The Hidden Curriculum

Transcript

Every college and every university has an academic curriculum. The classes that you need to take and the academic requirements that you need to complete in order to get your degree, but those colleges and universities also have a kind of hidden curriculum, a curriculum that's particularly intense during your first semester and your first year on campus and that curriculum consists of all of the things that you need to know about being a successful student on campus, that no one ever explicitly tells you. While the academic curriculum is taught to you by professors in a classroom, this hidden curriculum, how to be successful as a student, is a curriculum you really have to navigate on your own and the tricky thing is that no one ever really tells you what you're supposed to know or what questions you're supposed to ask. In sum, there's no real syllabus to the hidden curriculum. I'm going to try to help with that now by giving you a sense of what kinds of questions you should be asking and what kinds of information you should be seeking, in order to navigate the hidden curriculum as efficiently and effectively as possible. Let's get started. The first thing you should think about when you get to campus, is who's who at your school. Who are the people who are helping you? What are they called, and what kinds of things can they do for you? Different people in different roles are going to be called different things at different schools and so, this isn't something that I can tell you about your particular school but what I can tell you, is that orienting yourself to the cast of characters who are at your school to support you, is going to be the best and easiest way to getting the support and the help that you need as early as possible. So let's talk about a couple of the kinds of people you should be thinking about, figuring out what to call them, and how they can help. First, you have your instructional staff. You have faculty professors, adjunct professors, TAs, TFs, those are teaching assistants and teaching fellows, course assistants, the people who are really responsible for helping shepherd you through your academic curriculum. Different professors and different instructors and TAs are going to be called different things. They're going to have different titles and so at your particular school, it's going to be important to understand what to call these people and what kind of a relationship that you'll have with them. In most cases, these are just going to be your teachers and figuring out what to call them, is going to facilitate you building relationships with them as early as possible. Next, you have your deans your decanal staff, the people who are going to help support you as a holistic student at school. These are also in some schools, called academic advisors. Some deans do academic advising, some academic advisors do deanly work, in some schools they're completely separate. So try to get a sense at your school of what a dean is, what an academic advisor is, if these both exist, and if so, what your specific relationship is going to be to each of them. At every school, you should at least have one person who's going to be dedicated to helping you with your academic planning and if something comes up and you need assistance, is going to be the person to help you and facilitate that support. Get to know who that person is. Then you're going to see that there are a whole host of directors, co-directors, program coordinators for various offices at your school. Whether it's the career office or the employment office or the health office, and so, trying to get a sense of who those people are and what they're called, can also be helpful. Again, I know it seems a bit overwhelming but these people are here to support you, so getting to know them is key. And finally, there's going to be your residential life staff, your student life staff, the people whose job it is to really think about your quality of life at school and to help you live a happy, successful life as a person on campus, not just as a student on campus. The person you'll probably have the most direct contact with, is an RA type person, a residential advisor, someone who's living in your building or living near you, who can serve as a resource for things that are going on in your living situation. This is a person you'll probably meet right away but if you haven't met them yet, and if you haven't started building a relationship, you should do so. Again, I can't give a ton of specific information here because every school is going to call these people different things and at every school these people will have a different relationship to you as a student. So the onus is on you to try to identify who these people are and how they can help you. The sooner you do that, the better off you'll be. Next, I've created a list of places that I think that you should locate early, because these are places that you're going to need to know, they're places where you'll spend a lot of time and they're places where there's a critical mass of help and support that's available for you. Let's talk about some of them. The first is your library system and the reason I call it a library system, rather than a library, is that on a lot of campuses, there's not just one library, there are many libraries and those libraries serve different schools and different departments. So it's important to try to get a sense of what this library system is like and how you can access it. The simplest way to do this, is to go into Google and put the name of your school and put the word library and that should connect you to a website that gives you pretty good information, but to get an additional level of support, try scheduling an appointment with a librarian, who can help walk you through your library system and give you really detailed instructions and help on how best to access that resource and make it manageable to you. Second, try to find your tutoring center or your academic resource center or your writing center, or your academic support center. It's going to be called different things at different places but the role of that kind of center, is to give you academic support to help you with classes, to help you build academic skills and to help you achieve academic success and remember, academic support services are not only for students who are struggling in a course, who are feeling overwhelmed. Yes, that is one reason that you can use academic support, but you can also use academic support for enrichment. You can use it if you want to do well or if you're doing well and want to do even better. Make sure that you locate your dean's office or your academic advisor's office, if you haven't already, that's a person you're going to want to build a relationship with and if you haven't had an appointment yet, do so right away. Make sure to find the registrar's office. The registrar's office is one of these places that people aren't always sure what it is or what it does. In fact, not everyone's sure whether the registrar is even a person or a place. I will tell you that the registrar is a person, a member of the university or college staff that's responsible for the official university transcripts and other documents, and the registrar works out of the registrar's office or the office of the registrar. This is often the place where you'll pay your student bill, where you'll deal with transcript requests and where you'll deal with other official documents. Make sure you know where your financial aid office is or your office of educational financing. Education is expensive and the professionals at your financial aid office are working hard to make sure that you have a sense of how to make your education more manageable financially. So if you haven't built a relationship with someone in that office yet, try to see if you can. Schedule an appointment and talk to them about your situation. Again, seeking this kind of help proactively, is so much better than seeking it reactively. Next, make sure you know where your health center is on campus and if it's separate, your mental health center on campus. It's important to know where to get medical services if you need them. Similarly, know where your public safety office is, if you need to report a crime or if you're the victim of a crime. Make sure to get in touch with the folks at your career center on campus. This can be a career center, an employment center, a center for career education. These are the people who are going to help you translate your studies into job opportunities, employment opportunities and internship possibilities, not just while you're at school, but after you graduate. If you don't know where the gym or the fitness center is, find it. It's important to make sure that you stay healthy while you're a student and if you don't know where a good place to get a cup of coffee is, you want to find one. Yes, you should know where the registrar is, yes you should know where your academic advisor's office is, but it's also really important to know where to get caffeine. Once you've figured out who the people are on campus who can help you and once you've located the places on campus where you're going to spend most of your time, here are a couple of other things to keep in mind. As I list these, don't necessarily think about what you need to do now, but spend a moment thinking about whether or not you've thought at all about these particular sets of resources and if any of them seem particularly relevant to you, mark them down and follow up later. The first is campus clubs and organizations. Most college and university campuses have tremendous number of clubs and organizations that are built around shared student interests and the primary goal of these, is to create knowable communities based on shared interests between students. These can be cultural groups, artistic groups, political groups, service organizations. So if you're interested in getting involved extra curricularly, try to figure out what these organizations are, and on most campuses, there's going to be a club and organization fair, either at the beginning of every term, or at the beginning of the academic year. Try to get a sense of where your campus study spaces are. Not just in libraries but outside of libraries. A lot of campuses have private study spaces that you can book to do group study and there are often places off-campus that are particularly useful for independent study, so try to get a sense of what those are, because sometimes you won't want to study in the library and you won't want to study at home, so having a sense of where you can go to be really productive, is useful. If you're a commuter student, see if your school has resources for commuter students. For example, some schools offer rebates or discounts on public transportation and if that's something your school is offering, you're going to want to know about it. Similarly, for students who are parents, if you're a student who's raising children, your college or university may offer services that help you balance the demands of being a student with the demands of being a parent. There are also often organizations for student parents, where folks provide babysitting for each other and other forms of support. So reach out and see if that's an organization or a form of support that's available at your institution. If you're a student who's managing a documented disability, make sure to know what kinds of resources are available for you on your campus. Again, most colleges and universities will have an office of disability services that specializes in providing support services to students with disabilities. And finally, know the power of your student ID. Sure, your student ID gets you into buildings on campus and it identifies you as a student of the school, but it may also entitle you to discounts, to rebates, to special services, not just at school but beyond school. So get a sense of what your student ID will do for you. It might make the movies a little bit cheaper, for example. And veteran students, it's of particular importance that you understand what special resources are available to you at your college or university. Most campuses will have some sort of student organization that supports vets or is made up of vets. Some campuses will have staff dedicated to particular kinds of veteran support, not only academic support, but also educational financing support and there are very likely local organizations, veteran service organizations or VA organizations, that are going to be able to support you. So once you get to your college or university, make sure you have a sense of what kind of resources are available for you, not just on campus, but off campus. By getting a sense of who's available to help you, by getting a sense of where to go on campus to get certain kinds of support and by getting a better sense of the whole array of resources that are available to you, you can start to get a sense of this hidden curriculum and learn what kinds of things you can do to make yourself the most successful student possible. Again, no one's really going to tell you about these things explicitly in any sort of formal way, so spending a little bit of time at the very beginning of your studies, trying to sort this out and reaching out to the right people who can help you, will really help you make some headway on your hidden curriculum so that you can get to work on your academic curriculum.

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