Episode Description:

In this episode of Highway to Higher Ed, Alex is joined by College Success Coach Dale Troy, who works with college students to reduce their level of stress and improve their college experiences. Dale, with an undergraduate degree and law degree from Yale University and extensive experience in wellness coaching, offers a wealth of knowledge on college student fitness. Alex and Dale discuss the secrets to college success coaching, the impacts the pandemic has had on student experience, and how to best support students in today’s college world. 

Key Takeaways:

-Stress management skills are increasingly important in surviving in today’s college world.  It’s critical to help young students develop these skills.  Typically this involves not only educating them from a third party (not parents! God no), but getting them to buy in to trying new healthy practices.

-Parents can help prepare their kids to succeed in college by allowing them a bit more space in the middle and high school years.  Allowing them to fail a bit more then is key, and avoids the syndrome of them diving off of a cliff when they graduate from high school, going from a system of complete dependence to one of complete autonomy.  

-Most critical of all may be time management skills. The use of a planner to organize one’s life is critical, not only in completing assignments and arriving to events on time, but it also provides a sense of control over one’s life.  This sense of control is key to combating the rising epidemic of anxiety that has resulted from the pandemic.