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Parker Allen

Professor Bill Reader

English 111.W01

22 Sept. 2025

Succeeding through Challenges in College

everyone can think of at least one person. For me, the first person that comes to mind is

my stepmother, Megan. I’ve seen her at every step in her college journey so far, from

struggling to decide whether or not she should attend, to deciding if she should remain,

to receiving her diagnosis of autism and figuring out how to thrive in her education, and I

couldn’t hope for a better example of perseverance on one’s college journey. So, when I

saw the prompt for this essay, I didn’t waste any time in setting up an interview with her

over the phone. We talked for nearly two hours as I asked questions that she answered,

and I learned quite a bit of how someone can succeed through their struggles and

become a model student despite the barriers they might face.

The first lesson I found was that success doesn’t mean just following along with

the material handed to you but finding ways that you can shift that material towards your

interests to make it work for you. Megan told me about how, initially, she struggled to

handle classes that weren’t specific to her areas of interest. The main example she

gave was that she doesn’t find science all that interesting, so her biology gen ed class

was particularly difficult. For the first few weeks she struggled, until she finally found a

way to make it click. “… but then we got to the chapter on cells and how they work, and
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it felt really similar to me to how people work, with each little piece being different kinds

of people with different wants and needs and having to work together to figure it all out.”

(Alber). When she found a way to get the subject to mesh with something she actually

had an interest in, some of her excitement for the one shifted to the other. Suddenly, her

grades went way up, shifting from steady C’s and the occasional D for difficult chapters,

up to consistent B’s and even A’s when she found a really good comparison. She didn’t

gain any lasting interest in biology, but she made it a manageable class by finding the

ways in which it meshed up with the things she enjoyed, and once she knew the trick

she started integrating it into other areas she struggled with. “It doesn’t even have to

make sense really. Like, I hate papers, but I love cooking. So, if I think about the

different parts of a paper like ingredients, and how to make it work as a dish, suddenly I

find a new way to look at it and writing a paper isn’t so horrible.” (Alber) College is

challenging enough, and especially so when someone has to confront a subject they

don’t have any personal interest in, so finding ways to look at the material that makes it

more exciting, or at least more tolerable, is immensely valuable to sticking with a college

career.

Shifting the material to better fit you isn’t the only way to make sticking with

college easier, though, sometimes you have to examine yourself. “Getting diagnosed

with autism was really eye opening.” (Alber) While not everyone has such a well-defined

moment to see areas they might have been struggling with or as clear a guide to use

when examining their shortcomings, we all do struggle with certain areas of learning.

Whether it's taking things too literally, like in the case of my stepmother, or struggling to

string together math concepts, we can all see an area that we might be lacking in our
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efforts to learn. Finding the ways that we can work through or mitigate these issues can

be crucial to managing the workload expected of us in college. “…when you know you

take things too literally, it makes sense to ask for clarification.” (Alber) Acknowledging

areas where her means of thinking weren’t up to handling something, and then finding a

way around it also helped to improve her experience in college. When she could,

Megan asked her professor to clarify the questions she knew she usually struggled with,

when it wasn’t, she asked a friend to tell her what they thought it meant, and by doing

so she managed to accommodate her disadvantage. It might not be as clearly defined a

barrier for someone else, but finding the ways someone struggles to understand the

subject matter and looking for methods to manage those difficulties is crucial to

completing a college career.

While finding ways to make the overall college experience less taxing is ideal,

sometimes, you just can’t. Whether it’s because of the work itself or how you find you

learn best, sometimes, the only thing to do is press forward. “Some things are just going

to be harder for me… if I want my degree, I just have to figure it out.” (Alber) It’s great if

you can find the means to make college a better experience for you, but sometimes

things are just going to be hard. That might be because of the way your brain is

required, or the kinds of things that interest you, or just the work itself, but accepting that

things are going to be hard sometimes and deciding to deal with them anyways is the

only way forward when other things fail. I think Megan laid it out perfectly in our

conversation when she said, “It’s not like other people don’t struggle with college. They

figure it out. So can I.” (Alber). There are going to be times through anyone’s college

career where they struggle. Maybe for some it’s math and science while others might
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struggle with English and sociology, but whatever challenges someone comes up

against, the most important thing is that they keep going. Recognizing that this difficulty

is only temporary and that, with hard work and perseverance, you will eventually come

out on the other side, it can be huge for avoiding losing out on the benefits of getting

your degree.

When it comes to finding success in college and persisting through the

challenges you’ll face there, finding ways to cope is pivotal to reaching your degree.

Whether it’s finding ways to make the material fit with your interests, finding ways to

bridge the gap between how you learn and understand the material, or just battening

down and accepting that sometimes you are going to struggle and that’s okay, learning

to cope with the challenges college is going to throw at you is vital to lasting through the

years required to earn your degree. Finding ways to equate lessons I struggle to

connect with others that make sense to me will be pivotal to completing my education.

Maybe it will be finding how to link the clear rules of mathematics with the less defined

expectations of sociological concepts. Perhaps I’ll find ways to be less formal in my

forum responses, so my points come across more clearly, or have my wife double check

that my papers aren’t too wordy to be easily understood. Hopefully when neither method

is possible, I can follow Megan’s example and find it within myself to struggle well and

keep going even when I don’t really want too. Whatever the case, my college journey

will feel both less lonely for knowing someone who also knows it’s difficulties and more

manageable for seeing an example of someone who managed despite their own

struggles.
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Works Cited
Alber, Megan. 16 Sept. 2025.