Reflection – When Learning Doesn’t Look Like Success (Yet)

This week’s readings really hit home for me, especially the story of a student who participated fully in an online module but still struggled to meet academic expectations. It made me reflect on my own experience as an international student navigating graduate school in a completely new way. 

During my first semester, I did everything I thought I was supposed to do. I kept up with the readings, contributed to class discussions, and stayed engaged throughout the course. But when I got my final grades, they weren’t what I had expected. The feedback mentioned that my work lacked “criticality”—a word that, at the time, I didn’t fully understand. 

Back in Nepal, where I completed my undergraduate studies, we focused heavily on structured arguments and summarizing ideas from texts. The concept of challenging an author’s perspective or interrogating underlying assumptions wasn’t something I had been taught to do. So, when I came here and was expected to “analyze critically,” I realized I had to relearn how to read and write in ways that were unfamiliar but necessary in this academic context. 

It was a hard adjustment. But that moment became a turning point for me. I began asking for help, meeting with professors, and slowly learning how to engage with texts in a more questioning and reflective way. I came to understand that sometimes learning doesn’t look like immediate success—it looks like uncertainty, like stumbling, like trying over and over until it begins to make sense. 

I still carry that experience with me, not as a disappointment, but as a reminder that meaningful learning is rarely neat or linear. For students like me, whose academic journeys are shaped by different cultural and educational systems, growth often happens in ways that aren’t always visible or immediately recognized. And that’s okay. It’s all part of learning how to learn again.