The College Experience: Friendships and Personal Growth From the moment you graduate high school, everyone including your friends, teachers, and parents, express how college is one of the most life changing experience you’ll ever encounter. You enter a world of new surroundings, faces, and education system. You’ve been preparing yourself since the first day of kindergarten to enter this new world. The purpose of college is identified as the preparation to guide one through the workforce and adulthood. College is the fundamental key to succeeding in your career. As a junior in college, I have acknowledged the manifest functions of college such as socialization, social placement, and other social agents. But there are also many things that are …show more content…
As crazy as it seems, I must say it has opened my eyes to who I want to be and how I will accomplish it. Being the new student in town can of course be scary; no friends or clue of where anything is located at. During my first month as a student here, I decided to look into social clubs and came across different sororities. I attended different events and finally decided that becoming part of an organization where I would focus on a philanthropy that worked on women’s wellness, it would help me grow as an individual. Being part of sorority, I have entered a world of diverse women who I can rely on. I’ve made friends who want to become doctors, teachers, and some that have the same interest as me, public relations. Making connections in my field, it has helped guide me to preparing the perfect resume for internships at companies such as Kate Spade, Latina Magazine, and Ralph Lauren. As a member of a sorority you learn to carry yourself in so many ways. I acquired the skill on how to balance school, work, and social life. It has also taught me how to get rid of one of my biggest fears, social speaking. While, in college you come across many new faces and
College is an opportunity to truly discover who you are. Often enough, you hear people saying “You should really major in this field, I think you would really enjoy this career.” or, “Do you think you really want to study that? Have you thought about what you will be doing ten years from now?” filling your mind with self doubt, uncertainty, and the anxiousness of not knowing what you want to do with the rest of your life. Mark Edmundson wrote an article titled, Who Are You and What Are You Doing Here?, published in Oxford American addressing college students and their families how the most important thing college students should focus on is personal growth. When students take their courses seriously their engagement can help finding out who they really are and which future career will lead not necessarily to great financial success, but to a career and life that is very satisfying. Edmundson wants to inspire his audience and have them take what he is saying seriously. Edmundson uses satirical informal language and hypothetical situations to effectively persuade college students to focus on their personal growth in order to create a life and career that is deeply fulfilling.
Students today have been raised to think that college is just the next step in life after high school. Decades ago,going to college was a huge achievement and not many people enrolled. Today, however it is almost expected that you go to college. The purpose of college has been changing over the years. Students and professors have lost sight of what to get out a college education. Gary Gutting explains in his article, “What is College for?” that students are losing passion for higher education. He also believes that professors are not realizing what their true job really is, and are not doing the necessary procedures to help their students succeed. “In On the Uses of a Liberal Education”, Mark Edmundson shares similar ideas, and gives a first person point of view of Gutting’s ideas about the quality of the college experience. Mark Edmundson would agree with Gary Gutting’s claims that the quality of colleges is declining and is negatively affecting the students and faculty members.
More people than ever before are attending college due to the endless opportunities that it provides. Louis Menand, a college professor and the author of “Live and Learn: Why We Have College,” explains the meaning of college through three theories that have been developed. Theory 1 supports the idea of the sorting-out process that separates the highly intelligent from the less intelligent. Menand’s second theory explains that college provides opportunities for developmental growth, personal growth, and teaches individuals about the world around us. These are valuable lessons that will not be learned anywhere else. Theory three supports the idea of people attending college to specialize in a specific vocation. I
Gary Colombo, Robert Cullen, and Bonnie Lisle in their book “Rereading America” feel that commencing college is a very disturbing experience. So many things we have to deal while starting college, but the major challenges are expanded difficulty levels and higher expectation which we are not familiar over the years of high school. In order to solve this issue, we have to remodel ourselves by taking up the challenge and rethink about our strength and flaws. To succeed in college we need to be mentally strong and dedicated towards our goal.
Being admitted into college is a difficult process, one that requires students to be diligent in their studies, engage in a number of extracurricular activities, and overcome the everyday pressures and challenges that high-schoolers face across the country. Admittedly, not everyone in the United States is born with the same opportunities as socioeconomic factors as well as historic injustices have contributed to a society in which some people are far more likely to achieve upward mobility – of which, obtaining a college degree is a necessary part – than others. While there is need to rectify this reality,
Today, our society thrives on the wealth and support of the upper-class aristocrats to guide our dollar sign endeavors in the right direction. They are proof, in the flesh, that college offers a life above average, a life that is comfortable and well-lived. College offers experience for the long run, a chance at higher paying jobs, and a chance to make a positive contribution to the our endlessly evolving world. Nonetheless, it is the decision every high school student faces at the end of their four-year run; is it worth the hassle or is it an unnecessary element in their daily lives.
Through sports, school, and other extracurricular activities I have grown close, made some great friends; and I am glad to be graduating with all of you. I have made many friends over the years and have lost some which I think we all have but we know who our real friends are and they will always be there no matter the situation. We all have those awesome friends who we would share anything with and we know that they would never spill our secrets. My family has been there through it all and have been a marvelous part of my senior year.
Throughout the essay, Charles Murray stresses the idea that college is the wonderland of finding oneself and to find the career that one would want to follow for the rest of their lives. “College is seen as the open sesame to a good job and a desirable way for adolescents to transition to adulthood. Neither reason is as persuasive as it first appears.” Murray, C (2008) Practically spoken, this is not normally the case. College is a fair amount of work, much more work than one would normally acquire through any course of a high school or secondary school setting. In no way saying that the average student cannot meet the requirement and achieve success over the amounted work, it would also be ridiculous to expect every graduate to pursue going into higher education with the expansion of work that will be given.
The transition from high school to college is a dynamic time in one’s life that parallels the change from childhood to adulthood. Both of these changes are dramatic and, as a result, feelings are difficult to put down into words. A messy combination of emotions fills the heart, surfacing in strange ways. Confident high school seniors go right back to the bottom of the chain when entering college as freshmen. These students start all over, just like entering grade school or high school for the first time. The move up from high school to college signals the switch from dependence to self-sufficiency. From a personal point of view, going through the experience of graduating high school and transferring to a residential college campus at STLCOP, made me realize I was no longer a kid and capable of making my own decisions.
Friendship Circle is a residential organization located in West Bloomfield, Michigan united with Lubavitch of Michigan. Their method is to pair local teen volunteers with individuals who have special needs. They all participate in different weekly programs that the organization provides such as sports such as, dance, music, and martial arts. Through these activities and with the help of local volunteers the special need individuals are able to develop friendships and gain confidence through community attachment. Rabbi Levi and Bassie Shemtov founded Friendship Circle in 1994 starting with eight families and sixteen volunteers. Friendship Circle of Michigan has grown to include 300 families and over 800 volunteers. Their goal is to provide
At some point, someone has said that high school will be the best four years of their lives and college gets even better. So with that idea in people’s heads, they come up with their ideal image of the college. They start planning the perfect scenario of what college they will go to and what their roommate will be like. They often try to compare an unrealistic image and turn it into a realistic image, but they are unlike in many ways. Once students step onto the college campus, they will soon face what it is actually like to be in college.When people understand that college is not the perfect movie scene, then they will take advantage of expanding and furthering their education seriously. Going to college is a whole different experience and there is a lot more to it such as the rigorous classes and overwhelming school work, being more independent, and forming new bonds with others.
Thesis Statement: College students come from all different types of backgrounds. Most come directly from high school, some are returning from a period of "finding themselves", some are trying to climb the corporate ladder, and then there are "moms" who want to start a career now that their children are in school. Regardless of their origins, college students come in all shapes and sizes and each easily identifiable from a mile away.
College is a chance to be free and is a bridge between the real world and school. I’m an adult and expected to behave as such; I make my own choices where I have to decide what is important to me. I have an opportunity to learn how the world works, to explore the limitless possibilities and a chance to admire how vast knowledge can be. College will change my life in the way that I can develop life skills outside academics, to be fully
For many, after graduating high school the next big step is college. I never asked myself why or if I even wanted to. Yet, since I was not yet ready to join the work force, and didn’t want to disappoint my parents, I simply followed the path that I was supposed to take. For a while I had no direction, but through the loss of my high school English teacher and my dream of making my family proud, I discovered that college was the place I wanted and needed to be.
College is a time of your educational life, which ingrain many experiences within you. It teaches you a lot in terms of knowledge, way of communication, making friends and mental growth. Students seek to become somebody after they graduate from college, they have set many objectives for the future. However, not all the students are the similar when they come to college life. Some of them are strong and skillful in academic circles, while some are strong in socializing and friendships.