Column:

Kiss ass and learn at the same time

It's the underrated skill for college success.

By Jacob Houska

Published Feb. 26, 2009

One of the most underrated and underused techniques used by students is kissing a professor's ass. It might not seem true, because every time you see that kid introduce himself to the professor after the first class and make small talk about the weather, the picture burns a hole in your mind, and you're inclined to think it happens more often than it really does. But while the brown-nosers are getting their B+ bumped up to an A-, what you don't see are the 300 sorry souls filing their way out the back. If they only knew what they were missing.

My dad has told me all my life that if I would learn how to kiss ass I would have an easier time accomplishing all of my goals in life. However, this contradicted the way I saw the world. I used to be a firm believer that there are two ways to be successful in life: You can do the work, or you can kiss the ass.

Why not both?

It's sad that it took me 19 years to have this epiphany, but I recently had an eye-opening experience that completely swayed my beliefs.

I'm in a wonderful little class called learning strategies, where the assignments are geared toward helping you with your other classes and achieving an A is as easy as showing up and paying attention. In this class I was assigned to interview two of my professors about their lives and basically make small talk. I dreaded the assignment, mostly because I'm the kid who sits in the back row and watches the video of the kid getting smoked in the side of the head by a basketball after it was heaved 90 feet at the buzzer and getting hit so hard his torso hits the ground while his feet are still in the air over and over. So the odds of me making small talk with an instructor are slim.

But in this case, I was required. And like usual, when stepping out of my comfort zone, I learned something.

Even though I won't see the numerical results of my conversations until the end of the semester, the five minutes I spent talking to my professors was more productive than any five minutes I've ever spent trying to do school-related things in college.

While I was simply asking questions about where they went to school what and advice they have for a student in their class, I was getting valuable insight about how they think. When I asked, "What advice do you have?" and they responded, "Understand the concepts more than the details, and develop your writing skills," I learned that the test would be essay based and would test true knowledge of the ideas mentioned in class, rather than memorizing dates and names.

Another benefit from these meetings is the instructor getting to know your name. Most people write their name at the end of every e-mail, and every e-mail already says your name in their inbox before they open it. So after seeing your name twice, and then hearing your name as you introduce yourself to them, they are going to be likely to remember it, at least vaguely enough to recognize it when they put in your final letter grade. And if you're begging for an extra percentage point at the end of the semester, you're no longer just a name on a screen; you're that kid they talked to earlier in the semester. Consider your odds of getting the extra point doubled.

Either way, it will only take 10 minutes, and it can't possibly hurt. Worst-case scenario is the professor is a huge jerk. Big deal.

It's not like you haven't spent 10 minutes doing something pointless before.