One of the Most Demoralizing Things That Can Happen To a Student

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One of the most demoralizing things that can happen to a student:

You are given the impression that you’re well prepared, when in fact there is some helpful background knowledge that lots of classmates are coming in with, that you don’t have.

And then you get the rug pulled out from under you. You struggle and feel like there is a gigantic gap between you and your classmates. You think everybody is way smarter than you, when in fact only some are, and the rest are just better prepared.

But you don’t know that missing prerequisite knowledge is the source of your struggle. You don’t realize that you can catch up. That may dawn on you years later as you accumulate more life experience, especially if you end up working with youngsters in a skill development setting. But in the moment, when you’re young and in the thick of it, you just think you’re too dumb.

Few students can recover from this.

While it’s never pleasant to be told that you’re accumulating a knowledge deficit and are going to need to put in extra work to catch up later, the psychological gut-punch gets much softer the earlier it’s detected and delivered, and the less likely it is to become a knock-out blow.

Honesty is always the best policy.

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