The three secret qualities of top students

A blogger at Inside Higher Ed has posed a fascinating question: what is an ideal student?

Strictly speaking, there could not possibly be an ideal student any more than there could be perfect person. But the question is worth thinking about if you care about education.

I wouldn’t want to repeat the answers already on offer, so let me move the question out of the abstract just a bit and ask a similar question: what have my very best students had in common?

To answer this question, I turned to a list I keep affixed to my filing cabinet in my office under a magnet that says “ARS LONGA, VITA BREVIS.” It shows all the students who have earned grades of A+ in my courses. Readers of this blog may surmise from my curmudgeonly persona that the list is not huge. In fact, there are sixteen names.

From that list I selected the five who seemed most memorable for their abilities and achievements. What did they have in common? Many things, of course, some of which were also suggested in the IHE piece: curiosity, open-mindedness, willingness to be engaged. Intelligence, of course, and a capacity for hard work, obviously. But three other qualities stand out, too:

1.

Ambition

. By this, I don’t mean a desire to be famous or make a lot of money, but rather a willingness to try to do something great in whatever one does. For the best students, an assignment is not merely a requirement to be met, but an opportunity to test and strengthen themselves.

2. Humility. Seemingly the opposite of ambition, humility, in the best students, sits in elegant balance with it. The best students have the confidence to push themselves to be the best they can, but they are humble enough to know that there is always more to learn. Life is short, and learning the art takes a long time.

3. Creativity. Observers sometimes worry that formal education stifles creativity, and, to be sure, academia does come with certain rules and restrictions. Still, like a great musician or painter, a great student figures out that some rules are actually empowering, and that some can be stretched or broken when the occasion demands.

Of course, these students don’t come along every day. My little A+ list shows I’m lucky if they come along every year, and nobody would suggest you have to be a top student to be a good student. But all students should ask themselves whether they could demonstrate more of these qualities. I know I could have used more of number 2 when I was a student.

But then, we didn’t have blogs in those days, and I probably wouldn’t have listened, anyway.