Reaching out

Description of the video:

Welcome to Learning.IU. My name is Sergio Ortiz and I'll be guiding you through your journey here at IU with the help of your fellow students. These videos will help you learn how to study smarter, grow professionally, stay healthy, and find tech. You may take a great deal of pride in all that you have accomplished through your own strength and efforts and that is certainly worth celebrating. But in college, no one does this alone. No one. Don't be afraid to reach out for help if you find that studying on your own is not working. And even if it is, working through material with others is a great way to further deepen your knowledge. On every campus, you can connect with peers who have been specially trained to provide that extra boost you need. Fellow students who are tutors, peer mentors, teaching assistants, and supplemental instructors can relate to your struggles with mastering coursework and managing your time. They too, have been in your shoes. Let's hear from your fellow students, peers, and tutors on the value of seeking academic help. As a freshman, as I went through the year, I realized you can't be afraid to ask questions. It's your time that you're spending and your future that you're investing in. So it's important that you really get yourself out there. Meet with your professors, talk with your counselors, even any of the faculty around campus that are willing to help, like they'll gladly assist you. I've just found that being here with the professors has been a great boon for me because they're very willing to talk to you and help you. They want you to succeed. But one time that I was struggling heavily with academics was in my anatomy class. I was trying to figure out a better way to study for the exams, because not all the professors give the same exam. They are all very drastically different. And I decided that I was going to go see the tutor and she actually had taught me a few different study strategies that I use to this day in my third year. She kind of taught me to break down the material based on what you know versus what you don't know. And once you have that, the things that you don't know, focus on those, like you're teaching them to somebody else. As an incoming IU student, you might be taking a class that you're not very used to. It might not be within your major, it might not be within your field of study. If that happens to you when you come across a class, it's giving you some type of difficulty, talk to the professor. That's the number one thing you should do. Talk to them, build a connection. They should know you just like you know them. They're going to be teaching the whole semester, just like you're going to be their student for the whole semester. Don't be a robot. Show up, talk to the teacher, talk to your classmates. If you're still struggling, go to a tutor. A lot of the IU campuses here offer free tutoring. The more you go to tutoring, the more you're going to gain expertise in that subject, the more confident you will be in that subject, the better you will do in a class, the better your GPA will be, the more likely you'll earn scholarships, and the more likely you'll be a happy college student. These peer instructors may be attached directly to your class, in which case you'll see them mentioned in your syllabus. Or they may work out of a campus tutoring or mentoring center. Tutors and mentors provide an individualized learning experience that can help you succeed. Make a habit of seeking help early and often. And don't forget to use faculty office hours. Office hours are here for you. You can find your campus tutoring services in the Academic Resources section on Learning.IU.edu Campus resources page. Thanks for watching and be sure to visit Learning.IU.edu for more tips on how to enhance your IU experience.

Description of the video:

Welcome to Learning IU. My name is Hannah and I will be guiding you through your journey here at IU with the help of your fellow students. These videos will help you learn how to study smarter, grow professionally, stay healthy, and find tech. Asking for help can feel impossible to do. It can be hard to admit to yourself that you might need some backup. It might feel like you're acknowledging a weakness, something that you're not particularly eager to share with others. It may be so hard to do because you take a great deal of personal pride in having gotten to where you are now primarily through your own strengths and efforts. Something we're celebrating. Or it could simply be a matter of being unsure what to say, where to go for help or even how to get started. No one does college alone. No one. This is a team sport and every person you meet, including your professors and advisors had help to getting where they are now. As a successful student, you will too by making it a habit to do one of the most important things all successful students do. Getting your team together and asking for help early and often. Let's hear from some of your peers. My sophomore junior year of college, I switched my major and I wasn't really sure what I wanted to do. I was a business major, wasn't really vibing with it, was looking at the other programs we had, wasn't really vibing with a lot of them, so I sat down with some of my professors and one of my advisors, and I was like, what should I do? It was a lot of conversations, a lot of talking, a lot of self reflection that left me feeling pretty heavy for a while, just because you're looking in on yourself and it can be hard. But it made the world to have those people who have surrounded me and helped me out and uplifted me while I was making that decision and made it easier for me to decide what I wanted to do. One resource that was available on campus to me was the career Services Center. So as I was looking for an internship and a part time job over the summer, I needed help on my resume. So that was a great opportunity for me to take my resume to that career services center, and they were able to help me and perfect my resume and allow me to earn those internships that ended up being so beneficial to me in my college career. So definitely the Indiana University community is going to be so essential to the success of most students here. Not only are the faculty available for help, but also reaching out to your peers and other fellow students has been so vital in completing some of the major projects that I've done here on campus, and also just provides a sense of oneness with your peers. You guys get to bond more and figure out things together, which ultimately helps everybody that's involved. So I was really struggling with compartmentalizing my own things in my life. And so I ended up actually failing an exam, and it had dropped my grade pretty low, and I was very worried about being able to pass this class for the rest of the semester. And so with a lot of pushing and persuading by a couple campus mentors and people that I work with, I finally decided to go talk to the professor who also is the director of my program. And so I was honest with her and I told her look, like this first exam, I blew it. I completely just didn't know what to do. I need your help because I don't want to fail this course. And she sat with me for a solid hour and a half just talking about how to do things better in this course, how to use my resources on campus, and she provided me with a list of resources. And it just walking out of her office that day was a sigh of relief because I'm not so scared. I know that I still have a lot of work to do to dig myself out of this grade. But I'm not terrified anymore. I know that if I reach out to her, she will 110% help me. One more thing. You were not only supporting yourself when you reach out to others for help. You were also giving them the opportunity to fulfill one of their greatest joys, helping the people around them, not only that, but you are providing them with a chance to repay the debt of gratitude that they owe to all the people that help them along the way. One day, when some young person comes to you in their time of need, it will be your turn to pay it forward. Thanks for watching and be sure to visit Learning.iu.edu for more tips on enhancing your IU experience.