You can learn a lot by trying and failing.

Maybe it's just me, but college students these days seem to be cautious about an awful lot. I realize some classes are harder than others, but the overall concept of college is not that difficult. Go to class. Read your textbook. Do your assignments. If something is unclear, go ahead and ask about it, but it's safe to assume that you'll learn a lot just by jumping in and trying.

I get the feeling that that's where the breakdown is for a lot of students. They don't want to try something until they're sure that they are doing it right. I can certainly appreciate this attitude, although I wonder what it says about a person's life experience.

Try and fail. Then learn from your mistake and try again. In "real" life, that's how things get done. There's generally no teacher to ask for life's lessons so you learn by trial and error. Lessons learned by the worst trials are usually also the ones remembered best.

I'm sure I was as cautious as everyone else the first time I went to college, but this time around I find myself diving into assignments a lot quicker than my younger classmates. While they're still looking around to the others and making sure they understand the concept, I'm halfway done and learning the concept firsthand. This isn't to say that I haven't scrapped assignments and started over a number of times... but when I do, I usually understand a whole lot more than I did when I started.