S01E03: Big Fish, Small Pond – Dr. Anne Kaplan
Being a big fish in a small pond can set unrealistic expectations. Dr. Anne Kaplan shares her experience with going to college.
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KB: Past successes are awesome! It feels great to have a win, and those wins can help us build self-confidence. Self-confidence can be a great asset—except when it's not. I’m Kristin Brynteson, and this is Failure Bites, the podcast where successful people tell bite-size stories of failure, growth, and success. In this episode, we hear from Dr. Anne Kaplan, vice president of Outreach, Engagement, and Regional Development here at NIU. Dr. Kaplan talks about her lessons learned when she took the plunge from high school to college.
AK: Well, I would say my most spectacular failure at least psychologically was failing to test out of freshman rhetoric when I went to college. And the reason that was so alarming to me I suppose goes back to the fact that I grew up in a little town in the northwest part of the state. Its population was 1400, part of a consolidated school district where even with three little towns, we had a senior class of 50 and that included everybody. And I was something of a superstar in my class of 50. I was the class president, I was the editor of the yearbook, I was the lead in all the plays, I was the drum major... Anything that needed leading I would do, and anything that need writing I would do because everybody thought I could write better than anybody else, and I was so smitten by my own successes that I applied to one college, not imagining that anybody would turn me down.
They didn't, which was something of a miracle after the fact, but when I got there, all students had an opportunity to test out of freshman rhetoric, which of course I thought I could do because I was an A+ student. I was going to college to be an English major. What's so hard about freshman rhetoric? Well, it was harder than I thought, and I did not test out of freshman rhetoric, which was quite a shock and set me on a completely different path through college where… for… the freshman rhetoric situation was only one example in many because the college was really very selective, recruited a lot of students cross country.
So, I got there and had a roommate from Bronx High School of Science and was surrounded on my floor by kids from New Trier, people who had had all kinds of AP courses. My school didn't offer any AP courses, so, as a result, I was frankly terrified for about the first three terms, and I did nothing but study. In the end, I was probably very well served by that because the kids who came into school with far more robust academic backgrounds than I had were coasting, and in the end, I graduated with honors and I did quite a bit better than some of my more privileged colleagues. But I did learn this it's important to note the size of the pool when you think you're going to make a big splash, and really what had happened to me was that I was a very good student in a very small puddle. And that was a lesson that I took to heart and probably have used ever since.
KB: Success is contextual. Sometimes, success comes easy because we are not being challenged. The challenges we have faced in one context have become familiar; we have already conquered them. Just because you can do a lap in your small pond does not mean you are ready to take on the Olympic-size pool. Your first, second, or third attempts might feel like they end in failure, but that failure shouldn't stop you it just means you need to work harder, study more, or in the words of our favorite forgetful fish, “just keep swimming.” I'm Kristin Brynteson, and this was Failure Bites. For more stories, leave a review, and subscribe! This podcast was produced by NIU STEAM at Northern Illinois University. Your future, our focus.
