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"Help, I Need Somebody": Rethinking How We Conceptualize Honors
| Content Provider | Semantic Scholar |
|---|---|
| Author | Badenhausen, Richard |
| Copyright Year | 2010 |
| Abstract | The very morning I received the JNCHC announcement of an issue devoted to honors students in trouble, I met with the mother of a freshman honors student who had threatened that weekend to kill herself. The parent, who had flown over two thousand miles to our campus, was predictably upset and the student demoralized. After individual conversations with each party, during which we decided the best course of action for the student would be to leave honors, I listened to this young lady make the courageous admission that she had never wanted to join the honors program but did so only to please her parents. other honors students this year have struggled through brutal conflicts with family members, homesickness, substance abuse, computer addiction, and severe motivation problems without resolving the issues successfully. I found myself wondering about the causes of these painful misfortunes and, in particular, why these students didn't ask for help or only sought assistance when it was essentially too late to dig out of what had become very deep holes. Why is it so hard for honors students to ask for help? They have always been told they are the best and the brightest, able to leap tall (academic) buildings in a single bound, but such messages may well be part of the problem. Jack Dudley is no doubt right in his lead essay that our current economic, social, and political problems have intensified the challenges for all college students. My own sense is that these crises have turned what were merely cracks in the foundations of many family structures into wide, gaping crevasses; job losses, bankruptcies, divorce, and calamitous interactions with our country's healthcare "system" are part of the everyday fabric of our students' lives. Yet the effects of such material circumstances, so visible and tangible and capable of being comfortably fit into narratives of struggle and failure, are exacerbated by the way in which many honors students are encouraged to see and define themselves and by the manner in which they internalize those messages. I see very specific reasons why honors students resist our support, and we as honors educators can take particular steps to make that "helping project" more palatable and successful for those we teach. The first challenge honors students face in asking for help is the fact that their self-concept is so grounded in the idea of academic achievement that seeking assistance calls their very identity into question. Asking for help becomes an attack on the notion of a successful self. For such students, soliciting help on an academic matter seems a sign of weakness or even failure; they have seen others seek help throughout their schooling, but they have not associated themselves with that class of students. While many honors students intuitively understand when they need help and recognize that mentors are ready to provide support, the shame associated with the activity overwhelms the intellectual realization that they must act to save themselves. The very word "honors" complicates matters because the origins of the term emphasize respect, fame, glory, esteem, and reputation, which are special privileges bestowed by others. To exhibit vulnerability is to risk losing that externally granted status. A related crisis occurs when such students, accustomed to receiving praise in high school for uncovering and then delivering "what the teacher wants," are told in college to take risks, think for themselves, and cultivate their own voices; the sudden apparent lack of external criteria to determine self-worth is frightening and can leave them at a loss. A second reason our honors students don't ask for help is that many of them simply don't know how. Most high schools have not created opportunities for high-achieving students to seek assistance. The testing/accountability movement of the past ten years has promoted rote learning environments that discourage high-level student-teacher interaction. … |
| Starting Page | 27 |
| Ending Page | 27 |
| Page Count | 1 |
| File Format | PDF HTM / HTML |
| Volume Number | 11 |
| Alternate Webpage(s) | http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1259&context=nchcjournal |
| Alternate Webpage(s) | https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1259&context=nchcjournal |
| Alternate Webpage(s) | https://westminstercollege.edu/docs/default-source/undergraduate-documents/honors-documents/readings-on-honors/helping-honors-students-in-trouble.pdf?sfvrsn=8 |
| Language | English |
| Access Restriction | Open |
| Content Type | Text |
| Resource Type | Article |
