In this chapter you will explore

been said that many successful businesspeople and politi-cians were C students who spent more time in college socializing than study-ing. That’s not necessarily true, but the popular belief embodies a key aspect of education that is often overlooked. The ability to understand and get along with people is vital for success in school, work, and life. Another element of success is the ability to manage time well and get things done. Why do some individuals handle stressful situations with ease while others fall apart? Although we tend to think of these abilities as inborn personality traits that can’t be changed, the fact is that social skills and stress-management skills can be learned and improved.

Particularly in the first year of college, many students who are intellectu-ally capable of succeeding have difficulty establishing positive relationships with others, dealing with pressure, or making wise decisions. Other students exude optimism and happiness and seem to adapt to their new environment without any trouble. The difference lies not in academic talent but in emo-tional intelligence (EI), or the ability to recognize and manage moods, feel-ings, and attitudes. A growing body of evidence shows a clear connection between students’ EI and whether or not they stay in college.

As you read this chapter, you will develop an understanding of emotional intelligence, and you will learn how to use it to become a more successful student and person. You will begin to look at yourself and others through an EI lens, observe the behaviors that help people do well, get to know yourself better, and take the time to examine why you are feeling the way that you do before you act. Then, as you read each subsequent chapter in this book, try

Confessions of a COLLEGE STUDENT...

GENEVIEVE TIMMONS, 19New York University

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to apply what you have learned about EI and think about how it might relate to the behaviors of successful college students. You can’t always control the challenges and frustrations of life, but with practice you can control how you respond to them.

Emotional intelligence is the ability to identify, use, understand, and manage emotions. Emotions are a big part of who you are; you should not ignore them. The better the emotional read you have on a situation, the more appro-priately you can respond to it. Being aware of your own and others’ feelings helps you to gather accurate information about the world around you and allows you to respond in appropriate ways.

There are many competing theories about EI, some of them very complex. While experts vary in their definitions and models, all agree that emotions are real, can be changed for the better, and have a profound impact on whether or not a person is successful.

In the simplest terms, emotional intelligence consists of two general abilities:

Understanding emotions involves the capacity to monitor and label feelings accurately (nervous, happy, angry, relieved, and so forth) and to determine why you feel the way you do. It also involves predicting how others might feel in a given situation. Emotions contain information, and the ability to understand and think about that information plays an important role in behavior.

Managing emotions builds on the belief that feelings can be modified, even improved. At times, you need to stay open to your feelings, learn from them, and use them to take appropriate action. Other times, it is better to disengage from an emotion and return to it later. Anger, for example, can blind you and lead you to act in negative or antisocial ways; used positively, however, the same emotion can help you overcome adversity, bias, and injustice.

Identifying and using emotions can help you know which moods are best for different situations and learn how to put yourself in the “right” mood. Developing an awareness of emotions allows you to use your feelings to enhance your thinking. If you are feeling sad, for instance, you might view the world in a certain way, while if you feel happy, you are likely to interpret

the same events differently. Once you start paying attention to emotions, you can learn not only how to cope with life’s pressures and demands, but also how to harness your knowledge of the way you feel for more effective prob-lem solving, reasoning, decision making, and creative endeavors.1

A number of sophisticated tools can be used to assess emotional intelligence. Some first-year seminars and many campus counseling centers offer the op-portunity to complete a professionally administered questionnaire, such as the Emotional Quotient Inventory (EQ-i), which provides a detailed assessment of your emotional skills and a graphic representation of where you stand in comparison with other students. But even without a formal test, you can take a number of steps to get in touch with your own EI. You’ll have to dig deep inside yourself and be willing to be honest about how you really think and how you really behave. This can take time, and that’s fine. Think of your EI as a work in progress.

1Adapted with permission from EI Skills Group, “Ability Model of Emotional Intelligence,” http://www.emotionaliq.com/. © 2005–2009.

Let’s take a closer look at the specific skills and competencies that Bar-On has identified as the pieces that make up a person’s emotional intelligence.2

It’s something like a jigsaw puzzle, and when you have put all of the pieces together, you will begin to see yourself and others more clearly.

The first category, intrapersonal, relates to how well you know and like your-self, as well as how effectively you can do the things you need to do to stay happy. This category is made up of five specific competencies:

Emotional self-awareness. Knowing how and why you feel the way you do.

Emotional intelligence includes many capabilities and skills that influence a per-son’s ability to cope with life’s pressures and demands. Reuven Bar-On, a pro-fessor at the University of Texas, Austin, and world-renowned EI expert, devel-oped a model that demonstrates how these categories of emotional intelligence directly affect general mood and lead to effective performance (see Figure. 3.1).

2Adapted from R. Bar-On. “The Bar-On Model of Emotional-Social Intelligence (ESI),” Psicothema, 2006, 18 (suppl. 13-25): 21. http://www.eiconsortium.org/pdf/baron_model_of_emotional_social_intelligence.pdf.

Effective Performance

General Mood

Bar-On Model of Emotional Intelligence

Intrapersonal Interpersonal

StressManagement Adaptability

Assertiveness. Standing up for yourself when you need to without being too aggressive.

Independence. Making important decisions on your own without having to get everyone’s opinion.

Self-regard. Liking yourself in spite of your flaws (and we all have them). Self-actualization. Being satisfied and comfortable with what you have achieved in school, work, and your personal life.

Understanding yourself and why you think and act as you do is the glue that holds all of the EI competencies together. Knowledge of self is strongly connected to respect for others and their way of life. If you don’t understand yourself and why you do the things you do, it can be difficult for you to understand others. What’s more, if you don’t like yourself, you can hardly expect others to like you.

Recent studies have shown that people with extensive support networks are generally happier and tend to enjoy longer, healthier lives. Forging relation-ships and getting along with other people depend on the competencies that form the basis for the interpersonal category:

Empathy. Making an effort to understand another person’s situation or point of view.

Social responsibility. Establishing a personal link with a group or commu-nity and cooperating with other members in working toward shared goals.

Interpersonal relationships. Seeking out healthy and mutually beneficial relationships—such as friendships, professional networks, family connec-tions, mentoring, and romantic partnerships—and making a persistent ef-fort to maintain them.

Things change. Adaptability, the ability to adjust your thinking and behavior when faced with new or unexpected situations, helps you cope and ensures that you’ll do well in life, no matter what the challenges. This category in-cludes three key competencies:

Reality testing. Ensuring that your feelings are appropriate by checking them against external, objective criteria.

Flexibility. Adapting and adjusting your emotions, viewpoints, and ac-tions as situations change.

Problem solving. Approaching challenges step by step and not giving up in the face of obstacles.

In college, at work, and at home, now and in the future, you’ll be faced with what can seem like never-ending pressures and demands. Managing the inevi-table resulting stress depends on two skills:

Stress tolerance. Recognizing the causes of stress and responding in ap-propriate ways. Staying strong under pressure

Impulse control. Thinking carefully about potential consequences before you act and delaying gratification for the sake of achieving long-term goals

It might sound sappy, but having a positive attitude really does improve your chances of doing well. Bar-On emphasizes the importance of two emotions in particular:

Optimism. Looking for the “bright side” of any problem or difficulty and being confident that things will work out for the best.

Happiness. Being satisfied with yourself, with others, and with your situation in general.

It makes sense: If you feel good about yourself and manage your emotions, you can expect to get along with others and enjoy a happy, successful life.

Wired WINDOW

A number of studies link strong emotional intelligence skills to college success in particular. Here are a few highlights:

Emotionally intelligent students get higher grades. Researchers looked at students’ grade point averages at the end of the first year of college. Students who had tested high for intrapersonal skills, stress tolerance, and adaptability when they entered in the fall did better academically than those who had lower overall EI test scores.

Students who can’t manage their emotions struggle academically. Some students have experienced full-blown panic attacks before tests. Others who are depressed can’t concentrate on coursework. And far too many turn to risky behaviors (drug and alcohol abuse, eating disorders, and worse) in an effort to cope. Dr. Richard Kadison, Chief of Mental Health Service at Harvard University, notes that “the emotional well-being of students goes hand-in-hand with their academic development. If they’re not doing well emotionally, they are not going to reach their academic potential.”3 Even students who manage to succeed academically in spite of emotional difficulties can be at risk if unhealthy behavior patterns fol-low them after college.

Students who can delay gratification tend to do better overall. Impulse control leads to achievement. In the famous “Marshmallow Study” per-formed at Stanford University, researchers examined the long-term be-haviors of individuals who, as four-year olds, did or did not practice de-layed gratification. The children were given one marshmallow and told that if they didn’t eat it right away, they could have another. Fourteen years later, the children who ate their marshmallow immediately were more likely to experience significant stress, irritability, and inability to focus on goals. The children who waited scored an average of 210 points higher on the SAT; had better confidence, concentration, and reliability;

3Richard Kadison and Theresa Foy DiGeronimo, College of the Overwhelmed: The Campus Mental Health Crisis and What to Do About It (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2004), p. 156.

Emotions are strongly tied to physical and psychological well-being. For ex-ample, some studies have suggested that cancer patients who have strong EI live longer. People who are aware of the needs of others tend to be happier than people who are not. A large study done at the University of Pennsylvania found that the best athletes do well in part because they’re extremely optimis-tic. In light of tremendous obstacles and with the odds stacked against them, emotionally intelligent people nonetheless go on to succeed.

held better-paying jobs; and reported being more satisfied with life. The following box details the differences between the two groups of students after fourteen years.

EI skills can be enhanced in a first-year seminar. In two separate studies, one conducted in Australia and another conducted in the United States, researchers found that college students enrolled in a first-year seminar who demonstrated good EI skills were more likely to do better in college than students who did not exhibit those behaviors. A follow-up study indicated that the students who had good EI skills also raised their scores on a measure of emotional intelligence.

Without strong EI in college, it is possible to do well enough to get by, but you might miss out on the full range and depth of competencies and skills that can help you to succeed in your chosen field and have a fulfilling and meaningful life.

Developing your EI is an important step toward getting the full benefit of a college education. Think about it. Do you often give up because something is just too hard or you can’t figure it out? Do you take responsibility for what you do, or do you blame others if you fail? Can you really be successful in life if you don’t handle change well or if you are not open to diverse groups and

their opinions? How can you communicate effectively if you are not asser-tive or if you are overly aggressive? If you’re inflexible, how can you solve problems, get along with coworkers and family members, or learn from other people’s points of view?

The good news is you can improve your EI. It might not be easy—old habits are hard to change—but it can definitely be done. Here are some sug-gestions:

1. Identify your strengths and weaknesses. Take a hard look at yourself, and consider how you respond to situations. Most people have trouble assessing their own behaviors realistically, so ask someone you trust and respect for insight. And if you have an opportunity to take a formal emotional intelligence test or to meet with a behavioral counselor, by all means, do.

2. Set realistic goals. As you identify areas of emotional intelligence that you would like to improve, be as specific as possible. Instead of deciding to be more assertive, for example, focus on a particular issue that is giv-ing you trouble, such as nagging resentment toward a friend who always orders the most expensive thing on the menu and then expects to split the whole check evenly.

3. Formulate a plan. With a particular goal in mind, identify a series of steps you could take to achieve the goal, and define the results that would indicate success. As you contemplate your plan, consider all of the emotional competencies discussed on pages 43– 45 of this chapter: You might find that to be more assertive with your friend about the restau-rant situation, for instance, you need to figure out why you’re frustrated (emotional self-awareness), identify possible causes for your friend’s be-havior (empathy), and consider what you might be doing to encourage it (reality testing).

4. Check your progress on a regular basis. Continually reassess whether or not you have met your goals, and adjust your strategy as needed.

Suppose you know that you don’t handle stress well. When things get tough—too many things are due at once, your roommate leaves clothes and leftover food all over the place, and your significant other seems a bit dis-tant—you begin to fall apart. Here is a model you might use for improving the way you handle stress.

EI competency: Stress toleranceSpecific goal: To get control of the things that are causing stress this

weekPlan: Identify each stressor, and select a strategy for addressing it.

List everything that needs to be done this week. Allot time for each item on the list, and stick to a schedule. Reassess the schedule many times during the week.

Ask yourself whether your roommate is bothering you only because you are stressed. Do you do some of the same things your roommate does? Ask yourself what the next step should be: Talking to your roommate? Looking for another place to study?

Ask yourself whether your significant other is acting differently for any reason. Is he or she under stress? Are you overreacting because you feel insecure in the relationship? After answering these questions, decide what the next step will be: Talking to your significant other and sharing your feelings with him or her? Reassessing the situation in another week when things calm down?

Identify what reduces stress for you and still allows you to stay on target to get things done. Is it exercise? Working in small chunks with rewards when you finish something? Playing a musical instrument?

Success Indicator: You are feeling less stressed, and you have accomplished many of the things on your list. You are working out three times a week. Your significant other seems just fine, and your place is still a mess but it’s not bothering you. You leave your room and decide to study in the library.

It’s important not to try to improve everything at once. Instead, identify specific EI competencies that you can define, describe, and identify, and then set measurable goals for change. Don’t expect success overnight. Remember that it took you a while to develop your specific approach to life, and it will take commitment and practice to change it.

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