you have received a low grade as your professor may want to review the assignment or test beforehand. Step 3. Explain the issue as clearly as possible. This is where the written account may help. Focus on what you experienced, heard, or read. Here is an example of a statement about a classmate’s rude behavior that a professor would want to know: “When I spoke up in class about the need for more resources for immigrants, my classmate said under his breath ‘They should just go back to where they belong. I don’t know why you care.’” Step 4. Share how you felt about the event. It is important to acknowledge your emotions, but you don’t have to dwell on them. They will, however, provide some context as to why you feel the issue needs to be resolved. Here is an example: “I was surprised when Jarod said that when I was speaking and it made me mad that he would interrupt me with such a statement.” Step 5. Provide a potential solution or ask for assistance resolving the issue. The phrases “Can you help me understand…?” and “Can you help me resolve this issue?” are both good ways to frame this part of the process when speaking to your professor. Be prepared to listen, take notes, and make a list of steps you can take. A special word about resolving issues with grades, especially final grades. Your professors are human and may make mistakes as they grade and return your work. While it may be a rare occurrence, it is worth discussing what to do if this happens. Here are a few suggestions to help you resolve questions about grades. 1. Reach out as soon as you notice a grade that is lower than expected. Don’t wait until the end of the term to question a grade from months earlier. 2. If it is a grade on an assignment or test during the term, request a meeting in person or carefully ask in an email if you can get additional information about what you did or didn’t do that contributed to the grade. 3. If it is a final grade, reach out in person, by phone, or email, but be sure to follow these guidelines: As with all your relationships in college, think about them in terms of building your network that will help you throughout college and after graduation. While you cannot avoid conflict–or bad experiences–you can manage how you respond to them and how you work with others, especially professors, to resolve issues. ### Developing Relationships with Others In addition to developing relationships with professors, you will encounter a variety of people in different roles that are part of a fulfilling experience. Don’t overlook the opportunity to create deep, meaningful relationships with others as they will be part of your network for support during college. Here are some categories of people you will want to create intentional relationships with and what they can do to help you succeed in college. 1. Classmates. It seems obvious that you want to develop relationships with people in your classes, but many students overlook their fellow colleagues as potential friends or support networks. Classmates can help you learn the material when they serve as tutors or study buddies, and they can be an emotional support when you suffer a setback in a course. 2. Roommates. If you live on campus or away from home in off-campus housing, you may have a roommate. A roommate can also become a good friend who can make you feel more at home while you are away from your family. 3. Peers. Your peers are people who are other students who populate the college campus. You will encounter them when you join organizations, attend events, or use certain services on campus such as tutoring. Many colleges employ fellow college students on campus to manage a residential hall, serve food in the cafeteria, and hand out sports equipment at the gym. Your peers also run organizations such as clubs, professional-interest meetings, and Greek fraternities and sororities. Developing relationships with your peers can help you expand your network and create connections with people who you may find helpful when you launch your career. 4. Mentors. Many colleges provide opportunities for students to participate in mentorship programs. Your institution may have formal and informal programs that you can participate in to be mentored by a peer, a faculty or staff member, or even an alumnus in a career field that interests you. Mentors can provide you with advice and support as you work on your college and career goals. 5. Advisors. While there are many different roles on a college campus that could be included in this list, advisors deserve a special place because they are crucial to your success; they are also the first place to go when a student has an issue. Some advisors spend considerable time with students to help them choose a major and create a schedule each semester that will enable them to graduate. Others serve as a sounding board for students who are struggling in a class and deciding whether or not to drop. Developing a relationship with your advisor has obvious benefits: They get to know what your goals are and can help you refine them. They also are very knowledgeable about how to navigate the processes of completing a degree. Developing quality relationships takes time, effort, and intentionality, but the rewards are many. Consider expanding your network each semester you are in college so that you have a rich, diverse group of people whom you know and can count on to help you reach your goals. ### Addressing Family Matters A discussion about relationships while you are in college would not be complete without mentioning family (and even friends). For many students, the support they receive from family is key to their feelings of stability and support. However, there may be times that you experience tension or confusion with your family. Pressures arise from differences in experience or perspective, the financial aspects of college, and simply undergoing an evolution in your relationship. You may notice that your emotionally-supportive family is unable to help you navigate the college experience or give advice about what you should do. Other students may experience conflict when they choose a major or career pathway that goes against the wishes or expectations of family members. Finally, college students with children (or younger family members they care for) often feel overwhelmed when balancing their responsibilities; they may at the same time experience guilt or disappointment due to time spent away from the kids. Here are some times in which you may find that dealing with family can be difficult. 1. When you leave the family to attend college. Moving out can challenge a family if they expect or wish that you were still part of their day-to-day activities. 2. During holidays and breaks. Adapting to the schedule of the family can be challenging after your freedom to come and go (and go to bed and get up) when you want to. 3. When you experience a failure or setback. Letting your family know you failed a test or a course or didn’t get accepted in a program may concern them. 4. When you decide on a college major. Choosing a major they are not familiar with or they worry won’t lead to a specific job after college can contribute to their anxiety about your success. 5. When you decide to continue your education beyond your undergraduate degree. Deciding to take on more debt or take longer to be “done” with your education can cause worry about your future. 6. When you choose a career pathway. Choosing a career that they are not familiar with or do not approve of can cause stress in your relationship. 7. When you choose to participate in another experience rather than return home. Choosing a different experience (such as studying abroad) instead of going back home could make them feel left out of your life. 8. If you decide to stop out, drop out, or transfer. Making a major decision that can have emotional and financial implications can upset your family if they have a firm belief in what you should do. While it may seem obvious, it is worth stating this clearly: Your life is your life and the choices you make should be the ones you want to make. This may be difficult to do if your family is relying on you or you are relying on them for financial or emotional support. Honest conversations about what you want to do with your life and how you want to get there are always good first steps in managing any potential conflict. You may also want to keep in mind a few of these opportunities for you to help them understand your experience: 1. Keep the lines of communication open. Clear communication about what you are studying, what you like and don’t like, and how you are changing can head off surprises should you find that what you thought you wanted to study and what you thought you wanted to do with your life changes. If you experience a setback or a failure, be honest about it and demonstrate how you will get back on track. 2. Share with them some of your experiences. While you don’t have to recreate the lecture that blew your mind, you can share what you are learning or doing that is exciting you and developing your curiosity or purpose. 3. Assure them of the support you are receiving from your network. Most families worry when they are unsure of how you are making major life decisions. Let them know what resources, offices, and people are providing advice and support as you move through college. If you change your major after talking with your advisor and reviewing what you need to do to still graduate on time, let your family know! 4. Let go of your expectations. In some cases, your family may just not understand because they haven’t gone to college or they have not experienced what you have. You may just need to let go of the expectation that they will be able to provide the type of support that you want or need. 5. Create boundaries. If you feel as though your family is overstepping their role in your life decisions, set clear, firm boundaries about what help or advice you will and will not accept. Creating boundaries is part of every healthy relationship and parents and family members should be no different. If you have to decide that you cannot discuss your career plans with your family because the conversation devolves into shouting, then you must create boundaries to protect your mental health.

# Building Relationships ## Working in Groups Questions to Consider: 1. What are the benefits of working in groups? 2. What can I do to work effectively in a group? ### Benefits of Working in Groups When a professor assigns group work, most students initially cringe because they have had poor experiences collaborating on a project. Many of them have tales of group members who didn’t contribute equally or who disappeared altogether. It is no wonder that a popular meme includes a photo of a casket being lowered into the ground with the words “When I die, I want my group members to lower me into my grave so they can let me down one last time.” We can laugh at this extreme reaction, but there is some truth in feeling apprehension about being disappointed by others. This section makes the case that if you know more about how group dynamics can and should work and how to communicate effectively during the process of completing a group project, you are more likely to have a positive – or successful – experience. Why do professors assign group projects if they are often fraught with challenges? Perhaps it is because group projects are probably the most “real world” experience you will do in college. Very rarely will you be asked to create a report, present to a client, develop a new product or treatment, or fix a problem without working with others and depending on them to do their parts in a timely and professional manner. The more practice you have developing your own skills as a group member and troubleshooting when things don’t go smoothly, the more nimble you will be when you have to collaborate in your job. If you approach working in groups by anticipating the challenges and developing strategies to minimize their negative impact, you will be able to weather the stresses more successfully. provides some common challenges that you may experience working in a group and reviews the strategies you can use to minimize or eliminate the challenges. ### Understanding Group Dynamics One way to improve your work in groups is to learn more about group dynamics and stages. Bruce TuckmanTuckman, Bruce W (1965). “Developmental sequence in small groups”. Psychological Bulletin. (1965) developed a model of group development. His initial four phases are forming, storming, norming and performing. In the forming phase, group members learn more about the task they must complete as well as getting to know each other. For the most part, members act and think individually and may be polite or quiet when trying to make decisions about what needs to be done. Group conflict arises in the storming phase when roles are assigned and a leader emerges. Some members may not voice their concerns and suffer from internal (and unexpressed) conflict while others may openly argue about what needs to be done. Groups may skip this phase altogether if communication is clear and roles are assigned to interest and strengths. The next phase is norming, or when group members work collectively to help each other achieve their goal. Members are aware of how their part fits into the whole and are mindful of supporting each other. The last phase is performing and is marked by members’ competence and confidence to complete goals. Some groups revert to previous phases when there is unresolved conflict or when communication breaks down. The goal of group work is not to have a conflict-free experience, but to learn how to negotiate challenges, concerns, and changes during the process. When group members set common goals, create clear expectations, and communicate regularly, they are less likely to experience insurmountable obstacles. ### Setting Up Your Group for Success ### Review Assignment If we use the Tuckman (1965) model, we can anticipate the steps for creating a successful group. First, review the assignment and ensure that everyone understands the scope of the work, especially the expectations of the final product. Take some time to discuss what the parts of the assignment are and what the expected outcome should be. Will you be writing a paper? Will you be presenting original research? Will you need special equipment, technology, or software to complete the project? Get clarity on the assignment before you get too far into the work. ### Choose Roles Next, your group should determine roles. You may want to first determine the leader, or you may decide to share leadership between two members or choose a “second in command” should the leader not be able to fulfill the duties. Then, you will need to set roles and responsibilities for everyone else in the group. Be sure to discuss each other’s strengths, weaknesses, and interests. Different types of group projects call for different roles, so you may need to pick and choose what is appropriate for your project. provides examples of roles and responsibilities that you may consider when assigning roles. ### Create a Communication Plan When you have assigned roles and responsibilities, your group should create a communication plan. Because college students have different schedules and obligations, you will find that a strong communication plan can make working together easier. You may find that you need to work asynchronously, or not at the same time, and clear communication expectations will help your group both in person and online run smoothly. Here are some questions to guide your communication plan: 1. How will the group communicate primarily? 2. What will be the back-up communication strategy? 3. What will you do if a group member doesn’t respond to or acknowledge messages? If group members do not want to share personal phone numbers, then consider using email or a shared drive folder to message each other. ### Write a Group Contract To ensure that all members uphold their responsibilities, create a contract that lists all the expectations for the group. You can use a template or create your own based on the group members’ roles, dynamics, and assignment requirements. A group contract can be helpful in managing conflict and directing group members should someone not do their part. Here are the components you will want to consider and an example below of a contract: 1. Assignment reminders. Include a description of the goal or project and the final deadline. 2. General expectations or guiding principles. Provide a list of general expectations or principles that will guide a successful group. For example, you may determine that acting respectfully, communicating honestly, and giving full effort are important group principles. 3. Specific expectations or tasks. List expectations about communicating, delegating, meeting, completing tasks, and managing conflict. 4. Group members’ signatures. Include signatures or initials of the group members to underscore the importance of the contract. ### Managing Conflict in Groups Conflict during group work does not have to be inevitable. With proper planning, clear roles and responsibilities, and a communication plan, your group can minimize a majority of issues that can arise. However, it is important to recognize what kinds of conflict can derail group work and review what steps you can take to get back on course. Here are a few examples of common conflicts: 1. No leader. When no leader emerges, it may be difficult to move forward. If this happens, each member may need to take a specific task and assume responsibility for that task. Group members who are not comfortable being the leader may also feel more comfortable with co-leaders. 2. Too many leaders. Many people with good ideas can derail a group project. If there are too many people vying to influence the group’s direction, ask all group members to speak openly about the conflict. The group may want to vote on who should assume the leadership positions or what direction the group should take if there are more than one good option. 3. Aggressiveness or hostility. A group member who tries to take over the project or is openly hostile during the process can make the experience miserable for everyone involved. The leader should take action immediately when the issue arises by clearly naming the behavior, avoiding emotional language, asking the reasons behind the anger, and communicating a plan to move forward with the project. This may mean assigning the member to a specific and limited role, or, in extreme situations, removing (or asking to remove) the member from the group. 4. Lack of communication. A group member who never responds to messages or who communicates inconsistently can make completing a group project very difficult. The leader should go back to the group contract and reach out to the member, preferably in writing, and describe the missing communication, the tasks that have not been completed, and what the group will be doing to move forward without the group member. Even if the group member never reads or responds to the message, the group will have evidence that they attempted to reach out. 5. Overpromising and underperforming. A group member that takes on tasks, promises to do them well and on time, and consistently misses the mark should be talked with about the lack of work. A group member may need to take on their responsibilities to meet the deadline. 6. Low work quality. If a member is not completing quality work, the group leader should step in to work with the other members to revise or edit the work, but the group should communicate with the member as to what has changed and why. Most conflict occurs when there is a lack of communication about what is expected. Providing your group members with examples of how to deliver bad or difficult news (e.g., “I am not able to meet my deadline” or “I think I need help with my tasks”) can help your members feel more comfortable when it does occur. Be sure to treat others respectfully and with kindness even if you are justifiably frustrated by your group members’ actions or inactions. ### Completing the Project The project is complete when all the steps have been taken to submit or present it successfully, but that is not the end of the group work. You will want to also debrief on what worked and what could have been improved. Consider calling a brief meeting to review the process of completing the project or to review your graded work. Ask your group members what they felt were the group’s strengths and weaknesses. Use the debriefing to think about how to make changes to the process the next time you work in a group. Spend some time reflecting on what skills you still need to improve and how you can make the most of future group work. ### Friends & Family Matter Michael’s group project seems to be destined to fail. The group members have been sporadic in attending meetings, communicating in the group text, and completing their work. If the project was not worth a third of their overall grade, Michael would have given up weeks ago. However, he really wants to do a good job, because he knows he needs to develop better communication skills and because his professor is part of the graduate admissions committee for physical therapy and her recommendation would be important. The professor has communicated how she expects the groups to handle the workload and conflict. She wants them to resolve any issues that arise, and she does not want to be consulted on disputes that can be easily remedied by the group. She believes that these real-world experiences of working with others will help them develop project-planning and communication skills that are far more valuable than the grade they may earn. The presentation and final paper are due in a week, and Michael is the only one who has kept to the agreed-upon schedule. He has heard nothing from his classmates about where they are in the process and when they will be able to hand over their parts. Unfortunately, Michael cannot finish his parts—writing the conclusion and finalizing the slides—without knowing what they found in their research. He is not sure what to do. ### Let’s Think About It Michael has several options. Think through the consequences of each one, and choose the best option or create your own option. 1. Michael does all the work himself and tells his professor in a private message that none of his group members contributed and do not deserve a grade for the project. 2. Michael sends a message to all his group members telling them that he will be doing all the work himself as an individual project and if they want to continue as a group, they can fill in his part themselves. 3. Michael offers to help fill in parts that need to be completed, waits patiently until a few days before the assignment is due, and completes as much as he can—his parts and others’ parts—without sharing with his professor the reality of the situation. ### Let’s Talk About It Michael has a few communication challenges: his professor wants the groups to work out any conflict and his group is not communicating with him. While Michael may be limited in his ability to affect the outcome of the group presentation, he can communicate clearly with his group members. Here are some suggestions for communicating with others about the dilemma that Michael is facing: 1. “I realize that we are all really busy, but I want to reiterate what we agreed to do. At the very least, please communicate what you have done and what you need help with, so that we all can do our parts to complete this project.” 2. “I am feeling stressed about the lack of communication, and am concerned it will keep us from working effectively. Because I am leading our group work, I am proposing that those who do not meet the deadlines for having their part completed will be replaced by someone who can get the part done.” 3. “By next Thursday, if the group members who have not completed their parts do not update or share their work, I will be filling in those parts myself so that we can submit this work on time.” Whatever choice you would make in this situation, it is always best to communicate clearly your needs, your concerns, and even your uncertainties. ### Summary and Next Steps for College Success Developing healthy relationships and expanding your network of support are both important tasks for you to do in college. Without these relationships, your experience may be lackluster at best and lonely and difficult at worst. The first step to creating meaningful connections is to be healthy yourself and acknowledging the importance of community. There are also some ways you can jumpstart a relationship by improving your “small talk” skills. You will develop many relationships with different people while you are in college, but one of the most important is with your professors. Be sure to find ways to connect with them in and out of class. You will also want to be mindful of connecting with classmates, peers, mentors, and advisors as they will all be important to your network for success and support. Finally, there is no better way to really get to know others than when you work with them to complete a goal or a project. While group work strikes fear in some students, it doesn’t have to be a conflict-ridden endeavor. Consider what you can do to anticipate challenges and make the process as smooth as possible. To make the most of the relationships that you will develop or strengthen, consider what else about relationships and working with others that you would like to improve. Choose one of the following to explore further this term: 1. Create a self-care routine that you incorporate into your weekly tasks. Read, watch, or listen to articles, books, videos, and podcasts about self-awareness, self-reflection, mindfulness, and stress reduction. These resources can help you build your self-care toolkit. 2. Find ways to connect to your community through organizations, clubs, events, and volunteer opportunities. Work on developing a solid sense of belonging academically, socially, and campuswide. 3. Get to know at least one professor this term and begin to build your support network of classmates, peers, mentors, and advisors. Commit to reaching out to people to begin developing relationships. 4. Talk with your family and friends about what kinds of support you would like from them while you are in college. Be clear about your needs. 5. Create a system for managing group work that includes assigning roles, setting goals, and developing communication expectations. ### Checking In: Your College Readiness Checklist ### Spring

# Maintaining Your Mental Health and Managing Stress ## Introduction ### Student Survey How do you feel about your overall health and well-being? These questions will help you determine how the chapter concepts relate to you right now. As we are introduced to new concepts and practices, it can be informative to reflect on how your understanding changes over time. Take this quick survey to figure it out, ranking questions on a scale of 1—4, 1 meaning “least like me” and 4 meaning “most like me.” 1. I can manage my emotions most of the time. 2. I can reduce stress when it is negatively affecting me. 3. I feel comfortable seeking out help when needed. 4. I get enough sleep. You can also take the Chapter 7 survey anonymously online. ### About This Chapter This chapter explores the many ways your health and well-being may be impacted by the choices you make. The goal of this material is to help you do the following: 1. Understand how your mindset influences your emotions. 2. Identify strategies to manage your moods. 3. Describe differences between stress versus anxiety and sadness versus depression. 4. Understand the mind and body connection. 5. Identify ways to maintain and enhance your emotional health. 6. Understand mental health risks and warning signs. 7. Outline steps you can take to ask for help. 8. Describe actions you can take to improve your physical health. As a first-year college student you will make many choices without parental oversight, including the way you take care of your body and mind. Some choices put you on a path to health, and other choices can lead you down a path toward illness. There is a strong connection between success in college and your ability to stay healthy. Health is more than a strong body that doesn’t get sick. Health also includes your overall sense of well-being (mental and emotional, for example) and healthy coping strategies to manage life stressors. Good health is about making positive choices in all of these areas and avoiding destructive choices. It’s about learning to be smart, to set boundaries, to watch out for your safety, and to take care of the one body that will carry you through life. While health and wellness are often interchanged, it is important to differentiate the two concepts. Health is a state of physical, mental, and social well-being, while wellness is a process through which people become aware of and make choices toward a healthy and fulfilling life. In this chapter you will learn the skills you need to live a healthy lifestyle for both your mind and body. The first step is to focus on who you are and how you can create your best self. This includes how to promote self-efficacy (i.e., your belief in yourself) and create strategies that you can use to improve your resiliency (i.e., your ability to recover from challenges and adapt to change) during your transition into college. Next we will discuss the mind and body connection and how we need to consider managing both as a top priority every day. We will address identifying your feelings and mood and build a vocabulary that helps you communicate with others. Then we will move into the topic of stress versus anxiety and how to manage both. At this point, prepared with identifying and managing your emotions with strategies you can use on your own, we will discuss when and how to seek help including the steps you must take to establish your own support system. Once you have a support system, we will then discuss the importance of managing your problems in a way that holds you accountable for your actions and behaviors yet provides a framework for others to help you effectively. We will then discuss the role of social media on your overall health and well-being and provide suggestions for creating boundaries with the use of social media. Lastly, we will help you to gain a better understanding of how to maintain physical health through good nutrition, maintaining physical activity, and sleep.

# Maintaining Your Mental Health and Managing Stress ## Creating Your Best Self Questions to Consider: 1. What skills do you need to promote self-efficacy? 2. What strategies can you use to improve your resiliency? You are in college to fulfill an educational, personal, or professional goal. But it is just as important to work on creating your best self in the process, as who you are and what you believe you can achieve are just as important as the piece of paper you will receive at graduation. The first step in this process is identifying your positive attributes, which will be the foundation of your self-confidence. The belief in your abilities is also known as your self-efficacy. One way to increase your self-efficacy is to identify your strengths and values. Think of strengths as characteristics about ourselves that make us feel good about who we are, things we are good at, and parts of our personalities that make us good friends or good members of our community. Values are the things that matter to us the most. Typically, we do the best we can to live by our values; however, sometimes we struggle. Identifying strengths and values is a great place to start when making big life transitions. Being clear on what you view as your strengths and the values that are important to you will help you with finding similar people to build your support network. Let’s get started. First, consider your strengths. In , we have listed several examples of strengths. What are your strengths? What would your family say if we asked them about your strengths? What about your friends or community, would they have other examples of your strengths? Answer these questions to make a list of your own. Next, let’s consider your values. When finding your support network, friends, new clubs or organizations to join, one way to start is to understand your values and then look for others that have similar values. Your values have been shaped largely by your family, friends and the culture you grew up in. Many of these values may be challenged as you go through college and grow as an independent person. Understanding your current values and recognizing when they are being challenged may give you some insights into why you value what you do and what changes you may be open to. Consider the values in the table below and then list some of yours. Did you come to these through your family, your community? Throughout life, your values will often be challenged by other individuals. Someone may challenge your political views, or your religion, or your value in family. It is best to recognize your current values and then, as they are challenged, you can have a clearer understanding of the person you want to be. Although your journey through college is just starting, you will soon have to make critical decisions as to what courses you want to take, you may have to choose a major you want to focus on, and you will be start to look for your next step, life after college. One of the most asked questions you will face on this journey is where you see yourself in the next three to five years. Use this time to draft your vision.

# Maintaining Your Mental Health and Managing Stress ## Your Overall Well-Being Questions to Consider: 1. How can I shift my mindset to change how I feel? 2. How can I understand my emotions? Day-to-day, you most likely experience situations that either align with your values or go against them; you may undergo experiences that make you confident or unconfident. These situations may trigger strong emotions or lead you to react in a manner that you may later regret. During transition periods, such as the transition into college, you may be even more likely to have these experiences, particularly involving topics and people you do not know well. When these situations happen, it is best to consider your thoughts, consult available resources, and allow time to understand how to best navigate your emotions. ### Understanding Your Mindset Let’s first talk about your mindset. Have you ever heard someone refer to “seeing the glass half full” or “seeing the glass half empty?” This is another way of saying that, given a situation that could be interpreted multiple ways, some see the positives (half full) while others see the negatives (half empty). It is natural to move in and out of these frames of mind depending on the situation, your confidence level, the amount of stress you have in your life at the time, and so on. Setbacks and mistakes will always occur, and it’s okay and appropriate to feel negatively about them. With experience and practice, you will learn how to move on from these negative feelings and adapt your attitudes in order to promote success. Let’s consider the following example: 1. Negative reaction: “I forgot to complete an assignment and now I will fail the course because this is the second time I missed submitting my work on time.” How does this feel? What emotions are you experiencing? What is your mood? 1. Now let’s reframe to a more positive reaction: “Yes, I will get a zero for that assignment. However, if I work hard on the final two assignments and get at least a B on my final exam, I could improve my final grade to at least a C+.” How does this new thought feel in your body and mind? Is it different in a good way or not so good way? What emotions are you experiencing now? How has your mood changed? Most likely you feel differently in your body and in your mind when you consider each of these responses. When the thinking is that the course is lost, you may feel disappointed, frustrated, and uncertain regarding the future. However, in the more positive reframing of the situation, the mood may shift to one of calmness and even purpose, because there is a way forward. A key aspect of effective and positive attitudes is the awareness and ability to take responsibility for situations in which you contributed to the outcome. In the example above, the person did recognize that they were the ones who forgot to complete the assignment. Consider similar situations you’ve been in. Do you tend to put the responsibility for a missed assignment or a bad grade on yourself or your instructor? Do you tend to blame technology, unclear instructions, or too much work? While unfair situations can certainly occur, it is very important to recognize the role we play in them, and take ownership of mistakes and any extra work we need to undertake. The ability to reconsider situations and find positive ways forward is a critical skill in navigating not only your college experience, but throughout your life, career, and relationships. To do that effectively, you will also need to identify your feelings and emotions. Examining what you are feeling will help you to more easily navigate those emotions. By understanding your emotions and how to communicate with others about how you are feeling, you will decrease the chances of behaviors that may have negative consequences. Expanding your emotional vocabulary (see ) will allow you to be more specific in identifying the feelings you experience. Identifying your emotions will help you to find a solution or coping strategy more quickly. Using a tool such as this emotion wheel enables you to identify the emotion you may be experiencing. You may think that you are “angry”; however, after you look at the emotion wheel you may realize you are hurt or disappointed. Also, by identifying your emotions at a given time, you will be able to improve your mood and the relationship between your feelings and mood. Once you have a better understanding of the relationships between your feelings and mood, you’ll be better equipped to overcome situations in which you have low moods versus when your moods are more positive.      

# Maintaining Your Mental Health and Managing Stress ## The Mind-Body Connection Questions to Consider: 1. Are there ways I can control how I react in stressful situations? 2. Is it possible to “feel” stressed in your body? ### Controlling Emotional Reactions As you begin to understand how feelings impact your mood, and how your mood can feel in your body, you can start to align your emotions with the physical reactions that your body experiences. Doing this will help you in knowing when you need to use coping skills to help you through stronger emotions. (Coping skills are discussed in the section on mental health.) Below is a conversation between a student and her professor. Have you experienced a situation when you’ve been so frustrated you wanted to scream? Would you have responded differently? Do you feel Paige was in control of her emotions? In this example, Paige’s reaction was driven by her emotions. Physically she experienced sweaty palms, a flushed face, and a trembling lip. Psychologically she was angry and hostile. Behaviorally, she was waving her paper in the air and yelling at the professor. Paige’s reaction illustrates the various reactions you may experience with emotions including the physical, psychological, and behavioral reactions. When experiencing these reactions it is best to take a step back and not allow your emotions to take over. This situation could have been avoided if Paige took a moment to pause and collect her thoughts. Reacting quickly often results in over-reacting; so, to prevent negative consequences, a better approach is to take a breath and walk away. The same idea applies when you are not in person: Taking substantial time before sending an email or text, reacting to a social media post, or responding to a comment in a discussion forum can make a difference between a careful, constructive outcome and one that leads to even deeper problems. As you continue this journey of managing your emotions, you will find that you experience more situations in which you feel in control of your emotions and less often experience emotion-driven behaviors and lack of control. ### Physical Responses and Well-Being When you have felt really frustrated with a personal relationship or an upcoming test, have you ever experienced a headache, stomachache or perhaps felt extremely tired? This is your brain and body working together to let you know that they are stressed. The connection between our mind and body is powerful, and both feed off of each other to influence how we feel and function every day. The amount of sleep we get, the types of food we eat, what we do for exercise or what we don’t do, all interrelate and lead to how we can manage our emotions or not. Developing coping skills will help you manage how you are feeling and calm your body and mind with the goal of decreasing your stress level. Taking a pause versus reacting immediately, such as going on a walk, connecting with a friend, or simply focusing on your breath during times of stress has the potential to slow down your heart rate and calm your mind. Although coping strategies help in these stressful situations, what you do every day to prepare your body to manage these times matters just as much. You need to focus on taking care of your body and mind daily. Again, the mind-body connection is so strong that what you eat, how much activity you do, and the amount of time you sleep directly influences your ability to manage your day-to-day stressors. Below are some simple suggestions to ensure you are making your mind and body your top priority. A more comprehensive understanding of each of these behaviors is discussed later in the chapter. 1. A healthy diet will help you to be your best self and keep your mind and body functioning properly. Balance is critical: Try to have a serving of a protein source, a carbohydrate source, and a serving of a fruit and vegetable at each meal. Typically, you will find that your body and mind need fuel every 3-4 hours during the day. Knowing this, you can plan accordingly your meals and snacks. Lastly, don’t forget to hydrate. 2. Being active for at least 60 minutes every day can be a goal for you if you find yourself spending most of your day sitting—in class, while studying, or as you complete assignments. Being physically active will help your body feel awake and make you stronger to handle stressful situations. Even simple activities such as taking a walk, finding a yoga class or online video, or even a pick-up game of basketball can maintain good physical health. 3. As important as being active is, it is equally critical to spend time sleeping. Note, that being inactive (watching TV, playing video games) is not the same to our bodies as restorative sleep. Maintaining a regular sleep routine and schedule is critical to your mind and body.

# Maintaining Your Mental Health and Managing Stress ## Mental Health Basics Question to consider: 1. What are some of the ways to tell if you are holding onto stress? 2. How do mindfulness and gratitude encourage emotional health? ### What Is Mental Health? Mental health “includes emotional, psychological, and social well-being. It affects how we think, feel, act, make choices, and relate to others. Mental health is more than the absence of a mental illness—it’s essential to your overall health and quality of life.”National Institute of Mental Health. “Caring for your mental health.” https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/topics/caring-for-your-mental-health According to the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI), a mental illness is a condition that affects a person’s thinking, feeling, or mood. The condition may affect a person’s ability to relate to others and function throughout the day. A recent survey of over 350,000 college students from almost 400 campuses across the U.S. found that more than 60% of students met criteria for one or more mental health illness diagnosis (i.e., depression, anxiety, eating disorder, suicide ideation).Lipson SK J of Affective Disorders 2022 v306 page138-147 Although mental health illness worsened among all students, health disparities were found among racially and ethnically minoritized (i.e., Asian, Black, Latinx, American Indian/Alaskan Native, Arab American) students. A mental health condition isn’t the result of one event; it is most often the result of multiple overlapping causes. Environment, lifestyle, and genetic predisposition can all be factors in whether someone develops a mental health condition. Traumatic life events or stressful experiences may make some people more susceptible, and brain biochemistry may play a role as well. Exposure to harmful social media also plays a role and impacts your anxiety levels, self-perception, and other aspects of mental health. Mental health conditions show up in many ways. Anxiety, depression, and eating disorders are some of the most common. ### Depression Most people feel sad at times. This is a normal reaction to loss or struggles we face. Being sad is not the same as having depression. When intense sadness lasts for several days or even weeks, and you are no longer interested in activities you once enjoyed, it may be depression. Depression can lead to a variety of emotional and physical problems and can decrease a person’s ability to function at work and at home. Depression occurs when something in our brain stops functioning correctly. This dysfunction prevents you from taking care of yourself, interferes with your relationships, and may lead to you missing school or work. Depression does not have a single cause. It can follow a life crisis or physical illness, but it can also occur spontaneously. Several factors including trauma, a significant life change, brain injury, and drug and alcohol misuse may contribute to depression. Regardless of how or why it occurs, depression is a treatable medical condition, and the ability to identify what it is and how to treat it is important. Because depression is a medical illness, it needs to be treated by a health professional. If you are experiencing symptoms of depression, reach out to your doctor or call your local mental health resources on campus. During this situation, having a friend or family member to call and talk to is the fastest way to get the help you need. Building a network of support for yourself is critical. ### Suicidal Behavior Suicide is when people direct violence at themselves with the intent to end their lives, and they die because of their actions.National Institute of Mental Health, “Frequently asked questions about suicide.” https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/publications/suicide-faq/index.shtml People who contemplate suicide often experience a deep feeling of hopelessness. They often feel they can’t cope with challenging life events and are not able to see solutions to problems. At the moment, they are unable to see that the challenges are really only temporary. Most survivors of suicide attempts go on to live wonderful, full lives. Help is available all day, every day, for anyone who might be in crisis. By offering immediate counseling to everyone that may need it, crisis centers provide invaluable support at the most critical times. If you or someone you know has warning signs of suicide, get help as soon as possible. Family and friends are often the first to recognize any warning signs and can help you to take the first step in finding treatment. If someone is telling you that they are going to kill themselves, do not leave them alone, and call the suicide hotline at 988. The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK (8255) is available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. A Crisis Text Line is also available 24/7 by texting HOME to 741741, 85258, or 686868. Depression is a key risk factor for suicide, along with substance abuse, chronic debilitating pain, mental health disorders, and a family history of suicide. These are some of the warning signs to help you determine if a friend or loved one is at risk for suicide, especially if the behavior is new, has increased, or seems related to a painful event: 1. talking about wanting to die or to kill themselves 2. looking for a way to kill themselves, like searching online or buying a gun 3. talking about feeling hopeless or having no reason to live 4. talking about feeling trapped or in unbearable pain 5. talking about being a burden to others 6. increasing the use of alcohol or drugs 7. acting anxious or agitated; behaving recklessly 8. sleeping too little or too much 9. withdrawing or isolating themselves 10. showing rage or talking about seeking revenge 11. extreme mood swingsU.S. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. “We can all prevent suicide.” https://suicidepreventionlifeline.org/how-we-can-all-prevent-suicide/ ### Eating Disorders Eating disorders are not uncommon among students. Stress or anxiety may create a desire for some students to overeat, while others may develop a concern about body shape or weight and significantly reduce their food intake. The table below provides three common eating disorders. Eating disorders can lead to many complications, some of them very serious, like heart conditions and kidney failure. It is crucial for anyone with an eating disorder to stabilize their health, then continue medical care and counseling to reach full recovery. Eating disorders can be treated successfully with medical care, psychotherapy, counseling, or coaching. It is important to seek treatment if you suspect there is an issue. Treatment can address any underlying psychological issues. If you think you might have an eating disorder, visit a doctor or your campus health center. The National Eating Disorders Association also offers information, help, and support. ### Anxiety Disorders Anxiety disorders are the most common mental health concern in the United States, and while there are many types of anxiety disorders, they all have one thing in common: “persistent, excessive fear or worry in situations that are not threatening.”National Institute of Mental Health. “Anxiety Disorders.”, https://www.nami.org/NAMI/media/NAMI-Media/Images/FactSheets/Anxiety-Disorders-FS.pdf Physically, your heart may race, and you may experience shortness of breath, nausea, or intense fatigue. Talk with a mental health care professional if you experience a level of anxiety that keeps you from your regular daily activities. ### Identifying Anxiety Experiencing stress is both normal and healthy to build both your self-efficacy and resilience. We typically experience different types of stressors throughout the day. Although stress doesn’t always feel good for us to experience and is often unpleasant when it is happening, it is typically for a short amount of time. Think about the last time you were stressed: taking an important final exam, having to present your work in front of classmates, introducing yourself to others at a new club you joined. These situations are typically very short and centered around a particular event. You may experience sweaty palms, a fast heartbeat, a headache or stomachache, but these feelings usually go away after the situation. To learn more about what stress does to your body, visit the American Psychological Association's page on stress. On the other hand, when you are experiencing anxiety, your body and mind are trying to communicate to you that you need to seek help and may need medical treatment. Anxiety will feel similar to a stressful situation, as described above, but the feeling doesn’t go away. Using an example from above, you have to present your work in front of your classmates today and you feel very nauseous, your heart is pounding so hard in your chest you feel dizzy and have to sit down. You don’t think you can walk the 10 minutes to class and decide to just skip class and stay home. This may be anxiety. Anxiety is different than stress as it sometimes prevents you from doing your daily activities. Anxiety may affect your ability to concentrate, increase your risk for heart disease, can weaken your immune system, disrupt your sleep, and can cause fatigue, and depression.The University of Maryland Medical Center UMMC, https://www.umms.org/ummc The table above contrasts the differences between stress and anxiety so that you can better determine what you are experiencing over time. When you feel any of the symptoms listed above, ask yourself “Is this stress or anxiety?” ### Additional Resources Because entering college is such a big transition, it is important to know what health services are available on your campus. Some help may be beyond the scope of a college counseling program, and if this is the case, your college health center can refer you to off-campus resources to support you. Regardless of where you attend college, OK2TALK and NAMI offer online, text, and phone support. 1. OK2TALK is a community for young adults struggling with mental health problems. It offers a safe place to talk. 2. Call the NAMI helpline at 800-950-6264, or txt NAMI to 741741. Your brain requires a constant supply of energy to function. What you eat and are exposed to have a direct impact on its processes, your mood, and your ability to make good decisions. A majority of college students feel anxious, lonely, or depressed at some point during the year. We all have bad days, and sometimes bad days string into weeks. It’s okay to feel bad. What’s important is to acknowledge and work through your feelings, and find a friend or a counselor to talk to. ### Developing Coping Strategies Everyone experiences stress during their lives. It is part of the human experience, and despite how healthy and well-adjusted you are, stress is inevitable. What makes a difference is how you deal with it. One of the most important things you can do is to keep perspective on your stressors. When feeling stressed, ask yourself, on a scale of 1 to 100, how stressful a situation is this? Will I even remember this three years from now? When facing potential stressors, the way you interpret what you’re experiencing can intensify your stress or minimize it. There are many ways to manage stress. Take a look at some of the suggestions below that can be added to your own “toolkit” for coping with stress. As you read through the descriptions, think about the following questions: 1. Which ones have you tried? You may already have one or more that work really well for you. 2. Which ones do you want to try? If you have not tried any or many, consider focusing on adding one to your strategies for coping with stress. 3. Which ones would be best in certain situations? It’s helpful to have different tools for different situations—for example, a calming yoga pose in your dorm room and deep breathing in the classroom. ### Mindfulness Mindfulness means being present with your thoughts, feelings, bodily sensations, and surrounding environment. Mindfulness is also without judgment—meaning there is no right or wrong way to think or feel in a given moment. When we practice mindfulness, our thoughts tune into what we’re sensing in the present moment rather than rehashing the past or imagining the future.Moran, Joan; University of California at Los Angeles. “Pause, reflect and give thanks.” http://newsroom.ucla.edu/stories/gratitude-249167 Anything that keeps you present in the moment and gives your prefrontal cortex (the reasoning and thinking part of your brain) a break is practicing mindfulness. Mindfulness can be a slow walk; looking intently at the grass, trees, flowers, or buildings; and being aware of what you are sensing and feeling. Mindfulness can be sitting quietly—even sitting still in a quiet place for as little as a few minutes can reduce heart rate and blood pressure. Developing a practice of mindfulness is easier than you may think: 1. Slow down. From brushing your teeth, to washing your face, to shampooing your hair—can you take the speed out of getting ready in the morning? Focus on the activity, pay attention to what you are doing, stay present (this means don’t think about what happened last night or what’s in store for the day, just stay focused on the activity), and take your time. 2. Focus on your breath. How fast are you breathing? Is your breath coming from your chest or your belly? Can you feel the air come through your nose on the inhale? Can you slow down the exhale? Can you feel your body relax when you slow the exhale? 3. Connect to your environment. Walk for a few minutes, focused on the world around you—look at the leaves on the trees or the light at the corner, listen to the sounds around you, stay with your surroundings, and observe what you see and hear around you. ### Deep Breathing When people hear mindfulness they often think of meditation. While meditation is one method of mindfulness, there are many others that may be simpler and easier for you to practice. Deep breathing helps lower stress and reduce anxiety, and it is simple yet very powerful. A daily mindful breathing practice has been shown to reduce test anxiety in college students.Levitin, Time Special Edition 2018, The New Mindfulness A 2-4-6-8 breathing pattern is a very useful tool that can be used to help bring a sense of calm and to help mild to moderate anxiety. It takes almost no time, requires no equipment, and can be done anywhere: 1. Start by quickly exhaling any air in your lungs (to the count of 2). 2. Breathing in through your nose, inhale to the count of 4. 3. Hold your breath for a count of 6. 4. Slowly exhale through your mouth to the count of 8. This is one round. Do not repeat the quick exhale again. Instead start round two with an inhale through your nose to the count of 4, hold for 6, and exhale to 8. Repeat for three more rounds to relax your body and mind. With practice, 2-4-6-8 breathing will become a useful tool for times when you experience tension or stress. ### Meditation Dan Harris, a news reporter at ABC, suffered a major panic attack on national television. Following this challenging period in his life, he learned to meditate and found that it made him calmer and more resilient. He’s now on a mission to make meditation approachable to everyone. Dan used to be a skeptic about meditation but now says that if he learned to meditate, anyone can learn to meditate! Dan reminds us that we are going to get lost, and our mind is going to stray, and that’s okay. Simply notice when you’re lost and start over. Every time your mind strays and you start over, it is like a bicep curl for your brain. Start with 3 minutes of meditation, and slowly work your way up to 15 or 20. To hear more about Dan’s journey, watch this video, and for a simple meditation to get started, you can try one of the videos on the meditation Youtube channel. There are also some great meditation apps including Insight Timer, CALM, and Headspace. ### Gratitude Too often people think it is the external factors that bring us joy and happiness, when really it’s all related to internal work. According to UCLA’s Mindfulness Awareness Research Center, “Having an attitude of gratitude changes the molecular structure of the brain, and makes us healthier and happier. When you feel happiness, the central nervous system is affected. You are more peaceful, less reactive and less resistant.”2016 Study Journal of PLoS One, https://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.1000316 Numerous studies show that people who count their blessings tend to be happier and less depressed. In a UC Berkeley study, researchers recruited 300 people who were experiencing emotional or mental health challenges and randomly divided them into three groups. All three groups received counseling services. The first group also wrote a letter of gratitude every week for three weeks. The second group wrote about their thoughts and feelings with negative experiences. The third group received only counseling. The people in the group who wrote gratitude letters reported significantly better mental health for up to 12 weeks after the writing exercise ended. This would suggest that a healthy emotional self-care practice is to take note of good experiences or when you see something that makes you smile. Think about why the experience feels so good. According to Rick Hanson, author of Resilient, “Each day is strewn with little jewels. The idea is to see them and pick them up. When you notice something positive, stay with the feeling for 30 seconds. Feel the emotions in your whole body. Maybe your heart feels lighter or you’re smiling. The more you can deepen and lengthen positive experiences the longer those positivity neurons in your brain are firing—and the longer they fire the stronger the underlying neural networks become. Repeat that process a half dozen times a day and you’ll feel stronger, more stable and calmer within a few weeks.”Hanson, R. (2020). Resilient. Harmony ### Asking for Help If you find that you are stuck in a low mood and are more often feeling down, hopeless, a burden to others and simply don’t find many things bring you joy, you may need help from a professional. As just discussed, there may be situations when you may want advice or support and need to reach out to others. Having your own support system is key. In this section you will build the foundation of your support system. You may have a teacher, guidance couselor, a friend's big brother/sister, or your own sibling who has helped you through difficult situations. Once in college, some of them may be harder to reach. Consider who you know now and start the process of building a bigger system. Reaching out and making a few good friends in this new environment will be a great start in this process. This may be easier said than done; however, it is a great skill to develop when in college as you are around so many people. You will also share at least one or two values or strengths with these individuals at your school which is a great conversation starter. Other people that may be in your support system could be family members, professors or counselors at school, or even a sports coach or leader of a community group you participate in. Examples of situations in which you may need to ask for help are endless. You may have low motivation to complete assignments or attend class, be unable to concentrate during lectures, feel helpless with simple tasks, miss family or friends, or just feel unhappy with being in college. All of these situations could be related to a lack of sleep, poor eating habits, the negative effects of sustained stress, or symptoms of depression you may be experiencing. If you find that you are failing class or are in danger of being dropped because of attendance issues, or just can’t seem to be motivated to leave your dorm room, use your support system. provides a flowchart for dealing with common situations you may experience in college by providing prompts for determining when you can make changes on your own and when you may need to seek help. If you found yourself in one of these situations and needed support today, who would you call and why? If they weren’t available, who is the next person on your list? Having a plan and a group of people you can reach out to is a game changer for when you are stuck in a situation and need help in moving forward. Sometimes, seeking help and starting the conversation with someone can feel intimidating and even stressful. Consider these examples to help you begin: 1. “I feel very alone today. Can we talk?” 2. “I think I am going to fail my class. I could really use some help coming up with a plan.” 3. “I said some things that I shouldn’t have to my close friend and don’t know what to do about it. What would you do if you were me?” 4. “You are so good at working in groups and I just hate it. It makes me feel so uncomfortable. Could you tell me how you do it?” 5. “I have to get up in front of my class to present on a research topic and I am very nervous. What can I do to feel less stressed about this?” Having a list of a few people that you can call or stop to chat with will make these situations easier to manage and help you feel like you are not in it alone. When you do reach out, consider how you feel, what your mood is like, if you have a handle on your emotions. You should be able to express yourself in the situation but have space to receive help. Remember it is best to go for a walk to cool off or take a few moments by pausing to gather your thoughts. This is a great time to pull in your support system to help you work through these feelings and emotions. With your support system you will be able to have a clearer picture of the problem and discover some steps to take to overcome the situation.

# Maintaining Your Mental Health and Managing Stress ## The Role of Social Media on Mental Health Questions to Consider: 1. Why do I use social media? 2. How can I balance positive and negative social media use? 3. How can I identify and improve problematic social media use? 4. What should I do if I experience cyberbullying? Some people refer to the time we are living in as the age of overload. It’s easy to get worn down by social media and the constant news cycle, and to be overwhelmed by too many choices that social media affords us. We live in a fast-paced, always-on world with a lot of pressures. Social media offers many benefits, from staying connected to your loved ones and friends, learning about events in your community, and providing you with the ability to get information quickly. Unfortunately, these benefits are compounded with many risks (see ).Haddad JM Curr Psychiatry Rep. 2021; 23(11): 70. Among college students, social media has also been associated with negative effects on self-esteem and self-image. Overuse of social media has been found to increase symptoms of anxiety, loneliness, and depression. ### Uncovering Your Relationship with Social Media By better understanding your relationship with social media, you will be more successful in finding the right balance and occasions for using it. The best way to get started is to just become aware of your relationship with social media and how it may or may not impact your own mental health. Upon reflection from the activity above, where is your relationship with social media? To consider the relationship another way, think about the questions in the table below? Which more accurately describes your most frequent feelings when using social media? ### Impact on Your Focus and Attention When asked how social media use impacts a student’s ability to study, two out of three undergraduate college students indicated they were more drawn to social media than their school work.Kolhar M Saudi Journal of Biological Sciences 2021; 28(4):2216 Although the answer may be as simple as social media is more fun, the deeper issue may be related to how your use of social media has trained your brain to prefer to take in information in short doses. Social media rewards a distracted, shorter attention span, which may reward giving our brain quick doses of dopamine. (Dopamine is a chemical in your brain related to feelings of pleasure or satisfaction.) Similarly, when your phone beeps, buzzes, or vibrates with new posts waiting for you, your brain receives a dose of dopamine. Distractions from social media have also been linked to our desire to be connected and be available for people in our networks.Koessmeier C Frontiers in Psychology 2021. “Why are we distracted by social media?” https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.711416/full Similar studies have shown that the fear of missing out (FoMO) leads to significant social media-driven distractions. The first step of gaining control over these distractions is by eliminating them. As you know, you can easily turn on/off your phone (watch, computer, etc.) notifications. Consider switching away from social media during your relaxing time and pick up a book or magazine, an old school puzzle, or journaling on paper. Another way to improve your concentration is to focus on one task at a time. Put away your phone for 30-90 minutes, jot down three tasks you need to complete, and check one off at a time. The more you use these strategies, the faster you will regain your focus and attention. ### Impact on Relationships Problematic social media use has been well documented among individuals who experience social anxiety and loneliness.O’Day EB Computers in Human Behavior Reports 2021 For these individuals, social media is often used as a form of connection when in-person relationships are lacking. As mentioned above, for individuals who actively use social media as a way to directly communicate with others, social media use can provide social support and connection. Alternatively, those who use social media more passively, such as only to view other’s lives, have more negative outcomes that can include depression and anxiety. Are you active in your engagement or passive? If you feel your engagement is only passive, consider this as a red flag, and start by setting boundaries on your social media use as discussed above. To prevent social media from impacting your relationships, consider using social media more actively by reaching out to those in your network to plan in-person meet ups. Also, if you find yourself frequently comparing yourself to what you see on others’ social media, remember that people’s digital life might not be reflective of reality. If you find such comparisons damaging your self-esteem and relationship with yourself, reach out to your support network and open the conversation. ### Need for Validation Consider this scenario: Josh just finished finals week and posted on social media, “I guess I will start packing up my room. I know I just failed my chemistry final. My parents are going to threaten not to pay for next semester.” An hour later, Josh is back in his dorm room and checks his account. No comments. No likes. No “hug” or “care” emoji. How did you feel when you read this situation? Did it trigger you to cringe and feel bad for Josh? Have you ever found yourself in a similar situation? How did you feel then? When you first started using social media you may have simply posted a picture or update in order to keep your friends and family connected with your life. At some point in time, you likely started to expect likes and comments. Eventually, if you don’t get the same level of likes and comments you have become accustomed to, you may start to think your connections are not interested in you. According to research, the lack of response is often interpreted as “no one cares since no one took the time to respond.” This line of thinking can lead to self-doubt, insecurity, and anxiety.McLean Hospital. “The social dilemma: Social media and your mental health.” https://www.mcleanhospital.org/essential/it-or-not-social-medias-affecting-your-mental-health Seeking validation – either positive or negative -- via social media is moving your relationship with social media into problem territory. If you reach that point, you should pause and reflect on the meaning of this behavior. One of the immediate steps you can take to disrupt this unhealthy cycle is to pause before you post. ### Problematic Social Media Use In 2021, the average internet user spent nearly two and a half hours per day on social media.Kemp S. “Reels Grew by 220M and other mindblowing stats.” Hootsuite blog, 2022. https://blog.hootsuite.com/simon-kemp-social-media/ That translates to over 37 days per year, and over the average lifetime, more than seven years of time. Let that sink in. Since we spend so much time on social media, dedicating such a massive portion of our lives to it, it’s even more important we spend that time well. As stated above, there are definitely positives associated with engaging in social media, especially if you use it to learn more, broaden your social network, and enhance your life by letting it lead you to new offline experiences. However, there are times when social media use, or overuse, can be problematic and unhealthy. Factors that lead to an individual having problematic social media use include the following: 1. poor self-regulation, 2. lack of control of time spent on social media, 3. social media as a mood regulator, 4. history of obsessive thinking, 5. social media impacting your social and/or professional life, and 6. if social media use is altered to negate these negative factors yet the individual relapses.Stanculescu E. Telematics and Informatics. 2022. “Social media addiction profiles and their antecedents.” https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1016/j.tele.2022.101879 As a student, problematic social media use could mean that your attendance in class declines or you fail to complete assignments, which leads to lower academic achievement. You may find watching videos and viewing posts more satisfying than learning. You may regularly become distracted while participating in activities that require your full attention, such as driving.Sun Y. Addictive Behaviors. 2021. “A review of theories and models applied in studies of social media addiction and implications for future research” Further, problematic social media use refers to using social media platforms for reasons that are illegal, unethical, or socially unacceptable behaviors such as stalking, bullying, or spreading misinformation. As previously described, evaluating your relationship with social media is the first place to start. In a recent intervention to decrease problematic social media use, students were asked to log their daily use of social media for one week.Hou Y. Journal of Psychosocial Research on Cyberspace. 2019. “Social media addiction: its impact, mediation, and intervention.” They logged the length of their time on social media, as well as how they were using it and their thoughts and emotions. After one week, students significantly reduced their level of problematic social media use and improved their mental health and academic efficiency. ### Cyberbullying The relationship between mental health issues and bullying is well documented. The relationship between mental health and bullying in the digital space, known as cyberbullying, is a newer problem and unfortunately provides a platform for bullies to say things behind the screen that most likely would never be said in person. Compared to traditional bullying, cyberbullying isn’t easily reduced by supervision, has the potential for larger audiences, is often anonymous, and has fewer opportunities for someone to provide direct feedback in order to put a stop to the activity.Sticca F. Journal of Youth and Adolescence. 2013. “Longitudinal risk factors for cyberbullying in adolescence.” For individuals experiencing cyberbullying, it is much harder to avoid attacks and/or escape as the bullying can take place any time of the day. Cyberbullying has a larger audience due to how well connected social media is throughout the community, state, country, and world. Posts and conversations on social media have limitless reach which often puts the victim in a situation with very little control. Once information is in the virtual world, the text becomes very hard to remove and can “go viral” where it becomes so popular you can find it on any search platform. Cyberbullying via social media can affect people of all ages, and it puts individuals in a difficult situation in which they cannot adequately defend themselves. The roles of each person involved in cyberbullying is consistently in a state of transition as people switch roles from being the victim, to the perpetrator, or the bystander as social media features (i.e., like, share) are utilized. In a recent study of US college students, 1 out of 2 students report being a victim of cyberbullying, while 1 out of 4 students report being a perpetrator at least one time per month.Giumetti GW. Aggressive Behavior 2022;48:40. “Predictors and outcomes of cyberbullying among college students: A two-wave study.” https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/ab.21992 Prevention strategies to decrease frequency of cyberbullying events are limited; however, research addressing victimization has noted the most effective strategy is to engage your social support network. Together you and a supportive person in your life can discuss the situation and make a plan to avoid further cyberbullying. Eliminating your social media platform where the attacks are occurring is not the only solution. Social media companies are aware that their users may experience these negative events and have put systems into place to report when users engage in such attacks. These companies have also enabled features to block or modify account privacy to prevent situations in the future. The table below provides common examples of cyberbullying and their explanations.

# Maintaining Your Mental Health and Managing Stress ## Physical Health Basics Questions to Consider: 1. What is healthy eating? 2. Why is it important to stay hydrated? 3. How important is exercise to a healthy body? 4. Are you getting enough sleep to be healthy? 5. What are toxins, and how can they affect your health? You have one body. Treat it well so as to maximize its ability to serve you throughout your life. Often physical health gets moved to the bottom of the priority list when we are busy. Taking care of your physical health doesn’t mean six-pack abs or training for a marathon. It means honoring your physical needs so your body can function properly, feeding your cells the nutrients that will keep your body working well your entire life, and minimizing exposure to toxins to reduce your risk of disease. ### Healthy Eating While it’s not the only thing that contributes to great health, what you eat makes a huge difference. We have 37 trillion cells in our body. The only way they function optimally is with good nutrition. As a college student, you will be surrounded by temptations to eat poorly. Although it is okay to choose unhealthy food options in moderation, your goal will be to focus on making healthier choices to fuel your mind and body daily. One way to ensure you are making healthy meal choices is by using the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Healthy Plate Guidelines. MyPlate illustrates five different food groups considered the building blocks for a healthy plate for each meal—vegetables, fruits, protein, grains, and dairy. ### Whole Foods vs. Processed Foods Choose whole foods. Whole foods are any foods that have not been processed, packaged, or altered in any way. Whole foods are an essential part of a healthy diet because they contain the vitamins and minerals our bodies need. Examples of whole foods include the following: 1. Vegetables: Carrots, broccoli, kale, avocados, cauliflower, spinach, peppers 2. Fruits: Apples, bananas, blueberries, strawberries, grapes, melons, peaches 3. Grains: Brown rice, oatmeal, barley, buckwheat, quinoa, millet 4. Beans: Black, pinto, kidney, black-eyed peas, chickpeas Minimize non-whole foods, often called processed foods. These are foods that have been processed, such as cookies, hot dogs, chips, pasta, deli meat, and ice cream. Even seemingly healthy foods like yogurt, granola, and other cereals are processed and should be checked for added sugar and other unhealthy ingredients. Review the label on these items and look for products that have less than 5 grams of fat and 10 grams of added sugars per serving. Also, review the dietary fiber and select products that have at least 3 grams per serving. Dietary fiber is a good thing; the higher the number the better. Fiber makes you feel full, and helps with digestion. Following these simple guidelines will help you select the best foods. The average American eats 62 percent of their daily calories from processed foods.Dr. Joel Furhman https://www.mensjournal.com/features/joel-fuhrman-the-doctor-is-out-there-20121107/ In order for your body to be as healthy as possible, it’s extremely important to include lots of whole foods in your diet. ### How to Read a Food Label The U.S. government requires food manufacturers to put a label on every processed food product. This is so we, as consumers, know what we are putting into our bodies and can make good dietary choices. A quick review of the label will provide a lot of important information about what you are eating, yet most people don’t take the time to read the label. This is a big mistake. Think of the front of the package as a marketing billboard. Don’t be fooled by the marketing. Every day millions of dollars are spent to persuade us to eat foods that are not healthy for us. Through visuals and words (like natural, healthy, or gluten free), the food industry wants us to make assumptions about the nature of a food product without looking at the facts. For example, many people eat protein bars thinking they are a healthy choice, but protein bars can have up to 30 grams of sugar! Understanding the nutrition information and ingredients will help you make healthier choices. When you take the time to read the labeled ingredients, you are no longer being marketed to—you are staring at the facts. This video on how to read a food label is a helpful overview on what else to look for. ### What You Drink What is your go-to drink when you are thirsty? Soda? Juice? Coffee? How about water? Most of your blood and every cell in your body is composed of water. In fact, water makes up 60 to 80 percent of our entire body mass, so when we don’t consume enough water, all kinds of complications can occur. To function properly, all the cells and organs in our body need water. Proper hydration is key to overall health and well-being. By the time you feel thirsty, you are already dehydrated. Dehydration is when your body does not have as much water and fluids as it needs. Researchers at Virginia Polytechnic discovered that mild dehydration (as little as losing 1 to 2 percent of body water) can impair cognitive performance.University of Virginia https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4207053/ Water increases energy and relieves fatigue, helps maintain weight, flushes toxins, improves skin complexion, improves digestion, and is a natural headache remedy (your brain is 76 percent water). Headaches, migraines, and back pains are commonly caused by dehydration. Your body will also let you know it needs water by messaging through muscle cramps, achy joints, constipation, dry skin, and of course a dry mouth. Aside from feeling thirsty, the easiest way to tell if you are dehydrated is to check your urine. If it is a dark shade of yellow, your urine is over-concentrated with waste. Water helps to flush out waste, so when you’re hydrated there’s a higher ratio of water to waste, turning your urine a lighter color. One of the best habits you can develop is to drink a large glass of water first thing in the morning. Your body becomes a little dehydrated as you sleep. Drinking water first thing in the morning allows your body to rehydrate, which helps with digestion and helps move the bowels for regularity in the morning. It also helps to eliminate the toxins your liver processed while you slept. Check out this video for more benefits of drinking water. “But I don’t like the taste of water!” No problem. Select any non-caloric beverage. Flavored waters are a perfect choice and there are many options with and without bubbles or caffeine. Limit your intake of caloric beverages such as juice, soda, and high calorie beverages at your favorite coffee shop. ### Exercise Many people exercise to maintain or lose weight, or increase cardiovascular health, but physical outcomes are only one potential benefit of exercise. Regular exercise can improve the quality of your sleep, strengthen your bones, increase your energy levels, and reduce your risk of high blood pressure, diabetes, and even some forms of cancer.Harvard Medical School https://www.health.harvard.edu/newsletter_article/Exercise_as_medicine Regular exercise is key to living a long, healthy life. There are three basic types of exercise—flexibility, strength training, and cardiovascular. 1. Flexibility is the range in motion of the joints in your body, or the ability for your muscles to move freely. Without adequate flexibility, daily activities can become difficult to do. Stretching increases your body’s flexibility, improves circulation, and sends more blood to your muscles. Just a few minutes a day of deep stretching can have a powerfully positive impact on your health. Yoga and Tai Chi are other wonderful ways to improve your flexibility. 2. Strength is the body’s ability to produce force. Strength training helps improve muscle strength and muscle mass, which will become increasingly important as you age. Increased muscle helps your body burn calories more efficiently. Strength training also helps maintain bone strength. In addition to lifting weights, other ways to build strength include push-ups, pull-ups, squats, lunges, and yoga. 3. Cardiovascular is the body’s ability to use oxygen efficiently during exercise. As one’s ability to use oxygen improves, daily activities can be performed with less fatigue. Great cardiovascular modes of exercise include jogging, swimming, biking, and HIIT (high intensity interval training). HIIT is short bursts of intense activity followed by a rest period. With HIIT, you can squeeze a lot of benefit into a short period of time. Click here for an example of HITT workouts. Research indicates that regular aerobic exercise can support memory and cognition. In these studies, aerobic exercise generally increases the number of new neurons created in the brain’s memory center and also reduces inflammation.Kelty, Journal of Applied Physiology Inflammation in the brain may contribute to the development of dementia and other neurodegenerative conditions. It might be good timing to take a jog before you sit down to study for a test! It’s important to move throughout the day, and every day. Aim to exercise for 150 minutes a week. You don’t have to be the king or queen of CrossFit; it’s the daily movement that is most important. Research has found that three brisk walks for 10 minutes a day is a great start. While it is best to integrate all three types of exercise, the best exercise is the one you will actually do. Find and commit to a form of exercise you will enjoy. ### Sleep How often do you wake up filled with energy, eager to embrace the day? How often do you wake up still tired, with heavy eyes that just don’t want to open? Your answer to these questions has a direct bearing on the quality of your decisions, your ability to use good judgment, the extent to which you can focus in the classroom, and ultimately your long-term health. A great night’s sleep begins the minute you wake up. The choices you make throughout the day impact how quickly you fall asleep, whether you sleep soundly, and whether your body is able to successfully complete the cycle of critical functions that only happen while you sleep. Sleep is the foundation of health, yet almost 40 percent of adults struggle to get enough sleep.Cleveland Clinic, https://health.clevelandclinic.org/lack-sleep-make-crave-junk-food/ Lack of sleep affects mental and physical performance and can make you more irritable. The diminished energy that results from too little sleep often leads us to make poor decisions about most things, including food. Think about the last time you were really tired. Did you crave pizza, donuts, and fries—or a healthy salad? Studies have shown that people who sleep less are more likely to eat fewer vegetables and eat more fats and refined carbohydrates, like donuts.Cleveland Clinic, https://health.clevelandclinic.org/lack-sleep-make-crave-junk-food/ With sufficient sleep it is easier to learn, to remember what you learned, and to have the necessary energy to make the most of your educational experience. Without sufficient sleep it is harder to learn, to remember what you learned, and to have the energy to make the most of your educational experience. It’s that simple. ### What Happens When We Sleep? Sleep is a time when our bodies are quite busy repairing and detoxifying. While we sleep we fix damaged tissue, toxins are processed and eliminated, hormones essential for growth and appetite control are released and restocked, and energy is restored. A review of hundreds of sleep studies concluded that most adults need around eight hours of sleep to maintain good health. Some people may be able to function quite well on seven and others may need closer to nine, but as a general rule, most people need a solid eight hours of sleep each night. And when it comes to sleep, both quantity and quality are important. When sleep is cut short, the body doesn’t have time to complete the phases for the repair and detoxification. A tiny lobe called the pineal gland helps us fall asleep. The pineal gland secretes melatonin to calm the brain. The pineal gland responds to darkness. If you are watching TV until the minute you go to bed and then sleep with the artificial light from smartphones and other devices, your brain is tricked into thinking it is still daylight; this makes it difficult for the pineal gland to do its job. In addition, if the TV shows you watch before bed are violent or action-packed, your body will release cortisol (the stress hormone). Anything that creates stress close to bedtime will make it more difficult to fall asleep. A bedtime practice of quiet activities like reading, journaling, listening to music, or meditation will make it much easier to fall asleep. ### What Happens If You Don’t Get Enough Sleep? Lack of sleep has a big impact on your overall state of health and well-being. Studies have linked poor sleep to a variety of health problems. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have identified sleep deprivation as a public health epidemic. Some of the health risks of insufficient sleep include the following: Increased risk of heart attack and stroke: In his book Why We Sleep, Matthew Walker, PhD, shares Japanese research showing that male workers who average six hours of sleep or less are 400 to 500 percent more likely to suffer one or more cardiac arrests than those getting more than six hours of sleep each night. Another study of women between the ages of 20 and 79 found that those who had mild sleep disturbance such as taking longer to fall asleep or waking up one or more times during the night were significantly more likely to have high blood pressure than those who fell asleep quickly and slept soundly.Matthew Walker, PhD Impaired cognitive function: Even one night of sleeping less than six hours can impact your ability to think clearly the next day. Increased risk of accidents: Sleep deprivation slows your reaction time, which increases your risk of accidents. You are three times more likely to be in a car crash if you are tired. According to the American Sleep Foundation, 40 percent of people admitted to falling asleep behind the wheel at least once. A Governor’s Highway Safety Association report estimates there are 6,400 fatal drowsy-driving crashes each year. Fifty percent of these crashes involve drivers under the age of 25.Governors Highway Safety Association Driving after 20 hours without sleep is the equivalent of driving with a blood-alcohol concentration of 0.08 percent—the U.S. legal limit for drunk driving. Weight gain/increased risk for obesity: Sleep helps balance your appetite by regulating hormones that play a role in helping you feel full after a meal. Also, cortisol is released during times of anxiety, and exhaustion causes your body to produce more cortisol. This can stimulate your appetite. Increased risk of cancer: Tumors grow up to three times faster in laboratory animals with severe sleep dysfunctions. Researchers believe this is because of disrupted melatonin production, as melatonin has both antioxidant and anticancer activity. Increased emotional intensity: The part of the brain responsible for emotional reactions, your amygdala, can be 60 percent more reactive when you've slept poorly, resulting in increased emotional intensity. For more information on the advantages and health risks of sleep watch this TED Talk by Matt Walker, PhD, Director of the Sleep Center at U California Berkeley. ### Tips to Improve the Quality of Your Sleep Now that you are more aware of the ways insufficient sleep harms your body, let’s review some of the things you can do to enhance your sleep. Make sleep a priority. It can be challenging once in college, but try to get on a schedule where you sleep and wake at the same time every day to get your body accustomed to a routine. This will help your body get into a sleep rhythm and make it easier to fall asleep and get up in the morning. Sleep in a cool, quiet, dark room. Create a sleeping environment that is comfortable and conducive to sleep. If you can control the temperature in your room, keep it cool in the evening. Scientists believe a cool bedroom (around 65 degrees) may be best for sleep, since it mimics our body's natural temperature drop. Exposure to bright light suppresses our body’s ability to make melatonin, so keep the room as dark as possible. A 2010 study in The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism found that individuals exposed to room light “during the usual hours of sleep suppressed melatonin by greater than 50%.”JCEM, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3047226/ Even the tiniest bit of light in the room (like from a clock radio LCD screen) can disrupt your internal clock and your production of melatonin, which will interfere with your sleep. A sleep mask may help eliminate light, and earplugs can help reduce noise. Avoid eating late or drinking alcohol or caffeine close to bedtime. It is best to finish eating at least two hours before bedtime and avoid caffeine after lunch. While not everyone is affected in the same way, caffeine hangs around a long time in most bodies. Although alcohol will make you drowsy, the effect is short-lived and you will often wake up several hours later, unable to fall back to sleep. Alcohol can also keep you from entering the deeper stages of sleep, where your body does most of the repair and healing. A 2013 Scientific Research study concluded that “energy drinks, other caffeinated beverages and alcoholic beverages are risk factors of poor sleep quality.” It’s important to finish eating hours before bedtime so your body is able to heal and detoxify and it is not spending the first few hours of sleep digesting a heavy meal. Start to wind down an hour before bed. Making mindfulness and/or a gratitude practice (as discussed previously) a part of your bedtime routine are well documented as improving an individual's ability to fall asleep and have better quality of sleep. There are also great apps to help with relaxation, stress release, and falling asleep which include mediations, gratitude practice, and mindfulness. Consider the Insight Timer app, or any of the free apps listed by the American Sleep Association. Exercise for 30 minutes a day. One of the biggest benefits of exercise is its effect on sleep. A study from Stanford University found that 16 weeks in a moderate-intensity exercise program allowed people to fall asleep about 15 minutes faster and sleep about 45 minutes longer. Walking, yoga, swimming, strength training, jumping rope—whatever it is, find an exercise you like and make sure to move your body every day. Improve your diet. Low fiber and high saturated fat and sugar intake is associated with lighter, less restorative sleep with more wake time during the night. Processed food full of chemicals will make your body work extra hard during the night to remove the toxins and leave less time for healing and repair. Sleep affects how we look, feel, and function on a daily basis and is vital to our health and quality of life. When you get the sleep your body needs, you look more vibrant, you feel more vibrant, and you have the energy to live your best life. Now, with a better understanding of the benefits of getting the recommended hours of nightly sleep and the health risks of not getting enough sleep, what changes can you make to improve the quality and quantity of your sleep? Difficulty sleeping may be a sign of something else happening in your mind or body (i.e., anxiety, insomnia, sleep apnea). If you are doing all the right things and still have trouble falling or staying asleep, talk to your doctor or go to your student health services. Here are some resources to learn more: 1. Healthy Sleep, Harvard Medical School Division of Sleep Medicine 2. Insomnia Treatment, American Association of Sleep Medicine 3. Sleep Medicine, Society of Behavioral Sleep Medicine ### Friends & Family Matter JT has always been a hard worker, even when balancing college and work has been stressful. However, shortly after the end of the year, JT’s family experiences the sudden death of his father. While he had had health issues, the family is not prepared for the loss, especially right after JT's grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins celebrated the holidays together. JT is very close to his family, and the thought of returning to his classes and continuing to work seems too much to bear. Nonetheless, JT begins the new semester, but soon finds it difficult to get out of bed and go to class. Working is the only thing that he has motivation to do, perhaps because he needs to work to pay the bills. When JT feels well enough to go to class, he comes in late, loses focus during class, and forgets to submit assignments. JT’s boss has seen no difference in his work ethic or behavior, but JT’s professors have noticed he is not performing well, and a few of them have reached out to find out what is going on. JT has ignored the professors’ emails and skipped appointments with his advisor to talk about his academic risk. Despite being encouraged to seek on-campus counseling, JT is convinced that he can get better on his own and doesn’t have the motivation to talk to anyone other than his family members who understand best what he is going through. ### Let’s Think About It JT has several options. Think through the consequences of each one, and choose the best option or create your own option. 1. JT continues to deal with his depression and anxiety by missing classes and avoiding work with the hope that with time it will get better. 2. JT talks to their professor about what he is going through to see if there is a way to get extensions on assignments. 3. JT meets with a counselor to talk through options for improving his mental health that would involve additional costs including regular therapy and medication. ### Let’s Talk About It JT may feel uncomfortable expressing his mental and emotional needs—and he need not share personal health information with others if he does not want to—but he could communicate with those who are affected by his behaviors. Here are some suggestions for communicating with others about the dilemma that JT is facing: 1. “I am going through some tough things right now and have not been myself. While I am very committed to my education, my actions are not in line with that commitment. I am struggling with how to get back on track.” 2. “I have had some personal issues that have kept me from focusing on my course work. I am planning to seek some counseling and would like to talk about what steps I can take now, if any, to help me make up for lost time in the course.” 3. “I want to share an explanation—and not an excuse—about my behavior in and out of class. I have been struggling with some family issues that have made it difficult to feel good enough to come to class and do the work. Do you have any advice for me or would you be able to talk to me about it at length?” Whatever choice you would make in this situation, it is always best to communicate clearly your needs, your concerns, and even your uncertainties. ### Summary and Next Steps for College Success As you learned in this chapter, your college experience will be impacted by your own health and well-being. During these years, you will start the process of learning who you are and who you want to be. Your values will be questioned and your strengths will become more apparent not only to you but also to your support system. The goal of this chapter was to introduce you to the complex relationship between your mind and body; to help you identify the differences between feeling stressed versus being anxious; and to know when feeling sad may be symptoms of depression. This foundational knowledge will help to empower you to not only improve your self-efficacy, but also help you become more resilient during difficult situations. With the hope you can continue to grow in this area and improve your health and well-being, consider one of the items below and commit to setting it as your new top priority: 1. Reach out to your support system and start the conversation with a person you have identified as an important support for your health. Tell them why you included them and let them know that you value them as a key person in your life. 2. Identify other strategies that you can turn to during difficult times. Talk to your friends to learn how they handle difficult situations and if they have specific strategies that help them through such times. 3. Consider the resources available to you on campus. Are there classes that can help you learn to meditate or how to handle stress? Where is the student health service and what treatment and prevention opportunities are provided for students? 4. Think back to situations that did not go smoothly in the past. What knowledge and skills can you take from this chapter and apply to that situation which would have a different, more positive outcome. If a similar situation happens again, what would you do differently?

# Understanding Financial Literacy ## Introduction ### Student Survey How financially literate are you? This survey will help you determine how the chapter concepts relate to you right now. As we are introduced to new concepts and practices, it can be informative to reflect on how your understanding changes over time. Take this quick survey to figure it out, ranking the statements on a scale of 1—4, 1 meaning “least like me” and 4 meaning “most like me.” 1. I actively and regularly plan and/or monitor my finances. 2. I understand the benefits and risks of credit. 3. I have a plan to repay my student loans. 4. I regularly take steps to protect my identity and assets. You can also take the Chapter 8 survey anonymously online. ### About This Chapter In this chapter, you will learn to reach your personal life goals by implementing financial planning and strategies to protect yourself, manage your money today, and put yourself in a better position for tomorrow. How you act today impacts your tomorrow. By the end of this chapter, you should be able to do the following: 1. Align your personal and financial goals through smart financial planning. 2. Create a saving and spending plan and track your performance. 3. Identify best practices and risks associated with credit cards and other debt. 4. Determine the best opportunities for you to finance your college education. ### What Would You Do? Think about this scenario: Everything was working out for Elan. They got into the college they wanted to, and some friends were planning to attend as well. They felt like an adult and were looking forward to new freedoms and opportunities. Elan’s parents let them get a credit card after high school graduation. Elan shared an apartment with their friends just off campus, and was able to get where they needed to go because they had a car. Elan had also saved over $1,000 from gifts and a summer job. They needed a new laptop. Elan planned to stay within set limits. They went to the store and found a very knowledgeable salesperson, Jermain, who said he knew exactly what Elan needed. Jermain pointed out that the laptop in Elan’s budget would do schoolwork just fine, but it was not as powerful as the best unit with advanced gaming features. Plus, the better computer came with new headphones! Jermain suggested that Elan could later sell the computer to incoming students. (Most first-year students bought used computers if they did not have one when they came to school.) The high-powered computer was $2,000, though, and Elan didn’t have that much money. Maybe they should use the credit card? Maybe their new part-time job would pay for it? But Jermain arranged for a small down payment and monthly payments of only $100. That did not seem too bad to Elan. The future looked bright. At least, that’s what Elan thought. They soon realized that working more hours meant fewer hours to study. Meanwhile, Elan’s rent and gas usage went up, and, as a young car owner, their insurance was through the roof. Only three months into the first semester, Elan missed a payment on the laptop and accrued a late fee. They put the next laptop payment on the credit card. Soon, Elan was alternating payments between the credit card, laptop, and car, building up interest and late charges. Now Elan was having trouble paying their rent and started getting calls from creditors. Everything had seemed so promising. Elan didn’t know where they had gone wrong. Elan comes to you and shares the situation. They ask, “What could I have done differently?” This chapter offers you insight into your finances so that you can make good decisions and avoid costly mistakes. We all face chances to spend money to try to get what we want. Many think only about now and not next month, next year, or ten years from now, but our behavior now has consequences later. Not everyone can own all the latest technology, drive their dream car, continually invest for their retirement, or live in the perfect home at this moment. But by understanding the different components of earning money, banking, credit, and budgeting, you can begin working toward your personal and financial goals. We’ll also discuss a related topic, safeguarding your accounts and personal information, which is critical to protecting everything you’ve worked for. By the end of this chapter, you will have good insights for Elan . . . and yourself!

# Understanding Financial Literacy ## Personal Financial Planning Questions to Consider: 1. What simple steps do I take to create a financial plan? 2. How do I use financial planning in everyday life? 3. How is the financial planning process implemented for every purchase? Honestly, practicing money management isn’t that hard to figure out. In many ways it’s similar to playing a video game. The first time you play a game, you may feel awkward or have the lowest score. Playing for a while can make you okay at the game. But if you learn the rules of the game, figure out how to best use each tool in the game, read strategy guides from experts, and practice, you can get really good at it. Money management is the same. It’s not enough to “figure it out as you go.” If you want to get good at managing your money, you must treat money like you treat your favorite game. You have to come at it with a well-researched plan. Research has shown that people with stronger finances are healthierhttps://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277953613002839 and happier,https://academic.oup.com/geronj/article-abstract/38/5/626/578092 have better marriages,https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1741-3729.2012.00715.x and http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1741-3729.2012.00715.x/abstract and even have better cognitive functioning.https://science.sciencemag.org/content/341/6149/976%20 ### The Financial Planning Process Personal goals and behaviors have a financial component or consequence. To make the most of your financial resources, you need to do some financial planning. The financial planning process consists of five distinct steps: goal setting, evaluating, planning, implementing, and monitoring. ### Financial Planning in Five Steps 1. Develop Personal Goals 2. Identify and Evaluate Alternatives for Achieving Goals for My Situation 3. Write My Financial Plan 4. Implement the Plan 5. Monitor and Adjust the Plan ### How to Use Financial Planning in Everyday Life The financial planning process isn’t only about creating one big financial plan. You can also use it to get a better deal when you buy a car or computer or rent an apartment. In fact, any time you are thinking about spending a lot of money, you can use the financial planning process to pay less and get more. To explore financial planning in depth, we’ll use the example of buying a car. ### 1. Develop Goals First, what do you really need? If you’re looking for a car, you probably need transportation. Before you decide to buy a car, consider alternatives to buying a car. Could you take a bus, walk, or bike instead? Often one goal can impact another goal. Cars are typically not good financial investments. We have cars for convenience and necessity, to earn an income and to enjoy life. Financially, they are an expense. They lose value, or depreciate, rather than increasing in value, like savings. So buying a car may slow your savings or retirement plan goals. Cars continually use up cash for gas, repairs, taxes, parking, and so on. Keep this in mind throughout the planning process. ### 2. Identify and Evaluate Alternatives for Achieving Goals in Your Current Situation. For this example, let’s assume that you have determined the best alternative is to buy a car. Do you need a new car? Will your current car last with some upkeep? Consider a used car over a new one. On average, a new car will lose one-fifth of its value during its first year.Krome, Charles. “Car Depreciation.” 2018, Carfax. https://www.carfax.com/blog/car-depreciation Buying a one-year-old car is like getting a practically new car for a 20 percent discount. So in many cases, the best deal may be to buy a five- or six-year-old car. Sites such as the Kelley Blue Book website (KBB.com) and Edmunds.com can show you depreciation tables for the cars you are considering. Perhaps someone in your family has a car they will sell you at a discount. Do you know how much it will cost in total to own the car? It will help to check out the total cost of ownership tools (also on KBB.com and Edmunds.com) to estimate how much each car will cost you in maintenance, repairs, gas, and insurance. A cheap car that gets poor gas mileage and breaks down all the time will actually cost you more in the long run. ### 3. Write Down Your Financial Plan ### 4. Implement Your Plan Once you’ve narrowed down which car you are looking for, do more online research with resources such as Kelley Blue Book to see what is for sale in your area. You can also begin contacting dealerships and asking them if they have the car you are looking for with the features you want. Ask the dealerships with the car you want to give you their best offer, then compare their price to your researched price. You may have to spend more time looking at other dealerships to compare offers, but one goal of online research is to save time and avoid going from place to place if possible. When you do go to buy the car, bring a copy of your written plan into the dealership and stick to it. If a dealership tries to switch you to a more expensive option, just say no, or you can leave to go to another dealership. Remember Elan in our opening scenario? They went shopping alone and caved to the pressure and persuasion of the salesperson. If you feel it is helpful, take a responsible friend or family member with you for support. ### 5. Monitor and Adjust the Plan to Changing Circumstances and New Life Goals Life changes, and things wear out. Keep up the recommended maintenance on the car (or any other purchase). Keep saving money for your emergency fund, then for your next big purchase. The worst time to buy something is when you need to replace an important item that stops working or is damaged, because you are easier to take advantage of when you are desperate. You will be glad that you have an emergency fund. A good practice is to keep making car payments once the car loan is paid off. If you are paying $300 per month for a car loan, when the loan is paid off, put $300 per month into a savings account for a new car instead. Do it long enough and you can buy your next car using your own money! ### Use the Financial Planning Process for Everything The same process can be used to make every major purchase in your life. When you rent an apartment, begin with the same assessment of your current financial situation, what you need in an apartment, and what goals it will impact or fulfill. Then look for an apartment using a written plan to avoid being sold on a more expensive place than you want. You can even use the process of assessing and planning for small things such as buying textbooks or weekly groceries. While saving a few bucks each week may seem like a small deal, you will gain practice using the financial planning process, so it will become automatic for when you make the big decisions in life. Stick to your plan.

# Understanding Financial Literacy ## Savings, Expenses, and Budgeting Questions to Consider: 1. How is the flow of money best measured? 2. How do I keep things balanced? What is the best way to get to the Mississippi River from here? Do you know? To answer the question, even with a map app, you would need to know where you are starting from and exactly where on the river you want to arrive before you can map the best route. Our financial lives need maps, too. You need to know where you are now and where you want to end up in order to map a course to meet the goal. You map your financial path using a spending and savings plan, or budget, which tracks your income, savings, and spending. You check on your progress using a balance sheet that lists your assets, or what you own, and your liabilities, or what you owe. A balance sheet is like a snapshot, a moment in time, that we use to check our progress. ### Budgets The term budget is unpleasant to some people because it just looks like work. But who will care more about your money than you? We all want to know if we have enough money to pay our bills, travel, get an education, buy a car, etc. Technically, a budget is a specific financial plan for a specified time. Budgets have three elements: income, saving and investing, and expenses. ### Income Income most often comes from our jobs in the form of a paper or electronic paycheck. During school, you may receive support from family that could be considered income. You may also receive scholarships, grants, or student loan money. When listing your income for your monthly budget, you should use your net pay, also called your disposable income. It is the only money you can use to pay bills. If you currently have a job, look at the pay stub or statement. You will find gross pay, then some money deducted for a variety of taxes, leaving a smaller amount—your net pay. Sometimes you have the opportunity to have some other, optional deductions taken from your paycheck before you get your net pay. Examples of optional deductions include 401(k) or health insurance payments. You can change these amounts, but you should still use your net pay when considering your budget. Some individuals receive disability income, social security income, investment income, alimony, child support, and other forms of payment on a regular basis. All of these go under income. ### Saving and Investing The first bill you should pay is to yourself. You owe yourself today and tomorrow. The quote at the start of this section was said by Warren Buffet who is one of the most successful investors of the 20th century, with a personal fortune of more than $60 billion. Setting aside a certain amount of money for savings and investments, before paying bills and making discretionary, or optional, purchases, will put you on a path to building your own reserve. Savings can be for an emergency fund or for short-term goals such as education, a wedding, travel, or a car. Investing, such as putting your money into stocks, bonds, or real estate, offers higher returns at a higher risk than money saved in a bank. Investments include retirement accounts that can be automatically funded with money deducted from your paycheck. Automatic payroll deductions are an effective way to save money before you can get your hands on it. Make saving money a priority to assure that you will work as hard to make the payment to yourself as you work to make your car or housing payment. The money you “pay” toward saving or investing will earn you back your money, plus some money earned on your money. Compare this to the cost of buying an item on credit and paying your money plus interest to a creditor. Paying yourself first is a habit that pays off! ### Expenses Expenses are categorized in two ways. One method separates them into fixed expenses and variable expenses. Rent, insurance costs, and utilities (power, water) are fixed: they cost about the same every month and are predictable based on your arrangement with the provider. Variable expenses, on the other hand, change based on your priorities and available funds; they include groceries, restaurants, cell phone plans, gas, clothing, and so on. You have a good degree of control over your variable expenses. You can begin organizing your expenses by categorizing each one as either fixed or variable. A second way to categorize expenses is to identify them as either needs or wants. Your needs come first: food, basic clothing, safe housing, medical care, and water. Your wants come afterward, if you can afford them while sticking to a savings plan. Wants may include meals at a restaurant, designer clothes, video games, other forms of entertainment, or a new car. After you identify an item as a need or want, you must exercise self- control to avoid caving to your desire for too many wants. How do your total “need” expenses compare to your total “want” expenses? Should either of them change? Budgets are done in a chart or spreadsheet format and often look like the ones below. Pay attention to how the first budget differs from the second.     ### Balancing Your Budget Would you take all your cash outside and throw it up in the air on a windy day? Probably not. We want to hold on to every cent and decide where we want it to go. Our budget allows us to find a place for each dollar. We should not regularly have money left over. If we do, we should consider increasing our saving and investing. We also should not have a negative balance, meaning we don’t have enough to pay our bills. If we are short of money, we can look at all three categories of our budget: income, savings, and expenses. We could increase our income by taking a second job or working overtime, although this is rarely advisable alongside college coursework. The time commitment quickly becomes overwhelming. Another option is to cut savings, or there’s always the possibility of reducing expenses. Any of these options in combination can work. Another, even less desirable option is to take on debt to make up the shortfall. This is usually only a short-term solution that makes future months and cash shortages worse as we pay off the debt. When we budget for each successive month, we can look at what we actually spent the month before and make adjustments. ### Tracking the Big Picture When you think about becoming more financially secure, you’re usually considering your net worth, or the total measure of your wealth. Earnings, savings, and investments build up your assets—that is, the valuable things you own. Borrowed money, or debt, increases your liabilities, or what you owe. If you subtract what you owe from what you own, the result is your net worth. Your goal is to own more than you owe. When people first get out of college and have student debt, they often owe more than they own. But over time and with good financial strategies, they can reverse that situation. You can track information about your assets, liabilities, and net worth on a balance sheet or part of a personal financial statement. This information will be required to get a home loan or other types of loans. For your net worth to grow in a positive direction, you must increase your assets and decrease your liabilities over time.

# Understanding Financial Literacy ## Credit Cards Questions to Consider: 1. How dangerous is debt? 2. What should I think about when getting and using a credit card? 3. What is the purpose of a credit score? Yes, taking on too much debt can (and does) have disastrous effects on people’s personal finances, but if used appropriately, debt can be a tool to help you build wealth. Debt is like fire. You can use it to keep yourself warm, cook food, and ward off animals—but if you don’t know how to control it, it’ll burn your house down. ### The Danger of Debt When you take out a loan, you take on an obligation to pay the money back, with interest, through a monthly payment. You will take this debt with you when you apply for auto loans or home loans, when you enter into a marriage, and so on. Effectively, you have committed your future income to the loan. While this can be a good idea with student loans, take on too many loans and your future self will be poor, no matter how much money you make. Worse, you’ll be transferring more and more of your money to the bank through interest payments. ### Compounding Interest While compounding works to make you money when you are earning interest on savings or investments, it works against you when you are paying the interest on loans. To avoid compounding interest on loans, make sure your payments are at least enough to cover the interest charged each month. The good news is that the interest you are charged will be listed each month on the loan account statements you are sent by the bank or credit union, and fully amortized loans will always cover the interest costs plus enough principal to pay off what you owe by the end of the loan term. The two most common loans on which people get stuck paying compounding interest are credit cards and student loans. Paying the minimum payment each month on a credit card will just barely cover the interest charged that month, while anything you buy with the credit card will begin to accrue interest on the day you make the purchase. Since credit cards charge interest daily, you’ll begin paying interest on the interest immediately, starting the compound interest snowball working against you. When you get a credit card, always pay the credit card balance down to $0 each month to avoid the compound interest trap. ### Getting and Using a Credit Card One of the most controversial aspects of personal finance is the use of credit cards. While credit cards can be an incredibly useful tool, their high interest rates, combined with how easily credit cards can bury you in debt, make them extremely dangerous if not managed correctly. Reflect on Elan from the chapter introduction and how they felt. How would you (or did you) feel to hold a new credit card with a $2,000 spending limit? ### Benefits of a Credit Card There are three main benefits of getting a credit card. The first is that credit cards offer a secure and convenient method of making purchases, similar to using a debit card. When you carry cash, you have the potential of having the money lost or stolen. A credit card or debit card, on the other hand, can be canceled and replaced at no cost to you. Additionally, credit cards offer greater consumer protections than debit cards do when lost or stolen. These consumer protections are written into law, and with credit cards you have a maximum liability of $50. With a debit card, you are responsible for all charges made up until the point you report the card stolen. In order to have the same protections as with credit cards, you need to report the debit card lost or stolen within 48 hours. The longer you wait to report the loss of the card, or the longer it takes you to realize you lost your card, the more money in stolen charges you may be responsible for, up to an unlimited amount.Federal Trade Commission. “Lost Or Stolen Credit, ATM, and Debit Cards.” 2012. The final benefit is that a credit card will allow you to build your credit score, which is helpful in many aspects of life. While most people associate a credit score with getting better rates on loans, credit scores are also important to getting a job, lowering car insurance rates, and finding an apartment.Purposeful Finance. “Four Surprising Ways Your Credit Score Will Affect Your Life.” https://www.purposefulfinance.org/home/Articles/2016/four-surprising-ways-your-credit-score-will-affect-your-life ### How to Use a Credit Card All the benefits of credit cards are destroyed if you carry credit card debt. Credit cards should be used as a method of paying for things you can afford, meaning you should only use a credit card if the money is already sitting in your bank account and is budgeted for the item you are buying. If you use credit cards as a loan, you are losing the game. Every month, you should pay off your credit card in full, meaning you will bring the loan amount down to $0. If your statement says you charged $432.56 that month, make sure you can pay off all $432.56. If you do this, you won’t pay any interest on the credit card. But what happens if you don’t pay it off in full? If you are even one cent short on the payment, meaning you pay $432.55 instead, you must pay daily interest on the entire amount from the date you made the purchases. Your credit card company, of course, will be perfectly happy for you to make smaller payments—that’s how they make money. It is not uncommon for people to pay twice as much as the amount purchased and take years to pay off a credit card when they only pay the minimum payment each month. What to Look for in Your Initial Credit Card 1. Find a Low-Rate Credit Card Even though you plan to never pay interest, mistakes will happen, and you don’t want to be paying high interest while you fix a misstep. Start by narrowing the hundreds of card options to the few with the lowest APR (annual percentage rate). 2. Avoid Cards with Annual Fees or Minimum Usage Requirements Your first credit card should ideally be one you can keep forever, but that’s expensive to do if they charge you an annual fee or have other requirements just for having the card. There are many options that won’t require you to spend a minimum amount each month and won’t charge you an annual fee. 3. Keep the Credit Limit Equal to Two Weeks’ Take-Home Pay Even though you want to pay your credit card off in full, most people will max out their credit cards once or twice while they are building their good financial habits. If this happens to you, having a small credit limit makes that mistake a small mistake instead of a $5,000 mistake. 4. Avoid Rewards Cards Everyone loves to talk about rewards cards, but credit card companies wouldn’t offer rewards if they didn’t earn them a profit. Rewards systems with credit cards are designed by experts to get you to spend more money and pay more interest than you otherwise would. Until you build a strong habit of paying off your card in full each month, don’t step into their trap. ### What Is a Good Credit Score? Most credit scores have a 300–850 score range. The higher the score, the lower the risk to lenders. A “good” credit score is considered to be in the 670–739 score range. ### Components of a Credit Score and How to Improve Your Credit Credit scores contain a total of five components. These components are credit payment history (35 percent), credit utilization (30 percent), length of credit history (15 percent), new credit (10 percent), and credit mix (10 percent). The main action you can take to improve your credit score is to stop charging and pay all bills on time. Even if you cannot pay the full amount of the credit card balance, which is the best practice, pay the minimum on time. Paying more is better for your debt load but does not improve your score. Carrying a balance on a credit card does not improve your score. Your score will go down if you pay bills late and owe more than 30 percent of your credit available. Your credit score is a reflection of your willingness and ability to do what you say you will do—pay your debts on time.

# Understanding Financial Literacy ## Paying for College Questions to Consider: 1. What choices should you consider when taking on student debt? 2. How do you match debt to postgraduate income? 3. What types of financial aid are available? 4. How do you apply for financial aid? 5. What are the best repayment strategies? As you progress through your college experience, the cost of college can add up rapidly. Worse, your anxiety about the cost of college may rise faster as you hear about the rising costs of college and the horror stories regarding the “student loan crisis.” It is important to remember that you are in control of your choices and the cost of your college experience, and you do not have to be a sad statistic. ### Education Choices Education is vital to living. Education starts at the beginning of our life, and as we grow, we learn language, sharing, and to look both ways before crossing the street. We also generally pursue a secular or public education that often ends at high school graduation. After that, we have many choices, including getting a job and stopping our education, working at a trade or business started by our parents and bypassing additional schooling, earning a certificate from a community college or four-year college or university, earning a two-year or associate degree from one of the same schools, and completing a bachelor’s or advanced degree at a college or university. We can choose to attend a public or private school. We can live at home or on a campus. Each of these choices impacts our debt, happiness, and earning power. The average income goes up with an increase in education, but that is not an absolute rule. The New York Federal Reserve Bank reported in 2017 that approximately 34 percent of college graduates worked in a job that did not require a college degreeCooper. P. (2017). “New York Fed highlights underemployment among college graduates.” https://www.forbes.com/sites/prestoncooper2/2017/07/13/new-york-fed-highlights-underemployment-among-college-graduates/#55be172f40d8. Of course, many well-paying occupations do require a bachelor’s or master’s degree. You have started on a path that may be perfect for you, but you may also choose to make adjustments. College success from a financial perspective means that you must: 1. Know the total cost of the education 2. Consider job market trends 3. Work hard at school during the education 4. Pursue ways to reduce costs Most importantly: Buy only the amount of education that returns more than you invest. According to US News & World Report, the average cost of college (including university) tuition and fees varies widely. In-state colleges average $10,338 while out-of-state students pay $22,698 for the same state college. Private colleges average $38,185 . The local community college averages approximately $3,726. On-campus housing and meals, if available, can add approximately $10,000 per year.Kerr, E. and Wood, S. (2019). “The cost of private versus public colleges.” US News and World Reports. https://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/paying-for-college/articles/2019-06-25/the-cost-of-private-vs-public-colleges See the table below, and create your own chart after you research. You may need to adjust your college plan as circumstances change for you and in the job market. You can modify plans based on funding opportunities available to you (see next sections) and your location. You may prefer a community-college-only education, or you may complete two years at a community college and then transfer to a university to complete a bachelor’s degree. Living at home for the first two years or all of your college education will save a lot of money if your circumstances allow. Be creative! ### Key to Success: Matching Student Debt to Post-Graduation Income Students and parents often ask, “How much debt should I have?” The problem is that the correct answer depends on your personal situation. A big-firm attorney in a major city might make $120,000 in their first year as a lawyer. Having $100,000 or even $200,000 in student debt in this situation may be reasonable. But a high school teacher making $40,000 in their first year would never be able to pay off the debt. The amount of student debt you take on should be tied to the income you expect. ### Research Your Starting Salary Begin by researching your expected starting salary when you graduate. Most students expect to make significantly more than they will actually make.Hess, Abigail. “College Grades expect to earn $60,000.” 2019. CNBC. https://www.cnbc.com/2019/02/15/college-grads-expect-to-earn-60000-in-their-first-jobfew-do.html As a result, your salary expectations are likely much higher than reality. Ask professors at your college what is typical for a recent graduate in your field, or do informational interviews with human resource managers at local companies. Explore the US Bureau of Labor Statistics' Occupational Outlook Handbook. Another handy tool that gives general information based on your personal experience and location is the PayScale. Search websites and talk to employees of companies that interest you for future employment to identify real starting salaries. ### Undergraduate Degree: 1 x Annual Salary For students working toward a bachelor’s or associate degree, or both forms of undergraduate degrees, you should try to keep your student loans equal to or less than your expected first year’s salary. So if, based on research, you expect to make $40,000 in your first year out of college, then $33,000 in student loans would be a reasonable amount for you to pay out of a monthly budget with some sacrifice. ### Advanced Degrees: 1–2 x Annual Salary Once you’ve graduated with your bachelor’s degree, you may want to get an advanced degree such as a master’s degree, a law degree, a medical degree, or a doctorate. While these degrees can greatly increase your income, you still need to match your student debt to your expected income. Advanced degrees can often double your expected annual salary, meaning your total debt for all your degrees should be equal to or less than twice your expected first job income. A lower number for the debt portion of your education would be more manageable. Your goal should be to pay for college using multiple methods so your student loan debt can be as small as possible, rather than just making low monthly payments on a large loan that will lead to a higher overall cost. ### Types of Financial Aid: How to Pay for College The true cost of college may be more than you expected, but you can make an effort to make the cost less than many might think. While the price tag for a school might say $40,000, the net cost of college may be significantly less. The net price for a college is the true cost a family will pay when grants, scholarships, and education tax benefits are factored in. The net cost for the average family at a public in-state school is only $3,980. And for a private school, free financial aid money reduces the cost to the average family from $32,410 per year to just $14,890. If you haven’t visited your college’s financial aid office recently, it’s probably worth it to talk with them. You must seek out opportunities, complete paperwork, and learn about then meet the specific criteria, but it can save you thousands of dollars. ### Grants and Scholarships Grants and scholarships are free money you can use to pay for college. Unlike loans, you never have to pay back a grant or a scholarship. All you have to do is go to school. And you don’t have to be a straight-A student to get grants and scholarships. There is so much free money, in fact, that billions of dollars go unclaimed every year.https://www.usatoday.com/story/college/2015/01/20/29-billion-unused-federal-grant-awards-in-last-academic-year/37399897/ While some grants and scholarships are based on a student’s academic record, many are given to average students based on their major, ethnic background, gender, religion, or other factors. There are likely dozens or hundreds of scholarships and grants available to you personally if you look for them. ### Federal Grants Federal Pell Grants are awarded to students based on financial need, although there is no income or wealth limit on the grant program. The Pell Grant can give you more than $6,000 per year in free money toward tuition, fees, and living expenses.https://studentaid.ed.gov/sa/types/grants-scholarships/pell If you qualify for a Pell Grant based on your financial need, you will automatically get the money. Federal Supplemental Educational Opportunity Grants (FSEOGs) are additional free money available to students with financial need. Through the FSEOG program, you can receive up to an additional $4,000 in free money. These grants are distributed through your school’s financial aid department on a first-come, first- served basis, so pay close attention to deadlines. Teacher Education Assistance for College and Higher Education (TEACH) Grants are designed to help students who plan to go into the teaching profession. You can receive up to $4,000 per year through the TEACH Grant. To be eligible for a TEACH Grant, you must take specific classes and majors and must hold a qualifying teaching job for at least four years after graduation. If you do not fulfill these obligations, your TEACH Grant will be converted to a loan, which you will have to pay back with both interest and back interest. There are numerous other grants available through individual states, employers, colleges, and private organizations. ### State Grants Most states also have grant programs for their residents, often based on financial need. Eleven states have even implemented free college tuition programs for residents who plan to continue to live in the state. Even some medical schools are beginning to be tuition free. Check your school’s financial aid office and your state’s department of education for details. ### College/University Grants and Scholarships Most colleges and universities have their own scholarships and grants. These are distributed through a wide variety of sources, including the school’s financial aid office, the school’s endowment fund, individual departments, and clubs on campus. ### Private Organization Grants and Scholarships A wide variety of grants and scholarships are awarded by foundations, civic groups, companies, religious groups, professional organizations, and charities. Most are small awards under $4,000, but multiple awards can add up to large amounts of money each year. Your financial aid office can help you find these opportunities. ### Employer Grants and Scholarships Many employers also offer free money to help employees go to school. A common work benefit is a tuition reimbursement program, where employers will pay students extra money to cover the cost of tuition once they’ve earned a passing grade in a college class. And some companies are going even further, offering to pay 100 percent of college costs for employees. Check to see whether your employer offers any kind of educational support. ### Additional Federal Support The federal government offers a handful of additional options for college students to find financial support. ### Education Tax Credits The IRS gives out free money to students and their parents through two tax credits, although you will have to choose between them. The American opportunity tax credit (AOTC) will refund up to $2,500 of qualifying education expenses per eligible student, while the lifetime learning credit (LLC) refunds up to $2,000 per year regardless of the number of qualifying students. While the AOTC may be a better tax credit to choose for some, it can only be claimed for four years for each student, and it has other limitations. The LLC has fewer limitations, and there is no limit on the number of years you can claim it. Lifetime learners and nontraditional students may consider the LLC a better choice. Calculate the benefits for your situation. The IRS warns taxpayers to be careful when claiming the credits. There are potential penalties for incorrectly claiming the credits, and you or your family should consult a tax professional or financial adviser when claiming these credits. ### Federal Work-Study Program The Federal Work-Study Program provides part-time jobs through colleges and universities to students who are enrolled in the school. The program offers students the opportunity to work in their field, for their school, or for a nonprofit or civic organization to help pay for the cost of college. If your school participates in the program, it will be offered through your school’s financial aid office. ### Student Loans Federal student loans are offered through the US Department of Education and are designed to give easy and inexpensive access to loans for school. You don’t have to make payments on the loans while you are in school, and the interest on the loans is tax deductible for most people. Direct Loans, also called Federal Stafford Loans, have a competitive fixed interest rate and don’t require a credit check or cosigner. ### Direct Subsidized Loans Direct Subsidized Loans are federal student loans on which the government pays the interest while you are in school. Direct Subsidized Loans are made based on financial need as calculated from the information you provide in your application. Qualifying students can get up to $3,500 in subsidized loans in their first year, $4,500 in their second year, and $5,500 in later years of their college education. ### Direct Unsubsidized Loans Direct Unsubsidized Loans are federal loans on which you are charged interest while you are in school. If you don’t make interest payments while in school, the interest will be added to the loan amount each year and will result in a larger student loan balance when you graduate. The amount you can borrow each year depends on numerous factors, with a maximum of $12,500 annually for undergraduates and $20,500 annually for professional or graduate students. There are also total loan limits that apply to put a maximum cap on the total amount you can borrow for student loans. ### Direct PLUS Loans Direct PLUS Loans are additional loans a parent, grandparent, or graduate student can take out to help pay for additional costs of college. PLUS loans require a credit check and have higher interest rates, but the interest is still tax deductible. The maximum PLUS loan you can receive is the remaining cost of attending the school. Parents and other family members should be careful when taking out PLUS loans on behalf of a child. Whoever is on the loan is responsible for the loan forever, and the loan generally cannot be forgiven in bankruptcy. The government can also take Social Security benefits should the loan not be repaid. ### Private Loans Private loans are also available for students who need them from banks, credit unions, private investors, and even predatory lenders. But with all the other resources for paying for college, a private loan is generally unnecessary and unwise. Private loans will require a credit check and potentially a cosigner, they will likely have higher interest rates, and the interest is not tax deductible. As a general rule, you should be wary of private student loans or avoid them altogether. ### Repayment Strategies Payments on student loans will begin shortly after you graduate. While many websites, financial “gurus,” and talking heads in the media will encourage you to pay off your student loans as quickly as possible, you should give careful consideration to your repayment options and how they may impact your financial plans. Quickly paying off your student loans or refinancing your student loans into a private loan may be the worst option available to you. ### Payment Plans The federal government has eight separate loan repayment programs, each with their own way of calculating the payment you owe. Five of the programs tie loan payments to your income, which can make it easier to afford your student loans when you are just starting off in your career. The programs are described briefly below, but you should seek the help of a licensed fiduciary financial adviser familiar with student loans when making decisions related to student loan payment plans. The standard repayment plan sets a consistent monthly payment to pay off your loan within 10 years (or up to 30 years for consolidated loans). You can also choose a graduated repayment plan, which will begin with lower payments and then increase the payment every two years. The graduated plan is also designed to pay off your student loans in 10 years (or up to 30 years for consolidated loans). A third option is the extended repayment plan, which provides a fixed or graduated payment for up to 25 years. However, none of these programs are ideal for individuals planning to seek loan forgiveness options, which are discussed below. Beyond the “normal” repayment options, the government offers five income-based repayment options: (1) the Pay As You Earn (PAYE) repayment plan, (2) the Revised Pay As You Earn (REPAYE) repayment plan, (3) the Income-Based Repayment (IBR) plan, (4) the Income-Contingent Repayment (ICR) plan, and (5) the Income- Sensitive Repayment (ISR) plan. Each program has its method of calculating payments, along with specific requirements for eligibility and rules for staying eligible in the program. Many income-based repayment plans are also eligible for loan forgiveness after a set period of time, assuming you follow all the rules and remain eligible. ### Loan Forgiveness Programs Many income-based repayment options also have a loan forgiveness feature built into the repayment plan. If you make 100 percent of your payments on time and follow all of the other plan rules, any remaining loan balance at the end of the plan repayment term (typically 20 to 30 years) will be forgiven. This means you will not have to pay the remainder on your student loans. This loan forgiveness, however, comes with a catch: taxes. Any forgiven balance will be counted and taxed as income during that year. So if you have a $100,000 loan forgiven, you could be looking at an additional $20,000 tax bill that year (assuming you were in the 20 percent marginal tax rate). Another option is the Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) program for students who go on to work for a nonprofit or government organization. If eligible, you can have your loans forgiven after working for 10 years in a qualifying public service job and making 120 on-time payments on your loans. A major advantage of PSLF is that the loan forgiveness may not be taxed as income in the year the loan is forgiven. ### Consider Professional Advice The complexity of the payment and forgiveness programs makes it difficult for non-experts to choose the best strategy to minimize costs. Additionally, the strict rules and potential tax implications create a minefield of potential financial problems. In 2017, the first year graduates were eligible for the PSLF program, 99 percent of applicants were denied due to misunderstanding the programs or having broken one of the many requirements for eligibility.https://www.forbes.com/sites/zackfriedman/2019/05/01/99-of-borrowers-rejected-again-for-student-loan-forgiveness/ ### Your Rights as a Loan Recipient As a recipient of a federal student loan, you have the same rights and protections as you would for any other loan. This includes the right to know the terms and conditions for any loan before signing the paperwork. You also have the right to know information on your credit report and to dispute any loan or information on your credit file. If you end up in collections, you also have several rights, even though you have missed loan payments. Debt collectors can only call you between 8 a.m. and 9 p.m. They also cannot harass you, threaten you, or call you at work once you’ve told them to stop. The United States doesn’t have debtors’ prisons, so anyone threatening you with arrest or jail time is automatically breaking the law. Federal student loans also come with many other rights, including the right to put your loan in deferment or forbearance (pushing pause on making payments) under qualifying circumstances. Deferment or forbearance can be granted if you lose your job, go back to school, or have an economic hardship. If you have a life event that makes it difficult to make your payments, immediately contact the student loan servicing company on your loan statements to see if you can pause your student loan payments. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) has created a series of sample letters you can use to respond to a debt collector. You can also file a complaint with the CFPB if you believe your rights have been violated. ### Applying for Financial Aid, FAFSA, and Everything Else The federal government offers a standard form called the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA), which qualifies you for federal financial aid and also opens the door for nearly all other financial aid. Most grants and scholarships require you to fill out the FAFSA, and they base their decisions on the information in the application. The FAFSA only requests financial aid for the specific year you file your application. This means you will need to file a FAFSA for each year you are in college. Since your financial needs will change over time, you may qualify for financial aid even if you did not qualify before. You can apply for the FAFSA through your college’s financial aid office or at studentaid.gov if you don’t have access to a financial aid office. Once you file a FAFSA, any college can gain access to the information (with your approval), so you can shop around for financial aid offers from colleges. ### Maintaining Financial Aid To maintain your financial aid throughout your college career, you need to make sure you meet the eligibility requirements for each year you are in school, not just the year of your initial application. The basic requirements include being a US citizen or eligible noncitizen, having a valid Social Security number, and registering for selective service if required. Undocumented residents may receive financial aid as well and should check with their school’s financial aid office. You also must make satisfactory academic progress, including meeting a minimum grade-point average, taking and completing a minimum number of classes, and making progress toward graduation or a certificate. Your school will have a policy for satisfactory academic progress, which you can get from the financial aid office. ### What to Do with Extra Financial Aid Money One expensive mistake that students make with financial aid money is spending the money on non-education expenses. Students often use financial aid, including student loans, to purchase clothing, take vacations, or dine out at restaurants. Nearly 3 percent spend student loan money on alcohol and drugs.https://studentloanhero.com/featured/smart-dumb-money-moves-students/ These non-education expenses are major contributors to student loan debt, which will make it harder for you to afford a home, take vacations, or save for your retirement after you graduate. When you have extra student loan money, consider saving it for future education expenses. Just like you will need an emergency fund all your adult life, you will want an emergency fund for college when expensive books or travel abroad programs present unexpected costs. If you make it through your college years with extra money in your savings, you can use the money to help pay down debt. ### Friends & Family Matter Ana has several ideas for what to major in and because she has had to take out student loans to cover the costs of college, she is worried about getting a job after graduation that pays enough for her to afford the monthly loan payments. Fortunately, she has met with her financial aid advisor who has provided her with a few options that could help her cover her costs for the remainder of her time in college. One of her options is to major in education and become a middle school science teacher. She likes this option because she loves science and working with young people. She finds out that her state has a student grant program for teachers in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) fields who agree to teach for five years in a rural part of the state, a place that is several hours from Ana’s hometown. The program provides grants to cover the remaining costs of a degree for the promise of the graduate’s teaching in the designated district for the entire 5 years. However, the program requires that Ana commit to the major now, complete the degree, and sign on for at least 5 years of teaching service. If she breaks any part of the requirements, the grants will turn into loans that she will owe the state. While Ana is excited by the opportunity to earn grant money, she is concerned about being so far away from her family for that long and the commitment to the degree and length of service. Her family still relies on her and had planned for her to be close to them after graduation. While this is not the only option that Ana has for covering the costs of her education, it is the most promising one. The others are scholarships and internships that are highly competitive, and Ana is not confident that she has the grades or the experiences to compete with other more accomplished or needy students. ### Let’s Think About It Ana has several options. Think through the consequences of each one, and choose the best option or create your own option. 1. Ana majors in education and applies for the grant program even if it means being away from her family for an extended time and carries the possibility the grants will become loans if she doesn’t fulfill the commitment. 2. Ana chooses to apply for the scholarships and internships only. 3. Ana applies for the grant program and will wait until after she graduates to decide if she wants to maintain the commitment. ### Let’s Talk About It Ana’s situation sounds as if it can help her get the financial support she needs, but it comes with a long-term commitment that she and her family may not be ready for. She will need to think about the pros and cons of any of her next steps and communicate what she is thinking to her family. Here are some suggestions for communicating with others about the dilemma that Ana is facing: 1. “I have an opportunity to get grants to cover my educational costs, but it comes with a big commitment. Can we talk about how this decision may affect all of us now and in the future?” 2. “I have explored different options for paying for college, and this one seems to be the best one. Can you help me talk through the others to see if there is anything else I need to consider?” 3. “I have to admit I am nervous about locking myself into such a commitment even though I know the grant money is much needed for me to continue my degree with less stress. Can I share with you what I am feeling and why?” Whatever choice you would make in this situation, it is always best to communicate clearly your needs, your concerns, and even your uncertainties. ### Summary and Next Steps for College Success There are a lot of benefits to good financial management. Primarily, it generally allows you to do more of what you want with your life. When you have poor financial habits, too much of your money goes into other people’s pockets. But when you have good financial management habits, you can afford to do more because you have worked hard, separated needs from wants, saved and invested, and avoided credit card and debt pitfalls. However, financial literacy is a topic that many college students struggle with, but good financial planning habits will benefit you long after your college days are behind you. To make the most of what you have learned about financial literacy, specifically student debt and strategies for managing your finances in college, consider what else you would like to work on. Choose one of the following to explore further this term: 1. Create a budget with your expenses and income. Look for ways to eliminate unnecessary spending and increase your ability to pay for your college expenses. 2. Research college grants, scholarships, and loans and create a list of potential opportunities that you can take now and in the future to help you cover your costs while in college. Rank your options. 3. Develop an emergency fund and guidelines for when to use it. 4. Research the best credit card options for you at this time. ### Checking In: Your College Readiness Checklist ### Summer

# Planning Your Future ## Introduction ### Student Survey How do you feel about your readiness to create an academic and life plan? These questions will help you determine how the chapter concepts relate to you right now. As you are introduced to new concepts and practices, it can be informative to reflect on how your understanding changes over time. Take this quick survey to figure it out, ranking questions on a scale of 1—4, 1 meaning “least like me” and 4 meaning “most like me.” 1. I know why I want to go to college and what I want to accomplish. 2. I have set both short- and long-term academic goals. 3. I am familiar with the requirements I must complete and options I must select to obtain a college degree. 4. I am familiar with the resources, tools, and individuals who can assist me in developing an effective plan for success. You can also take the Chapter 9 survey anonymously online. ### About This Chapter Among the most celebrated differences between high school and college is the freedom that students look forward to when they complete their mandatory high school education and take up the voluntary pursuit of a college degree. Though not every college freshman comes fresh from high school, those who do might be looking forward to the freedom of moving away from home onto a campus or into an apartment. Others might be excited about the potential to sleep in on a Monday morning and take their classes in the afternoon. For others, balancing a class schedule with an already-busy life filled with work and other responsibilities may make college seem less like freedom and more like obligation. In any case, and however they might imagine their next experience to be, students can anticipate increased freedom of choice in college and the ability to begin to piece together how their values, interests, and developing knowledge and skills will unfold into a career that meets their goals and dreams. By the time you complete this chapter, you should be able to do the following: 1. Learn to set short-term goals that build toward a long- term goal, and plan how you will track progress toward your goals. 2. List the types of college certificates, degrees, special programs, and majors you can pursue, as well as general details about their related opportunities and requirements. 3. Take advantage of resources to draft and track an academic plan. 4. Recognize decision-making and planning as continuous processes, especially in response to unexpected change.

# Planning Your Future ## Setting Goals and Staying Motivated Questions to Consider: 1. How do I set motivational goals? 2. What are SMART goals? 3. What’s the importance of an action plan? 4. How do I keep to my plan? Motivation often means the difference between success and failure. That applies to school, to specific tasks, and to life in general. One of the most effective ways to keep motivated is to set goals. Goals can be big or small. A goal can range from I am going to write one extra page tonight, to I am going to work to get an A in this course, all the way to I am going to graduate in the top of my class so I can start my career with a really good position. The great thing about goals is that they can include and influence a number of other things that all work toward a much bigger picture. For example, if your goal is to get an A in a certain course, all the reading, studying, and every assignment you do for that course contributes to the larger goal. You have motivation to do each of those things and to do them well. Setting goals is something that is frequently talked about, but it is often treated as something abstract. Like time management, goal setting is best done with careful thought and planning. This next section will explain how you can apply tested techniques to goal setting and what the benefits of each can be. ### Set Goals That Motivate You The first thing to know about goal setting is that a goal is a specific end result you desire. If the goal is not something you are really interested in, there is little motivational drive to achieve it. Think back to when you were much younger and some well-meaning adult set a goal for you—something that didn’t really appeal to you at all. How motivated were you to achieve the goal? More than likely, if you were successful at all in meeting the goal, it was because you were motivated by earning the approval of someone or receiving a possible reward, or you were concerned with avoiding something adverse that might happen if you did not do what you were told. From an honest perspective in that situation, your real goal was based on something else, not the meeting of the goal set for you. To get the most from the goals you set, make sure they are things that you are interested in achieving. That is not to say you shouldn’t set goals that are supported by other motivations (e.g., If I finish studying by Friday, I can go out on Saturday), but the idea is to be intellectually honest with your goals. ### Set SMART Goals Goals should also be SMART. In this case, the word smart is not only a clever description of the type of goal, but it is also an acronym that stands for Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-bound. The reason these are all desirable traits for your goals is because they not only help you plan how to meet the goal, but they can also contribute to your decision-making processes during the planning stage. What does it mean to create SMART goals? 1. Specific—For a goal to be specific, it must be defined enough to actually determine the goal. A goal of get a good job when I graduate is too general. It doesn’t define what a good job is. In fact, it doesn’t even necessarily include a job in your chosen profession. A more specific goal would be something like be hired as a nurse in a place of employment where it is enjoyable to work and that has room for promotion. 2. Measurable—The concept of measurable is one that is often overlooked when setting goals. What this means is that the goal should have clearly defined outcomes that are detailed enough to measure and can be used for planning of how you will achieve the goal. For example, setting a goal of doing well in school is a bit undefined, but making a goal of graduating with a GPA above 3.0 is measurable and something you can work with. If your goal is measurable, you can know ahead of time how many points you will have to earn on a specific assignment to stay in that range or how many points you will need to make up in the next assignment if you do not do as well as you planned. 3. Attainable—Attainable or achievable goals means they are reasonable and within your ability to accomplish. While a goal of make an extra one million dollars by the end of the week is something that would be nice to achieve, the odds that you could make that happen in a single week are not very realistic. 4. Relevant—For goal setting, relevant means it applies to the situation. In relation to college, a goal of getting a horse to ride is not very relevant, but getting dependable transportation is something that would contribute to your success in school. 5. Time-bound—Time-bound means you set a specific time frame to achieve the goal. I will get my paper written by Wednesday is time-bound. You know when you have to meet the goal. I will get my paper written sometime soon does not help you plan how and when you will accomplish the goal. In the following table you can see some examples of goals that do and do not follow the SMART system. As you read each one, think about what elements make them SMART or how you might change those that are not. ### Long-Term Goals Once you have learned how to set goals that are specific and measurable, consider developing both long-term and short-term goals. Long-term goals are future goals that often take years to complete. An example of a long-term goal might be to complete a Bachelor of Arts degree within four years. Another example might be purchasing a home or running a marathon. While this chapter focuses on academic and career planning, long-term goals are not exclusive to these areas of your life. You might set long-term goals related to fitness, wellness, spirituality, and relationships, among many others. When you set a long-term goal in any aspect of your life, you are demonstrating a commitment to dedicate time and effort toward making progress in that area. Because of this commitment, it is important that your long-term goals are aligned with your values. ### Short-Term Goals Setting short-term goals helps you consider the necessary steps you’ll need to take, but it also helps to chunk a larger effort into smaller, more manageable tasks. Even when your long-term goals are SMART, it’s easier to stay focused and you’ll become less overwhelmed in the process of completing short-term goals. You might assume that short-term and long-term goals are different goals that vary in the length of time they take to complete. Given this assumption, you might give the example of a long-term goal of learning how to create an app and a short-term goal of remembering to pay your cell phone bill this weekend. These are valid goals, but they don’t exactly demonstrate the intention of short- and long-term goals for the purposes of effective planning. Instead of just being bound by the difference of time, short-term goals are the action steps that take less time to complete than a long-term goal, but that help you work toward your long-term goals. To determine your best degree option, it might make sense to do some research to determine what kind of career you’re most interested in pursuing. Or, if you recall that short-term goal of paying your cell phone bill this weekend, perhaps this short-term goal is related to a longer-term goal of learning how to better manage your budgeting and finances. ### Setting Long- and Short-Term Goals Consider this scenario: While meeting with an academic advisor at his college to discuss his change of major, Sunil was tasked with setting long- and short-term goals aligned with that major. He selected a degree plan in business administration, sharing with his advisor his intention to work in business and hopefully human relations in particular. His advisor discussed with him how he could set short-term goals that would help his progress on that plan. Sunil wondered if he should be as specific as setting short-term goals week by week or for the successful completion of every homework assignment or exam. His advisor shared that he could certainly break his goals down into that level of specificity if it helped him to stay focused, but recommended that he start by outlining how many credits or courses he would hope to complete. Sunil drafted his goals and planned to meet again with his advisor in another week to discuss. Sunil worried that his list of short-term goals looked more like a checklist of tasks than anything. His advisor reassured him, sharing that short-term goals can absolutely look like a checklist of tasks because their purpose is to break the long-term goal down into manageable chunks that are easier to focus on and complete. His advisor then recommended that Sunil add to his plan an additional note at the end of every other semester to “check in” with his advisor to make certain that he was on track. ### Planning for Adjustments You will recall from the SMART goals goal-setting model that goals should be both measurable and attainable. Far too often, however, we set goals with the best of intentions but then fail to keep track of our progress or adjust our short-term goals if they’re not helping us to progress as quickly as we’d like. When setting goals, the most successful planners also consider when they will evaluate their progress. At that time, perhaps after each short-term goal should have been met, they may reflect on the following: 1. Am I meeting my short-term goals as planned? 2. Are my short-term goals still planned across time in a way that they will meet my long-term goals? 3. Are my long-term goals still relevant, or have my values changed since I set my goals? While departing from your original goals may seem like a failure, taking the time to reflect on goals before you set them aside to develop new ones is a success. Pivoting from one goal to new, better-fitting goal involves increased self-awareness and increased knowledge about the processes surrounding your specific goal (such as the details of a college transfer, for example). With careful reflection and information seeking, your change in plans may even demonstrate learning and increased maturity! Keep in mind that values and goals may change over time as you meet new people, your life circumstances change, and you gain more wisdom or self-awareness. In addition to setting goals and tracking your progress, you should also periodically reflect on your goals to ensure their consistency with your values.

# Planning Your Future ## Planning Your Degree Path Questions to Consider: 1. What types of college degrees or certifications can I pursue? 2. What is the difference between majors and minors? 3. How do preprofessional programs differ from other majors? 4. Do some majors have special requirements beyond regular coursework? To set goals for your academic and career path, you must first have an understanding of the options available for you to pursue and the requirements you will need to meet. The next section provides an overview of academic programs and college degrees that are common among many colleges and universities in the United States. Please note that each institution will have its own specific options and requirements, so the intention of this section is both to help you understand your opportunities and to familiarize you with language that colleges typically use to describe these opportunities. After reviewing this section, you should be better able to formulate specific questions to ask at your school or be better prepared to navigate and search your own college’s website. ### Types of Degrees Whereas in most states high school attendance through the 12th grade is mandatory, or compulsory, a college degree may be pursued voluntarily. There are fields that do not require a degree. Bookkeeping, computer repair, massage therapy, and childcare are all fields where certification programs—tracks to study a specific subject or career without need of a complete degree—may be enough. However, many individuals will find that an associate or bachelor’s degree is a requirement to enter their desired career field. According to United States Census data published in 2017, more than one-third of the adult population in the country has completed at least a bachelor’s degree, so this may be the degree that is most familiar to you. Not every job requires a bachelor’s degree, and some require even higher degrees or additional specialized certifications. As you develop your academic plan, it is important to research your field of interest to see what requirements might be necessary or most desirable. To distinguish between the types of degrees, it is useful to understand that courses are often assigned a number of credits, sometimes called semester hours as well. Credits relate to the calculated hours during a course that a student spends interacting with the instructor and/or the course material through class time, laboratory time, online discussions, homework, etc. Courses at all degree levels are typically assigned a value of one to six credits, although students often need to complete a developmental education course or two, often in English or math. These requirements, which cost as much as typical college courses but do not grant college credit, are meant to provide some basic information students may have missed in high school but that will be necessary to keep up in college-level coursework. The minimum or maximum number of credits required to graduate with different degrees varies by state or institution, but approximate minimum numbers of credits are explained below. Keep in mind that although a minimum number of credits must be completed to get a certain degree, total credits completed is not the only consideration for graduation—you must take your credits or courses in particular subjects indicated by your college. To determine your best degree option, it might make sense to do some research to determine what kind of career you’re most interested in pursuing. Visit your campus career center or guidance office to meet with a counselor to guide you through this process. These services are free to students while they are enrolled in school, but can be pricey if used outside a school setting, so take advantage. There are other tools online you can investigate. ### Associate Degrees To enter an associate degree program, students must have a high school diploma or its equivalent. Associate degree programs may be intended to help students enter a technical career field, such as automotive technology, graphic design, or entry-level nursing in some states. Such technical programs may be considered an Associate of Applied Arts (AAA) or Associate of Applied Science (AAS) degrees, though there are other titles as well. Other associate degree programs are intended to prepare a student with the necessary coursework to transfer into a bachelor’s degree program upon graduation. These transfer-focused programs usually require similar general education and foundational courses that a student would need in the first half of a bachelor’s degree program. Transfer-focused associate degrees may be called Associate of Arts (AA) or Associate of Science (AS), or other titles, depending on the focus of study. An associate degree is typically awarded when a student has completed a minimum of 60 credits, approximately 20 courses, meeting the requirements of a specific degree. Some technical associate degrees, such as nursing, may require additional credits in order to meet requirements for special certifications. You may find that your college or university does not offer associate degrees. Most associate degrees are offered by community or junior colleges, or by career and technical colleges. ### Bachelor’s Degrees When someone generally mentions “a college degree,” they are often referring to the bachelor’s degree, or baccalaureate degree. Because it takes four years of full-time attendance to complete a bachelor’s degree, this degree is also referred to as a “four-year degree.” Similar to an associate degree, to enter a bachelor’s degree program a student must have completed a high school diploma or its equivalent. Both associate degrees and bachelor’s degrees are considered undergraduate degrees, thus students working toward these degrees are often called undergraduates. A student with an associate degree may transfer that degree to meet some (usually half) of the requirements of a bachelor’s degree; however, completion of an associate degree is not necessary for entry into a bachelor’s degree program. A bachelor’s degree is usually completed with a minimum of 120 credits, or approximately 40 courses. Some specialized degree programs may require more credits. (If an associate degree has been transferred, the number of credits from that degree usually counts toward the 120 credits. For example, if an associate degree was 60 credits, then a student must take 60 additional credits to achieve their bachelor’s degree.) Bachelor of Arts (BA), Bachelor of Science (BS), Bachelor of Science in Nursing (BSN), and Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA) are the most popular degree titles at this level and differ primarily in their focus on exploring a broader range of subject areas, as with a BA, versus focusing in more depth on a particular subject, as with a BS, BSN, or BFA. Regardless of whether a student is pursuing a BA, BS, BSN, or BFA, each of these programs requires a balance of credits or courses in different subject areas. In the United States, a bachelor’s degree comprises courses from three categories: general education courses, major courses, and electives. A fourth category of courses would be those required for a minor, which we will discuss in more detail in the section on majors and minors. ### General Education General education, also called core curriculum, is a group of courses that are often set as requirements by your state or by your individual college. These courses provide you with a foundation of knowledge across a breadth of fields and are also intended to help you further develop college-level critical-thinking and problem- solving abilities. You may be able to select courses from a general education menu of courses available at your institution. More than half of your bachelor’s degree program is likely made up of general education courses. ### Major Courses Major courses are courses in your field of interest and provide you with the foundational knowledge required for further study in that field or with the skills necessary to enter your career. Some schools may refer to these as career studies courses. Major courses often have a series of prerequisites, or courses that must be taken in sequence prior to other courses, starting with an introductory course and progressing into more depth. Major courses usually make up about a fourth or more of a bachelor’s degree (30 credits, or approximately 10 courses). A BS or BFA degree may require more major courses than a BA degree. Colleges and universities usually require students to select a major by the time they’ve completed 30 total credits. ### Electives Electives are free-choice courses. Though you may have a choice to select from a menu of options to meet general education and major requirements, electives are even less restricted. Some students may be able to take more electives than others due to their choice of major or if they are able to take courses that meet more than one requirement (for example, a sociology course may be both a major requirement and a general education social science course). Some colleges intentionally allow room for electives in a program to ensure that students, particularly those students who are undecided about their major, are able to explore different programs without exceeding the total number of credits required to graduate with a bachelor’s degree. In other cases, students may have taken all of their major courses and fulfilled their general education requirements but still need additional credits to fulfill the minimum to graduate. The additional courses taken to meet the total credit requirement (if necessary) are considered electives. ### Graduate Degrees According to United States Census data published in 2018, 13.1 percent of the U.S. adult population have completed advanced degrees.United States Census Bureau. (2019, February 21). Number of People with Master’s and Doctoral Degrees Doubles Since 2000. Retrieved from: https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2019/02/number-of-people-with-masters-and-phd-degrees-double-since-2000.html Whereas associate and bachelor’s degrees are considered undergraduate degrees and require high school graduation for entry, advanced degrees called graduate degrees require prior completion of a bachelor’s degree. Some professions require graduate degrees as a minimum job qualification, such as pharmacists, lawyers, physical therapists, psychologists, and college professors. In other cases, students may be motivated to pursue a graduate degree to obtain a higher-level job or higher salary, or to be more competitive in their field. Some students are also interested in learning about some subject in greater depth than they did at the undergraduate level. Because graduate degrees do not include general education or free elective courses, they are very focused on career-specific knowledge and skills. Graduate degrees include master’s, doctoral, and professional degrees. Master’s degrees often require 30–60 credits and take one to two years of full-time attendance to complete. Some master’s degrees, like those for counselors, require supervised job experience as a component of the degree and therefore require more credits. Doctorate and professional degrees are the highest level of advanced degrees. Approximately 3.5% of the U.S. adult population has completed a doctorate or professional degree. Very few careers require this level of education for entry, so fewer individuals pursue these degrees. Doctorates are offered in many subjects and primarily prepare students to become researchers in their field of study. This in-depth level of education often requires an additional 90–120 credits beyond the bachelor’s degree, and may or may not require a master’s degree prior to entry. (A master’s degree as an entry requirement may reduce the number of credits required to complete the doctoral degree.) Professional degrees are a specific type of doctorate-level degree that focus on skills to be applied in a practical, or hands-on, career rather than as a researcher. The most common professional degrees are Doctor of Medicine (MD) for aspiring medical doctors, Juris Doctor (JD) for aspiring lawyers, Doctor of Pharmacy (PharmD) for aspiring pharmacists, and Doctor of Education (EdD) for aspiring school and college or university administrators. If the career you are pursuing requires a graduate degree, you should keep this end goal in mind as you plan for the timeline and finances required to meet your goals. You may also want to inquire about special agreements that your college or university may have to expedite admission into or completion of graduate degrees. For example, some universities offer 4+1 master’s programs, wherein students take both bachelor’s and master’s level courses during their last year as an undergraduate to accelerate the completion of both degrees. ### Majors and Minors One of the most common questions an undergraduate college student will be asked is “What’s your major?” As we already noted, your major is only one part of your undergraduate (associate or bachelor’s) degree, but it is the part that most demonstrates your interests and possible future goals. At some point during your studies, you will be asked to decide on, or declare, a major. You may also be able to select a or additional concentration. Whereas a major comprises approximately 10–12 courses of a bachelor’s degree program and is required, a minor is usually 5–8 courses, is often optional, and may count toward or contribute to exceeding the total number of credits required for graduation. Rather than take elective courses, some students will select courses that meet the requirements for a minor. When selecting a major and possibly a minor, you’ll want to consider how the knowledge and skills you gain through those fields of study prepare you for a particular career. Majors and minors can be complementary. For example, a major in business might be well- matched with a minor in a foreign language, thus allowing the student to pursue a career in business with a company that hires bilingual employees. It is important to research careers of interest to you when selecting your major and/or minor to determine what will best help you to meet your goals. ### Preprofessional Programs Some undergraduate degrees are specifically designed to prepare students to later pursue professional degrees (such as the MD or PharmD) at the graduate level. Such programs are called or preprofessional tracks. The most common preprofessional programs are premed, prelaw, and prepharmacy, but you may see other offerings. Although some preprofessional programs are structured as majors that you can declare, many preprofessional programs are a sequence of recommended courses and activities that a student can follow alongside a related major. While following a preprofessional program may not guarantee your admittance to a professional program, it does increase the likelihood of acceptance to and preparation for a graduate professional program. Consider Loretta’s story as an example of how a student might be on a preprofessional track. Loretta has decided that she would like to become a medical doctor. She has declared biology as her major and is taking the courses required to graduate with a bachelor of science degree in biology. Her university does not have a premed major, but it does have a premed track. She informs her academic advisor of her career goals, and her advisor provides her information about the premed track. The premed track includes a list of courses that students should take to prepare for the medical school entrance exams, called MCATs. Some of these courses are biology courses that overlap with Loretta’s biology major, while others are higher-level chemistry courses that are not required for her major. She can take these chemistry courses, and any other premed-track courses, as her elective courses. The premed track at Loretta’s university includes opportunities to attend MCAT study workshops and premed student club meetings. It also provides recommendations for summer volunteering and internships that will strengthen Loretta’s resume and application to medical school following the completion of her bachelor’s degree. ### Special Requirements of Majors While preprofessional programs prepare students for entrance into graduate professional degree programs, some undergraduate majors involve special requirements beyond the usual courses and classroom experience to prepare students for entrance to their career. Such requirements provide students practical experience or prerequisites for licensure necessary for a particular job. When requirements are major-specific, it is often because the requirement is state-mandated for that job. Majors that often include state-mandated special requirements are education, social work, and nursing. Some colleges and universities may require all students to participate in additional experiences beyond their regular coursework. You will want to ask your college about details specific to your major or institution. In this section we will generally discuss four such special requirements and experiences: fieldwork and internships, clinicals, student teaching, and service learning. ### Fieldwork and Internships Fieldwork and internships may also be referred to as and field experience. These requirements provide hands-on work experience in a career, or field. When fieldwork or internships are required for your major, such as with a social work major, it is often listed as a course requirement among your major requirements. In other words, you usually receive credits for your fieldwork as you would for a lab or lecture course. Your fieldwork instructor will likely ask you to reflect on and report on your experiences. They will likely confer with a supervisor at your fieldwork site, the place where you are working, to help assess your hands-on learning. Fieldwork and internships provide students with opportunities to practice the skills they’ve learned in the classroom while also introducing them to the values and culture of the organizations and communities in which they hope to be employed. It is important to note that fieldwork and internship experiences are often available to students even if they are not required for their major. You may want to inquire with your academic advisors, faculty, or career services office to determine what opportunities might be available for you to gain this type of experience in your field of interest. ### Clinicals Clinicals are a type of fieldwork specifically required of nursing students. Clinicals may take place in hospitals, nursing homes, or mental health facilities. They provide nursing students who are nearing the end of their degree programs with the opportunity to practice nursing skills that cannot be learned in a regular classroom. During clinicals, students will interact with real patients to conduct physical examinations, draw blood, administer medicine, and provide other care as necessary. Because of the risk to patients, students participating in clinicals are more closely supervised by experienced professionals than those in other types of fieldwork experiences. Thus, clinicals function very much like a real-world classroom and progress to more independent work through the semester. Before undertaking clinicals, nursing students will need to complete certain coursework and pass a physical examination and background check. Because clinicals are often much longer than a class meeting, students will need to work with staff from the program to plan their schedule. It may not be feasible to work at another job while completing clinicals, so if you must work while you’re in college, it’s important to discuss this with nursing staff or academic advisors and to plan ahead. ### Student Teaching Student teaching is a specific type of fieldwork undertaken by students who plan to teach at the preschool, elementary, or middle and high school levels. Education students are often required to complete a student teaching experience in order to obtain a teaching license in their state. Students must often complete core education coursework prior to student teaching and must complete a background check prior to placement in a school setting. During their student teaching experience, students are usually paired one-on-one with an experienced teacher and have the opportunity to observe that teacher, get to know the students, understand the classroom culture, and participate in lessons as a teaching assistant as needed or appropriate. Much like nursing clinicals, this highly supervised fieldwork experience usually progresses to more independent work when the student teacher is asked to deliver and reflect on a lesson plan of their own design. Keep in mind as you plan for student teaching, that, unlike other fieldwork experiences, student teaching is limited to fall or spring semesters and cannot be completed in the summer because most schools are closed during the summer terms. Also, it may not be feasible to work at another job while completing your student teaching experience, so if you must work while you’re in college, it’s important to discuss this with your program staff or academic advisors and to plan ahead. ### Service Learning While service learning may not be required of a specific major, you may see this special requirement for a course or as a general graduation requirement for your college or university. It’s also an excellent opportunity to try out something that interests you, something that could lead to or be part of your eventual career. Service learning is very much like volunteering or community service. The purpose of service learning is to interact with and meet the needs of your local community. Service learning does differ from volunteering in that it is more structured to meet specific learning goals. For example, if you were engaging in service learning for an environmental science course, your activities would likely be focused on local environmental issues. Or, if you were engaging in service learning for a sociology course, you would likely be working with local community groups or organizations not only to assist these organizations, but also to observe how groups interact. Like fieldwork, service learning provides you an opportunity to observe and apply concepts learned in the classroom in a real-world setting. Students are often asked to reflect on their service learning activities in the context of what they’ve been learning in class, so if you’re engaged in service learning, be thinking about how the activities you do relate to what you’ve learned and know.

# Planning Your Future ## Making a Plan Questions to Consider: 1. What resources are available to help me understand my degree program requirements? 2. Who can assist me in making a plan? 3. What tools are available to help me develop and track the progress of my plan? 4. Is there anything else I can do now to plan for after I graduate? As previously noted, most associate degrees require a minimum of 60 credit hours for completion, and bachelor’s degrees minimally require a total of 120 credits. Some individuals refer to these degrees as “two- year” and “four-year” degrees, respectively. To complete a 60-credit associate degree in two years, you would need to take 15 credits (about five classes) in the fall and spring semesters during both years of your attendance. To complete a 120-credit bachelor’s degree in four years, you would need to take 15 credits in the fall and spring semesters each of your four years. It is therefore entirely possible to complete these degrees in two and four years, particularly if you use the three primary resources that colleges provide to help you with your planning: curriculum maps, academic advisors, and interactive planning technology. ### Curriculum Maps Many colleges and universities will provide , or course checklists to illustrate the sequence of courses necessary to follow this timeline. These timelines often assume that you are ready to take college-level math and English courses and that you will be attending college as a full-time student. If placement tests demonstrate a need for prerequisite math and English coursework to get you up to speed, your timeline will likely be longer. Many students attend college part-time, often because of family or work responsibilities. This will obviously have an impact on your completion timeline as well. Programs that have special requirements may also require that you plan for additional time. For example, it may be the case that you cannot take other courses while completing clinicals or student teaching, so you will need to plan accordingly. Alternatively, you may be able to speed up, or accelerate, your timeline to degree by taking courses during summer or winter terms. Or if you take fewer than 15 credits per semester, you can take courses during the summer terms to “make up” those credits and stay on track toward those two- or four-year graduation goals.Brookdale Community College Office of Career and Leadership Development. (2016). ### Academic Advisors All colleges and universities provide resources such as a academic advisors to assist you with your academic planning. Academic advisors may also be called success coaches, mentors, preceptors, or counselors. They may be staff members, or faculty may provide advisement as an additional role to their teaching responsibilities. Regardless of what your college calls this role, academic advisors are individuals who are able to assist you in navigating the puzzle of your academic plan and piecing your courses and requirements together with your other life obligations to help you meet your goals. An advisor is an expert on college and major requirements and policies, while you are the expert on your life circumstances and your ability to manage your study time and workload. It is also an advisor’s responsibility to understand the details of your degree requirements. This person can teach you how to best utilize college resources to make decisions about your academic and career path. An advisor can help you connect with other college staff and faculty who might be integral to supporting your success. Together with your advisor, you can create a semester-by-semester plan for the courses you will take and the special requirements you will meet. Refer to the end of this section for a detailed planning template that you could use in this process. Even if your college does not require advising, it is wise to meet with your advisor every semester to both check your progress and learn about new opportunities that might lend you competitive advantage in entering your career. Common Functions of Academic Advisors Academic advisors can help you: 1. Set educational and career goals 2. Select a major and/or minor 3. Understand the requirements of your degree 4. Navigate the online tools that track the progress of your degree 5. Calculate your GPA and understand how certain choices may impact your GPA 6. Discuss your academic progress from semester to semester 7. Assist with time management strategies 8. Connect with other support and resources at the college such as counseling, tutoring, and career services 9. Navigate institutional policies such as grade appeals, admission to special programs, and other concerns 10. Strategize how to make important contacts with faculty or other college administrators and staff as necessary (such as discussing how to construct professional emails) 11. Discuss transfer options, if applicable 12. Prepare for graduate school applications

# Planning Your Future ## Using the Career Planning Cycle Questions to Consider: 1. What steps should I take to learn about my best opportunities? 2. What can I do to prepare for my career while in college? 3. What experiences and resources can help me in my search? The Career Planning Cycle helps us apply some concrete steps to figuring out where we might fit into the work world. If you follow the steps, you will learn about who you truly are, and can be, as a working professional. You will discover important knowledge about the work world. You will gain more information to help you make solid career decisions. You will get experience that will increase your qualifications. You will be more prepared to reach your professional goals. And the good news is that colleges and universities are set up nicely to help you utilize this process. ### Learn About Yourself To understand what type of work suits us and to be able to convey that to others to get hired, we must become experts in knowing who we are. Gaining self-knowledge is a lifelong process, and college is the perfect time to gain and adapt this fundamental information. Following are some of the types of information that we should have about ourselves: 1. Interests: Things that we like and want to know more about. These often take the form of ideas, information, knowledge, and topics. 2. Skills/Aptitudes: Things that we either do well or can do well. These can be natural or learned and are usually skills—things we can demonstrate in some way. Some of our skills are “hard” skills, which are specific to jobs and/or tasks. Others are “soft” skills, which are personality traits and/or interpersonal skills that accompany us from position to position. 3. Values: Things that we believe in. Frequently, these are conditions and principles. 4. Personality: Things that combine to make each of us distinctive. Often, this shows in the way we present ourselves to the world. Aspects of personality are customarily described as qualities, features, thoughts, and behaviors. In addition to knowing the things we can and like to do, we must also know how well we do them. What are our strengths? When employers hire us, they hire us to do something, to contribute to their organization in some way. We get paid for what we know, what we can do, and how well or deeply we can demonstrate these things. Think of these as your Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities (KSAs). As working people, we can each think of ourselves as carrying a “tool kit.” In our tool kit are the KSAs that we bring to each job. As we gain experience, we learn how best to use our tools. We gain more tools and use some more often than others, but all the tools we gather during our career stay with us in some form. ### Formal Assessments Formal assessments are typically referred to as “career tests.” There are thousands available, and many are found randomly on the Internet. While many of these can be fun, “free” and easily available instruments are usually not credible. It is important to use assessments that are developed to be reliable and valid. Look to your career center for their recommendations; their staff has often spent a good deal of time selecting instruments that they believe work best for students. Here are some commonly used and useful assessments that you may run across: 1. Interest Assessments: Strong Interest Inventory, Self-Directed Search, Campbell Interest and Skill Survey, Harrington-O’Shea Career Decision-Making System 2. Personality Measures: Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, CliftonStrengths (formerly StrengthsQuest), Big Five Inventory, Keirsey Temperament Sorter, TypeFocus, DiSC 3. Career Planning Software: SIGI 3, FOCUS 2 ### Informal Assessments Often, asking questions and seeking answers can help get us information that we need. When we start working consciously on learning more about any subject, things that we never before considered may become apparent. Happily, this applies to self-knowledge as well. Some things that you can do outside of career testing to learn more about yourself can include: ### Self-Reflection: 1. Notice when you do something that you enjoy or that you did particularly well. What did that feel like? What about it made you feel positive? Is it something that you’d like to do again? What was the impact that you made through your actions? 2. Most people are the “go to” person for something. What do you find that people come to you for? Are you good with advice? Do you tend to be a good listener, observing first and then speaking your mind? Do people appreciate your repair skills? Are you good with numbers? What role do you play in a group? 3. If you like to write or record your thoughts, consider creating a career journal that you update regularly, whether it’s weekly or by semester. If writing your own thoughts is difficult, seek out guided activities that help prompt you to reflect. 4. Many colleges have a career planning course that is designed to specifically lead you through the career decision-making process. Even if you are decided on your major, these courses can help you refine and plan best for your field. ### Explore Jobs and Careers Many students seem to believe that the most important decision they will make in college is to choose their major. While this is an important decision, even more important is to determine the type of knowledge you would like to have, understand what you value, and learn how you can apply this in the workplace after you graduate. For example, if you know you like to help people, this is a value. If you also know that you’re interested in math and/or finances, you might study to be an accountant. To combine both of these, you would gain as much knowledge as you can about financial systems and personal financial habits so that you can provide greater support and better help to your clients. The four factors of self-knowledge (interests, skills/aptitudes, values, and personality), which manifest in your KSAs, are also the factors on which employers evaluate your suitability for their positions. They consider what you can bring to their organization that is at once in line with their organization’s standards and something they need but don’t have in their existing workforce. Along with this, each job has KSAs that define it. You may think about finding a job/career as looking like the figure below. The importance of finding the right fit cannot be overstated. Many people don’t realize that the KSAs of the person and the requirements of the job have to match in order to get hired in a given field. What is even more important, though, is that when a particular job fits your four factors of self-knowledge and maximizes your KSAs, you are most likely to be satisfied with your work! The “fit” works to help you not only get the job, but also enjoy the job. So if you work to learn about yourself, what do you need to know about jobs, and how do you go about learning it? In our diagram, if you need to have self-knowledge to determine the YOU factors, then to determine the JOB factors, you need to have workplace knowledge. This involves understanding what employers in the workplace and specific jobs require. Aspects of workplace knowledge include: 1. Labor Market Information: Economic conditions, including supply and demand of jobs; types of industries in a geographic area or market; regional sociopolitical conditions and/or geographic attributes. 2. Industry Details: Industry characteristics; trends and opportunities for both industry and employers; standards and expectations. 3. Work Roles: Characteristics and duties of specific jobs and work roles; knowledge, skills, and abilities necessary to perform the work; training and education required; certifications or licenses; compensation; promotion and career path; hiring process. This “research” may sound a little dry and uninteresting at first, but consider it as a look into your future. If you are excited about what you are learning and what your career prospects are, learning about the places where you may put all of your hard work into practice should also be very exciting! Most professionals spend many hours not only performing their work but also physically being located at work. For something that is such a large part of your life, it will help you to know what you are getting into as you get closer to realizing your goals. There are many and varied types of experiential learning opportunities that can help you learn more about different career opportunities. The table below provides a brief overview. ### What to Do to Get Ready Being prepared to find a job means putting evidence of your KSAs together in a way that employers will understand. It is one thing to say you can do something; it is another to show that you can. The following are things that you will want to compile as a part of your college career. ### Resumes and Profiles: The College Version You may already have a resume or a similar profile (such as LinkedIn), or you may be thinking about developing one. Usually, these resources are not required for early college studies, but you may need them for internships, work-study, or other opportunities. When it comes to an online profile, something that is a public resource, be very considerate and intentional when developing it. ### Resume A resume is a summary of your education, work experience, and other accomplishments. It is not simply a list of what you’ve done; it’s a showcase that presents the best you have to offer for a specific role. While most resumes have a relatively similar look and feel, there are some variations in the approach. Especially when developing your first résumé or applying in a new area, you should seek help from resources such as career counselors and others with knowledge of the field. Websites can be very helpful, but be sure to run your resume by others to make sure it fits the format and contains no mistakes. A resume is a one-page summary (two, if you are a more experienced person) that generally includes the following information: 1. Name and contact information 2. Objective and/or summary 3. Education—all degrees and relevant certifications or licenses 4. Work or work-related experience—usually in reverse chronological order, starting with the most recent and working backward. (Some resumes are organized by subject/skills rather than chronologically.Writing@CSU. “Organizing Your Resume.” https://writing.colostate.edu/guides/page.cfm?pageid=1517&guideid=77) 5. Career-related/academic awards or similar accomplishments 6. Specific work-related skills While you’re in college, especially if you go to college directly after high school, you may not have formal degrees or significant work experience to share. That’s okay. Tailor the resume to the position for which you’re applying, and include high school academic, extracurricular, and community-based experience. These show your ability to make a positive contribution and are a good indicator of your work ethic. If you have significant experience outside of college, you should include it if it’s relatively recent, relates to the position, and/or includes transferable skills (discussed above) that can be used in the role for which you’re applying. Military service or similar experience should nearly always be included. If you had a long career with one company quite some time ago, you can summarize that in one resume entry, indicating the total years worked and the final role achieved. These are judgment calls, and again you can seek guidance from experts. ### Digital Profiles An online profile is a nearly standard component of professional job seeking and networking. LinkedIn is a networking website used by people from nearly every profession. It combines elements of résumés and portfolios with social media. Users can view, connect, communicate, post events and articles, comment, and recommend others. Employers can recruit, post jobs, and process applications. Alternatives include Jobcase, AngelList, Hired, and Nexxt. These varying sites work in similar ways, with some unique features or practices. Some professions or industries have specific LinkedIn groups or subnetworks. Other professions or industries may have their own networking sites, to be used instead of or in addition to LinkedIn. Industry, for example, is a networking site specifically for culinary and hospitality workers. As a college student, it might be a great idea to have a LinkedIn or related profile. It can help you make connections in a prospective field, and provide access to publications and posts on topics that interest you. Before you join and develop a public professional profile, however, keep the following in mind: 1. Be professional. Write up your profile information, any summary, and job/education experience separately, check for spelling and other errors, and have someone review before posting. Be sure to be completely honest and accurate. 2. Your profile isn’t a contest. As a college student, you may only have two or three items to include on your profile. That’s okay. Overly long LinkedIn profiles—like overly long resumes—aren’t effective anyway, and a college student’s can be brief. 3. Add relevant experience and information as you attain it. Post internships, summer jobs, awards, or work-study experiences as you attain them. Don’t list every club or organization you’re in if it doesn’t pertain to the professional field, but include some, especially if you become head of a club or hold a competitive position, such as president or member of a performance group or sports team. 4. Don’t “over-connect.” As you meet and work with people relevant to your career, it is appropriate to connect with them through LinkedIn by adding a personal note on the invite message. But don’t send connection invites to people with whom you have no relationship, or to too many people overall. Even alumni from your own school might be reluctant to connect with you unless you know them relatively well. 5. Professional networking is not the same as social media. While LinkedIn has a very strong social media component, users are often annoyed by too much nonprofessional sharing (such as vacation/child pictures); aggressive commenting or arguing via comments is also frowned upon. As a student, you probably shouldn’t be commenting or posting too much at all. Use LinkedIn as a place to observe and learn. And in terms of your profile itself, keep it professional, not personal. 6. LinkedIn is not a replacement for a real resume. ### Building Your Portfolio Future employers or educational institutions may want to see the work you’ve done during school. Also, you may need to recall projects or papers you wrote to remember details about your studies. Your portfolio can be one of your most important resources. Portfolio components vary according to field. Business students should save projects, simulations, case studies, and any mock companies or competitions they worked on. Occupational therapy students may have patient thank-you letters, summaries of volunteer activity, and completed patient paperwork (identities removed). Education majors will likely have lesson plans, student teaching materials, sample projects they created, and papers or research related to their specialization. Other items to include in your portfolio: 1. Evidence of any workshops or special classes you attended. Include a certificate, registration letter, or something else indicating you attended/completed it. 2. Evidence of volunteer work, including a write-up of your experience and how it impacted you. 3. Related experience and work products from your time prior to college. 4. Materials associated with career-related talks, performances, debates, or competitions that you delivered or took part in. 5. Products, projects, or experiences developed in internships, fieldwork, clinicals, or other experiences (see below). 6. Evidence of “universal” workplace skills such as computer abilities or communication, or specialized abilities such as computation/number crunching. A portfolio is neither a scrapbook nor an Instagram story. No need to fill it with pictures of your college experience unless those pictures directly relate to your career. If you’re studying theology and ran a religious camp, include a picture. If you’re studying theology and worked in a food store, leave it out. Certain disciplines, such as graphic design, music, computer science, and other technologies, may have more specific portfolio requirements and desired styles. You’ll likely learn about that in the course of your studies, but be sure to proactively inquire about these needs or seek examples. Early in your college career, you should be most focused on gathering components for your portfolio, not formalizing it for display or sharing. ### Preparing to Network Throughout this chapter, we have discussed how important relationships are to your career development. It can sometimes be a little intimidating to meet new people in the professional environment. But with preparation and understanding, these encounters can be not only helpful, but also rewarding. Here are some ideas to consider when meeting new people who can be helpful to your career: 1. Be yourself. You’re your own best asset. If you’re comfortable with who you are and where you come from, others will be, too. 2. Remember, you’re in college and they know it. Don’t try to impress everyone with what you know; alumni or faculty know more. Instead, talk about what you’re learning—your favorite class, the project you’re most proud of, or even the ones by which you’ve been most challenged. 3. Be polite, not too casual. If your goal is to become a professional, look and sound the part. 4. Listen. 5. Think of some questions ahead of time. Don’t aim for difficult questions or anything too personal, but asking people how they got into their career, with whom they studied in college, what their job is like, and similar questions will both start conversations and provide you with meaningful insight. 6. Don’t stress. Remember, if alumni, even highly successful ones, are speaking to you, it’s usually because they want to. An encounter over finger food or a brief meetup in the Rad Tech department office isn’t going to make or break your job prospects. 7. If appropriate and timely, ask if you can keep in touch. Be prepared with a polished email address and phone number. For example, if your current address is “fortnitefan@gmail.com,” consider creating a second account that’s more professional. 8. Say thank you. No need to go on and on, but thank them for any advice they give or simply for taking the time to talk with you ### Making Your Case through the Words of Others: Letters of Recommendation Whether you go on to graduate school or directly into the workforce (or both at the same time), decision makers will want to learn more about you. Your grades, interviews, test scores, and other performance data will tell them a lot. But sometimes they’ll want to hear from others. Letters of recommendation are often a standard component of convincing people you’re the right person to join their organization. Some positions or institutions require a certain quantity of letters and may have specific guidance on who should write them. Other companies will accept them as additional evidence that you’re a great candidate. Either way, gathering such letters or having a few people whom you can ask for them will put you in a better position. Note that internships, especially competitive ones, may also require letters of recommendation. ### Friends & Family Matter Michael has continued on his path to become a physical therapist even though he has struggled in some of the basic science classes. In fact, he earned Ds in Chemistry I and in Anatomy and Physiology. He will need to retake the courses and earn at least Cs in them to graduate with a bachelor’s degree in biology, but even more importantly, he will need to greatly improve his GPA if he wants to be able to get into a graduate program. Michael has noticed that his enthusiasm for his major classes has waned considerably, especially since he has taken courses such as history and literature. He loves reading and discussing texts and analyzing their historical contexts. When he expressess this to his family, they encourage him to “get that out of his system” and continue on his pathway to physical therapy. In fact, they often share with him news stories about salaries for people who graduate with liberal arts degrees versus science and mathematics degrees, and the data show that his physical therapy degree will be far more lucrative over his lifetime. Even though Michael knows he needs to be able to land a good-paying job after he graduates, he doesn’t think he has what it takes to get through his science courses. Now he is unsure of how to bring this up to his family as they have made it clear what their expectations are. He doesn’t want to disappoint them—and perhaps they know better what he should do—but he just can’t find the motivation to retake the courses and work harder. ### Let’s Think About It Michael has several options. Think through the consequences of each one, and choose the best option or create your own option. 1. Michael continues on the path to become a physical therapist even if that means retaking classes to earn a higher GPA so he can apply for graduate school. 2. Michael talks with a career counselor and an academic advisor about his dilemma and finds a more viable pathway for himself. 3. Michael has an honest conversation with his family about how he is feeling and why he is not doing well in his science classes. ### Let’s Talk About It Michael’s situation is common among students who think they want to major in something because they like the idea of it, their family supports the pathway, and the choice can lead to a lucrative career. However, it is okay to change your mind or decide to study something that interests you even if you are not sure just yet how to connect it to a career. Here are some suggestions for communicating with others about the dilemma that Michael is facing: 1. “After some thought and experiences in my classes, I don’t feel as though my original major and career plan are a good fit for what I would like to study. I would like to explore other options.” 2. “I have been talking with a career counselor about other options for careers. I have found some interesting pathways that would be different from what I originally chose, but would still be viable ways to use what I am learning in college in a career that makes a difference for others.” 3. “I am struggling with what I want to study and do with my life. I have found some classes are more enjoyable for me—even when they are challenging—and I would like to talk to my professors, advisors, and the career services staff about what this may mean for my degree pathway.” Whatever choice you would make in this situation, it is always best to communicate clearly your needs, your concerns, and even your uncertainties. ### Summary and Next Steps for College Success This chapter began by describing the process of creating short-term, long-term, and SMART goals that can serve as motivation for you. After a discussion of the relationship between short- and long-term goals and the importance of tracking the progress of our goals, the chapter dove into the specifics of academic plans. Sections on degree types and the special considerations and requirements of certain programs should help you understand the type of opportunities that may be available to you and the types of questions you should research and ask. The section on planning your semesters provided you with the types of resources, people, and tools that you should look for when developing your academic plan. The final section shared some basic job-seeking advice and information that will allow you to begin the process of building the components needed to apply for positions during and after college. To make the most of the time you have in college to explore and plan for your future, consider what you can do now to create your educational and career pathway. Choose one of the following to explore further or do this term: 1. Take a variety of values, interests, skills, and personality inventories to learn more about what kinds of career environments and tasks would be worth pursuing. 2. Create a degree plan for yourself that includes opportunities to participate in experiential learning and activities such as internships and service learning. 3. Explore additional education or credentials you may need to fulfill your career goals. 4. Begin to create a resume or professional profile via social media that shares the experiences you have.

# An Invisible World ## Introduction From boiling thermal hot springs to deep beneath the Antarctic ice, microorganisms can be found almost everywhere on earth in great quantities. Microorganisms (or microbes, as they are also called) are small organisms. Most are so small that they cannot be seen without a microscope. Most microorganisms are harmless to humans and, in fact, many are helpful. They play fundamental roles in ecosystems everywhere on earth, forming the backbone of many food webs. People use them to make biofuels, medicines, and even foods. Without microbes, there would be no bread, cheese, or beer. Our bodies are filled with microbes, and our skin alone is home to trillions of them.J. Hulcr et al. “A Jungle in There: Bacteria in Belly Buttons are Highly Diverse, but Predictable.” Some of them we can’t live without; others cause diseases that can make us sick or even kill us. Although much more is known today about microbial life than ever before, the vast majority of this invisible world remains unexplored. Microbiologists continue to identify new ways that microbes benefit and threaten humans.

# An Invisible World ## What Our Ancestors Knew ### Learning Objectives By the end of this section, you will be able to: 1. Describe how our ancestors improved food with the use of invisible microbes 2. Describe how the causes of sickness and disease were explained in ancient times, prior to the invention of the microscope 3. Describe key historical events associated with the birth of microbiology Most people today, even those who know very little about microbiology, are familiar with the concept of microbes, or “germs,” and their role in human health. Schoolchildren learn about bacteria, viruses, and other microorganisms, and many even view specimens under a microscope. But a few hundred years ago, before the invention of the microscope, the existence of many types of microbes was impossible to prove. By definition, microorganisms, or microbes, are very small organisms; many types of microbes are too small to see without a microscope, although some parasites and fungi are visible to the naked eye. Humans have been living with—and using—microorganisms for much longer than they have been able to see them. Historical evidence suggests that humans have had some notion of microbial life since prehistoric times and have used that knowledge to develop foods as well as prevent and treat disease. In this section, we will explore some of the historical applications of microbiology as well as the early beginnings of microbiology as a science. ### Fermented Foods and Beverages People across the world have enjoyed fermented foods and beverages like beer, wine, bread, yogurt, cheese, and pickled vegetables for all of recorded history. Discoveries from several archeological sites suggest that even prehistoric people took advantage of fermentation to preserve and enhance the taste of food. Archaeologists studying pottery jars from a Neolithic village in China found that people were making a fermented beverage from rice, honey, and fruit as early as 7000 BC.P.E. McGovern et al. “Fermented Beverages of Pre- and Proto-Historic China.” Production of these foods and beverages requires microbial fermentation, a process that uses bacteria, mold, or yeast to convert sugars (carbohydrates) to alcohol, gases, and organic acids (). While it is likely that people first learned about fermentation by accident—perhaps by drinking old milk that had curdled or old grape juice that had fermented—they later learned to harness the power of fermentation to make products like bread, cheese, and wine. ### The Iceman Treateth Prehistoric humans had a very limited understanding of the causes of disease, and various cultures developed different beliefs and explanations. While many believed that illness was punishment for angering the gods or was simply the result of fate, archaeological evidence suggests that prehistoric people attempted to treat illnesses and infections. One example of this is Ötzi the Iceman, a 5300-year-old mummy found frozen in the ice of the Ötzal Alps on the Austrian-Italian border in 1991. Because Ötzi was so well preserved by the ice, researchers discovered that he was infected with the eggs of the parasite Trichuris trichiura, which may have caused him to have abdominal pain and anemia. Researchers also found evidence of Borrelia burgdorferi, a bacterium that causes Lyme disease.A. Keller et al. “New Insights into the Tyrolean Iceman's Origin and Phenotype as Inferred by Whole-Genome Sequencing.” Some researchers think Ötzi may have been trying to treat his infections with the woody fruit of the Fomitopsis betulinus fungus, which was discovered tied to his belongings.L. Capasso. “5300 Years Ago, the Ice Man Used Natural Laxatives and Antibiotics.” This fungus has both laxative and antibiotic properties. Ötzi was also covered in tattoos that were made by cutting incisions into his skin, filling them with herbs, and then burning the herbs.L. Capasso, L. “5300 Years Ago, the Ice Man Used Natural Laxatives and Antibiotics.” There is speculation that this may have been another attempt to treat his health ailments. ### Early Notions of Disease, Contagion, and Containment Several ancient civilizations appear to have had some understanding that disease could be transmitted by things they could not see. This is especially evident in historical attempts to contain the spread of disease. For example, the Bible refers to the practice of quarantining people with leprosy and other diseases, suggesting that people understood that diseases could be communicable. Ironically, while leprosy is communicable, it is also a disease that progresses slowly. This means that people were likely quarantined after they had already spread the disease to others. The ancient Greeks attributed disease to bad air, mal’aria, which they called “miasmatic odors.” They developed hygiene practices that built on this idea. The Romans also believed in the miasma hypothesis and created a complex sanitation infrastructure to deal with sewage. In Rome, they built aqueducts, which brought fresh water into the city, and a giant sewer, the Cloaca Maxima, which carried waste away and into the river Tiber (). Some researchers believe that this infrastructure helped protect the Romans from epidemics of waterborne illnesses. Even before the invention of the microscope, some doctors, philosophers, and scientists made great strides in understanding the invisible forces—what we now know as microbes—that can cause infection, disease, and death. The Greek physician Hippocrates (460–370 BC) is considered the “father of Western medicine” (). Unlike many of his ancestors and contemporaries, he dismissed the idea that disease was caused by supernatural forces. Instead, he posited that diseases had natural causes from within patients or their environments. Hippocrates and his heirs are believed to have written the Hippocratic Corpus, a collection of texts that make up some of the oldest surviving medical books.G. Pappas et al. “Insights Into Infectious Disease in the Era of Hippocrates.” Hippocrates is also often credited as the author of the Hippocratic Oath, taken by new physicians to pledge their dedication to diagnosing and treating patients without causing harm. While Hippocrates is considered the father of Western medicine, the Greek philosopher and historian Thucydides (460–395 BC) is considered the father of scientific history because he advocated for evidence-based analysis of cause-and-effect reasoning (). Among his most important contributions are his observations regarding the Athenian plague that killed one-third of the population of Athens between 430 and 410 BC. Having survived the epidemic himself, Thucydides made the important observation that survivors did not get re-infected with the disease, even when taking care of actively sick people.Thucydides. This observation shows an early understanding of the concept of immunity. Marcus Terentius Varro (116–27 BC) was a prolific Roman writer who was one of the first people to propose the concept that things we cannot see (what we now call microorganisms) can cause disease (). In Res Rusticae (On Farming), published in 36 BC, he said that “precautions must also be taken in neighborhood swamps. . . because certain minute creatures [animalia minuta] grow there which cannot be seen by the eye, which float in the air and enter the body through the mouth and nose and there cause serious diseases.”Plinio Prioreschi. ### The Birth of Microbiology While the ancients may have suspected the existence of invisible “minute creatures,” it wasn’t until the invention of the microscope that their existence was definitively confirmed. While it is unclear who exactly invented the microscope, a Dutch cloth merchant named Antonie van Leeuwenhoek (1632–1723) was the first to develop a lens powerful enough to view microbes. In 1675, using a simple but powerful microscope, Leeuwenhoek was able to observe single-celled organisms, which he described as “animalcules” or “wee little beasties,” swimming in a drop of rain water. From his drawings of these little organisms, we now know he was looking at bacteria and protists. (We will explore Leeuwenhoek’s contributions to microscopy further in How We See the Invisible World.) Nearly 200 years after van Leeuwenhoek got his first glimpse of microbes, the “Golden Age of Microbiology” spawned a host of new discoveries between 1857 and 1914. Two famous microbiologists, Louis Pasteur and Robert Koch, were especially active in advancing our understanding of the unseen world of microbes (). Pasteur, a French chemist, showed that individual microbial strains had unique properties and demonstrated that fermentation is caused by microorganisms. He also invented pasteurization, a process used to kill microorganisms responsible for spoilage, and developed vaccines for the treatment of diseases, including rabies, in animals and humans. Koch, a German physician, was the first to demonstrate the connection between a single, isolated microbe and a known human disease. For example, he discovered the bacteria that cause anthrax (Bacillus anthracis), cholera (Vibrio cholera), and tuberculosis (Mycobacterium tuberculosis).S.M. Blevins and M.S. Bronze. “Robert Koch and the ‘Golden Age’ of Bacteriology.” We will discuss these famous microbiologists, and others, in later chapters. As microbiology has developed, it has allowed the broader discipline of biology to grow and flourish in previously unimagined ways. Much of what we know about human cells comes from our understanding of microbes, and many of the tools we use today to study cells and their genetics derive from work with microbes. ### Key Concepts and Summary 1. Microorganisms (or microbes) are living organisms that are generally too small to be seen without a microscope. 2. Throughout history, humans have used microbes to make fermented foods such as beer, bread, cheese, and wine. 3. Long before the invention of the microscope, some people theorized that infection and disease were spread by living things that were too small to be seen. They also correctly intuited certain principles regarding the spread of disease and immunity. 4. Antonie van Leeuwenhoek, using a microscope, was the first to actually describe observations of bacteria, in 1675. 5. During the Golden Age of Microbiology (1857–1914), microbiologists, including Louis Pasteur and Robert Koch, discovered many new connections between the fields of microbiology and medicine. ### Multiple Choice ### Fill in the Blank ### Short Answer ### Critical Thinking

# An Invisible World ## A Systematic Approach ### Learning Objectives By the end of this section, you will be able to: 1. Describe how microorganisms are classified and distinguished as unique species 2. Compare historical and current systems of taxonomy used to classify microorganisms Once microbes became visible to humans with the help of microscopes, scientists began to realize their enormous diversity. Microorganisms vary in all sorts of ways, including their size, their appearance, and their rates of reproduction. To study this incredibly diverse new array of organisms, researchers needed a way to systematically organize them. ### The Science of Taxonomy Taxonomy is the classification, description, identification, and naming of living organisms. Classification is the practice of organizing organisms into different groups based on their shared characteristics. The most famous early taxonomist was a Swedish botanist, zoologist, and physician named Carolus Linnaeus (1701–1778). In 1735, Linnaeus published Systema Naturae, an 11-page booklet in which he proposed the Linnaean taxonomy, a system of categorizing and naming organisms using a standard format so scientists could discuss organisms using consistent terminology. He continued to revise and add to the book, which grew into multiple volumes (). In his taxonomy, Linnaeus divided the natural world into three kingdoms: animal, plant, and mineral (the mineral kingdom was later abandoned). Within the animal and plant kingdoms, he grouped organisms using a hierarchy of increasingly specific levels and sublevels based on their similarities. The names of the levels in Linnaeus’s original taxonomy were kingdom, class, order, family, genus (plural: genera), and species. Species was, and continues to be, the most specific and basic taxonomic unit. ### Evolving Trees of Life (Phylogenies) With advances in technology, other scientists gradually made refinements to the Linnaean system and eventually created new systems for classifying organisms. In the 1800s, there was a growing interest in developing taxonomies that took into account the evolutionary relationships, or phylogenies, of all different species of organisms on earth. One way to depict these relationships is via a diagram called a phylogenetic tree (or tree of life). In these diagrams, groups of organisms are arranged by how closely related they are thought to be. In early phylogenetic trees, the relatedness of organisms was inferred by their visible similarities, such as the presence or absence of hair or the number of limbs. Now, the analysis is more complicated. Today, phylogenic analyses include genetic, biochemical, and embryological comparisons, as will be discussed later in this chapter. Linnaeus’s tree of life contained just two main branches for all living things: the animal and plant kingdoms. In 1866, Ernst Haeckel, a German biologist, philosopher, and physician, proposed another kingdom, Protista, for unicellular organisms (). He later proposed a fourth kingdom, Monera, for unicellular organisms whose cells lack nuclei, like bacteria. Nearly 100 years later, in 1969, American ecologist Robert Whittaker (1920–1980) proposed adding another kingdom—Fungi—in his tree of life. Whittaker’s tree also contained a level of categorization above the kingdom level—the empire or superkingdom level—to distinguish between organisms that have membrane-bound nuclei in their cells (eukaryotes) and those that do not (prokaryotes). Empire Prokaryota contained just the Kingdom Monera. The Empire Eukaryota contained the other four kingdoms: Fungi, Protista, Plantae, and Animalia. Whittaker’s five-kingdom tree was considered the standard phylogeny for many years. shows how the tree of life has changed over time. Note that viruses are not found in any of these trees. That is because they are not made up of cells and thus it is difficult to determine where they would fit into a tree of life. ### The Role of Genetics in Modern Taxonomy Haeckel’s and Whittaker’s trees presented hypotheses about the phylogeny of different organisms based on readily observable characteristics. But the advent of molecular genetics in the late 20th century revealed other ways to organize phylogenetic trees. Genetic methods allow for a standardized way to compare all living organisms without relying on observable characteristics that can often be subjective. Modern taxonomy relies heavily on comparing the nucleic acids (deoxyribonucleic acid [DNA] or ribonucleic acid [RNA]) or proteins from different organisms. The more similar the nucleic acids and proteins are between two organisms, the more closely related they are considered to be. In the 1970s, American microbiologist Carl Woese discovered what appeared to be a “living record” of the evolution of organisms. He and his collaborator George Fox created a genetics-based tree of life based on similarities and differences they observed in the gene sequences coding for small subunit ribosomal RNA (rRNA) of different organisms. In the process, they discovered that a certain type of bacteria, called archaebacteria (now known simply as archaea), were significantly different from other bacteria and eukaryotes in terms of their small subunit rRNA gene sequences. To accommodate this difference, they created a tree with three Domains above the level of Kingdom: Archaea, Bacteria, and Eukarya (). Analysis of small subunit rRNA gene sequences suggests archaea, bacteria, and eukaryotes all evolved from a common ancestral cell type. The tree is skewed to show a closer evolutionary relationship between Archaea and Eukarya than they have to Bacteria. Scientists continue to use analysis of RNA, DNA, and proteins to determine how organisms are related. One interesting, and complicating, discovery is that of horizontal gene transfer—when a gene of one species is absorbed into another organism’s genome. Horizontal gene transfer is especially common in microorganisms and can make it difficult to determine how organisms are evolutionarily related. Consequently, some scientists now think in terms of “webs of life” rather than “trees of life.” ### Naming Microbes In developing his taxonomy, Linnaeus used a system of binomial nomenclature, a two-word naming system for identifying organisms by genus and specific epithet. For example, modern humans are in the genus Homo and have the specific epithet name sapiens, so their scientific name in binomial nomenclature is Homo sapiens. In binomial nomenclature, the genus part of the name is always capitalized; it is followed by the specific epithet name, which is not capitalized. Both names are italicized. When referring to the species of humans, the binomial nomenclature would be Homo sapiens. Taxonomic names in the 18th through 20th centuries were typically derived from Latin, since that was the common language used by scientists when taxonomic systems were first created. Today, newly discovered organisms can be given names derived from Latin, Greek, or English. Sometimes these names reflect some distinctive trait of the organism; in other cases, microorganisms are named after the scientists who discovered them. The archaeon Haloquadratum walsbyi is an example of both of these naming schemes. The genus, Haloquadratum, describes the microorganism’s saltwater habitat (halo is derived from the Greek word for “salt”) as well as the arrangement of its square cells, which are arranged in square clusters of four cells (quadratum is Latin for “foursquare”). The species, walsbyi, is named after Anthony Edward Walsby, the microbiologist who discovered Haloquadratum walsbyi in 1980. While it might seem easier to give an organism a common descriptive name—like a red-headed woodpecker—we can imagine how that could become problematic. What happens when another species of woodpecker with red head coloring is discovered? The systematic nomenclature scientists use eliminates this potential problem by assigning each organism a single, unique two-word name that is recognized by scientists all over the world. In this text, we will typically abbreviate an organism’s genus and species after its first mention. The abbreviated form is simply the first initial of the genus, followed by a period and the full name of the species. For example, the bacterium Escherichia coli is shortened to E. coli in its abbreviated form. You will encounter this same convention in other scientific texts as well. ### Bergey’s Manuals Whether in a tree or a web, microbes can be difficult to identify and classify. Without easily observable macroscopic features like feathers, feet, or fur, scientists must capture, grow, and devise ways to study their biochemical properties to differentiate and classify microbes. Despite these hurdles, a group of microbiologists created and updated a set of manuals for identifying and classifying microorganisms. First published in 1923 and since updated many times, of Determinative Bacteriology and Bergey’s Manual of Systematic Bacteriology are the standard references for identifying and classifying different prokaryotes. (Appendix D of this textbook is partly based on Bergey’s manuals; it shows how the organisms that appear in this textbook are classified.) Because so many bacteria look identical, methods based on nonvisual characteristics must be used to identify them. For example, biochemical tests can be used to identify chemicals unique to certain species. Likewise, serological tests can be used to identify specific antibodies that will react against the proteins found in certain species. Ultimately, DNA and rRNA sequencing can be used both for identifying a particular bacterial species and for classifying newly discovered species. 1. Carolus Linnaeus developed a taxonomic system for categorizing organisms into related groups. 2. Binomial nomenclature assigns organisms Latinized scientific names with a genus and species designation. 3. A phylogenetic tree is a way of showing how different organisms are thought to be related to one another from an evolutionary standpoint. 4. The first phylogenetic tree contained kingdoms for plants and animals; Ernst Haeckel proposed adding kingdom for protists. 5. Robert Whittaker’s tree contained five kingdoms: Animalia, Plantae, Protista, Fungi, and Monera. 6. Carl Woese used small subunit ribosomal RNA to create a phylogenetic tree that groups organisms into three domains based on their genetic similarity. 7. Bergey’s manuals of determinative and systemic bacteriology are the standard references for identifying and classifying bacteria, respectively. 8. Bacteria can be identified through biochemical tests, DNA/RNA analysis, and serological testing methods. ### Multiple Choice ### Fill in the Blank ### Short Answer ### Critical Thinking

# An Invisible World ## Types of Microorganisms ### Learning Objectives By the end of this section, you will be able to: 1. List the various types of microorganisms and describe their defining characteristics 2. Give examples of different types of cellular and viral microorganisms and infectious agents 3. Describe the similarities and differences between archaea and bacteria 4. Provide an overview of the field of microbiology Most microbes are unicellular and small enough that they require artificial magnification to be seen. However, there are some unicellular microbes that are visible to the naked eye, and some multicellular organisms that are microscopic. An object must measure about 100 micrometers (µm) to be visible without a microscope, but most microorganisms are many times smaller than that. For some perspective, consider that a typical animal cell measures roughly 10 µm across but is still microscopic. Bacterial cells are typically about 1 µm, and viruses can be 10 times smaller than bacteria (). See for units of length used in microbiology. Microorganisms differ from each other not only in size, but also in structure, habitat, metabolism, and many other characteristics. While we typically think of microorganisms as being unicellular, there are also many multicellular organisms that are too small to be seen without a microscope. Some microbes, such as viruses, are even acellular (not composed of cells). Microorganisms are found in each of the three domains of life: Archaea, Bacteria, and Eukarya. Microbes within the domains Bacteria and Archaea are all prokaryotes (their cells lack a nucleus), whereas microbes in the domain Eukarya are eukaryotes (their cells have a nucleus). Some microorganisms, such as viruses, do not fall within any of the three domains of life. In this section, we will briefly introduce each of the broad groups of microbes. Later chapters will go into greater depth about the diverse species within each group. ### Prokaryotic Microorganisms Bacteria are found in nearly every habitat on earth, including within and on humans. Most bacteria are harmless or helpful, but some are pathogens, causing disease in humans and other animals. Bacteria are prokaryotic because their genetic material (DNA) is not housed within a true nucleus. Most bacteria have cell walls that contain peptidoglycan. Bacteria are often described in terms of their general shape. Common shapes include spherical (coccus), rod-shaped (bacillus), or curved (spirillum, spirochete, or vibrio). shows examples of these shapes. They have a wide range of metabolic capabilities and can grow in a variety of environments, using different combinations of nutrients. Some bacteria are photosynthetic, such as oxygenic cyanobacteria and anoxygenic green sulfur and green nonsulfur bacteria; these bacteria use energy derived from sunlight, and fix carbon dioxide for growth. Other types of bacteria are nonphotosynthetic, obtaining their energy from organic or inorganic compounds in their environment. Archaea are also unicellular prokaryotic organisms. Archaea and bacteria have different evolutionary histories, as well as significant differences in genetics, metabolic pathways, and the composition of their cell walls and membranes. Unlike most bacteria, archaeal cell walls do not contain peptidoglycan, but their cell walls are often composed of a similar substance called pseudopeptidoglycan. Like bacteria, archaea are found in nearly every habitat on earth, even extreme environments that are very cold, very hot, very basic, or very acidic (). Some archaea live in the human body, but none have been shown to be human pathogens. ### Eukaryotic Microorganisms The domain Eukarya contains all eukaryotes, including uni- or multicellular eukaryotes such as protists, fungi, plants, and animals. The major defining characteristic of eukaryotes is that their cells contain a nucleus. ### Protists Protists are an informal grouping of eukaryotes that are not plants, animals, or fungi. Some algae are protists and others are bacteria; all protozoa are examples of protists. Algae (singular: alga) are mostly made up of protists that can be either unicellular or multicellular and vary widely in size, appearance, and habitat (). Algal protists are surrounded by cell walls made of cellulose, a type of carbohydrate. Algae are photosynthetic organisms that extract energy from the sun and release oxygen and carbohydrates into their environment. Cyanobacteria, a type of bacteria, is also considered an algae, but these organisms are bacterial prokaryotes and therefore have a peptidoglycan-based cell wall, unlike the cellulose-based cell wall of the algal protists. Because other organisms can use the waste products of all algae for energy, algae are important parts of many ecosystems. Many consumer products contain ingredients derived from algae, such as carrageenan or alginic acid, which are found in some brands of ice cream, salad dressing, beverages, lipstick, and toothpaste. A derivative of algae also plays a prominent role in the microbiology laboratory. Agar, a gel derived from algae, can be mixed with various nutrients and used to grow microorganisms in a Petri dish. Algae are also being developed as a possible source for biofuels. Protozoa (singular: protozoan) are protists that make up the backbone of many food webs by providing nutrients for other organisms. Protozoa are very diverse. Some protozoa move with help from hair-like structures called cilia or whip-like structures called flagella. Others extend part of their cell membrane and cytoplasm to propel themselves forward. These cytoplasmic extensions are called pseudopods (“false feet”). Some protozoa are photosynthetic; others feed on organic material. Some are free-living, whereas others are parasitic, only able to survive by extracting nutrients from a host organism. Most protozoa are harmless, but some are pathogens that can cause disease in animals or humans (). ### Fungi Fungi (singular: fungus) are also eukaryotes. Some multicellular fungi, such as mushrooms, resemble plants, but they are actually quite different. Fungi are not photosynthetic, and their cell walls are usually made out of chitin rather than cellulose. Unicellular fungi—yeasts—are included within the study of microbiology. There are more than 1000 known species. Yeasts are found in many different environments, from the deep sea to the human navel. Some yeasts have beneficial uses, such as causing bread to rise and beverages to ferment; but yeasts can also cause food to spoil. Some even cause diseases, such as vaginal yeast infections and oral thrush (). Other fungi of interest to microbiologists are multicellular organisms called molds. Molds are made up of long filaments that form visible colonies (). Molds are found in many different environments, from soil to rotting food to dank bathroom corners. Molds play a critical role in the decomposition of dead plants and animals. Some molds can cause allergies, and others produce disease-causing metabolites called mycotoxins. Molds have been used to make pharmaceuticals, including penicillin, which is one of the most commonly prescribed antibiotics, and cyclosporine, used to prevent organ rejection following a transplant. ### Helminths Multicellular parasitic worms called helminths are not technically microorganisms, as most are large enough to see without a microscope. However, these worms fall within the field of microbiology because diseases caused by helminths involve microscopic eggs and larvae. One example of a helminth is the guinea worm, or Dracunculus medinensis, which causes dizziness, vomiting, diarrhea, and painful ulcers on the legs and feet when the worm works its way out of the skin (). Infection typically occurs after a person drinks water containing water fleas infected by guinea-worm larvae. In the mid-1980s, there were an estimated 3.5 million cases of guinea-worm disease, but the disease has been largely eradicated. In 2014, there were only 126 cases reported, thanks to the coordinated efforts of the World Health Organization (WHO) and other groups committed to improvements in drinking water sanitation.C. Greenaway “Dracunculiasis (Guinea Worm Disease).” World Health Organization. “Dracunculiasis (Guinea-Worm Disease).” ### Viruses Viruses are acellular microorganisms, which means they are not composed of cells. Essentially, a virus consists of proteins and genetic material—either DNA or RNA, but never both—that are inert outside of a host organism. However, by incorporating themselves into a host cell, viruses are able to co-opt the host’s cellular mechanisms to multiply and infect other hosts. Viruses can infect all types of cells, from human cells to the cells of other microorganisms. In humans, viruses are responsible for numerous diseases, from the common cold to deadly Ebola (). However, many viruses do not cause disease. ### Microbiology as a Field of Study Microbiology is a broad term that encompasses the study of all different types of microorganisms. But in practice, microbiologists tend to specialize in one of several subfields. For example, bacteriology is the study of bacteria; mycology is the study of fungi; protozoology is the study of protozoa; parasitology is the study of helminths and other parasites; and virology is the study of viruses (). Immunology, the study of the immune system, is often included in the study of microbiology because host–pathogen interactions are central to our understanding of infectious disease processes. Microbiologists can also specialize in certain areas of microbiology, such as clinical microbiology, environmental microbiology, applied microbiology, or food microbiology. In this textbook, we are primarily concerned with clinical applications of microbiology, but since the various subfields of microbiology are highly interrelated, we will often discuss applications that are not strictly clinical. 1. Microorganisms are very diverse and are found in all three domains of life: Archaea, Bacteria, and Eukarya. 2. Archaea and bacteria are classified as prokaryotes because they lack a cellular nucleus. Archaea differ from bacteria in evolutionary history, genetics, metabolic pathways, and cell wall and membrane composition. 3. Archaea inhabit nearly every environment on earth, but no archaea have been identified as human pathogens. 4. Eukaryotes studied in microbiology include algae, protozoa, fungi, and helminths. 5. Algae are plant-like organisms that can be either unicellular or multicellular, and derive energy via photosynthesis. 6. Protozoa are unicellular organisms with complex cell structures; most are motile. 7. Microscopic fungi include molds and yeasts. 8. Helminths are multicellular parasitic worms. They are included in the field of microbiology because their eggs and larvae are often microscopic. 9. Viruses are acellular microorganisms that require a host to reproduce. 10. The field of microbiology is extremely broad. Microbiologists typically specialize in one of many subfields, but all health professionals need a solid foundation in clinical microbiology. ### Multiple Choice ### Fill in the Blank ### Short Answer ### Critical Thinking

# How We See the Invisible World ## Introduction When we look at a rainbow, its colors span the full spectrum of light that the human eye can detect and differentiate. Each hue represents a different frequency of visible light, processed by our eyes and brains and rendered as red, orange, yellow, green, or one of the many other familiar colors that have always been a part of the human experience. But only recently have humans developed an understanding of the properties of light that allow us to see images in color. Over the past several centuries, we have learned to manipulate light to peer into previously invisible worlds—those too small or too far away to be seen by the naked eye. Through a microscope, we can examine microbial cells, using various techniques to manipulate color, size, and contrast in ways that help us identify species and diagnose disease. illustrates how we can apply the properties of light to visualize and magnify images; but these stunning micrographs are just two examples of the numerous types of images we are now able to produce with different microscopic technologies. This chapter explores how various types of microscopes manipulate light in order to provide a window into the world of microorganisms. By understanding how various kinds of microscopes work, we can produce highly detailed images of microbes that can be useful for both research and clinical applications.

# How We See the Invisible World ## The Properties of Light ### Learning Objectives By the end of this section, you will be able to: 1. Identify and define the characteristics of electromagnetic radiation (EMR) used in microscopy 2. Explain how lenses are used in microscopy to manipulate visible and ultraviolet (UV) light Visible light consists of electromagnetic waves that behave like other waves. Hence, many of the properties of light that are relevant to microscopy can be understood in terms of light’s behavior as a wave. An important property of light waves is the wavelength, or the distance between one peak of a wave and the next peak. The height of each peak (or depth of each trough) is called the amplitude. In contrast, the frequency of the wave is the rate of vibration of the wave, or the number of wavelengths within a specified time period (). ### Interactions of Light Light waves interact with materials by being reflected, absorbed, or transmitted. Reflection occurs when a wave bounces off of a material. For example, a red piece of cloth may reflect red light to our eyes while absorbing other colors of light. Absorbance occurs when a material captures the energy of a light wave. In the case of glow-in-the-dark plastics, the energy from light can be absorbed and then later re-emitted as another form of phosphorescence. Transmission occurs when a wave travels through a material, like light through glass (the process of transmission is called transmittance). When a material allows a large proportion of light to be transmitted, it may do so because it is thinner, or more transparent (having more transparency and less opacity). illustrates the difference between transparency and opacity. Light waves can also interact with each other by interference, creating complex patterns of motion. Dropping two pebbles into a puddle causes the waves on the puddle’s surface to interact, creating complex interference patterns. Light waves can interact in the same way. In addition to interfering with each other, light waves can also interact with small objects or openings by bending or scattering. This is called diffraction. Diffraction is larger when the object is smaller relative to the wavelength of the light (the distance between two consecutive peaks of a light wave). Often, when waves diffract in different directions around an obstacle or opening, they will interfere with each other. ### Lenses and Refraction In the context of microscopy, refraction is perhaps the most important behavior exhibited by light waves. Refraction occurs when light waves change direction as they enter a new medium (). Different transparent materials transmit light at different speeds; thus, light can change speed when passing from one material to another. This change in speed usually also causes a change in direction (refraction), with the degree of change dependent on the angle of the incoming light. The extent to which a material slows transmission speed relative to empty space is called the refractive index of that material. Large differences between the refractive indices of two materials will result in a large amount of refraction when light passes from one material to the other. For example, light moves much more slowly through water than through air, so light entering water from air can change direction greatly. We say that the water has a higher refractive index than air (). When light crosses a boundary into a material with a higher refractive index, its direction turns to be closer to perpendicular to the boundary (i.e., more toward a normal to that boundary; see ). This is the principle behind lenses. We can think of a lens as an object with a curved boundary (or a collection of prisms) that collects all of the light that strikes it and refracts it so that it all meets at a single point called the image point (focus). A convex lens can be used to magnify because it can focus at closer range than the human eye, producing a larger image. Concave lenses and mirrors can also be used in microscopes to redirect the light path. shows the focal point (the image point when light entering the lens is parallel) and the focal length (the distance to the focal point) for convex and concave lenses. The human eye contains a lens that enables us to see images. This lens focuses the light reflecting off of objects in front of the eye onto the surface of the retina, which is like a screen in the back of the eye. Artificial lenses placed in front of the eye (contact lenses, glasses, or microscopic lenses) focus light before it is focused (again) by the lens of the eye, manipulating the image that ends up on the retina (e.g., by making it appear larger). Images are commonly manipulated by controlling the distances between the object, the lens, and the screen, as well as the curvature of the lens. For example, for a given amount of curvature, when an object is closer to the lens, the focal points are farther from the lens. As a result, it is often necessary to manipulate these distances to create a focused image on a screen. Similarly, more curvature creates image points closer to the lens and a larger image when the image is in focus. This property is often described in terms of the focal distance, or distance to the focal point. ### Electromagnetic Spectrum and Color Visible light is just one form of electromagnetic radiation (EMR), a type of energy that is all around us. Other forms of EMR include microwaves, X-rays, and radio waves, among others. The different types of EMR fall on the electromagnetic spectrum, which is defined in terms of wavelength and frequency. The spectrum of visible light occupies a relatively small range of frequencies between infrared and ultraviolet light (). Whereas wavelength represents the distance between adjacent peaks of a light wave, frequency, in a simplified definition, represents the rate of oscillation. Waves with higher frequencies have shorter wavelengths and, therefore, have more oscillations per unit time than lower-frequency waves. Higher-frequency waves also contain more energy than lower-frequency waves. This energy is delivered as elementary particles called photons. Higher-frequency waves deliver more energetic photons than lower-frequency waves. Photons with different energies interact differently with the retina. In the spectrum of visible light, each color corresponds to a particular frequency and wavelength ().The lowest frequency of visible light appears as the color red, whereas the highest appears as the color violet. When the retina receives visible light of many different frequencies, we perceive this as white light. However, white light can be separated into its component colors using refraction. If we pass white light through a prism, different colors will be refracted in different directions, creating a rainbow-like spectrum on a screen behind the prism. This separation of colors is called dispersion, and it occurs because, for a given material, the refractive index is different for different frequencies of light. Certain materials can refract nonvisible forms of EMR and, in effect, transform them into visible light. Certain fluorescent dyes, for instance, absorb ultraviolet or blue light and then use the energy to emit photons of a different color, giving off light rather than simply vibrating. This occurs because the energy absorption causes electrons to jump to higher energy states, after which they then almost immediately fall back down to their ground states, emitting specific amounts of energy as photons. Not all of the energy is emitted in a given photon, so the emitted photons will be of lower energy and, thus, of lower frequency than the absorbed ones. Thus, a dye such as Texas red may be excited by blue light, but emit red light; or a dye such as fluorescein isothiocyanate (FITC) may absorb (invisible) high-energy ultraviolet light and emit green light (). In some materials, the photons may be emitted following a delay after absorption; in this case, the process is called phosphorescence. Glow-in-the-dark plastic works by using phosphorescent material. ### Magnification, Resolution, and Contrast Microscopes magnify images and use the properties of light to create useful images of small objects. Magnification is defined as the ability of a lens to enlarge the image of an object when compared to the real object. For example, a magnification of 10⨯ means that the image appears 10 times the size of the object as viewed with the naked eye. Greater magnification typically improves our ability to see details of small objects, but magnification alone is not sufficient to make the most useful images. It is often useful to enhance the resolution of objects: the ability to tell that two separate points or objects are separate. A low-resolution image appears fuzzy, whereas a high-resolution image appears sharp. Two factors affect resolution. The first is wavelength. Shorter wavelengths are able to resolve smaller objects; thus, an electron microscope has a much higher resolution than a light microscope, since it uses an electron beam with a very short wavelength, as opposed to the long-wavelength visible light used by a light microscope. The second factor that affects resolution is numerical aperture, which is a measure of a lens’s ability to gather light. The higher the numerical aperture, the better the resolution. Even when a microscope has high resolution, it can be difficult to distinguish small structures in many specimens because microorganisms are relatively transparent. It is often necessary to increase contrast to detect different structures in a specimen. Various types of microscopes use different features of light or electrons to increase contrast—visible differences between the parts of a specimen (see Instruments of Microscopy). Additionally, dyes that bind to some structures but not others can be used to improve the contrast between images of relatively transparent objects (see Staining Microscopic Specimens). ### Key Concepts and Summary 1. Light waves interacting with materials may be reflected, absorbed, or transmitted, depending on the properties of the material. 2. Light waves can interact with each other (interference) or be distorted by interactions with small objects or openings (diffraction). 3. Refraction occurs when light waves change speed and direction as they pass from one medium to another. Differences in the refraction indices of two materials determine the magnitude of directional changes when light passes from one to the other. 4. A lens is a medium with a curved surface that refracts and focuses light to produce an image. 5. Visible light is part of the electromagnetic spectrum; light waves of different frequencies and wavelengths are distinguished as colors by the human eye. 6. A prism can separate the colors of white light (dispersion) because different frequencies of light have different refractive indices for a given material. 7. Fluorescent dyes and phosphorescent materials can effectively transform nonvisible electromagnetic radiation into visible light. 8. The power of a microscope can be described in terms of its magnification and resolution. 9. Resolution can be increased by shortening wavelength, increasing the numerical aperture of the lens, or using stains that enhance contrast. ### Multiple Choice ### Fill in the Blank ### Short Answer ### Critical Thinking

# How We See the Invisible World ## Peering Into the Invisible World ### Learning Objectives By the end of this section, you will be able to: 1. Describe historical developments and individual contributions that led to the invention and development of the microscope 2. Compare and contrast the features of simple and compound microscopes Some of the fundamental characteristics and functions of microscopes can be understood in the context of the history of their use. Italian scholar Girolamo Fracastoro is regarded as the first person to formally postulate that disease was spread by tiny invisible seminaria, or “seeds of the contagion.” In his book (1546), he proposed that these seeds could attach themselves to certain objects (which he called fomes [cloth]) that supported their transfer from person to person. However, since the technology for seeing such tiny objects did not yet exist, the existence of the seminaria remained hypothetical for a little over a century—an invisible world waiting to be revealed. ### Early Microscopes Antonie van Leeuwenhoek, sometimes hailed as “the Father of Microbiology,” is typically credited as the first person to have created microscopes powerful enough to view microbes (). Born in the city of Delft in the Dutch Republic, van Leeuwenhoek began his career selling fabrics. However, he later became interested in lens making (perhaps to look at threads) and his innovative techniques produced microscopes that allowed him to observe microorganisms as no one had before. In 1674, he described his observations of single-celled organisms, whose existence was previously unknown, in a series of letters to the Royal Society of London. His report was initially met with skepticism, but his claims were soon verified and he became something of a celebrity in the scientific community. While van Leeuwenhoek is credited with the discovery of microorganisms, others before him had contributed to the development of the microscope. These included eyeglass makers in the Netherlands in the late 1500s, as well as the Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei, who used a compound microscope to examine insect parts (). Whereas van Leeuwenhoek used a simple microscope, in which light is passed through just one lens, Galileo’s compound microscope was more sophisticated, passing light through two sets of lenses. Van Leeuwenhoek’s contemporary, the Englishman Robert Hooke (1635–1703), also made important contributions to microscopy, publishing in his book (1665) many observations using compound microscopes. Viewing a thin sample of cork through his microscope, he was the first to observe the structures that we now know as cells (). Hooke described these structures as resembling “Honey-comb,” and as “small Boxes or Bladders of Air,” noting that each “Cavern, Bubble, or Cell” is distinct from the others (in Latin, “cell” literally means “small room”). They likely appeared to Hooke to be filled with air because the cork cells were dead, with only the rigid cell walls providing the structure. ### Key Concepts and Summary 1. Antonie van Leeuwenhoek is credited with the first observation of microbes, including protists and bacteria, with simple microscopes that he made. 2. Robert Hooke was the first to describe what we now call cells. 3. Simple microscopes have a single lens, while compound microscopes have multiple lenses. ### Multiple Choice ### Fill in the Blank ### Short Answer

# How We See the Invisible World ## Instruments of Microscopy ### Learning Objectives By the end of this section, you will be able to: 1. Identify and describe the parts of a brightfield microscope 2. Calculate total magnification for a compound microscope 3. Describe the distinguishing features and typical uses for various types of light microscopes, electron microscopes, and scanning probe microscopes The early pioneers of microscopy opened a window into the invisible world of microorganisms. But microscopy continued to advance in the centuries that followed. In 1830, Joseph Jackson Lister created an essentially modern light microscope. The 20th century saw the development of microscopes that leveraged nonvisible light, such as fluorescence microscopy, which uses an ultraviolet light source, and electron microscopy, which uses short-wavelength electron beams. These advances led to major improvements in magnification, resolution, and contrast. By comparison, the relatively rudimentary microscopes of van Leeuwenhoek and his contemporaries were far less powerful than even the most basic microscopes in use today. In this section, we will survey the broad range of modern microscopic technology and common applications for each type of microscope. ### Light Microscopy Many types of microscopes fall under the category of light microscopes, which use light to visualize images. Examples of light microscopes include brightfield microscopes, darkfield microscopes, phase-contrast microscopes, differential interference contrast microscopes, fluorescence microscopes, confocal scanning laser microscopes, and two-photon microscopes. These various types of light microscopes can be used to complement each other in diagnostics and research. ### Brightfield Microscopes The brightfield microscope, perhaps the most commonly used type of microscope, is a compound microscope with two or more lenses that produce a dark image on a bright background. Some brightfield microscopes are monocular (having a single eyepiece), though most newer brightfield microscopes are binocular (having two eyepieces), like the one shown in ; in either case, each eyepiece contains a lens called an ocular lens. The ocular lenses typically magnify images 10 times (10⨯). At the other end of the body tube are a set of objective lenses on a rotating nosepiece. The magnification of these objective lenses typically ranges from 4⨯ to 100⨯, with the magnification for each lens designated on the metal casing of the lens. The ocular and objective lenses work together to create a magnified image. The total magnification is the product of the ocular magnification times the objective magnification: For example, if a 40⨯ objective lens is selected and the ocular lens is 10⨯, the total magnification would be The item being viewed is called a specimen. The specimen is placed on a glass slide, which is then clipped into place on the stage (a platform) of the microscope. Once the slide is secured, the specimen on the slide is positioned over the light using the x-y mechanical stage knobs. These knobs move the slide on the surface of the stage, but do not raise or lower the stage. Once the specimen is centered over the light, the stage position can be raised or lowered to focus the image. The coarse focusing knob is used for large-scale movements with 4⨯ and 10⨯ objective lenses; the fine focusing knob is used for small-scale movements, especially with 40⨯ or 100⨯ objective lenses. When images are magnified, they become dimmer because there is less light per unit area of image. Highly magnified images produced by microscopes, therefore, require intense lighting. In a brightfield microscope, this light is provided by an illuminator, which is typically a high-intensity bulb below the stage. Light from the illuminator passes up through condenser lens (located below the stage), which focuses all of the light rays on the specimen to maximize illumination. The position of the condenser can be optimized using the attached condenser focus knob; once the optimal distance is established, the condenser should not be moved to adjust the brightness. If less-than-maximal light levels are needed, the amount of light striking the specimen can be easily adjusted by opening or closing a diaphragm between the condenser and the specimen. In some cases, brightness can also be adjusted using the rheostat, a dimmer switch that controls the intensity of the illuminator. A brightfield microscope creates an image by directing light from the illuminator at the specimen; this light is differentially transmitted, absorbed, reflected, or refracted by different structures. Different colors can behave differently as they interact with chromophores (pigments that absorb and reflect particular wavelengths of light) in parts of the specimen. Often, chromophores are artificially added to the specimen using stains, which serve to increase contrast and resolution. In general, structures in the specimen will appear darker, to various extents, than the bright background, creating maximally sharp images at magnifications up to about 1000⨯. Further magnification would create a larger image, but without increased resolution. This allows us to see objects as small as bacteria, which are visible at about 400⨯ or so, but not smaller objects such as viruses. At very high magnifications, resolution may be compromised when light passes through the small amount of air between the specimen and the lens. This is due to the large difference between the refractive indices of air and glass; the air scatters the light rays before they can be focused by the lens. To solve this problem, a drop of oil can be used to fill the space between the specimen and an oil immersion lens, a special lens designed to be used with immersion oils. Since the oil has a refractive index very similar to that of glass, it increases the maximum angle at which light leaving the specimen can strike the lens. This increases the light collected and, thus, the resolution of the image (). A variety of oils can be used for different types of light. ### Darkfield Microscopy A darkfield microscope is a brightfield microscope that has a small but significant modification to the condenser. A small, opaque disk (about 1 cm in diameter) is placed between the illuminator and the condenser lens. This opaque light stop, as the disk is called, blocks most of the light from the illuminator as it passes through the condenser on its way to the objective lens, producing a hollow cone of light that is focused on the specimen. The only light that reaches the objective is light that has been refracted or reflected by structures in the specimen. The resulting image typically shows bright objects on a dark background (). Darkfield microscopy can often create high-contrast, high-resolution images of specimens without the use of stains, which is particularly useful for viewing live specimens that might be killed or otherwise compromised by the stains. For example, thin spirochetes like , the causative agent of syphilis, can be best viewed using a darkfield microscope (). ### Phase-Contrast Microscopes Phase-contrast microscopes use refraction and interference caused by structures in a specimen to create high-contrast, high-resolution images without staining. It is the oldest and simplest type of microscope that creates an image by altering the wavelengths of light rays passing through the specimen. To create altered wavelength paths, an annular stop is used in the condenser. The annular stop produces a hollow cone of light that is focused on the specimen before reaching the objective lens. The objective contains a phase plate containing a phase ring. As a result, light traveling directly from the illuminator passes through the phase ring while light refracted or reflected by the specimen passes through the plate. This causes waves traveling through the ring to be about one-half of a wavelength out of phase with those passing through the plate. Because waves have peaks and troughs, they can add together (if in phase together) or cancel each other out (if out of phase). When the wavelengths are out of phase, wave troughs will cancel out wave peaks, which is called destructive interference. Structures that refract light then appear dark against a bright background of only unrefracted light. More generally, structures that differ in features such as refractive index will differ in levels of darkness (). Because it increases contrast without requiring stains, phase-contrast microscopy is often used to observe live specimens. Certain structures, such as organelles in eukaryotic cells and endospores in prokaryotic cells, are especially well visualized with phase-contrast microscopy (). ### Differential Interference Contrast Microscopes Differential interference contrast (DIC) microscopes (also known as Nomarski optics) are similar to phase-contrast microscopes in that they use interference patterns to enhance contrast between different features of a specimen. In a DIC microscope, two beams of light are created in which the direction of wave movement (polarization) differs. Once the beams pass through either the specimen or specimen-free space, they are recombined and effects of the specimens cause differences in the interference patterns generated by the combining of the beams. This results in high-contrast images of living organisms with a three-dimensional appearance. These microscopes are especially useful in distinguishing structures within live, unstained specimens. () ### Fluorescence Microscopes A fluorescence microscope uses fluorescent chromophores called fluorochromes, which are capable of absorbing energy from a light source and then emitting this energy as visible light. Fluorochromes include naturally fluorescent substances (such as chlorophylls) as well as fluorescent stains that are added to the specimen to create contrast. Dyes such as Texas red and FITC are examples of fluorochromes. Other examples include the nucleic acid dyes 4’,6’-diamidino-2-phenylindole (DAPI) and acridine orange. The microscope transmits an excitation light, generally a form of EMR with a short wavelength, such as ultraviolet or blue light, toward the specimen; the chromophores absorb the excitation light and emit visible light with longer wavelengths. The excitation light is then filtered out (in part because ultraviolet light is harmful to the eyes) so that only visible light passes through the ocular lens. This produces an image of the specimen in bright colors against a dark background. Fluorescence microscopes are especially useful in clinical microbiology. They can be used to identify pathogens, to find particular species within an environment, or to find the locations of particular molecules and structures within a cell. Approaches have also been developed to distinguish living from dead cells using fluorescence microscopy based upon whether they take up particular fluorochromes. Sometimes, multiple fluorochromes are used on the same specimen to show different structures or features. One of the most important applications of fluorescence microscopy is a technique called immunofluorescence, which is used to identify certain disease-causing microbes by observing whether antibodies bind to them. (Antibodies are protein molecules produced by the immune system that attach to specific pathogens to kill or inhibit them.) There are two approaches to this technique: direct immunofluorescence assay (DFA) and indirect immunofluorescence assay (IFA). In DFA, specific antibodies (e.g., those that the target the rabies virus) are stained with a fluorochrome. If the specimen contains the targeted pathogen, one can observe the antibodies binding to the pathogen under the fluorescent microscope. This is called a primary antibody stain because the stained antibodies attach directly to the pathogen. In IFA, secondary antibodies are stained with a fluorochrome rather than primary antibodies. Secondary antibodies do not attach directly to the pathogen, but they do bind to primary antibodies. When the unstained primary antibodies bind to the pathogen, the fluorescent secondary antibodies can be observed binding to the primary antibodies. Thus, the secondary antibodies are attached indirectly to the pathogen. Since multiple secondary antibodies can often attach to a primary antibody, IFA increases the number of fluorescent antibodies attached to the specimen, making it easier visualize features in the specimen (). ### Confocal Microscopes Whereas other forms of light microscopy create an image that is maximally focused at a single distance from the observer (the depth, or z-plane), a confocal microscope uses a laser to scan multiple z-planes successively. This produces numerous two-dimensional, high-resolution images at various depths, which can be constructed into a three-dimensional image by a computer. As with fluorescence microscopes, fluorescent stains are generally used to increase contrast and resolution. Image clarity is further enhanced by a narrow aperture that eliminates any light that is not from the z-plane. Confocal microscopes are thus very useful for examining thick specimens such as biofilms, which can be examined alive and unfixed (). ### Two-Photon Microscopes While the original fluorescent and confocal microscopes allowed better visualization of unique features in specimens, there were still problems that prevented optimum visualization. The effective sensitivity of fluorescence microscopy when viewing thick specimens was generally limited by out-of-focus flare, which resulted in poor resolution. This limitation was greatly reduced in the confocal microscope through the use of a confocal pinhole to reject out-of-focus background fluorescence with thin (<1 μm), unblurred optical sections. However, even the confocal microscopes lacked the resolution needed for viewing thick tissue samples. These problems were resolved with the development of the two-photon microscope, which uses a scanning technique, fluorochromes, and long-wavelength light (such as infrared) to visualize specimens. The low energy associated with the long-wavelength light means that two photons must strike a location at the same time to excite the fluorochrome. The low energy of the excitation light is less damaging to cells, and the long wavelength of the excitation light more easily penetrates deep into thick specimens. This makes the two-photon microscope useful for examining living cells within intact tissues—brain slices, embryos, whole organs, and even entire animals. Currently, use of two-photon microscopes is limited to advanced clinical and research laboratories because of the high costs of the instruments. A single two-photon microscope typically costs between $300,000 and $500,000, and the lasers used to excite the dyes used on specimens are also very expensive. However, as technology improves, two-photon microscopes may become more readily available in clinical settings. ### Electron Microscopy The maximum theoretical resolution of images created by light microscopes is ultimately limited by the wavelengths of visible light. Most light microscopes can only magnify 1000⨯, and a few can magnify up to 1500⨯, but this does not begin to approach the magnifying power of an electron microscope (EM), which uses short-wavelength electron beams rather than light to increase magnification and resolution. Electrons, like electromagnetic radiation, can behave as waves, but with wavelengths of 0.005 nm, they can produce much better resolution than visible light. An EM can produce a sharp image that is magnified up to 100,000⨯. Thus, EMs can resolve subcellular structures as well as some molecular structures (e.g., single strands of DNA); however, electron microscopy cannot be used on living material because of the methods needed to prepare the specimens. There are two basic types of EM: the transmission electron microscope (TEM) and the scanning electron microscope (SEM) (). The TEM is somewhat analogous to the brightfield light microscope in terms of the way it functions. However, it uses an electron beam from above the specimen that is focused using a magnetic lens (rather than a glass lens) and projected through the specimen onto a detector. Electrons pass through the specimen, and then the detector captures the image (). For electrons to pass through the specimen in a TEM, the specimen must be extremely thin (20–100 nm thick). The image is produced because of varying opacity in various parts of the specimen. This opacity can be enhanced by staining the specimen with materials such as heavy metals, which are electron dense. TEM requires that the beam and specimen be in a vacuum and that the specimen be very thin and dehydrated. The specific steps needed to prepare a specimen for observation under an EM are discussed in detail in the next section. SEMs form images of surfaces of specimens, usually from electrons that are knocked off of specimens by a beam of electrons. This can create highly detailed images with a three-dimensional appearance that are displayed on a monitor (). Typically, specimens are dried and prepared with fixatives that reduce artifacts, such as shriveling, that can be produced by drying, before being sputter-coated with a thin layer of metal such as gold. Whereas transmission electron microscopy requires very thin sections and allows one to see internal structures such as organelles and the interior of membranes, scanning electron microscopy can be used to view the surfaces of larger objects (such as a pollen grain) as well as the surfaces of very small samples (). Some EMs can magnify an image up to 2,000,000⨯.“JEM-ARM200F Transmission Electron Microscope,” ### Scanning Probe Microscopy A scanning probe microscope does not use light or electrons, but rather very sharp probes that are passed over the surface of the specimen and interact with it directly. This produces information that can be assembled into images with magnifications up to 100,000,000⨯. Such large magnifications can be used to observe individual atoms on surfaces. To date, these techniques have been used primarily for research rather than for diagnostics. There are two types of scanning probe microscope: the scanning tunneling microscope (STM) and the atomic force microscope (AFM). An STM uses a probe that is passed just above the specimen as a constant voltage bias creates the potential for an electric current between the probe and the specimen. This current occurs via quantum tunneling of electrons between the probe and the specimen, and the intensity of the current is dependent upon the distance between the probe and the specimen. The probe is moved horizontally above the surface and the intensity of the current is measured. Scanning tunneling microscopy can effectively map the structure of surfaces at a resolution at which individual atoms can be detected. Similar to an STM, AFMs have a thin probe that is passed just above the specimen. However, rather than measuring variations in the current at a constant height above the specimen, an AFM establishes a constant current and measures variations in the height of the probe tip as it passes over the specimen. As the probe tip is passed over the specimen, forces between the atoms (van der Waals forces, capillary forces, chemical bonding, electrostatic forces, and others) cause it to move up and down. Deflection of the probe tip is determined and measured using Hooke’s law of elasticity, and this information is used to construct images of the surface of the specimen with resolution at the atomic level (). , , and summarize the microscopy techniques for light microscopes, electron microscopes, and scanning probe microscopes, respectively. ### Key Concepts and Summary 1. Numerous types of microscopes use various technologies to generate micrographs. Most are useful for a particular type of specimen or application. 2. Light microscopy uses lenses to focus light on a specimen to produce an image. Commonly used light microscopes include brightfield, darkfield, phase-contrast, differential interference contrast, fluorescence, confocal, and two-photon microscopes. 3. Electron microscopy focuses electrons on the specimen using magnets, producing much greater magnification than light microscopy. The transmission electron microscope (TEM) and scanning electron microscope (SEM) are two common forms. 4. Scanning probe microscopy produces images of even greater magnification by measuring feedback from sharp probes that interact with the specimen. Probe microscopes include the scanning tunneling microscope (STM) and the atomic force microscope (AFM). ### Multiple Choice ### Fill in the Blank ### Short Answer ### Critical Thinking

# How We See the Invisible World ## Staining Microscopic Specimens ### Learning Objectives By the end of this section, you will be able to: 1. Differentiate between simple and differential stains 2. Describe the unique features of commonly used stains 3. Explain the procedures and name clinical applications for Gram, endospore, acid-fast, negative capsule, and flagella staining In their natural state, most of the cells and microorganisms that we observe under the microscope lack color and contrast. This makes it difficult, if not impossible, to detect important cellular structures and their distinguishing characteristics without artificially treating specimens. We have already alluded to certain techniques involving stains and fluorescent dyes, and in this section we will discuss specific techniques for sample preparation in greater detail. Indeed, numerous methods have been developed to identify specific microbes, cellular structures, DNA sequences, or indicators of infection in tissue samples, under the microscope. Here, we will focus on the most clinically relevant techniques. ### Preparing Specimens for Light Microscopy In clinical settings, light microscopes are the most commonly used microscopes. There are two basic types of preparation used to view specimens with a light microscope: wet mounts and fixed specimens. The simplest type of preparation is the wet mount, in which the specimen is placed on the slide in a drop of liquid. Some specimens, such as a drop of urine, are already in a liquid form and can be deposited on the slide using a dropper. Solid specimens, such as a skin scraping, can be placed on the slide before adding a drop of liquid to prepare the wet mount. Sometimes the liquid used is simply water, but often stains are added to enhance contrast. Once the liquid has been added to the slide, a coverslip is placed on top and the specimen is ready for examination under the microscope. The second method of preparing specimens for light microscopy is fixation. The “fixing” of a sample refers to the process of attaching cells to a slide. Fixation is often achieved either by heating (heat fixing) or chemically treating the specimen. In addition to attaching the specimen to the slide, fixation also kills microorganisms in the specimen, stopping their movement and metabolism while preserving the integrity of their cellular components for observation. To heat-fix a sample, a thin layer of the specimen is spread on the slide (called a smear), and the slide is then briefly heated over a heat source (). Chemical fixatives are often preferable to heat for tissue specimens. Chemical agents such as acetic acid, ethanol, methanol, formaldehyde (formalin), and glutaraldehyde can denature proteins, stop biochemical reactions, and stabilize cell structures in tissue samples (). In addition to fixation, staining is almost always applied to color certain features of a specimen before examining it under a light microscope. Stains, or dyes, contain salts made up of a positive ion and a negative ion. Depending on the type of dye, the positive or the negative ion may be the chromophore (the colored ion); the other, uncolored ion is called the counterion. If the chromophore is the positively charged ion, the stain is classified as a basic dye; if the negative ion is the chromophore, the stain is considered an acidic dye. Dyes are selected for staining based on the chemical properties of the dye and the specimen being observed, which determine how the dye will interact with the specimen. In most cases, it is preferable to use a positive stain, a dye that will be absorbed by the cells or organisms being observed, adding color to objects of interest to make them stand out against the background. However, there are scenarios in which it is advantageous to use a negative stain, which is absorbed by the background but not by the cells or organisms in the specimen. Negative staining produces an outline or silhouette of the organisms against a colorful background (). Because cells typically have negatively charged cell walls, the positive chromophores in basic dyes tend to stick to the cell walls, making them positive stains. Thus, commonly used basic dyes such as basic fuchsin, crystal violet, malachite green, methylene blue, and safranin typically serve as positive stains. On the other hand, the negatively charged chromophores in acidic dyes are repelled by negatively charged cell walls, making them negative stains. Commonly used acidic dyes include acid fuchsin, eosin, and rose bengal. provides more detail. Some staining techniques involve the application of only one dye to the sample; others require more than one dye. In simple staining, a single dye is used to emphasize particular structures in the specimen. A simple stain will generally make all of the organisms in a sample appear to be the same color, even if the sample contains more than one type of organism. In contrast, differential staining distinguishes organisms based on their interactions with multiple stains. In other words, two organisms in a differentially stained sample may appear to be different colors. Differential staining techniques commonly used in clinical settings include Gram staining, acid-fast staining, endospore staining, flagella staining, and capsule staining. provides more detail on these differential staining techniques. ### Gram Staining The Gram stain procedure is a differential staining procedure that involves multiple steps. It was developed by Danish microbiologist Hans Christian Gram in 1884 as an effective method to distinguish between bacteria with different types of cell walls, and even today it remains one of the most frequently used staining techniques. The steps of the Gram stain procedure are listed below and illustrated in . 1. First, crystal violet, a primary stain, is applied to a heat-fixed smear, giving all of the cells a purple color. 2. Next, Gram’s iodine, a mordant, is added. A mordant is a substance used to set or stabilize stains or dyes; in this case, Gram’s iodine acts like a trapping agent that complexes with the crystal violet, making the crystal violet–iodine complex clump and stay contained in thick layers of peptidoglycan in the cell walls. 3. Next, a decolorizing agent is added, usually ethanol or an acetone/ethanol solution. Cells that have thick peptidoglycan layers in their cell walls are much less affected by the decolorizing agent; they generally retain the crystal violet dye and remain purple. However, the decolorizing agent more easily washes the dye out of cells with thinner peptidoglycan layers, making them again colorless. 4. Finally, a secondary counterstain, usually safranin, is added. This stains the decolorized cells pink and is less noticeable in the cells that still contain the crystal violet dye. The purple, crystal-violet stained cells are referred to as gram-positive cells, while the red, safranin-dyed cells are gram-negative (). However, there are several important considerations in interpreting the results of a Gram stain. First, older bacterial cells may have damage to their cell walls that causes them to appear gram-negative even if the species is gram-positive. Thus, it is best to use fresh bacterial cultures for Gram staining. Second, errors such as leaving on decolorizer too long can affect the results. In some cases, most cells will appear gram-positive while a few appear gram-negative (as in ). This suggests damage to the individual cells or that decolorizer was left on for too long; the cells should still be classified as gram-positive if they are all the same species rather than a mixed culture. Besides their differing interactions with dyes and decolorizing agents, the chemical differences between gram-positive and gram-negative cells have other implications with clinical relevance. For example, Gram staining can help clinicians classify bacterial pathogens in a sample into categories associated with specific properties. Gram-negative bacteria tend to be more resistant to certain antibiotics than gram-positive bacteria. We will discuss this and other applications of Gram staining in more detail in later chapters. ### Acid-Fast Stains Acid-fast staining is another commonly used, differential staining technique that can be an important diagnostic tool. An acid-fast stain is able to differentiate two types of gram-positive cells: those that have waxy mycolic acids in their cell walls, and those that do not. Two different methods for acid-fast staining are the Ziehl-Neelsen technique and the Kinyoun technique. Both use carbolfuchsin as the primary stain. The waxy, acid-fast cells retain the carbolfuchsin even after a decolorizing agent (an acid-alcohol solution) is applied. A secondary counterstain, methylene blue, is then applied, which renders non–acid-fast cells blue. The fundamental difference between the two carbolfuchsin-based methods is whether heat is used during the primary staining process. The Ziehl-Neelsen method uses heat to infuse the carbolfuchsin into the acid-fast cells, whereas the Kinyoun method does not use heat. Both techniques are important diagnostic tools because a number of specific diseases are caused by acid-fast bacteria (AFB). If AFB are present in a tissue sample, their red or pink color can be seen clearly against the blue background of the surrounding tissue cells (). ### Capsule Staining Certain bacteria and yeasts have a protective outer structure called a capsule. Since the presence of a capsule is directly related to a microbe’s virulence (its ability to cause disease), the ability to determine whether cells in a sample have capsules is an important diagnostic tool. Capsules do not absorb most basic dyes; therefore, a negative staining technique (staining around the cells) is typically used for capsule staining. The dye stains the background but does not penetrate the capsules, which appear like halos around the borders of the cell. The specimen does not need to be heat-fixed prior to negative staining. One common negative staining technique for identifying encapsulated yeast and bacteria is to add a few drops of India ink or nigrosin to a specimen. Other capsular stains can also be used to negatively stain encapsulated cells (). Alternatively, positive and negative staining techniques can be combined to visualize capsules: The positive stain colors the body of the cell, and the negative stain colors the background but not the capsule, leaving halo around each cell. ### Endospore Staining Endospores are structures produced within certain bacterial cells that allow them to survive harsh conditions. Gram staining alone cannot be used to visualize endospores, which appear clear when Gram-stained cells are viewed. Endospore staining uses two stains to differentiate endospores from the rest of the cell. The Schaeffer-Fulton method (the most commonly used endospore-staining technique) uses heat to push the primary stain (malachite green) into the endospore. Washing with water decolorizes the cell, but the endospore retains the green stain. The cell is then counterstained pink with safranin. The resulting image reveals the shape and location of endospores, if they are present. The green endospores will appear either within the pink vegetative cells or as separate from the pink cells altogether. If no endospores are present, then only the pink vegetative cells will be visible (). Endospore-staining techniques are important for identifying Bacillus and Clostridium, two genera of endospore-producing bacteria that contain clinically significant species. Among others, (which causes anthrax) has been of particular interest because of concern that its spores could be used as a bioterrorism agent. is a particularly important species responsible for the typically hospital-acquired infection known as “C. diff.” ### Flagella Staining Flagella (singular: flagellum) are tail-like cellular structures used for locomotion by some bacteria, archaea, and eukaryotes. Because they are so thin, flagella typically cannot be seen under a light microscope without a specialized flagella staining technique. Flagella staining thickens the flagella by first applying mordant (generally tannic acid, but sometimes potassium alum), which coats the flagella; then the specimen is stained with pararosaniline (most commonly) or basic fuchsin (). Though flagella staining is uncommon in clinical settings, the technique is commonly used by microbiologists, since the location and number of flagella can be useful in classifying and identifying bacteria in a sample. When using this technique, it is important to handle the specimen with great care; flagella are delicate structures that can easily be damaged or pulled off, compromising attempts to accurately locate and count the number of flagella. ### Preparing Specimens for Electron Microscopy Samples to be analyzed using a TEM must have very thin sections. But cells are too soft to cut thinly, even with diamond knives. To cut cells without damage, the cells must be embedded in plastic resin and then dehydrated through a series of soaks in ethanol solutions (50%, 60%, 70%, and so on). The ethanol replaces the water in the cells, and the resin dissolves in ethanol and enters the cell, where it solidifies. Next, thin sections are cut using a specialized device called an ultramicrotome (). Finally, samples are fixed to fine copper wire or carbon-fiber grids and stained—not with colored dyes, but with substances like uranyl acetate or osmium tetroxide, which contain electron-dense heavy metal atoms. When samples are prepared for viewing using an SEM, they must also be dehydrated using an ethanol series. However, they must be even drier than is necessary for a TEM. Critical point drying with inert liquid carbon dioxide under pressure is used to displace the water from the specimen. After drying, the specimens are sputter-coated with metal by knocking atoms off of a palladium target, with energetic particles. Sputter-coating prevents specimens from becoming charged by the SEM’s electron beam. ### Preparation and Staining for Other Microscopes Samples for fluorescence and confocal microscopy are prepared similarly to samples for light microscopy, except that the dyes are fluorochromes. Stains are often diluted in liquid before applying to the slide. Some dyes attach to an antibody to stain specific proteins on specific types of cells (immunofluorescence); others may attach to DNA molecules in a process called fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH), causing cells to be stained based on whether they have a specific DNA sequence. Sample preparation for two-photon microscopy is similar to fluorescence microscopy, except for the use of infrared dyes. Specimens for STM need to be on a very clean and atomically smooth surface. They are often mica coated with Au(111). Toluene vapor is a common fixative. ### Key Concepts and Summary 1. Samples must be properly prepared for microscopy. This may involve staining, fixation, and/or cutting thin sections. 2. A variety of staining techniques can be used with light microscopy, including Gram staining, acid-fast staining, capsule staining, endospore staining, and flagella staining. 3. Samples for TEM require very thin sections, whereas samples for SEM require sputter-coating. 4. Preparation for fluorescence microscopy is similar to that for light microscopy, except that fluorochromes are used. ### Multiple Choice ### Fill in the Blank ### Short Answer ### Critical Thinking

# The Cell ## Introduction Life takes many forms, from giant redwood trees towering hundreds of feet in the air to the tiniest known microbes, which measure only a few billionths of a meter. Humans have long pondered life’s origins and debated the defining characteristics of life, but our understanding of these concepts has changed radically since the invention of the microscope. In the 17th century, observations of microscopic life led to the development of the cell theory: the idea that the fundamental unit of life is the cell, that all organisms contain at least one cell, and that cells only come from other cells. Despite sharing certain characteristics, cells may vary significantly. The two main types of cells are prokaryotic cells (lacking a nucleus) and eukaryotic cells (containing a well-organized, membrane-bound nucleus). Each type of cell exhibits remarkable variety in structure, function, and metabolic activity (). This chapter will focus on the historical discoveries that have shaped our current understanding of microbes, including their origins and their role in human disease. We will then explore the distinguishing structures found in prokaryotic and eukaryotic cells.

# The Cell ## Spontaneous Generation ### Learning Objectives By the end of this section, you will be able to: 1. Explain the theory of spontaneous generation and why people once accepted it as an explanation for the existence of certain types of organisms 2. Explain how certain individuals (van Helmont, Redi, Needham, Spallanzani, and Pasteur) tried to prove or disprove spontaneous generation Humans have been asking for millennia: Where does new life come from? Religion, philosophy, and science have all wrestled with this question. One of the oldest explanations was the theory of spontaneous generation, which can be traced back to the ancient Greeks and was widely accepted through the Middle Ages. ### The Theory of Spontaneous Generation The Greek philosopher Aristotle (384–322 BC) was one of the earliest recorded scholars to articulate the theory of spontaneous generation, the notion that life can arise from nonliving matter. Aristotle proposed that life arose from nonliving material if the material contained pneuma (“spirit” or “breath”). As evidence, he noted several instances of the appearance of animals from environments previously devoid of such animals, such as the seemingly sudden appearance of fish in a new puddle of water.K. Zwier. “Aristotle on Spontaneous Generation.” http://www.sju.edu/int/academics/cas/resources/gppc/pdf/Karen%20R.%20Zwier.pdf This theory persisted into the 17th century, when scientists undertook additional experimentation to support or disprove it. By this time, the proponents of the theory cited how frogs simply seem to appear along the muddy banks of the Nile River in Egypt during the annual flooding. Others observed that mice simply appeared among grain stored in barns with thatched roofs. When the roof leaked and the grain molded, mice appeared. Jan Baptista van Helmont, a 17th century Flemish scientist, proposed that mice could arise from rags and wheat kernels left in an open container for 3 weeks. In reality, such habitats provided ideal food sources and shelter for mouse populations to flourish. However, one of van Helmont’s contemporaries, Italian physician Francesco Redi (1626–1697), performed an experiment in 1668 that was one of the first to refute the idea that maggots (the larvae of flies) spontaneously generate on meat left out in the open air. He predicted that preventing flies from having direct contact with the meat would also prevent the appearance of maggots. Redi left meat in each of six containers (). Two were open to the air, two were covered with gauze, and two were tightly sealed. His hypothesis was supported when maggots developed in the uncovered jars, but no maggots appeared in either the gauze-covered or the tightly sealed jars. He concluded that maggots could only form when flies were allowed to lay eggs in the meat, and that the maggots were the offspring of flies, not the product of spontaneous generation. In 1745, John Needham (1713–1781) published a report of his own experiments, in which he briefly boiled broth infused with plant or animal matter, hoping to kill all preexisting microbes.E. Capanna. “Lazzaro Spallanzani: At the Roots of Modern Biology.” He then sealed the flasks. After a few days, Needham observed that the broth had become cloudy and a single drop contained numerous microscopic creatures. He argued that the new microbes must have arisen spontaneously. In reality, however, he likely did not boil the broth enough to kill all preexisting microbes. Lazzaro Spallanzani (1729–1799) did not agree with Needham’s conclusions, however, and performed hundreds of carefully executed experiments using heated broth.R. Mancini, M. Nigro, G. Ippolito. “Lazzaro Spallanzani and His Refutation of the Theory of Spontaneous Generation.” As in Needham’s experiment, broth in sealed jars and unsealed jars was infused with plant and animal matter. Spallanzani’s results contradicted the findings of Needham: Heated but sealed flasks remained clear, without any signs of spontaneous growth, unless the flasks were subsequently opened to the air. This suggested that microbes were introduced into these flasks from the air. In response to Spallanzani’s findings, Needham argued that life originates from a “life force” that was destroyed during Spallanzani’s extended boiling. Any subsequent sealing of the flasks then prevented new life force from entering and causing spontaneous generation (). ### Disproving Spontaneous Generation The debate over spontaneous generation continued well into the 19th century, with scientists serving as proponents of both sides. To settle the debate, the Paris Academy of Sciences offered a prize for resolution of the problem. Louis Pasteur, a prominent French chemist who had been studying microbial fermentation and the causes of wine spoilage, accepted the challenge. In 1858, Pasteur filtered air through a gun-cotton filter and, upon microscopic examination of the cotton, found it full of microorganisms, suggesting that the exposure of a broth to air was not introducing a “life force” to the broth but rather airborne microorganisms. Later, Pasteur made a series of flasks with long, twisted necks (“swan-neck” flasks), in which he boiled broth to sterilize it (). His design allowed air inside the flasks to be exchanged with air from the outside, but prevented the introduction of any airborne microorganisms, which would get caught in the twists and bends of the flasks’ necks. If a life force besides the airborne microorganisms were responsible for microbial growth within the sterilized flasks, it would have access to the broth, whereas the microorganisms would not. He correctly predicted that sterilized broth in his swan-neck flasks would remain sterile as long as the swan necks remained intact. However, should the necks be broken, microorganisms would be introduced, contaminating the flasks and allowing microbial growth within the broth. Pasteur’s set of experiments irrefutably disproved the theory of spontaneous generation and earned him the prestigious Alhumbert Prize from the Paris Academy of Sciences in 1862. In a subsequent lecture in 1864, Pasteur articulated “Omne vivum ex vivo” (“Life only comes from life”). In this lecture, Pasteur recounted his famous swan-neck flask experiment, stating that “…life is a germ and a germ is life. Never will the doctrine of spontaneous generation recover from the mortal blow of this simple experiment.”R. Vallery-Radot. To Pasteur’s credit, it never has. ### Key Concepts and Summary 1. The theory of spontaneous generation states that life arose from nonliving matter. It was a long-held belief dating back to Aristotle and the ancient Greeks. 2. Experimentation by Francesco Redi in the 17th century presented the first significant evidence refuting spontaneous generation by showing that flies must have access to meat for maggots to develop on the meat. Prominent scientists designed experiments and argued both in support of (John Needham) and against (Lazzaro Spallanzani) spontaneous generation. 3. Louis Pasteur is credited with conclusively disproving the theory of spontaneous generation with his famous swan-neck flask experiment. He subsequently proposed that “life only comes from life.” ### Multiple Choice ### Fill in the Blank ### True/False ### Short Answer ### Critical Thinking

# The Cell ## Foundations of Modern Cell Theory ### Learning Objectives By the end of this section, you will be able to: 1. Explain the key points of cell theory and the individual contributions of Hooke, Schleiden, Schwann, Remak, and Virchow 2. Explain the key points of endosymbiotic theory and cite the evidence that supports this concept 3. Explain the contributions of Semmelweis, Snow, Pasteur, Lister, and Koch to the development of germ theory While some scientists were arguing over the theory of spontaneous generation, other scientists were making discoveries leading to a better understanding of what we now call the cell theory. Modern cell theory has two basic tenets: 1. All cells only come from other cells (the principle of biogenesis). 2. Cells are the fundamental units of organisms. Today, these tenets are fundamental to our understanding of life on earth. However, modern cell theory grew out of the collective work of many scientists. ### The Origins of Cell Theory The English scientist Robert Hooke first used the term “cells” in 1665 to describe the small chambers within cork that he observed under a microscope of his own design. To Hooke, thin sections of cork resembled “Honey-comb,” or “small Boxes or Bladders of Air.” He noted that each “Cavern, Bubble, or Cell” was distinct from the others (). At the time, Hooke was not aware that the cork cells were long dead and, therefore, lacked the internal structures found within living cells. Despite Hooke’s early description of cells, their significance as the fundamental unit of life was not yet recognized. Nearly 200 years later, in 1838, Matthias Schleiden (1804–1881), a German botanist who made extensive microscopic observations of plant tissues, described them as being composed of cells. Visualizing plant cells was relatively easy because plant cells are clearly separated by their thick cell walls. Schleiden believed that cells formed through crystallization, rather than cell division. Theodor Schwann (1810–1882), a noted German physiologist, made similar microscopic observations of animal tissue. In 1839, after a conversation with Schleiden, Schwann realized that similarities existed between plant and animal tissues. This laid the foundation for the idea that cells are the fundamental components of plants and animals. In the 1850s, two Polish scientists living in Germany pushed this idea further, culminating in what we recognize today as the modern cell theory. In 1852, Robert Remak (1815–1865), a prominent neurologist and embryologist, published convincing evidence that cells are derived from other cells as a result of cell division. However, this idea was questioned by many in the scientific community. Three years later, Rudolf Virchow (1821–1902), a well-respected pathologist, published an editorial essay entitled “Cellular Pathology,” which popularized the concept of cell theory using the Latin phrase omnis cellula a cellula (“all cells arise from cells”), which is essentially the second tenet of modern cell theory.M. Schultz. “Rudolph Virchow.” Given the similarity of Virchow’s work to Remak’s, there is some controversy as to which scientist should receive credit for articulating cell theory. See the following Eye on Ethics feature for more about this controversy. ### Endosymbiotic Theory As scientists were making progress toward understanding the role of cells in plant and animal tissues, others were examining the structures within the cells themselves. In 1831, Scottish botanist Robert Brown (1773–1858) was the first to describe observations of nuclei, which he observed in plant cells. Then, in the early 1880s, German botanist Andreas Schimper (1856–1901) was the first to describe the chloroplasts of plant cells, identifying their role in starch formation during photosynthesis and noting that they divided independent of the nucleus. Based upon the chloroplasts’ ability to reproduce independently, Russian botanist Konstantin Mereschkowski (1855–1921) suggested in 1905 that chloroplasts may have originated from ancestral photosynthetic bacteria living symbiotically inside a eukaryotic cell. He proposed a similar origin for the nucleus of plant cells. This was the first articulation of the endosymbiotic hypothesis, and would explain how eukaryotic cells evolved from ancestral bacteria. Mereschkowski’s endosymbiotic hypothesis was furthered by American anatomist Ivan Wallin (1883–1969), who began to experimentally examine the similarities between mitochondria, chloroplasts, and bacteria—in other words, to put the endosymbiotic hypothesis to the test using objective investigation. Wallin published a series of papers in the 1920s supporting the endosymbiotic hypothesis, including a 1926 publication co-authored with Mereschkowski. Wallin claimed he could culture mitochondria outside of their eukaryotic host cells. Many scientists dismissed his cultures of mitochondria as resulting from bacterial contamination. Modern genome sequencing work supports the dissenting scientists by showing that much of the genome of mitochondria had been transferred to the host cell’s nucleus, preventing the mitochondria from being able to live on their own.T. Embley, W. Martin. “Eukaryotic Evolution, Changes, and Challenges.” O.G. Berg, C.G. Kurland. “Why Mitochondrial Genes Are Most Often Found in Nuclei.” Wallin’s ideas regarding the endosymbiotic hypothesis were largely ignored for the next 50 years because scientists were unaware that these organelles contained their own DNA. However, with the discovery of mitochondrial and chloroplast DNA in the 1960s, the endosymbiotic hypothesis was resurrected. Lynn Margulis (1938–2011), an American geneticist, published her ideas regarding the endosymbiotic hypothesis of the origins of mitochondria and chloroplasts in 1967.L. In the decade leading up to her publication, advances in microscopy had allowed scientists to differentiate prokaryotic cells from eukaryotic cells. In her publication, Margulis reviewed the literature and argued that the eukaryotic organelles such as mitochondria and chloroplasts are of prokaryotic origin. She presented a growing body of microscopic, genetic, molecular biology, fossil, and geological data to support her claims. Again, this hypothesis was not initially popular, but mounting genetic evidence due to the advent of DNA sequencing supported the endosymbiotic theory, which is now defined as the theory that mitochondria and chloroplasts arose as a result of prokaryotic cells establishing a symbiotic relationship within a eukaryotic host (). With Margulis’ initial endosymbiotic theory gaining wide acceptance, she expanded on the theory in her 1981 book Symbiosis in Cell Evolution. In it, she explains how endosymbiosis is a major driving factor in the evolution of organisms. More recent genetic sequencing and phylogenetic analysis show that mitochondrial DNA and chloroplast DNA are highly related to their bacterial counterparts, both in DNA sequence and chromosome structure. However, mitochondrial DNA and chloroplast DNA are reduced compared with nuclear DNA because many of the genes have moved from the organelles into the host cell’s nucleus. Additionally, mitochondrial and chloroplast ribosomes are structurally similar to bacterial ribosomes, rather than to the eukaryotic ribosomes of their hosts. Last, the binary fission of these organelles strongly resembles the binary fission of bacteria, as compared with mitosis performed by eukaryotic cells. Since Margulis’ original proposal, scientists have observed several examples of bacterial endosymbionts in modern-day eukaryotic cells. Examples include the endosymbiotic bacteria found within the guts of certain insects, such as cockroaches,A.E. Douglas. “The Microbial Dimension in Insect Nutritional Ecology.” and photosynthetic bacteria-like organelles found in protists.J.M. Jaynes, L.P. Vernon. “The Cyanelle of ### The Germ Theory of Disease Prior to the discovery of microbes during the 17th century, other theories circulated about the origins of disease. For example, the ancient Greeks proposed the miasma theory, which held that disease originated from particles emanating from decomposing matter, such as that in sewage or cesspits. Such particles infected humans in close proximity to the rotting material. Diseases including the Black Death, which ravaged Europe’s population during the Middle Ages, were thought to have originated in this way. In 1546, Italian physician Girolamo Fracastoro proposed, in his essay De Contagione et Contagiosis Morbis, that seed-like spores may be transferred between individuals through direct contact, exposure to contaminated clothing, or through the air. We now recognize Fracastoro as an early proponent of the germ theory of disease, which states that diseases may result from microbial infection. However, in the 16th century, Fracastoro’s ideas were not widely accepted and would be largely forgotten until the 19th century. In 1847, Hungarian obstetrician Ignaz Semmelweis () observed that mothers who gave birth in hospital wards staffed by physicians and medical students were more likely to suffer and die from puerperal fever after childbirth (10%–20% mortality rate) than were mothers in wards staffed by midwives (1% mortality rate). Semmelweis observed medical students performing autopsies and then subsequently carrying out vaginal examinations on living patients without washing their hands in between. He suspected that the students carried disease from the autopsies to the patients they examined. His suspicions were supported by the untimely death of a friend, a physician who contracted a fatal wound infection after a postmortem examination of a woman who had died of a puerperal infection. The dead physician’s wound had been caused by a scalpel used during the examination, and his subsequent illness and death closely paralleled that of the dead patient. Although Semmelweis did not know the true cause of puerperal fever, he proposed that physicians were somehow transferring the causative agent to their patients. He suggested that the number of puerperal fever cases could be reduced if physicians and medical students simply washed their hands with chlorinated lime water before and after examining every patient. When this practice was implemented, the maternal mortality rate in mothers cared for by physicians dropped to the same 1% mortality rate observed among mothers cared for by midwives. This demonstrated that handwashing was a very effective method for preventing disease transmission. Despite this great success, many discounted Semmelweis’s work at the time, and physicians were slow to adopt the simple procedure of handwashing to prevent infections in their patients because it contradicted established norms for that time period. Around the same time Semmelweis was promoting handwashing, in 1848, British physician John Snow conducted studies to track the source of cholera outbreaks in London. By tracing the outbreaks to two specific water sources, both of which were contaminated by sewage, Snow ultimately demonstrated that cholera bacteria were transmitted via drinking water. Snow’s work is influential in that it represents the first known epidemiological study, and it resulted in the first known public health response to an epidemic. The work of both Semmelweis and Snow clearly refuted the prevailing miasma theory of the day, showing that disease is not only transmitted through the air but also through contaminated items. Although the work of Semmelweis and Snow successfully showed the role of sanitation in preventing infectious disease, the cause of disease was not fully understood. The subsequent work of Louis Pasteur, Robert Koch, and Joseph Lister would further substantiate the germ theory of disease. While studying the causes of beer and wine spoilage in 1856, Pasteur discovered properties of fermentation by microorganisms. He had demonstrated with his swan-neck flask experiments () that airborne microbes, not spontaneous generation, were the cause of food spoilage, and he suggested that if microbes were responsible for food spoilage and fermentation, they could also be responsible for causing infection. This was the foundation for the germ theory of disease. Meanwhile, British surgeon Joseph Lister () was trying to determine the causes of postsurgical infections. Many physicians did not give credence to the idea that microbes on their hands, on their clothes, or in the air could infect patients’ surgical wounds, despite the fact that 50% of surgical patients, on average, were dying of postsurgical infections.Alexander, J. Wesley. “The Contributions of Infection Control to a Century of Progress” Lister, however, was familiar with the work of Semmelweis and Pasteur; therefore, he insisted on handwashing and extreme cleanliness during surgery. In 1867, to further decrease the incidence of postsurgical wound infections, Lister began using carbolic acid (phenol) spray disinfectant/antiseptic during surgery. His extremely successful efforts to reduce postsurgical infection caused his techniques to become a standard medical practice. A few years later, Robert Koch () proposed a series of postulates (Koch’s postulates) based on the idea that the cause of a specific disease could be attributed to a specific microbe. Using these postulates, Koch and his colleagues were able to definitively identify the causative pathogens of specific diseases, including anthrax, tuberculosis, and cholera. Koch’s “one microbe, one disease” concept was the culmination of the 19th century’s paradigm shift away from miasma theory and toward the germ theory of disease. Koch’s postulates are discussed more thoroughly in How Pathogens Cause Disease. ### Key Concepts and Summary 1. Although cells were first observed in the 1660s by Robert Hooke, cell theory was not well accepted for another 200 years. The work of scientists such as Schleiden, Schwann, Remak, and Virchow contributed to its acceptance. 2. Endosymbiotic theory states that mitochondria and chloroplasts, organelles found in many types of organisms, have their origins in bacteria. Significant structural and genetic information support this theory. 3. The miasma theory of disease was widely accepted until the 19th century, when it was replaced by the germ theory of disease thanks to the work of Semmelweis, Snow, Pasteur, Lister, and Koch, and others. ### Multiple Choice ### Fill in the Blank ### Short Answer ### Critical Thinking

# The Cell ## Unique Characteristics of Prokaryotic Cells ### Learning Objectives By the end of this section, you will be able to: 1. Explain the distinguishing characteristics of prokaryotic cells 2. Describe common cell morphologies and cellular arrangements typical of prokaryotic cells and explain how cells maintain their morphology 3. Describe internal and external structures of prokaryotic cells in terms of their physical structure, chemical structure, and function 4. Compare the distinguishing characteristics of bacterial and archaeal cells Cell theory states that the cell is the fundamental unit of life. However, cells vary significantly in size, shape, structure, and function. At the simplest level of construction, all cells possess a few fundamental components. These include cytoplasm (a gel-like substance composed of water and dissolved chemicals needed for growth), which is contained within a plasma membrane (also called a cell membrane or cytoplasmic membrane); one or more chromosomes, which contain the genetic blueprints of the cell; and ribosomes, organelles used for the production of proteins. Beyond these basic components, cells can vary greatly between organisms, and even within the same multicellular organism. The two largest categories of cells—prokaryotic cells and eukaryotic cells—are defined by major differences in several cell structures. Prokaryotic cells lack a nucleus surrounded by a complex nuclear membrane and generally have a single, circular chromosome located in a nucleoid. Eukaryotic cells have a nucleus surrounded by a complex nuclear membrane that contains multiple, rod-shaped chromosomes.Y.-H.M. Chan, W.F. Marshall. “Scaling Properties of Cell and Organelle Size.” All plant cells and animal cells are eukaryotic. Some microorganisms are composed of prokaryotic cells, whereas others are composed of eukaryotic cells. Prokaryotic microorganisms are classified within the domains Archaea and Bacteria, whereas eukaryotic organisms are classified within the domain Eukarya. The structures inside a cell are analogous to the organs inside a human body, with unique structures suited to specific functions. Some of the structures found in prokaryotic cells are similar to those found in some eukaryotic cells; others are unique to prokaryotes. Although there are some exceptions, eukaryotic cells tend to be larger than prokaryotic cells. The comparatively larger size of eukaryotic cells dictates the need to compartmentalize various chemical processes within different areas of the cell, using complex membrane-bound organelles. In contrast, prokaryotic cells generally lack membrane-bound organelles; however, they often contain inclusions that compartmentalize their cytoplasm. illustrates structures typically associated with prokaryotic cells. These structures are described in more detail in the next section. ### Common Cell Morphologies and Arrangements Individual cells of a particular prokaryotic organism are typically similar in shape, or cell morphology. Although thousands of prokaryotic organisms have been identified, only a handful of cell morphologies are commonly seen microscopically. names and illustrates cell morphologies commonly found in prokaryotic cells. In addition to cellular shape, prokaryotic cells of the same species may group together in certain distinctive arrangements depending on the plane of cell division. Some common arrangements are shown in . In most prokaryotic cells, morphology is maintained by the cell wall in combination with cytoskeletal elements. The cell wall is a structure found in most prokaryotes and some eukaryotes; it envelopes the cell membrane, protecting the cell from changes in osmotic pressure (). Osmotic pressure occurs because of differences in the concentration of solutes on opposing sides of a semipermeable membrane. Water is able to pass through a semipermeable membrane, but solutes (dissolved molecules like salts, sugars, and other compounds) cannot. When the concentration of solutes is greater on one side of the membrane, water diffuses across the membrane from the side with the lower concentration (more water) to the side with the higher concentration (less water) until the concentrations on both sides become equal. This diffusion of water is called osmosis, and it can cause extreme osmotic pressure on a cell when its external environment changes. The external environment of a cell can be described as an isotonic, hypertonic, or hypotonic medium. In an isotonic medium, the solute concentrations inside and outside the cell are approximately equal, so there is no net movement of water across the cell membrane. In a hypertonic medium, the solute concentration outside the cell exceeds that inside the cell, so water diffuses out of the cell and into the external medium. In a hypotonic medium, the solute concentration inside the cell exceeds that outside of the cell, so water will move by osmosis into the cell. This causes the cell to swell and potentially lyse, or burst. The degree to which a particular cell is able to withstand changes in osmotic pressure is called tonicity. Cells that have a cell wall are better able to withstand subtle changes in osmotic pressure and maintain their shape. In hypertonic environments, cells that lack a cell wall can become dehydrated, causing crenation, or shriveling of the cell; the plasma membrane contracts and appears scalloped or notched (). By contrast, cells that possess a cell wall undergo plasmolysis rather than crenation. In plasmolysis, the plasma membrane contracts and detaches from the cell wall, and there is a decrease in interior volume, but the cell wall remains intact, thus allowing the cell to maintain some shape and integrity for a period of time (). Likewise, cells that lack a cell wall are more prone to lysis in hypotonic environments. The presence of a cell wall allows the cell to maintain its shape and integrity for a longer time before lysing (). ### The Nucleoid All cellular life has a DNA genome organized into one or more chromosomes. Prokaryotic chromosomes are typically circular, haploid (unpaired), and not bound by a complex nuclear membrane. Prokaryotic DNA and DNA-associated proteins are concentrated within the nucleoid region of the cell (). In general, prokaryotic DNA interacts with nucleoid-associated proteins (NAPs) that assist in the organization and packaging of the chromosome. In bacteria, NAPs function similar to histones, which are the DNA-organizing proteins found in eukaryotic cells. In archaea, the nucleoid is organized by either NAPs or histone-like DNA organizing proteins. ### Plasmids Prokaryotic cells may also contain extrachromosomal DNA, or DNA that is not part of the chromosome. This extrachromosomal DNA is found in plasmids, which are small, circular, double-stranded DNA molecules. Cells that have plasmids often have hundreds of them within a single cell. Plasmids are more commonly found in bacteria; however, plasmids have been found in archaea and eukaryotic organisms. Plasmids often carry genes that confer advantageous traits such as antibiotic resistance; thus, they are important to the survival of the organism. We will discuss plasmids in more detail in Mechanisms of Microbial Genetics. ### Ribosomes All cellular life synthesizes proteins, and organisms in all three domains of life possess ribosomes, structures responsible for protein synthesis. However, ribosomes in each of the three domains are structurally different. Ribosomes, themselves, are constructed from proteins, along with ribosomal RNA (rRNA). Prokaryotic ribosomes are found in the cytoplasm. They are called 70S ribosomes because they have a size of 70S (), whereas eukaryotic cytoplasmic ribosomes have a size of 80S. (The S stands for Svedberg unit, a measure of sedimentation in an ultracentrifuge, which is based on size, shape, and surface qualities of the structure being analyzed). Although they are the same size, bacterial and archaeal ribosomes have different proteins and rRNA molecules, and the archaeal versions are more similar to their eukaryotic counterparts than to those found in bacteria. ### Inclusions As single-celled organisms living in unstable environments, some prokaryotic cells have the ability to store excess nutrients within cytoplasmic structures called inclusions. Storing nutrients in a polymerized form is advantageous because it reduces the buildup of osmotic pressure that occurs as a cell accumulates solutes. Various types of inclusions store glycogen and starches, which contain carbon that cells can access for energy. Volutin granules, also called metachromatic granules because of their staining characteristics, are inclusions that store polymerized inorganic phosphate that can be used in metabolism and assist in the formation of biofilms. Microbes known to contain volutin granules include the archaea Methanosarcina, the bacterium , and the unicellular eukaryotic alga Chlamydomonas. Sulfur granules, another type of inclusion, are found in sulfur bacteria of the genus Thiobacillus; these granules store elemental sulfur, which the bacteria use for metabolism. Occasionally, certain types of inclusions are surrounded by a phospholipid monolayer embedded with protein. Polyhydroxybutyrate (PHB), which can be produced by species of Bacillus and Pseudomonas, is an example of an inclusion that displays this type of monolayer structure. Industrially, PHB has also been used as a source of biodegradable polymers for bioplastics. Several different types of inclusions are shown in . Some prokaryotic cells have other types of inclusions that serve purposes other than nutrient storage. For example, some prokaryotic cells produce gas vacuoles, accumulations of small, protein-lined vesicles of gas. These gas vacuoles allow the prokaryotic cells that synthesize them to alter their buoyancy so that they can adjust their location in the water column. Magnetotactic bacteria, such as , contain magnetosomes, which are inclusions of magnetic iron oxide or iron sulfide surrounded by a lipid layer. These allow cells to align along a magnetic field, aiding their movement (). Cyanobacteria such as and bacteria such as produce carboxysome inclusions. Carboxysomes are composed of outer shells of thousands of protein subunits. Their interior is filled with ribulose-1,5-bisphosphate carboxylase/oxygenase (RuBisCO) and carbonic anhydrase. Both of these compounds are used for carbon metabolism. Some prokaryotic cells also possess carboxysomes that sequester functionally related enzymes in one location. These structures are considered proto-organelles because they compartmentalize important compounds or chemical reactions, much like many eukaryotic organelles. ### Endospores Bacterial cells are generally observed as vegetative cells, but some genera of bacteria have the ability to form endospores, structures that essentially protect the bacterial genome in a dormant state when environmental conditions are unfavorable. Endospores (not to be confused with the reproductive spores formed by fungi) allow some bacterial cells to survive long periods without food or water, as well as exposure to chemicals, extreme temperatures, and even radiation. compares the characteristics of vegetative cells and endospores. The process by which vegetative cells transform into endospores is called sporulation, and it generally begins when nutrients become depleted or environmental conditions become otherwise unfavorable (). The process begins with the formation of a septum in the vegetative bacterial cell. The septum divides the cell asymmetrically, separating a DNA forespore from the mother cell. The forespore, which will form the core of the endospore, is essentially a copy of the cell’s chromosomes, and is separated from the mother cell by a second membrane. A cortex gradually forms around the forespore by laying down layers of calcium and dipicolinic acid between membranes. A protein spore coat then forms around the cortex while the DNA of the mother cell disintegrates. Further maturation of the endospore occurs with the formation of an outermost exosporium. The endospore is released upon disintegration of the mother cell, completing sporulation. Endospores of certain species have been shown to persist in a dormant state for extended periods of time, up to thousands of years.F. Rothfuss, M Bender, R Conrad. “Survival and Activity of Bacteria in a Deep, Aged Lake Sediment (Lake Constance).” However, when living conditions improve, endospores undergo germination, reentering a vegetative state. After germination, the cell becomes metabolically active again and is able to carry out all of its normal functions, including growth and cell division. Not all bacteria have the ability to form endospores; however, there are a number of clinically significant endospore-forming gram-positive bacteria of the genera Bacillus and Clostridium. These include B. anthracis, the causative agent of anthrax, which produces endospores capable of surviving for many decadesR. Sinclair et al. “Persistence of Category A Select Agents in the Environment.” ; C. tetani (causes tetanus); C. difficile (causes pseudomembranous colitis); C. perfringens (causes gas gangrene); and C. botulinum (causes botulism). Pathogens such as these are particularly difficult to combat because their endospores are so hard to kill. Special sterilization methods for endospore-forming bacteria are discussed in Control of Microbial Growth. ### Plasma Membrane Structures that enclose the cytoplasm and internal structures of the cell are known collectively as the cell envelope. In prokaryotic cells, the structures of the cell envelope vary depending on the type of cell and organism. Most (but not all) prokaryotic cells have a cell wall, but the makeup of this cell wall varies. All cells (prokaryotic and eukaryotic) have a plasma membrane (also called cytoplasmic membrane or cell membrane) that exhibits selective permeability, allowing some molecules to enter or leave the cell while restricting the passage of others. The structure of the plasma membrane is often described in terms of the fluid mosaic model, which refers to the ability of membrane components to move fluidly within the plane of the membrane, as well as the mosaic-like composition of the components, which include a diverse array of lipid and protein components (). The plasma membrane structure of most bacterial and eukaryotic cell types is a bilayer composed mainly of phospholipids formed with ester linkages and proteins. These phospholipids and proteins have the ability to move laterally within the plane of the membranes as well as between the two phospholipid layers. Archaeal membranes are fundamentally different from bacterial and eukaryotic membranes in a few significant ways. First, archaeal membrane phospholipids are formed with ether linkages, in contrast to the ester linkages found in bacterial or eukaryotic cell membranes. Second, archaeal phospholipids have branched chains, whereas those of bacterial and eukaryotic cells are straight chained. Finally, although some archaeal membranes can be formed of bilayers like those found in bacteria and eukaryotes, other archaeal plasma membranes are lipid monolayers. Proteins on the cell’s surface are important for a variety of functions, including cell-to-cell communication, and sensing environmental conditions and pathogenic virulence factors. Membrane proteins and phospholipids may have carbohydrates (sugars) associated with them and are called glycoproteins or glycolipids, respectively. These glycoprotein and glycolipid complexes extend out from the surface of the cell, allowing the cell to interact with the external environment (). Glycoproteins and glycolipids in the plasma membrane can vary considerably in chemical composition among archaea, bacteria, and eukaryotes, allowing scientists to use them to characterize unique species. Plasma membranes from different cells types also contain unique phospholipids, which contain fatty acids. As described in Using Biochemistry to Identify Microorganisms, phospholipid-derived fatty acid analysis (PLFA) profiles can be used to identify unique types of cells based on differences in fatty acids. Archaea, bacteria, and eukaryotes each have a unique PFLA profile. ### Membrane Transport Mechanisms One of the most important functions of the plasma membrane is to control the transport of molecules into and out of the cell. Internal conditions must be maintained within a certain range despite any changes in the external environment. The transport of substances across the plasma membrane allows cells to do so. Cells use various modes of transport across the plasma membrane. For example, molecules moving from a higher concentration to a lower concentration with the concentration gradient are transported by simple diffusion, also known as passive transport (). Some small molecules, like carbon dioxide, may cross the membrane bilayer directly by simple diffusion. However, charged molecules, as well as large molecules, need the help of carriers or channels in the membrane. These structures ferry molecules across the membrane, a process known as facilitated diffusion (). Active transport occurs when cells move molecules across their membrane against concentration gradients (). A major difference between passive and active transport is that active transport requires adenosine triphosphate (ATP) or other forms of energy to move molecules “uphill.” Therefore, active transport structures are often called “pumps.” Group translocation also transports substances into bacterial cells. In this case, as a molecule moves into a cell against its concentration gradient, it is chemically modified so that it does not require transport against an unfavorable concentration gradient. A common example of this is the bacterial phosphotransferase system, a series of carriers that phosphorylates (i.e., adds phosphate ions to) glucose or other sugars upon entry into cells. Since the phosphorylation of sugars is required during the early stages of sugar metabolism, the phosphotransferase system is considered to be an energy neutral system. ### Photosynthetic Membrane Structures Some prokaryotic cells, namely cyanobacteria and photosynthetic bacteria, have membrane structures that enable them to perform photosynthesis. These structures consist of an infolding of the plasma membrane that encloses photosynthetic pigments such as green chlorophylls and bacteriochlorophylls. In cyanobacteria, these membrane structures are called thylakoids; in photosynthetic bacteria, they are called chromatophores, lamellae, or chlorosomes. ### Cell Wall The primary function of the cell wall is to protect the cell from harsh conditions in the outside environment. When present, there are notable similarities and differences among the cell walls of archaea, bacteria, and eukaryotes. The major component of bacterial cell walls is called peptidoglycan (or murein); it is only found in bacteria. Structurally, peptidoglycan resembles a layer of meshwork or fabric (). Each layer is composed of long chains of alternating molecules of N-acetylglucosamine (NAG) and N-acetylmuramic acid (NAM). The structure of the long chains has significant two-dimensional tensile strength due to the formation of peptide bridges that connect NAG and NAM within each peptidoglycan layer. In gram-negative bacteria, tetrapeptide chains extending from each NAM unit are directly cross-linked, whereas in gram-positive bacteria, these tetrapeptide chains are linked by pentaglycine cross-bridges. Peptidoglycan subunits are made inside of the bacterial cell and then exported and assembled in layers, giving the cell its shape. Since peptidoglycan is unique to bacteria, many antibiotic drugs are designed to interfere with peptidoglycan synthesis, weakening the cell wall and making bacterial cells more susceptible to the effects of osmotic pressure (see Mechanisms of Antibacterial Drugs). In addition, certain cells of the human immune system are able “recognize” bacterial pathogens by detecting peptidoglycan on the surface of a bacterial cell; these cells then engulf and destroy the bacterial cell, using enzymes such as lysozyme, which breaks down and digests the peptidoglycan in their cell walls (see Pathogen Recognition and Phagocytosis). The Gram staining protocol (see Staining Microscopic Specimens) is used to differentiate two common types of cell wall structures (). Gram-positive cells have a cell wall consisting of many layers of peptidoglycan totaling 30–100 nm in thickness. These peptidoglycan layers are commonly embedded with teichoic acids (TAs), carbohydrate chains that extend through and beyond the peptidoglycan layer.T.J. Silhavy, D. Kahne, S. Walker. “The Bacterial Cell Envelope.” TA is thought to stabilize peptidoglycan by increasing its rigidity. TA also plays a role in the ability of pathogenic gram-positive bacteria such as Streptococcus to bind to certain proteins on the surface of host cells, enhancing their ability to cause infection. In addition to peptidoglycan and TAs, bacteria of the family Mycobacteriaceae have an external layer of waxy mycolic acids in their cell wall; as described in Staining Microscopic Specimens, these bacteria are referred to as acid-fast, since acid-fast stains must be used to penetrate the mycolic acid layer for purposes of microscopy (). Gram-negative cells have a much thinner layer of peptidoglycan (no more than about 4 nm thickL. Gana, S. Chena, G.J. Jensena. “Molecular Organization of Gram-Negative Peptidoglycan.” ) than gram-positive cells, and the overall structure of their cell envelope is more complex. In gram-negative cells, a gel-like matrix occupies the periplasmic space between the cell wall and the plasma membrane, and there is a second lipid bilayer called the outer membrane, which is external to the peptidoglycan layer (). This outer membrane is attached to the peptidoglycan by murein lipoprotein. The outer leaflet of the outer membrane contains the molecule lipopolysaccharide (LPS), which functions as an endotoxin in infections involving gram-negative bacteria, contributing to symptoms such as fever, hemorrhaging, and septic shock. Each LPS molecule is composed of Lipid A, a core polysaccharide, and an O side chain that is composed of sugar-like molecules that comprise the external face of the LPS (). The composition of the O side chain varies between different species and strains of bacteria. Parts of the O side chain called antigens can be detected using serological or immunological tests to identify specific pathogenic strains like , a deadly strain of bacteria that causes bloody diarrhea and kidney failure. Archaeal cell wall structure differs from that of bacteria in several significant ways. First, archaeal cell walls do not contain peptidoglycan; instead, they contain a similar polymer called pseudopeptidoglycan (pseudomurein) in which NAM is replaced with a different subunit. Other archaea may have a layer of glycoproteins or polysaccharides that serves as the cell wall instead of pseudopeptidoglycan. Last, as is the case with some bacterial species, there are a few archaea that appear to lack cell walls entirely. ### Glycocalyces and S-Layers Although most prokaryotic cells have cell walls, some may have additional cell envelope structures exterior to the cell wall, such as glycocalyces and S-layers. A glycocalyx is a sugar coat, of which there are two important types: capsules and slime layers. A capsule is an organized layer located outside of the cell wall and usually composed of polysaccharides or proteins (). A slime layer is a less tightly organized layer that is only loosely attached to the cell wall and can be more easily washed off. Slime layers may be composed of polysaccharides, glycoproteins, or glycolipids. Glycocalyces allows cells to adhere to surfaces, aiding in the formation of biofilms (colonies of microbes that form in layers on surfaces). In nature, most microbes live in mixed communities within biofilms, partly because the biofilm affords them some level of protection. Biofilms generally hold water like a sponge, preventing desiccation. They also protect cells from predation and hinder the action of antibiotics and disinfectants. All of these properties are advantageous to the microbes living in a biofilm, but they present challenges in a clinical setting, where the goal is often to eliminate microbes. The ability to produce a capsule can contribute to a microbe’s pathogenicity (ability to cause disease) because the capsule can make it more difficult for phagocytic cells (such as white blood cells) to engulf and kill the microorganism. , for example, produces a capsule that is well known to aid in this bacterium’s pathogenicity. As explained in Staining Microscopic specimens, capsules are difficult to stain for microscopy; negative staining techniques are typically used. An S-layer is another type of cell envelope structure; it is composed of a mixture of structural proteins and glycoproteins. In bacteria, S-layers are found outside the cell wall, but in some archaea, the S-layer serves as the cell wall. The exact function of S-layers is not entirely understood, and they are difficult to study; but available evidence suggests that they may play a variety of functions in different prokaryotic cells, such as helping the cell withstand osmotic pressure and, for certain pathogens, interacting with the host immune system. ### Filamentous Appendages Many bacterial cells have protein appendages embedded within their cell envelopes that extend outward, allowing interaction with the environment. These appendages can attach to other surfaces, transfer DNA, or provide movement. Filamentous appendages include fimbriae, pili, and flagella. ### Fimbriae and Pili Fimbriae and pili are structurally similar and, because differentiation between the two is problematic, these terms are often used interchangeably.J.A. Garnetta et al. “Structural Insights Into the Biogenesis and Biofilm Formation by the T. Proft, E.N. Baker. “Pili in Gram-Negative and Gram-Positive Bacteria—Structure, Assembly and Their Role in Disease.” The term fimbriae commonly refers to short bristle-like proteins projecting from the cell surface by the hundreds. Fimbriae enable a cell to attach to surfaces and to other cells. For pathogenic bacteria, adherence to host cells is important for colonization, infectivity, and virulence. Adherence to surfaces is also important in biofilm formation. The term pili (singular: pilus) commonly refers to longer, less numerous protein appendages that aid in attachment to surfaces (). A specific type of pilus, called the F pilus or sex pilus, is important in the transfer of DNA between bacterial cells, which occurs between members of the same generation when two cells physically transfer or exchange parts of their respective genomes (see How Asexual Prokaryotes Achieve Genetic Diversity). ### Flagella Flagella are structures used by cells to move in aqueous environments. Bacterial flagella act like propellers. They are stiff spiral filaments composed of flagellin protein subunits that extend outward from the cell and spin in solution. The basal body is the motor for the flagellum and is embedded in the plasma membrane (). A hook region connects the basal body to the filament. Gram-positive and gram-negative bacteria have different basal body configurations due to differences in cell wall structure. Different types of motile bacteria exhibit different arrangements of flagella (). A bacterium with a singular flagellum, typically located at one end of the cell (polar), is said to have a monotrichous flagellum. An example of a monotrichously flagellated bacterial pathogen is Vibrio cholerae, the gram-negative bacterium that causes cholera. Cells with amphitrichous flagella have a flagellum or tufts of flagella at each end. An example is , the cause of spirillary (Asian) rat-bite fever or sodoku. Cells with lophotrichous flagella have a tuft at one end of the cell. The gram-negative bacillus , an opportunistic pathogen known for causing many infections, including “swimmer’s ear” and burn wound infections, has lophotrichous flagella. Flagella that cover the entire surface of a bacterial cell are called peritrichous flagella. The gram-negative bacterium E. coli shows a peritrichous arrangement of flagella. Directional movement depends on the configuration of the flagella. Bacteria can move in response to a variety of environmental signals, including light (phototaxis), magnetic fields (magnetotaxis) using magnetosomes, and, most commonly, chemical gradients (chemotaxis). Purposeful movement toward a chemical attractant, like a food source, or away from a repellent, like a poisonous chemical, is achieved by increasing the length of runs and decreasing the length of tumbles. When running, flagella rotate in a counterclockwise direction, allowing the bacterial cell to move forward. In a peritrichous bacterium, the flagella are all bundled together in a very streamlined way (), allowing for efficient movement. When tumbling, flagella are splayed out while rotating in a clockwise direction, creating a looping motion and preventing meaningful forward movement but reorienting the cell toward the direction of the attractant. When an attractant exists, runs and tumbles still occur; however, the length of runs is longer, while the length of the tumbles is reduced, allowing overall movement toward the higher concentration of the attractant. When no chemical gradient exists, the lengths of runs and tumbles are more equal, and overall movement is more random (). ### Key Concepts and Summary 1. Prokaryotic cells differ from eukaryotic cells in that their genetic material is contained in a nucleoid rather than a membrane-bound nucleus. In addition, prokaryotic cells generally lack membrane-bound organelles. 2. Prokaryotic cells of the same species typically share a similar cell morphology and cellular arrangement. 3. Most prokaryotic cells have a cell wall that helps the organism maintain cellular morphology and protects it against changes in osmotic pressure. 4. Outside of the nucleoid, prokaryotic cells may contain extrachromosomal DNA in plasmids. 5. Prokaryotic ribosomes that are found in the cytoplasm have a size of 70S. 6. Some prokaryotic cells have inclusions that store nutrients or chemicals for other uses. 7. Some prokaryotic cells are able to form endospores through sporulation to survive in a dormant state when conditions are unfavorable. Endospores can germinate, transforming back into vegetative cells when conditions improve. 8. In prokaryotic cells, the cell envelope includes a plasma membrane and usually a cell wall. 9. Bacterial membranes are composed of phospholipids with integral or peripheral proteins. The fatty acid components of these phospholipids are ester-linked and are often used to identify specific types of bacteria. The proteins serve a variety of functions, including transport, cell-to-cell communication, and sensing environmental conditions. Archaeal membranes are distinct in that they are composed of fatty acids that are ether-linked to phospholipids. 10. Some molecules can move across the bacterial membrane by simple diffusion, but most large molecules must be actively transported through membrane structures using cellular energy. 11. Prokaryotic cell walls may be composed of peptidoglycan (bacteria) or pseudopeptidoglycan (archaea). 12. Gram-positive bacterial cells are characterized by a thick peptidoglycan layer, whereas gram-negative bacterial cells are characterized by a thin peptidoglycan layer surrounded by an outer membrane. 13. Some prokaryotic cells produce glycocalyx coatings, such as capsules and slime layers, that aid in attachment to surfaces and/or evasion of the host immune system. 14. Some prokaryotic cells have fimbriae or pili, filamentous appendages that aid in attachment to surfaces. Pili are also used in the transfer of genetic material between cells. 15. Some prokaryotic cells use one or more flagella to move through water. Peritrichous bacteria, which have numerous flagella, use runs and tumbles to move purposefully in the direction of a chemical attractant. ### Multiple Choice ### True/False ### Fill in the Blank ### Short Answer ### Critical Thinking

# The Cell ## Unique Characteristics of Eukaryotic Cells ### Learning Objectives By the end of this section, you will be able to: 1. Explain the distinguishing characteristics of eukaryotic cells 2. Describe internal and external structures of eukaryotic cells in terms of their physical structure, chemical structure, and function 3. Identify and describe structures and organelles unique to eukaryotic cells 4. Compare and contrast similar structures found in prokaryotic and eukaryotic cells 5. Describe the processes of eukaryotic mitosis and meiosis, and compare to prokaryotic binary fission Eukaryotic organisms include protozoans, algae, fungi, plants, and animals. Some eukaryotic cells are independent, single-celled microorganisms, whereas others are part of multicellular organisms. The cells of eukaryotic organisms have several distinguishing characteristics. Above all, eukaryotic cells are defined by the presence of a nucleus surrounded by a complex nuclear membrane. Also, eukaryotic cells are characterized by the presence of membrane-bound organelles in the cytoplasm. Organelles such as mitochondria, the endoplasmic reticulum (ER), Golgi apparatus, lysosomes, and peroxisomes are held in place by the cytoskeleton, an internal network that supports transport of intracellular components and helps maintain cell shape (). The genome of eukaryotic cells is packaged in multiple, rod-shaped chromosomes as opposed to the single, circular-shaped chromosome that characterizes most prokaryotic cells. compares the characteristics of eukaryotic cell structures with those of bacteria and archaea. ### Cell Morphologies Eukaryotic cells display a wide variety of different cell morphologies. Possible shapes include spheroid, ovoid, cuboidal, cylindrical, flat, lenticular, fusiform, discoidal, crescent, ring stellate, and polygonal (). Some eukaryotic cells are irregular in shape, and some are capable of changing shape. The shape of a particular type of eukaryotic cell may be influenced by factors such as its primary function, the organization of its cytoskeleton, the viscosity of its cytoplasm, the rigidity of its cell membrane or cell wall (if it has one), and the physical pressure exerted on it by the surrounding environment and/or adjoining cells. ### Nucleus Unlike prokaryotic cells, in which DNA is loosely contained in the nucleoid region, eukaryotic cells possess a nucleus, which is surrounded by a complex nuclear membrane that houses the DNA genome (). By containing the cell’s DNA, the nucleus ultimately controls all activities of the cell and also serves an essential role in reproduction and heredity. Eukaryotic cells typically have their DNA organized into multiple linear chromosomes. The DNA within the nucleus is highly organized and condensed to fit inside the nucleus, which is accomplished by wrapping the DNA around proteins called histones. Although most eukaryotic cells have only one nucleus, exceptions exist. For example, protozoans of the genus typically have two complete nuclei: a small nucleus that is used for reproduction (micronucleus) and a large nucleus that directs cellular metabolism (macronucleus). Additionally, some fungi transiently form cells with two nuclei, called heterokaryotic cells, during sexual reproduction. Cells whose nuclei divide, but whose cytoplasm does not, are called coenocytes. The nucleus is bound by a complex nuclear membrane, often called the nuclear envelope, that consists of two distinct lipid bilayers that are contiguous with each other (). Despite these connections between the inner and outer membranes, each membrane contains unique lipids and proteins on its inner and outer surfaces. The nuclear envelope contains nuclear pores, which are large, rosette-shaped protein complexes that control the movement of materials into and out of the nucleus. The overall shape of the nucleus is determined by the nuclear lamina, a meshwork of intermediate filaments found just inside the nuclear envelope membranes. Outside the nucleus, additional intermediate filaments form a looser mesh and serve to anchor the nucleus in position within the cell. Eukaryotes are able to multiply through asexual reproduction, during which a single parent cell becomes two identical daughter cells. This process of clonal reproduction is called mitosis. Although mitosis may sound similar to asexual binary fission in prokaryotes, the processes are very different. In contrast to the single chromosome in most prokaryotes, eukaryotic cells possess multiple chromosomes that must be replicated and strategically divided between daughter cells. Therefore, mitosis is a much more complex cellular process than binary fission. The eukaryotic cell cycle is an ordered and carefully regulated series of events involving cell growth, DNA replication, and cell division to produce two clonal daughter cells. One “turn” or cycle of the cell cycle consist of two general phases: interphase and the mitotic phase. (). During interphase, the cell is not dividing, but rather is undergoing normal growth processes and DNA is replicated preparing for cell division. The three stages of interphase are called G1, S, and G2. The mitotic phase is a multistep process during which the duplicated chromosomes are aligned, separated, move to opposite poles of the cell, and then are divided into two identical daughter cells. The first portion of the mitotic phase is called karyokinesis, or nuclear division. Karyokinesis is divided into a series of phases—prophase, prometaphase, metaphase, anaphase, and telophase—that result in the division of the cell nucleus (). The second portion of the mitotic phase, called cytokinesis, is the physical separation of the cytoplasmic components into the two daughter cells. In addition to the mitotic asexual reproduction described above, most eukaryotic microorganisms also have the option of sexual reproduction involving meiosis. Although mitosis and meiosis both require DNA replication, nuclear division, and share procedural similarities, there are important differences between the process and outcomes (). In contrast to the single nuclear division that completes mitosis, meiosis involves two separate nuclear divisions. Rather than creating two clonal daughter cells, the goal of meiosis is to create four genetically-distinct gametes, with each gamete possessing half the number of chromosomes found in the original cell. This strategic chromosome reduction is essential for the fertilization that occurs during sexual reproduction to produce in a zygote with a full complement of chromosomes. ### Nucleolus The nucleolus is a dense region within the nucleus where ribosomal RNA (rRNA) biosynthesis occurs. In addition, the nucleolus is also the site where assembly of ribosomes begins. Preribosomal complexes are assembled from rRNA and proteins in the nucleolus; they are then transported out to the cytoplasm, where ribosome assembly is completed (). ### Ribosomes Ribosomes found in eukaryotic organelles such as mitochondria or chloroplasts have 70S ribosomes—the same size as prokaryotic ribosomes. However, nonorganelle-associated ribosomes in eukaryotic cells are 80S ribosomes, composed of a 40S small subunit and a 60S large subunit. In terms of size and composition, this makes them distinct from the ribosomes of prokaryotic cells. The two types of nonorganelle-associated eukaryotic ribosomes are defined by their location in the cell: free ribosomes and membrane-bound ribosomes. Free ribosomes are found in the cytoplasm and serve to synthesize water-soluble proteins; membrane-bound ribosomes are found attached to the rough endoplasmic reticulum and make proteins for insertion into the cell membrane or proteins destined for export from the cell. The differences between eukaryotic and prokaryotic ribosomes are clinically relevant because certain antibiotic drugs are designed to target one or the other. For example, cycloheximide targets eukaryotic action, whereas chloramphenicol targets prokaryotic ribosomes.A.E. Barnhill, M.T. Brewer, S.A. Carlson. “Adverse Effects of Antimicrobials via Predictable or Idiosyncratic Inhibition of Host Mitochondrial Components.” Since human cells are eukaryotic, they generally are not harmed by antibiotics that destroy the prokaryotic ribosomes in bacteria. However, sometimes negative side effects may occur because mitochondria in human cells contain prokaryotic ribosomes. ### Endomembrane System The endomembrane system, unique to eukaryotic cells, is a series of membranous tubules, sacs, and flattened disks that synthesize many cell components and move materials around within the cell (). Because of their larger cell size, eukaryotic cells require this system to transport materials that cannot be dispersed by diffusion alone. The endomembrane system comprises several organelles and connections between them, including the endoplasmic reticulum, Golgi apparatus, lysosomes, and vesicles. ### Endoplasmic Reticulum The endoplasmic reticulum (ER) is an interconnected array of tubules and cisternae (flattened sacs) with a single lipid bilayer (). The spaces inside of the cisternae are called lumen of the ER. There are two types of ER, rough endoplasmic reticulum (RER) and smooth endoplasmic reticulum (SER). These two different types of ER are sites for the synthesis of distinctly different types of molecules. RER is studded with ribosomes bound on the cytoplasmic side of the membrane. These ribosomes make proteins destined for the plasma membrane (). Following synthesis, these proteins are inserted into the membrane of the RER. Small sacs of the RER containing these newly synthesized proteins then bud off as transport vesicles and move either to the Golgi apparatus for further processing, directly to the plasma membrane, to the membrane of another organelle, or out of the cell. Transport vesicles are single-lipid, bilayer, membranous spheres with hollow interiors that carry molecules. SER does not have ribosomes and, therefore, appears “smooth.” It is involved in biosynthesis of lipids, carbohydrate metabolism, and detoxification of toxic compounds within the cell. ### Golgi Apparatus The Golgi apparatus was discovered within the endomembrane system in 1898 by Italian scientist Camillo Golgi (1843–1926), who developed a novel staining technique that showed stacked membrane structures within the cells of Plasmodium, the causative agent of malaria. The Golgi apparatus is composed of a series of membranous disks called dictyosomes, each having a single lipid bilayer, that are stacked together (). Enzymes in the Golgi apparatus modify lipids and proteins transported from the ER to the Golgi, often adding carbohydrate components to them, producing glycolipids, glycoproteins, or proteoglycans. Glycolipids and glycoproteins are often inserted into the plasma membrane and are important for signal recognition by other cells or infectious particles. Different types of cells can be distinguished from one another by the structure and arrangement of the glycolipids and glycoproteins contained in their plasma membranes. These glycolipids and glycoproteins commonly also serve as cell surface receptors. Transport vesicles leaving the ER fuse with a Golgi apparatus on its receiving, or cis, face. The proteins are processed within the Golgi apparatus, and then additional transport vesicles containing the modified proteins and lipids pinch off from the Golgi apparatus on its outgoing, or trans, face. These outgoing vesicles move to and fuse with the plasma membrane or the membrane of other organelles. Exocytosis is the process by which secretory vesicles (spherical membranous sacs) release their contents to the cell’s exterior (). All cells have constitutive secretory pathways in which secretory vesicles transport soluble proteins that are released from the cell continually (constitutively). Certain specialized cells also have regulated secretory pathways, which are used to store soluble proteins in secretory vesicles. Regulated secretion involves substances that are only released in response to certain events or signals. For example, certain cells of the human immune system (e.g., mast cells) secrete histamine in response to the presence of foreign objects or pathogens in the body. Histamine is a compound that triggers various mechanisms used by the immune system to eliminate pathogens. ### Lysosomes In the 1960s, Belgian scientist Christian de Duve (1917–2013) discovered lysosomes, membrane-bound organelles of the endomembrane system that contain digestive enzymes. Certain types of eukaryotic cells use lysosomes to break down various particles, such as food, damaged organelles or cellular debris, microorganisms, or immune complexes. Compartmentalization of the digestive enzymes within the lysosome allows the cell to efficiently digest matter without harming the cytoplasmic components of the cell. ### Peroxisomes Christian de Duve is also credited with the discovery of peroxisomes, membrane-bound organelles that are not part of the endomembrane system (). Peroxisomes form independently in the cytoplasm from the synthesis of peroxin proteins by free ribosomes and the incorporation of these peroxin proteins into existing peroxisomes. Growing peroxisomes then divide by a process similar to binary fission. Peroxisomes were first named for their ability to produce hydrogen peroxide, a highly reactive molecule that helps to break down molecules such as uric acid, amino acids, and fatty acids. Peroxisomes also possess the enzyme catalase, which can degrade hydrogen peroxide. Along with the SER, peroxisomes also play a role in lipid biosynthesis. Like lysosomes, the compartmentalization of these degradative molecules within an organelle helps protect the cytoplasmic contents from unwanted damage. The peroxisomes of certain organisms are specialized to meet their particular functional needs. For example, glyoxysomes are modified peroxisomes of yeasts and plant cells that perform several metabolic functions, including the production of sugar molecules. Similarly, glycosomes are modified peroxisomes made by certain trypanosomes, the pathogenic protozoans that cause Chagas disease and African sleeping sickness. ### Cytoskeleton Eukaryotic cells have an internal cytoskeleton made of microfilaments, intermediate filaments, and microtubules. This matrix of fibers and tubes provides structural support as well as a network over which materials can be transported within the cell and on which organelles can be anchored (). For example, the process of exocytosis involves the movement of a vesicle via the cytoskeletal network to the plasma membrane, where it can release its contents. Microfilaments are composed of two intertwined strands of actin, each composed of actin monomers forming filamentous cables 6 nm in diameterFuchs E, Cleveland DW. “A Structural Scaffolding of Intermediate Filaments in Health and Disease.” (). The actin filaments work together with motor proteins, like myosin, to effect muscle contraction in animals or the amoeboid movement of some eukaryotic microbes. In ameboid organisms, actin can be found in two forms: a stiffer, polymerized, gel form and a more fluid, unpolymerized soluble form. Actin in the gel form creates stability in the ectoplasm, the gel-like area of cytoplasm just inside the plasma membrane of ameboid protozoans. Temporary extensions of the cytoplasmic membrane called pseudopodia (meaning “false feet”) are produced through the forward flow of soluble actin filaments into the pseudopodia, followed by the gel-sol cycling of the actin filaments, resulting in cell motility. Once the cytoplasm extends outward, forming a pseudopodium, the remaining cytoplasm flows up to join the leading edge, thereby creating forward locomotion. Beyond amoeboid movement, microfilaments are also involved in a variety of other processes in eukaryotic cells, including cytoplasmic streaming (the movement or circulation of cytoplasm within the cell), cleavage furrow formation during cell division, and muscle movement in animals (). These functions are the result of the dynamic nature of microfilaments, which can polymerize and depolymerize relatively easily in response to cellular signals, and their interactions with molecular motors in different types of eukaryotic cells. Intermediate filaments () are a diverse group of cytoskeletal filaments that act as cables within the cell. They are termed “intermediate” because their 10-nm diameter is thicker than that of actin but thinner than that of microtubules.E. Fuchs, D.W. Cleveland. “A Structural Scaffolding of Intermediate Filaments in Health and Disease.” They are composed of several strands of polymerized subunits that, in turn, are made up of a wide variety of monomers. Intermediate filaments tend to be more permanent in the cell and maintain the position of the nucleus. They also form the nuclear lamina (lining or layer) just inside the nuclear envelope. Additionally, intermediate filaments play a role in anchoring cells together in animal tissues. The intermediate filament protein desmin is found in desmosomes, the protein structures that join muscle cells together and help them resist external physical forces. The intermediate filament protein keratin is a structural protein found in hair, skin, and nails. Microtubules () are a third type of cytoskeletal fiber composed of tubulin dimers (α tubulin and β tubulin). These form hollow tubes 23 nm in diameter that are used as girders within the cytoskeleton.E. Fuchs, D.W. Cleveland. “A Structural Scaffolding of Intermediate Filaments in Health and Disease.” Like microfilaments, microtubules are dynamic and have the ability to rapidly assemble and disassemble. Microtubules also work with motor proteins (such as dynein and kinesin) to move organelles and vesicles around within the cytoplasm. Additionally, microtubules are the main components of eukaryotic flagella and cilia, composing both the filament and the basal body components (). In addition, microtubules are involved in cell division, forming the mitotic spindle that serves to separate chromosomes during mitosis and meiosis. The mitotic spindle is produced by two centrosomes, which are essentially microtubule-organizing centers, at opposite ends of the cell. Each centrosome is composed of a pair of centrioles positioned at right angles to each other, and each centriole is an array of twenty-seven parallel microtubules arranged in triplets (). ### Mitochondria The large, complex organelles in which aerobic cellular respiration occurs in eukaryotic cells are called mitochondria (). The term “mitochondrion” was first coined by German microbiologist Carl Benda in 1898 and was later connected with the process of respiration by Otto Warburg in 1913. Scientists during the 1960s discovered that mitochondria have their own genome and 70S ribosomes. The mitochondrial genome was found to be bacterial, when it was sequenced in 1976. These findings ultimately supported the endosymbiotic theory proposed by Lynn Margulis, which states that mitochondria originally arose through an endosymbiotic event in which a bacterium capable of aerobic cellular respiration was taken up by phagocytosis into a host cell and remained as a viable intracellular component. Each mitochondrion has two lipid membranes. The outer membrane is a remnant of the original host cell’s membrane structures. The inner membrane was derived from the bacterial plasma membrane. The electron transport chain for aerobic respiration uses integral proteins embedded in the inner membrane. The mitochondrial matrix, corresponding to the location of the original bacterium’s cytoplasm, is the current location of many metabolic enzymes. It also contains mitochondrial DNA and 70S ribosomes. Invaginations of the inner membrane, called cristae, evolved to increase surface area for the location of biochemical reactions. The folding patterns of the cristae differ among various types of eukaryotic cells and are used to distinguish different eukaryotic organisms from each other. ### Chloroplasts Plant cells and algal cells contain chloroplasts, the organelles in which photosynthesis occurs (). All chloroplasts have at least three membrane systems: the outer membrane, the inner membrane, and the thylakoid membrane system. Inside the outer and inner membranes is the chloroplast stroma, a gel-like fluid that makes up much of a chloroplast’s volume, and in which the thylakoid system floats. The thylakoid system is a highly dynamic collection of folded membrane sacs. It is where the green photosynthetic pigment chlorophyll is found and the light reactions of photosynthesis occur. In most plant chloroplasts, the thylakoids are arranged in stacks called grana (singular: granum), whereas in some algal chloroplasts, the thylakoids are free floating. Other organelles similar to mitochondria have arisen in other types of eukaryotes, but their roles differ. Hydrogenosomes are found in some anaerobic eukaryotes and serve as the location of anaerobic hydrogen production. Hydrogenosomes typically lack their own DNA and ribosomes. Kinetoplasts are a variation of the mitochondria found in some eukaryotic pathogens. In these organisms, each cell has a single, long, branched mitochondrion in which kinetoplast DNA, organized as multiple circular pieces of DNA, is found concentrated at one pole of the cell. ### Plasma Membrane The plasma membrane of eukaryotic cells is similar in structure to the prokaryotic plasma membrane in that it is composed mainly of phospholipids forming a bilayer with embedded peripheral and integral proteins (). These membrane components move within the plane of the membrane according to the fluid mosaic model. However, unlike the prokaryotic membrane, eukaryotic membranes contain sterols, including cholesterol, that alter membrane fluidity. Additionally, many eukaryotic cells contain some specialized lipids, including sphingolipids, which are thought to play a role in maintaining membrane stability as well as being involved in signal transduction pathways and cell-to-cell communication. ### Membrane Transport Mechanisms The processes of simple diffusion, facilitated diffusion, and active transport are used in both eukaryotic and prokaryotic cells. However, eukaryotic cells also have the unique ability to perform various types of endocytosis, the uptake of matter through plasma membrane invagination and vacuole/vesicle formation (). A type of endocytosis involving the engulfment of large particles through membrane invagination is called phagocytosis, which means “cell eating.” In phagocytosis, particles (or other cells) are enclosed in a pocket within the membrane, which then pinches off from the membrane to form a vacuole that completely surrounds the particle. Another type of endocytosis is called pinocytosis, which means “cell drinking.” In pinocytosis, small, dissolved materials and liquids are taken into the cell through small vesicles. Saprophytic fungi, for example, obtain their nutrients from dead and decaying matter largely through pinocytosis. Receptor-mediated endocytosis is a type of endocytosis that is initiated by specific molecules called ligands when they bind to cell surface receptors on the membrane. Receptor-mediated endocytosis is the mechanism that peptide and amine-derived hormones use to enter cells and is also used by various viruses and bacteria for entry into host cells. The process by which secretory vesicles release their contents to the cell’s exterior is called exocytosis. Vesicles move toward the plasma membrane and then meld with the membrane, ejecting their contents out of the cell. Exocytosis is used by cells to remove waste products and may also be used to release chemical signals that can be taken up by other cells. ### Cell Wall In addition to a plasma membrane, some eukaryotic cells have a cell wall. Cells of fungi, algae, plants, and even some protists have cell walls. Depending upon the type of eukaryotic cell, cell walls can be made of a wide range of materials, including cellulose (fungi and plants); biogenic silica, calcium carbonate, agar, and carrageenan (protists and algae); or chitin (fungi). In general, all cell walls provide structural stability for the cell and protection from environmental stresses such as desiccation, changes in osmotic pressure, and traumatic injury.M. Dudzick. “Protists.” OpenStax CNX. November 27, 2013. http://cnx.org/contents/f7048bb6-e462-459b-805c-ef291cf7049c@1 ### Extracellular Matrix Cells of animals and some protozoans do not have cell walls to help maintain shape and provide structural stability. Instead, these types of eukaryotic cells produce an extracellular matrix for this purpose. They secrete a sticky mass of carbohydrates and proteins into the spaces between adjacent cells (). Some protein components assemble into a basement membrane to which the remaining extracellular matrix components adhere. Proteoglycans typically form the bulky mass of the extracellular matrix while fibrous proteins, like collagen, provide strength. Both proteoglycans and collagen are attached to fibronectin proteins, which, in turn, are attached to integrin proteins. These integrin proteins interact with transmembrane proteins in the plasma membranes of eukaryotic cells that lack cell walls. In animal cells, the extracellular matrix allows cells within tissues to withstand external stresses and transmits signals from the outside of the cell to the inside. The amount of extracellular matrix is quite extensive in various types of connective tissues, and variations in the extracellular matrix can give different types of tissues their distinct properties. In addition, a host cell’s extracellular matrix is often the site where microbial pathogens attach themselves to establish infection. For example, , the bacterium that causes strep throat and various other infections, binds to fibronectin in the extracellular matrix of the cells lining the oropharynx (upper region of the throat). ### Flagella and Cilia Some eukaryotic cells use flagella for locomotion; however, eukaryotic flagella are structurally distinct from those found in prokaryotic cells. Whereas the prokaryotic flagellum is a stiff, rotating structure, a eukaryotic flagellum is more like a flexible whip composed of nine parallel pairs of microtubules surrounding a central pair of microtubules. This arrangement is referred to as a 9+2 array (). The parallel microtubules use dynein motor proteins to move relative to each other, causing the flagellum to bend. Cilia (singular: cilium) are a similar external structure found in some eukaryotic cells. Unique to eukaryotes, cilia are shorter than flagella and often cover the entire surface of a cell; however, they are structurally similar to flagella (a 9+2 array of microtubules) and use the same mechanism for movement. A structure called a basal body is found at the base of each cilium and flagellum. The basal body, which attaches the cilium or flagellum to the cell, is composed of an array of triplet microtubules similar to that of a centriole but embedded in the plasma membrane. Because of their shorter length, cilia use a rapid, flexible, waving motion. In addition to motility, cilia may have other functions such as sweeping particles past or into cells. For example, ciliated protozoans use the sweeping of cilia to move food particles into their mouthparts, and ciliated cells in the mammalian respiratory tract beat in synchrony to sweep mucus and debris up and out of the lungs (). ### Key Concepts and Summary 1. Eukaryotic cells are defined by the presence of a nucleus containing the DNA genome and bound by a nuclear membrane (or nuclear envelope) composed of two lipid bilayers that regulate transport of materials into and out of the nucleus through nuclear pores. 2. Eukaryotic cell morphologies vary greatly and may be maintained by various structures, including the cytoskeleton, the cell membrane, and/or the cell wall 3. The nucleolus, located in the nucleus of eukaryotic cells, is the site of ribosomal synthesis and the first stages of ribosome assembly. 4. Eukaryotic cells contain 80S ribosomes in the rough endoplasmic reticulum (membrane bound-ribosomes) and cytoplasm (free ribosomes). They contain 70s ribosomes in mitochondria and chloroplasts. 5. Eukaryotic cells have evolved an endomembrane system, containing membrane-bound organelles involved in transport. These include vesicles, the endoplasmic reticulum, and the Golgi apparatus. 6. The smooth endoplasmic reticulum plays a role in lipid biosynthesis, carbohydrate metabolism, and detoxification of toxic compounds. The rough endoplasmic reticulum contains membrane-bound 80S ribosomes that synthesize proteins destined for the cell membrane 7. The Golgi apparatus processes proteins and lipids, typically through the addition of sugar molecules, producing glycoproteins or glycolipids, components of the plasma membrane that are used in cell-to-cell communication. 8. Lysosomes contain digestive enzymes that break down small particles ingested by endocytosis, large particles or cells ingested by phagocytosis, and damaged intracellular components. 9. The cytoskeleton, composed of microfilaments, intermediate filaments, and microtubules, provides structural support in eukaryotic cells and serves as a network for transport of intracellular materials. 10. Centrosomes are microtubule-organizing centers important in the formation of the mitotic spindle in mitosis. 11. Mitochondria are the site of cellular respiration. They have two membranes: an outer membrane and an inner membrane with cristae. The mitochondrial matrix, within the inner membrane, contains the mitochondrial DNA, 70S ribosomes, and metabolic enzymes. 12. The plasma membrane of eukaryotic cells is structurally similar to that found in prokaryotic cells, and membrane components move according to the fluid mosaic model. However, eukaryotic membranes contain sterols, which alter membrane fluidity, as well as glycoproteins and glycolipids, which help the cell recognize other cells and infectious particles. 13. In addition to active transport and passive transport, eukaryotic cell membranes can take material into the cell via endocytosis, or expel matter from the cell via exocytosis. 14. Cells of fungi, algae, plants, and some protists have a cell wall, whereas cells of animals and some protozoans have a sticky extracellular matrix that provides structural support and mediates cellular signaling. 15. Eukaryotic flagella are structurally distinct from prokaryotic flagella but serve a similar purpose (locomotion). Cilia are structurally similar to eukaryotic flagella, but shorter; they may be used for locomotion, feeding, or movement of extracellular particles. ### Multiple Choice ### True/False ### Fill in the Blank ### Short Answer ### Critical Thinking

# Prokaryotic Diversity ## Introduction Scientists have studied prokaryotes for centuries, but it wasn’t until 1966 that scientist Thomas Brock (1926–2021) discovered that certain bacteria can live in boiling water. This led many to wonder whether prokaryotes may also live in other extreme environments, such as at the bottom of the ocean, at high altitudes, or inside volcanoes, or even on other planets. Prokaryotes have an important role in changing, shaping, and sustaining the entire biosphere. They can produce proteins and other substances used by molecular biologists in basic research and in medicine and industry. For example, the bacterium lives in the deep sea, where oxygen is scarce. It grows long appendages, which have special sensors used to seek the limited oxygen in its environment. It can also digest toxic waste and generate electricity. Other species of prokaryotes can produce more oxygen than the entire Amazon rainforest, while still others supply plants, animals, and humans with usable forms of nitrogen; and inhabit our body, protecting us from harmful microorganisms and producing some vitally important substances. This chapter will examine the diversity, structure, and function of prokaryotes.

# Prokaryotic Diversity ## Prokaryote Habitats, Relationships, and Microbiomes ### Learning Objectives By the end of this section, you will be able to: 1. Identify and describe unique examples of prokaryotes in various habitats on earth 2. Identify and describe symbiotic relationships 3. Compare normal/commensal/resident microbiota to transient microbiota 4. Explain how prokaryotes are classified All living organisms are classified into three domains of life: Archaea, Bacteria, and Eukarya. In this chapter, we will focus on the domains Archaea and Bacteria. Archaea and bacteria are unicellular prokaryotic organisms. Unlike eukaryotes, they have no nuclei or any other membrane-bound organelles. ### Prokaryote Habitats and Functions Prokaryotes are ubiquitous. They can be found everywhere on our planet, even in hot springs, in the Antarctic ice shield, and under extreme pressure two miles under water. One bacterium, Paracoccus denitrificans, has even been shown to survive when scientists removed it from its native environment (soil) and used a centrifuge to subject it to forces of gravity as strong as those found on the surface of Jupiter. Prokaryotes also are abundant on and within the human body. According to a report by National Institutes of Health, prokaryotes, especially bacteria, outnumber human cells 10:1.Medical Press. “Mouth Bacteria Can Change Their Diet, Supercomputers Reveal.” August 12, 2014. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2014-08-mouth-bacteria-diet-supercomputers-reveal.html. Accessed February 24, 2015. More recent studies suggest the ratio could be closer to 1:1, but even that ratio means that there are a great number of bacteria within the human body.A. Abbott. “Scientists Bust Myth That Our Bodies Have More Bacteria Than Human Cells: Decades-Old Assumption about Microbiota Revisited.” Bacteria thrive in the human mouth, nasal cavity, throat, ears, gastrointestinal tract, and vagina. Large colonies of bacteria can be found on healthy human skin, especially in moist areas (armpits, navel, and areas behind ears). However, even drier areas of the skin are not free from bacteria. The existence of prokaryotes is very important for the stability and thriving of ecosystems. For example, they are a necessary part of soil formation and stabilization processes through the breakdown of organic matter and development of biofilms. One gram of soil contains up to 10 billion microorganisms (most of them prokaryotic) belonging to about 1,000 species. Many species of bacteria use substances released from plant roots, such as acids and carbohydrates, as nutrients. The bacteria metabolize these plant substances and release the products of bacterial metabolism back to the soil, forming humus and thus increasing the soil’s fertility. In salty lakes such as the Dead Sea (), salt-loving halobacteria decompose dead brine shrimp and nourish young brine shrimp and flies with the products of bacterial metabolism. In addition to living in the ground and the water, prokaryotic microorganisms are abundant in the air, even high in the atmosphere. There may be up to 2,000 different kinds of bacteria in the air, similar to their diversity in the soil. Prokaryotes can be found everywhere on earth because they are extremely resilient and adaptable. They are often metabolically flexible, which means that they might easily switch from one energy source to another, depending on the availability of the sources, or from one metabolic pathway to another. For example, certain prokaryotic cyanobacteria can switch from a conventional type of lipid metabolism, which includes production of fatty aldehydes, to a different type of lipid metabolism that generates biofuel, such as fatty acids and wax esters. Groundwater bacteria store complex high-energy carbohydrates when grown in pure groundwater, but they metabolize these molecules when the groundwater is enriched with phosphates. Some bacteria get their energy by reducing sulfates into sulfides, but can switch to a different metabolic pathway when necessary, producing acids and free hydrogen ions. Prokaryotes perform functions vital to life on earth by capturing (or “fixing”) and recycling elements like carbon and nitrogen. Organisms such as animals require organic carbon to grow, but, unlike prokaryotes, they are unable to use inorganic carbon sources like carbon dioxide. Thus, animals rely on prokaryotes to convert carbon dioxide into organic carbon products that they can use. This process of converting carbon dioxide to organic carbon products is called carbon fixation. Plants and animals also rely heavily on prokaryotes for nitrogen fixation, the conversion of atmospheric nitrogen into ammonia, a compound that some plants can use to form many different biomolecules necessary to their survival. Bacteria in the genus , for example, are nitrogen-fixing bacteria; they live in the roots of legume plants such as clover, alfalfa, and peas (). Ammonia produced by Rhizobium helps these plants to survive by enabling them to make building blocks of nucleic acids. In turn, these plants may be eaten by animals—sustaining their growth and survival—or they may die, in which case the products of nitrogen fixation will enrich the soil and be used by other plants. Another positive function of prokaryotes is in cleaning up the environment. Recently, some researchers focused on the diversity and functions of prokaryotes in manmade environments. They found that some bacteria play a unique role in degrading toxic chemicals that pollute water and soil.A.M. Kravetz “Unique Bacteria Fights Man-Made Chemical Waste.” 2012. http://www.livescience.com/25181-bacteria-strain-cleans-up-toxins-nsf-bts.html. Accessed March 9, 2015. Despite all of the positive and helpful roles prokaryotes play, some are human pathogens that may cause illness or infection when they enter the body. In addition, some bacteria can contaminate food, causing spoilage or foodborne illness, which makes them subjects of concern in food preparation and safety. Less than 1% of prokaryotes (all of them bacteria) are thought to be human pathogens, but collectively these species are responsible for a large number of the diseases that afflict humans. Besides pathogens, which have a direct impact on human health, prokaryotes also affect humans in many indirect ways. For example, prokaryotes are now thought to be key players in the processes of climate change. In recent years, as temperatures in the earth’s polar regions have risen, soil that was formerly frozen year-round (permafrost) has begun to thaw. Carbon trapped in the permafrost is gradually released and metabolized by prokaryotes. This produces massive amounts of carbon dioxide and methane, greenhouse gases that escape into the atmosphere and contribute to the greenhouse effect. ### Symbiotic Relationships As we have learned, prokaryotic microorganisms can associate with plants and animals. Often, this association results in unique relationships between organisms. For example, bacteria living on the roots or leaves of a plant get nutrients from the plant and, in return, produce substances that protect the plant from pathogens. On the other hand, some bacteria are plant pathogens that use mechanisms of infection similar to bacterial pathogens of animals and humans. Prokaryotes live in a community, or a group of interacting populations of organisms. A population is a group of individual organisms belonging to the same biological species and limited to a certain geographic area. Populations can have cooperative interactions, which benefit the populations, or competitive interactions, in which one population competes with another for resources. The study of these interactions between microbial populations and their environment is called microbial ecology. Any interaction between different species that are associated with each other within a community is called symbiosis. Such interactions fall along a continuum between opposition and cooperation. Interactions in a symbiotic relationship may be beneficial or harmful, or have no effect on one or both of the species involved. summarizes the main types of symbiotic interactions among prokaryotes. When two species benefit from each other, the symbiosis is called mutualism (or syntropy, or crossfeeding). For example, humans have a mutualistic relationship with the bacterium Bacteroides thetaiotaomicron, which lives in the intestinal tract. Bacteroides thetaiotaomicron digests complex polysaccharide plant materials that human digestive enzymes cannot break down, converting them into monosaccharides that can be absorbed by human cells. Humans also have a mutualistic relationship with certain strains of , another bacterium found in the gut. E. coli relies on intestinal contents for nutrients, and humans derive certain vitamins from E. coli, particularly vitamin K, which is required for the formation of blood clotting factors. (This is only true for some strains of E. coli, however. Other strains are pathogenic and do not have a mutualistic relationship with humans.) A type of symbiosis in which one population harms another but remains unaffected itself is called amensalism. In the case of bacteria, some amensalist species produce bactericidal substances that kill other species of bacteria. The microbiota of the skin is composed of a variety of bacterial species, including Staphylococcus epidermidis and Propionibacterium acnes. Although both species have the potential to cause infectious diseases when protective barriers are breached, they both produce a variety of antibacterial bacteriocins and bacteriocin-like compounds. S. epidermidis and P. acnes are unaffected by the bacteriocins and bacteriocin-like compounds they produce, but these compounds can target and kill other potential pathogens. In another type of symbiosis, called commensalism, one organism benefits while the other is unaffected. This occurs when the bacterium uses the dead cells of the human skin as nutrients. Billions of these bacteria live on our skin, but in most cases (especially when our immune system is healthy), we do not react to them in any way. S. epidermidis provides an excellent example of how the classifications of symbiotic relationships are not always distinct. One could also consider the symbiotic relationship of S. epidermidis with humans as mutualism. Humans provide a food source of dead skin cells to the bacterium, and in turn the production of bacteriocin can provide an defense against potential pathogens. If neither of the symbiotic organisms is affected in any way, we call this type of symbiosis neutralism. An example of neutralism is the coexistence of metabolically active (vegetating) bacteria and endospores (dormant, metabolically passive bacteria). For example, the bacterium typically forms endospores in soil when conditions are unfavorable. If the soil is warmed and enriched with nutrients, some B. anthracis endospores germinate and remain in symbiosis with other species of endospores that have not germinated. A type of symbiosis in which one organism benefits while harming the other is called parasitism. The relationship between humans and many pathogenic prokaryotes can be characterized as parasitic because these organisms invade the body, producing toxic substances or infectious diseases that cause harm. Diseases such as tetanus, diphtheria, pertussis, tuberculosis, and leprosy all arise from interactions between bacteria and humans. Scientists have coined the term microbiome to refer to all prokaryotic and eukaryotic microorganisms and their genetic material that are associated with a certain organism or environment. Within the human microbiome, there are resident microbiota and transient microbiota. The resident microbiota consists of microorganisms that constantly live in or on our bodies. The term transient microbiota refers to microorganisms that are only temporarily found in the human body, and these may include pathogenic microorganisms. Hygiene and diet can alter both the resident and transient microbiota. The resident microbiota is amazingly diverse, not only in terms of the variety of species but also in terms of the preference of different microorganisms for different areas of the human body. For example, in the human mouth, there are thousands of commensal or mutualistic species of bacteria. Some of these bacteria prefer to inhabit the surface of the tongue, whereas others prefer the internal surface of the cheeks, and yet others prefer the front or back teeth or gums. The inner surface of the cheek has the least diverse microbiota because of its exposure to oxygen. By contrast, the crypts of the tongue and the spaces between teeth are two sites with limited oxygen exposure, so these sites have more diverse microbiota, including bacteria living in the absence of oxygen (e.g., , ). Differences in the oral microbiota between randomly chosen human individuals are also significant. Studies have shown, for example, that the prevalence of such bacteria as , , , and others was dramatically different when compared between individuals.E.M. Bik et al. “Bacterial Diversity in the Oral Cavity of 10 Healthy Individuals.” There are also significant differences between the microbiota of different sites of the same human body. The inner surface of the cheek has a predominance of Streptococcus, whereas in the throat, the palatine tonsil, and saliva, there are two to three times fewer Streptococcus, and several times more Fusobacterium. In the plaque removed from gums, the predominant bacteria belong to the genus Fusobacterium. However, in the intestine, both Streptococcus and Fusobacterium disappear, and the genus Bacteroides becomes predominant. Not only can the microbiota vary from one body site to another, the microbiome can also change over time within the same individual. Humans acquire their first inoculations of normal flora during natural birth and shortly after birth. Before birth, there is a rapid increase in the population of spp. in the vagina, and this population serves as the first colonization of microbiota during natural birth. After birth, additional microbes are acquired from health-care providers, parents, other relatives, and individuals who come in contact with the baby. This process establishes a microbiome that will continue to evolve over the course of the individual’s life as new microbes colonize and are eliminated from the body. For example, it is estimated that within a 9-hour period, the microbiota of the small intestine can change so that half of the microbial inhabitants will be different.C.C. Booijink et al. “High Temporal and Intra-Individual Variation Detected in the Human Ileal Microbiota.” The importance of the initial Lactobacillus colonization during vaginal child birth is highlighted by studies demonstrating a higher incidence of diseases in individuals born by cesarean section, compared to those born vaginally. Studies have shown that babies born vaginally are predominantly colonized by vaginal lactobacillus, whereas babies born by cesarean section are more frequently colonized by microbes of the normal skin microbiota, including common hospital-acquired pathogens. Throughout the body, resident microbiotas are important for human health because they occupy niches that might be otherwise taken by pathogenic microorganisms. For instance, Lactobacillus spp. are the dominant bacterial species of the normal vaginal microbiota for most women. lactobacillus produce lactic acid, contributing to the acidity of the vagina and inhibiting the growth of pathogenic yeasts. However, when the population of the resident microbiota is decreased for some reason (e.g., because of taking antibiotics), the pH of the vagina increases, making it a more favorable environment for the growth of yeasts such as . Antibiotic therapy can also disrupt the microbiota of the intestinal tract and respiratory tract, increasing the risk for secondary infections and/or promoting the long-term carriage and shedding of pathogens. ### Taxonomy and Systematics Assigning prokaryotes to a certain species is challenging. They do not reproduce sexually, so it is not possible to classify them according to the presence or absence of interbreeding. Also, they do not have many morphological features. Traditionally, the classification of prokaryotes was based on their shape, staining patterns, and biochemical or physiological differences. More recently, as technology has improved, the nucleotide sequences in genes have become an important criterion of microbial classification. In 1923, American microbiologist David Hendricks Bergey (1860–1937) published A Manual in Determinative Bacteriology. With this manual, he attempted to summarize the information about the kinds of bacteria known at that time, using Latin binomial classification. Bergey also included the morphological, physiological, and biochemical properties of these organisms. His manual has been updated multiple times to include newer bacteria and their properties. It is a great aid in bacterial taxonomy and methods of characterization of bacteria. A more recent sister publication, the five-volume of Systematic Bacteriology, expands on Bergey’s original manual. It includes a large number of additional species, along with up-to-date descriptions of the taxonomy and biological properties of all named prokaryotic taxa. This publication incorporates the approved names of bacteria as determined by the List of Prokaryotic Names with Standing in Nomenclature (LPSN). ### Classification by Staining Patterns According to their staining patterns, which depend on the properties of their cell walls, bacteria have traditionally been classified into gram-positive, gram-negative, and “atypical,” meaning neither gram-positive nor gram-negative. As explained in Staining Microscopic Specimens, gram-positive bacteria possess a thick peptidoglycan cell wall that retains the primary stain (crystal violet) during the decolorizing step; they remain purple after the gram-stain procedure because the crystal violet dominates the light red/pink color of the secondary counterstain, safranin. In contrast, gram-negative bacteria possess a thin peptidoglycan cell wall that does not prevent the crystal violet from washing away during the decolorizing step; therefore, they appear light red/pink after staining with the safranin. Bacteria that cannot be stained by the standard Gram stain procedure are called atypical bacteria. Included in the atypical category are species of and . are also considered atypical because they are too small to be evaluated by the Gram stain. More recently, scientists have begun to further classify gram-negative and gram-positive bacteria. They have added a special group of deeply branching bacteria based on a combination of physiological, biochemical, and genetic features. They also now further classify gram-negative bacteria into Proteobacteria, , and spirochetes. The deeply branching bacteria are thought to be a very early evolutionary form of bacteria (see Deeply Branching Bacteria). They live in hot, acidic, ultraviolet-light-exposed, and anaerobic (deprived of oxygen) conditions. Proteobacteria is a phylum of very diverse groups of gram-negative bacteria; it includes some important human pathogens (e.g., E. coli and ). The CFB group of bacteria includes components of the normal human gut microbiota, like . The spirochetes are spiral-shaped bacteria and include the pathogen , which causes syphilis. We will characterize these groups of bacteria in more detail later in the chapter. Based on their prevalence of guanine and cytosine nucleotides, gram-positive bacteria are also classified into low G+C and high G+C gram-positive bacteria. The low G+C gram-positive bacteria have less than 50% of guanine and cytosine nucleotides in their DNA. They include human pathogens, such as those that cause anthrax (), tetanus (), and listeriosis (). High G+C gram-positive bacteria, which have more than 50% guanine and cytosine nucleotides in their DNA, include the bacteria that cause diphtheria (), tuberculosis (), and other diseases. The classifications of prokaryotes are constantly changing as new species are being discovered. We will describe them in more detail, along with the diseases they cause, in later sections and chapters. ### Key Concepts and Summary 1. Prokaryotes are unicellular microorganisms whose cells have no nucleus. 2. Prokaryotes can be found everywhere on our planet, even in the most extreme environments. 3. Prokaryotes are very flexible metabolically, so they are able to adjust their feeding to the available natural resources. 4. Prokaryotes live in communities that interact among themselves and with large organisms that they use as hosts (including humans). 5. The totality of forms of prokaryotes (particularly bacteria) living on the human body is called the human microbiome, which varies between regions of the body and individuals, and changes over time. 6. The totality of forms of prokaryotes (particularly bacteria) living in a certain region of the human body (e.g., mouth, throat, gut, eye, vagina) is called the microbiota of this region. 7. Prokaryotes are classified into domains Archaea and Bacteria. 8. In recent years, the traditional approaches to classification of prokaryotes have been supplemented by approaches based on molecular genetics. ### Multiple Choice ### True/False ### Fill in the Blank ### Short Answer

# Prokaryotic Diversity ## Proteobacteria ### Learning Objectives By the end of this section, you will be able to: 1. Describe the unique features of each class within the phylum Proteobacteria: Alphaproteobacteria, Betaproteobacteria, Gammaproteobacteria, Deltaproteobacteria, and Epsilonproteobacteria 2. Give an example of a bacterium in each class of Proteobacteria In 1987, the American microbiologist Carl Woese (1928–2012) suggested that a large and diverse group of bacteria that he called “purple bacteria and their relatives” should be defined as a separate phylum within the domain Bacteria based on the similarity of the nucleotide sequences in their genome.C.R. Woese. “Bacterial Evolution.” This phylum of gram-negative bacteria subsequently received the name Proteobacteria. It includes many bacteria that are part of the normal human microbiota as well as many pathogens. The Proteobacteria are further divided into five classes: Alphaproteobacteria, Betaproteobacteria, Gammaproteobacteria, Deltaproteobacteria, and Epsilonproteobacteria (Appendix D). ### Alphaproteobacteria The first class of Proteobacteria is the Alphaproteobacteria, many of which are obligate or facultative intracellular bacteria. Some species are characterized as oligotrophs, organisms capable of living in low-nutrient environments such as deep oceanic sediments, glacial ice, or deep undersurface soil. Among the Alphaproteobacteria are rickettsias, obligate intracellular pathogens, that require part of their life cycle to occur inside other cells called host cells. When not growing inside a host cell, are metabolically inactive outside the host cell. They cannot synthesize their own adenosine triphosphate (ATP), and, therefore, rely on cells for their energy needs. Rickettsia spp. include a number of serious human pathogens. For example, causes Rocky Mountain spotted fever, a life-threatening form of meningoencephalitis (inflammation of the membranes that wrap the brain). R. rickettsii infects ticks and can be transmitted to humans via a bite from an infected tick (). Another species of Rickettsia, R. prowazekii, is spread by lice. It causes epidemic typhus, a severe infectious disease common during warfare and mass migrations of people. R. prowazekii infects human endothelium cells, causing inflammation of the inner lining of blood vessels, high fever, abdominal pain, and sometimes delirium. A relative, R. typhi, causes a less severe disease known as murine or endemic typhus, which is still observed in the southwestern United States during warm seasons. summarizes the characteristics of important genera of Alphaproteobacteria. ### Betaproteobacteria Betaproteobacteria are a diverse group of bacteria. The different bacterial species within this group utilize a wide range of metabolic strategies and can survive in a range of environments. Some genera include species that are human pathogens, able to cause severe, sometimes life-threatening disease. The genus , for example, includes the bacteria N. gonorrhoeae, the causative agent of the STI gonorrhea, and N. meningitides, the causative agent of bacterial meningitis. Neisseria are cocci that live on mucosal surfaces of the human body. They are fastidious, or difficult to culture, and they require high levels of moisture, nutrient supplements, and carbon dioxide. Also, Neisseria are microaerophilic, meaning that they require low levels of oxygen. For optimal growth and for the purposes of identification, Neisseria spp. are grown on chocolate agar (i.e., agar supplemented by partially hemolyzed red blood cells). Their characteristic pattern of growth in culture is diplococcal: pairs of cells resembling coffee beans (). The pathogen responsible for pertussis (whooping cough) is also a member of Betaproteobacteria. The bacterium , from the order Burkholderiales, produces several toxins that paralyze the movement of cilia in the human respiratory tract and directly damage cells of the respiratory tract, causing a severe cough. summarizes the characteristics of important genera of Betaproteobacteria. ### Gammaproteobacteria The most diverse class of gram-negative bacteria is Gammaproteobacteria, and it includes a number of human pathogens. For example, a large and diverse family, Pseudomonaceae, includes the genus . Within this genus is the species P. aeruginosa, a pathogen responsible for diverse infections in various regions of the body. P. aeruginosa is a strictly aerobic, nonfermenting, highly motile bacterium. It often infects wounds and burns, can be the cause of chronic urinary tract infections, and can be an important cause of respiratory infections in patients with cystic fibrosis or patients on mechanical ventilators. Infections by P. aeruginosa are often difficult to treat because the bacterium is resistant to many antibiotics and has a remarkable ability to form biofilms. Other representatives of Pseudomonas include the fluorescent (glowing) bacterium P. fluorescens and the soil bacteria P. putida, which is known for its ability to degrade xenobiotics (substances not naturally produced or found in living organisms). The also includes several clinically relevant genera and species. This family includes several bacteria that are human and/or animal pathogens. For example, Pasteurella haemolytica causes severe pneumonia in sheep and goats. P. multocida is a species that can be transmitted from animals to humans through bites, causing infections of the skin and deeper tissues. The genus contains two human pathogens, H. influenzae and H. ducreyi. Despite its name, H. influenzae does not cause influenza (which is a viral disease). H. influenzae can cause both upper and lower respiratory tract infections, including sinusitis, bronchitis, ear infections, and pneumonia. Before the development of effective vaccination, strains of H. influenzae were a leading cause of more invasive diseases, like meningitis in children. H. ducreyi causes the STI known as chancroid. The order Vibrionales includes the human pathogen . This comma-shaped aquatic bacterium thrives in highly alkaline environments like shallow lagoons and sea ports. A toxin produced by V. cholerae causes hypersecretion of electrolytes and water in the large intestine, leading to profuse watery diarrhea and dehydration. V. parahaemolyticus is also a cause of gastrointestinal disease in humans, whereas V. vulnificus causes serious and potentially life-threatening cellulitis (infection of the skin and deeper tissues) and blood-borne infections. Another representative of Vibrionales, Aliivibrio fischeri, engages in a symbiotic relationship with squid. The squid provides nutrients for the bacteria to grow and the bacteria produce bioluminescence that protects the squid from predators (). The genus also belongs to the Gammaproteobacteria. L. pneumophila, the pathogen responsible for Legionnaires disease, is an aquatic bacterium that tends to inhabit pools of warm water, such as those found in the tanks of air conditioning units in large buildings (). Because the bacteria can spread in aerosols, outbreaks of Legionnaires disease often affect residents of a building in which the water has become contaminated with Legionella. In fact, these bacteria derive their name from the first known outbreak of Legionnaires disease, which occurred in a hotel hosting an American Legion veterans’ association convention in Philadelphia in 1976. Enterobacteriaceae is a large family of enteric (intestinal) bacteria belonging to the Gammaproteobacteria. They are facultative anaerobes and are able to ferment carbohydrates. Within this family, microbiologists recognize two distinct categories. The first category is called the coliforms, after its prototypical bacterium species, . Coliforms are able to ferment lactose completely (i.e., with the production of acid and gas). The second category, noncoliforms, either cannot ferment lactose or can only ferment it incompletely (producing either acid or gas, but not both). The noncoliforms include some notable human pathogens, such as Salmonella spp., Shigella spp., and . E. coli has been perhaps the most studied bacterium since it was first described in 1886 by Theodor Escherich (1857–1911). Many strains of E. coli are in mutualistic relationships with humans. However, some strains produce a potentially deadly toxin called Shiga toxin. Shiga toxin is one of the most potent bacterial toxins identified. Upon entering target cells, Shiga toxin interacts with ribosomes, stopping protein synthesis. Lack of protein synthesis leads to cellular death and hemorrhagic colitis, characterized by inflammation of intestinal tract and bloody diarrhea. In the most severe cases, patients can develop a deadly hemolytic uremic syndrome. Other E. coli strains may cause traveler’s diarrhea, a less severe but very widespread disease. The genus , which belongs to the noncoliform group of Enterobacteriaceae, is interesting in that there is still no consensus about how many species it includes. Scientists have reclassified many of the groups they once thought to be species as serotypes (also called serovars), which are strains or variations of the same species of bacteria. Their classification is based on patterns of reactivity by animal antisera against molecules on the surface of the bacterial cells. A number of serotypes of Salmonella can cause salmonellosis, characterized by inflammation of the small and the large intestine, accompanied by fever, vomiting, and diarrhea. The species S. enterobacterica (serovar typhi) causes typhoid fever, with symptoms including fever, abdominal pain, and skin rashes (). summarizes the characteristics of important genera of Gammaproteobacteria. ### Deltaproteobacteria The Deltaproteobacteria is a small class of gram-negative Proteobacteria that includes sulfate-reducing bacteria (SRBs), so named because they use sulfate as the final electron acceptor in the electron transport chain. Few SRBs are pathogenic. However, the SRB Desulfovibrio orale is associated with periodontal disease (disease of the gums). Deltaproteobacteria also includes the genus , species of which are parasites of other gram-negative bacteria. Bdellovibrio invades the cells of the host bacterium, positioning itself in the periplasm, the space between the plasma membrane and the cell wall, feeding on the host’s proteins and polysaccharides. The infection is lethal for the host cells. Another type of Deltaproteobacteria, myxobacteria, lives in the soil, scavenging inorganic compounds. Motile and highly social, they interact with other bacteria within and outside their own group. They can form multicellular, macroscopic “fruiting bodies” (), structures that are still being studied by biologists and bacterial ecologists.H. Reichenbach. “Myxobacteria, Producers of Novel Bioactive Substances.” These bacteria can also form metabolically inactive myxospores. summarizes the characteristics of several important genera of Deltaproteobacteria. ### Epsilonproteobacteria The smallest class of Proteobacteria is Epsilonproteobacteria, which are gram-negative microaerophilic bacteria (meaning they only require small amounts of oxygen in their environment). Two clinically relevant genera of Epsilonproteobacteria are and , both of which include human pathogens. Campylobacter can cause food poisoning that manifests as severe enteritis (inflammation in the small intestine). This condition, caused by the species C. jejuni, is rather common in developed countries, usually because of eating contaminated poultry products. Chickens often harbor C. jejuni in their gastrointestinal tract and feces, and their meat can become contaminated during processing. Within the genus Helicobacter, the helical, flagellated bacterium H. pylori has been identified as a beneficial member of the stomach microbiota, but it is also the most common cause of chronic gastritis and ulcers of the stomach and duodenum (). Studies have also shown that H. pylori is linked to stomach cancer.S. Suerbaum, P. Michetti. “ H. pylori is somewhat unusual in its ability to survive in the highly acidic environment of the stomach. It produces urease and other enzymes that modify its environment to make it less acidic. summarizes the characteristics of the most clinically relevant genera of Epsilonproteobacteria. ### Key Concepts and Summary 1. Proteobacteria is a phylum of gram-negative bacteria discovered by Carl Woese in the 1980s based on nucleotide sequence homology. 2. Proteobacteria are further classified into the classes alpha-, beta-, gamma-, delta- and epsilonproteobacteria, each class having separate orders, families, genera, and species. 3. Alphaproteobacteria include several obligate and facultative intracellular pathogens, including the rickettsias. Some Alphaproteobacteria can convert atmospheric nitrogen to nitrites, making nitrogen usable for other forms of life. 4. Betaproteobacteria are a diverse group of bacteria that include human pathogens of the genus Neisseria and the species Bordetella pertussis. 5. Gammaproteobacteria are the largest and the most diverse group of Proteobacteria. Many are human pathogens that are aerobes or facultative anaerobes. Some Gammaproteobacteria are enteric bacteria that may be coliform or noncoliform. Escherichia coli, a member of Gammaproteobacteria, is perhaps the most studied bacterium. 6. Deltaproteobacteria make up a small group able to reduce sulfate or elemental sulfur. Some are scavengers and form myxospores, with multicellular fruiting bodies. 7. Epsilonproteobacteria make up the smallest group of Proteobacteria. The genera Campylobacter and Helicobacter are human pathogens. ### Multiple Choice ### Fill in the Blank ### Short Answer ### Critical Thinking

# Prokaryotic Diversity ## Nonproteobacteria Gram-Negative Bacteria and Phototrophic Bacteria ### Learning Objectives By the end of this section, you will be able to: 1. Describe the unique features of nonproteobacteria gram-negative bacteria 2. Give an example of a nonproteobacteria bacterium in each category 3. Describe the unique features of phototrophic bacteria 4. Identify phototrophic bacteria The majority of the gram-negative bacteria belong to the phylum Proteobacteria, discussed in the previous section. Those that do not are called the nonproteobacteria. In this section, we will describe four classes of gram-negative nonproteobacteria: Chlamydia, the spirochetes, the CFB group, and the Planctomycetes. A diverse group of phototrophic bacteria that includes Proteobacteria and nonproteobacteria will be discussed at the end of this section. ### Chlamydia C. trachomatis is a human pathogen that causes trachoma, a disease of the eyes, often leading to blindness. C. trachomatis also causes the sexually transmitted disease lymphogranuloma venereum (LGV). This disease is often mildly symptomatic, manifesting as regional lymph node swelling, or it may be asymptomatic, but it is extremely contagious and is common on college campuses. Members of the genus Chlamydia are gram-negative, obligate intracellular pathogens that are extremely resistant to the cellular defenses, giving them the ability to spread from host to host rapidly via elementary bodies. The metabolically and reproductively inactive elementary bodies are the endospore-like form of intracellular bacteria that enter an epithelial cell, where they become active. illustrates the life cycle of Chlamydia. ### Spirochetes Spirochetes are characterized by their long (up to 250 μm), spiral-shaped bodies. Most spirochetes are also very thin, which makes it difficult to examine gram-stained preparations under a conventional brightfield microscope. Darkfield fluorescent microscopy is typically used instead. Spirochetes are also difficult or even impossible to culture. They are highly motile, using their axial filament to propel themselves. The axial filament is similar to a flagellum, but it wraps around the cell and runs inside the cell body of a spirochete in the periplasmic space between the outer membrane and the plasma membrane (). Several genera of spirochetes include human pathogens. For example, the genus includes a species T. pallidum, which is further classified into four subspecies: T. pallidum pallidum, T. pallidum pertenue, T. pallidum carateum, and T. pallidum endemicum. The subspecies T. pallidum pallidum causes the sexually transmitted infection known as syphilis, the third most prevalent sexually transmitted bacterial infection in the United States, after chlamydia and gonorrhea. The other subspecies of T. pallidum cause tropical infectious diseases of the skin, bones, and joints. Another genus of spirochete, , contains a number of pathogenic species. B. burgdorferi causes Lyme disease, which is transmitted by several genera of ticks (notably and ) and often produces a “bull’s eye” rash, fever, fatigue, and, sometimes, debilitating arthritis. B. recurrens causes a condition known as relapsing fever. Appendix D lists the genera, species, and related diseases for spirochetes. ### Cytophaga, Fusobacterium, and Bacteroides The gram-negative nonproteobacteria of the genera , , and are classified together as a phylum and called the CFB group. Although they are phylogenetically diverse, bacteria of the CFB group share some similarities in the sequence of nucleotides in their DNA. They are rod-shaped bacteria adapted to anaerobic environments, such as the tissue of the gums, gut, and rumen of ruminating animals. CFB bacteria are avid fermenters, able to process cellulose in rumen, thus enabling ruminant animals to obtain carbon and energy from grazing. Cytophaga are motile aquatic bacteria that glide. Fusobacteria inhabit the human mouth and may cause severe infectious diseases. The largest genus of the CFB group is Bacteroides, which includes dozens of species that are prevalent inhabitants of the human large intestine, making up about 30% of the entire gut microbiome (). One gram of human feces contains up to 100 billion Bacteroides cells. Most Bacteroides are mutualistic. They benefit from nutrients they find in the gut, and humans benefit from their ability to prevent pathogens from colonizing the large intestine. Indeed, when populations of Bacteroides are reduced in the gut—as often occurs when a patient takes antibiotics—the gut becomes a more favorable environment for pathogenic bacteria and fungi, which can cause secondary infections. Only a few species of Bacteroides are pathogenic. B. melaninogenicus, for example, can cause wound infections in patients with weakened immune systems. ### Planctomycetes The Planctomycetes are found in aquatic environments, inhabiting freshwater, saltwater, and brackish water. Planctomycetes are unusual in that they reproduce by budding, meaning that instead of one maternal cell splitting into two equal daughter cells in the process of binary fission, the mother cell forms a bud that detaches from the mother cell and lives as an independent cell. These so-called swarmer cells are motile and not attached to a surface. However, they will soon differentiate into sessile (immobile) cells with an appendage called a holdfast that allows them to attach to surfaces in the water (). Only the sessile cells are able to reproduce. summarizes the characteristics of some of the most clinically relevant genera of nonproteobacteria. ### Phototrophic Bacteria The phototrophic bacteria are a large and diverse category of bacteria that do not represent a taxon but, rather, a group of bacteria that use sunlight as their primary source of energy. This group contains both Proteobacteria and nonproteobacteria. They use solar energy to synthesize ATP through photosynthesis. When they produce oxygen, they perform oxygenic photosynthesis. When they do not produce oxygen, they perform anoxygenic photosynthesis. With the exception of some cyanobacteria, the majority of phototrophic bacteria perform anoxygenic photosynthesis. One large group of phototrophic bacteria includes the purple or green bacteria that perform photosynthesis with the help of bacteriochlorophylls, which are green, purple, or blue pigments similar to chlorophyll in plants. Some of these bacteria have a varying amount of red or orange pigments called carotenoids. Their color varies from orange to red to purple to green (), and they are able to absorb light of various wavelengths. Traditionally, these bacteria are classified into sulfur and nonsulfur bacteria; they are further differentiated by color. The sulfur bacteria perform anoxygenic photosynthesis, using sulfites as electron donors and releasing free elemental sulfur. Nonsulfur bacteria use organic substrates, such as succinate and malate, as donors of electrons. The purple sulfur bacteria oxidize hydrogen sulfide into elemental sulfur and sulfuric acid and get their purple color from the pigments bacteriochlorophylls and carotenoids. Bacteria of the genus are purple sulfur Gammaproteobacteria. These microorganisms are strict anaerobes and live in water. They use carbon dioxide as their only source of carbon, but their survival and growth are possible only in the presence of sulfites, which they use as electron donors. Chromatium has been used as a model for studies of bacterial photosynthesis since the 1950s.R.C. Fuller et al. “Carbon Metabolism in The green sulfur bacteria use sulfide for oxidation and produce large amounts of green bacteriochlorophyll. The genus is a green sulfur bacterium that is implicated in climate change because it produces methane, a greenhouse gas. These bacteria use at least four types of chlorophyll for photosynthesis. The most prevalent of these, bacteriochlorophyll, is stored in special vesicle-like organelles called chlorosomes. Purple nonsulfur bacteria are similar to purple sulfur bacteria, except that they use hydrogen rather than hydrogen sulfide for oxidation. Among the purple nonsulfur bacteria is the genus . These microorganisms are facultative anaerobes, which are actually pink rather than purple, and can metabolize (“fix”) nitrogen. They may be valuable in the field of biotechnology because of their potential ability to produce biological plastic and hydrogen fuel.T.T. Selao et al. “Comparative Proteomic Studies in The green nonsulfur bacteria are similar to green sulfur bacteria but they use substrates other than sulfides for oxidation. is an example of a green nonsulfur bacterium. It often has an orange color when it grows in the dark, but it becomes green when it grows in sunlight. It stores bacteriochlorophyll in chlorosomes, similar to Chlorobium, and performs anoxygenic photosynthesis, using organic sulfites (low concentrations) or molecular hydrogen as electron donors, so it can survive in the dark if oxygen is available. Chloroflexus does not have flagella but can glide, like Cytophaga. It grows at a wide range of temperatures, from 35 °C to 70 °C, thus can be thermophilic. Another large, diverse group of phototrophic bacteria compose the phylum Cyanobacteria; they get their blue-green color from the chlorophyll contained in their cells (). Species of this group perform oxygenic photosynthesis, producing megatons of gaseous oxygen. Scientists hypothesize that cyanobacteria played a critical role in the change of our planet’s anoxic atmosphere 1–2 billion years ago to the oxygen-rich environment we have today.A. De los Rios et al. “Ultrastructural and Genetic Characteristics of Endolithic Cyanobacterial Biofilms Colonizing Antarctic Granite Rocks.” Cyanobacteria have other remarkable properties. Amazingly adaptable, they thrive in many habitats, including marine and freshwater environments, soil, and even rocks. They can live at a wide range of temperatures, even in the extreme temperatures of the Antarctic. They can live as unicellular organisms or in colonies, and they can be filamentous, forming sheaths or biofilms. Many of them fix nitrogen, converting molecular nitrogen into nitrites and nitrates that other bacteria, plants, and animals can use. The reactions of nitrogen fixation occur in specialized cells called heterocysts. Photosynthesis in Cyanobacteria is oxygenic, using the same type of chlorophyll a found in plants and algae as the primary photosynthetic pigment. Cyanobacteria also use phycocyanin and cyanophycin, two secondary photosynthetic pigments that give them their characteristic blue color. They are located in special organelles called phycobilisomes and in folds of the cellular membrane called thylakoids, which are remarkably similar to the photosynthetic apparatus of plants. Scientists hypothesize that plants originated from endosymbiosis of ancestral eukaryotic cells and ancestral photosynthetic bacteria.T. Cavalier-Smith. “Membrane Heredity and Early Chloroplast Evolution.” Cyanobacteria are also an interesting object of research in biochemistry,S. Zhang, D.A. Bryant. “The Tricarboxylic Acid Cycle in Cyanobacteria.” with studies investigating their potential as biosorbentsA. Cain et al. “Cyanobacteria as a Biosorbent for Mercuric Ion.” Bioresource Technology 99 no. 14 (2008):6578–6586. and products of human nutrition.C.S. Ku et al. “Edible Blue-Green Algae Reduce the Production of Pro-Inflammatory Cytokines by Inhibiting NF-κB Pathway in Macrophages and Splenocytes.” Unfortunately, cyanobacteria can sometimes have a negative impact on human health. Genera such as can form harmful cyanobacterial blooms, forming dense mats on bodies of water and producing large quantities of toxins that can harm wildlife and humans. These toxins have been implicated in tumors of the liver and diseases of the nervous system in animals and humans.I. Stewart et al. Cyanobacterial Poisoning in Livestock, Wild Mammals and Birds – an Overview. summarizes the characteristics of important phototrophic bacteria. ### Key Concepts and Summary 1. Gram-negative nonproteobacteria include the taxa spirochetes; the Chlamydia, Cytophaga, Fusobacterium, Bacteroides group; Planctomycetes; and many representatives of phototrophic bacteria. 2. Spirochetes are motile, spiral bacteria with a long, narrow body; they are difficult or impossible to culture. 3. Several genera of spirochetes contain human pathogens that cause such diseases as syphilis and Lyme disease. 4. Cytophaga, Fusobacterium, and Bacteroides are classified together as a phylum called the CFB group. They are rod-shaped anaerobic organoheterotrophs and avid fermenters. Cytophaga are aquatic bacteria with the gliding motility. Fusobacteria inhabit the human mouth and may cause severe infectious diseases. Bacteroides are present in vast numbers in the human gut, most of them being mutualistic but some are pathogenic. 5. Planctomycetes are aquatic bacteria that reproduce by budding; they may form large colonies, and develop a holdfast. 6. Phototrophic bacteria are not a taxon but, rather, a group categorized by their ability to use the energy of sunlight. They include Proteobacteria and nonproteobacteria, as well as sulfur and nonsulfur bacteria colored purple or green. 7. Sulfur bacteria perform anoxygenic photosynthesis, using sulfur compounds as donors of electrons, whereas nonsulfur bacteria use organic compounds (succinate, malate) as donors of electrons. 8. Some phototrophic bacteria are able to fix nitrogen, providing the usable forms of nitrogen to other organisms. 9. Cyanobacteria are oxygen-producing bacteria thought to have played a critical role in the forming of the earth’s atmosphere. ### Multiple Choice ### Fill in the Blank ### Short Answer