The Reverse Oreo Effect

My niece meticulously deconstructs her Oreo cookies into three separate pieces - two chocolate cookies and one slice of frosting. The idea is to eat the chocolate cookies first, leaving the best for last, the frosting. In the case of an Oreo, the stuff in the middle is the best part!

College tends to be the opposite. The beginning of college, while a little nerve-wracking, is overall quite exciting! Everything is new and full of possibility. Dreams are fresh on the mind. This excitement is only exceeded by the end of college - graduation! The day of graduation is a true high point in life. In the middle of these highlights, however, is where the real battle is won or lost.

For, in the middle, students run into extremely challenging coursework, long hours slogging through homework, limited funds trying to make ends meet, and many other bumps in the road. Suddenly, college does not seem as glamorous. Rather, it is a lot of hard work, with difficult choices, and plenty of confusion and self-debt. Sure, there are many high points along the journey as well. But in the middle, the rubber meets the road, and students either pick themselves up and dust themselves off, or they quit.

There is no way to magically transport yourself from the first day of class to your commencement ceremony. In the long run, you would not want to do this anyway. The whole point of college is to push you to grow, to challenge your fortitude, to expand the limits of your mind, and to allow you to fail (and get back up) in a relatively safe environment. You come out stronger, wiser, skilled, knowledgeable, and prepared for the next stages of life. Iron sharpens iron. The college degree you receive at graduation is a testimony to your power.

To make it through the middle, you must commit to your success. Create a plan by setting goals and then utilizing all the tools available to reach them. Revisit your motivators often. Practice delayed gratification, which is to do what you ought to do, even when it is not what you want to do. See failure as a learning process, not a dead end. When the going gets tough, the tough get going. Commit!