The Current Puzzle for me to Pursue my Goal

Came here as a freshman at UCSB, we should make different goals regarding to different stages during the life of study. At the very beginning, I set up the goal to deal with the relationships between professors and friends, hoping to make congenial friends as many as possible. However, after executing my plan for some time, here comes the fierce controversy whether students gain more positive influence by their teachers than by their classmates. It somehow puzzled me in choosing the right direction. In my point of view, making good relationships with professor help to enrich myself more in order to be successful in my college life.

First and foremost, in the reality, students are more willing to ask their teachers for help or some truths because of their immaturity. Asking for help to their teachers when they meet in school, not only can they gain some experiences from well-experienced adults, but also become more mature. Occasionally, some influences we acquired from our peer students may be harmful to our own, like plagiarism, infraction and so on. Our linguistic teacher Keith is a good model that one can easily get in touch with. He seems willing to help, and uses great enthusiasm in class that we never feel bored. I always feel free to ask him questions both in and off the class, which improves my study efficiency as well as making better impression on him. Class by class, we form a degree of chemistry that whenever Keith puts forth a question which needs discussion, I am already prepared to do so with clear idea about that. In my opinion, have distance with teacher is never too good to succeed in that course. Unlike the class in China, a typical American class encourages heavy interaction with professors. Whenever we come out some opinions about the content in the lecture, it is always welcomed to “trouble” them. Education is simply the exchange of knowledge between students and teachers, and we figure out some improvements and truths out of these conversations. The tragedy happens when the professor even cannot tell my name when I finish the course, so good impression should be made when I keep myself active and motivated.

Conversely, it is not always absolute that teachers are well-being models and we can learn nothing from our students. The influences we gained from them can also be valuable. We need to be social and we need peer friends. As everyone knows, the friend is of great importance, we know how to collaborate and stay away from aloof lifecycle with them.

To conclude, getting familiar with the school is to get familiar with the students and the faculty in it. Choosing to have more influences by teachers than by our friends, it is the key to let the school take responsibility for us.