Top 5 Reasons Why Students Fail in High-School and College

No student plans to fail in high school or college. Unfortunately, along the way, they can get off track due to internal struggles every young person experiences and some external factors that are different for everyone.

You planned to be a high-achiever that would graduate with flying colors and land a dream job straight from college, but here you are, googling “write my paper cheap” three days before the deadline, and one look on your room can tell how despair and panic look like.

Before you find yourself in such unfortunate situation, how about making yourself aware about the common reasons why students fail in high school and college in order to avoid it from happening in the first place.

Inability to Keep Focus

With the existence of smartphones, social media, iPads, and e-Readers, teens have lots of toys that can cause distraction. Once these are combined with problems at home, the stress of time pressure, or frustration with a difficult assignment, it all adds up and makes them lose focus. This makes it important for parents and support groups to teach the youth the right way of balancing their use of technology to be ready for challenges in post-secondary education.

Lack of Preparation

Teens have information readily available for them, and as huge benefit as it is, unfortunately it has a downside as well. This on-demand accessibility leads to a lazy mindset. Finding the truth, looking for data and challenging existing beliefs becomes too boring.  As a result, young people sometimes feel as if things must be done on their behalf or should be provided to them even with little or no effort on their end. Once teachers and parents don’t challenge them to think independently, they only set up the students for failure as they transition to their post-secondary education.

Poor Time Management

Effective time management is critical to the ability of a student to balance several responsibilities associated with being in school, including homework, social time, projects, family obligations, and others. It is a must that they learn the skill as early as now before they attend college. This way, they get to learn from failures in a less expensive environment. Being knowledgeable on how to avoid over-commitment is one aspect of finding balance in order to focus on things that are important and necessary.

Lack of Perseverance

It is also critical for students to learn that all things in life are processes. Life is not a mere sprint and instead, it is one long marathon. As such, lessons must be learned, challenges must be conquered, and obstacles must be overcome. Journeying through life thinking achievement, winning, and success come ease is just a false sense of home leading to nowhere.

Inadequate Self-Esteem

An adequate self-esteem during teen years is tied to success later on in life. Primarily because confidence helps young people to express their opinions, raise hand in class, and actively participate in discussions. This leads to good grades that can later allow teens to apply for scholarships. Feeling of confidence (I can do this!) also makes them look for better opportunities and shoot for the stars. This can also help youth in making better choices. The adverse impact of low self-esteem it that it can paralyze a person’s ability to progress and grow through life.

Meanwhile, excessive self-confidence can be detrimental to the future of a student. Thinking of being better than peers leads to inflated ego and entitlement. Generally, it is perceived as a reflection of bad character, causing people to stay away from you. Whatever the abilities or gifts a student might have, they should maintain intellectual humility (I might be wrong) and learn the right way of interacting with people, not driving them away. After all, there is a difference between showing off the best of you and being a narcissist poser.

Young people need help and guidance earlier in life to set them for succeeding independently some years later. It’s no use of blaming students for failure in college, if no one equipped them with all the necessary skills in school.