Learning from First-Year Fears

During Harvard University's wilderness pre-orientation programs, students participate in an activity called "Fear in a Hat," in which students anonymously write down their greatest fears about attending college. Researchers collected and analyzed 1,016 responses from this activity and used Chickering and Reisser's (1993) psychosocial model of developing competence to categorize the responses. Because 40% of the data did not fit into this model, researchers used a different lens, categorizing fears by either task fears or relationship fears. The results indicated that students' fears are predominantly involved with issues of interpersonal competence (Chickering & Reisser model) or relationship fears (task/relationship model). These results contradicted assumptions at Harvard that students are mainly worried about not being able to handle the academic (task) challenges. The findings prompted the researchers to investigate the related literature, which demonstrated the importance of relationship issues in mediating and enhancing task behaviors.