Cultural Norms For College Students

The topic I choose to do my term project on was looking at college as a subculture. The definition of subculture is a cultural group within a large culture. These groups often have similar beliefs or interests. Everybody who attends college and be put into a category of a subculture.

Recently, a white professor reported on a discussion she had with her students about Band-Aids. “Why aren’t there any black or brown Band-Aids?” the professor said. “Don’t Black people want Band-Aids that match their skin color?” (Herakova, Jelac, Sibii, & Cooks, 2011, p. 378). I had never thought about this. However, I believe this Band-Aid example exposed the existence of racism in current society and the openness of race talk on campus, which are more intense than I had thought.

Ethos can be defined by Merriam Webster Dictionary as, “the distinguishing character, sentiment, moral nature, or guiding beliefs of a person, group, or institution.” Famous Greek philosopher and teacher Aristotle studied and taught the concept of ethos. In The Rhetoric, Aristotle identifies ethos as:

Students should always be able to express themselves, so they feel like they are accepted. If we judge someone by how they dress, their clothing brand, or what race they are, or what their weight is we aren't being accepting of them. If you are comfortable with yourself and the way you dress, it shouldn't matter what others think. You should be able to express yourself everyday. People shouldn't have to bend over backwards to make others happy. As long as you look in the mirror and like what you see, nothing else should

There are social norms surrounding the consumption of alcohol, tobacco, and other drugs, but it varies depending on the substance. For example alcohol doesn’t carry that heavy of a sigma towards society because it’s alcohol and about “half of Americans consume alcoholic beverages regularly” (Donatelle, 2016, p.232). People can drink socially, a positive social norm, to interact with other people comfortably and the alcohol takes the edge of anxiety. The consumption of tobacco holds a fairly negative stigma in society, it’s mostly known for causing a multitude of cancers and lung diseases in the users. Social norms within tobacco would be it decreases the stress in college students as well as to just relax the student, “students claim to also smoke when being presented in social situations, this is also

Everyone follows the current fashion. People just want to fit in and be cool. In this generation, others make fun of the kind of shoes you have and what you wear. Therefore it makes us feel that we need to be like others and dress like others in order to be

If you open a newspaper or watch the news or the presidential debate you’re more than likely to hear the term global warming being thrown around. Global warming has been an evolving issue for decades, but is just now getting recognition because people are starting to realize it is a real threat to us and our future generations. If we are to ever reverse global warming and prevent further damage to the Earth then we must change our perceptions of global warming. People tend to brush the facts of global warming away because it does not pose an immediate threat. This is an awful way of thinking yet so many people especially older generations such as the baby boomers continue to think this way. I want to change the way of thinking

Cultural influences impact adolescent teens to attend colleges for the party scenes and unbelievably attractive women. According to Wright, “mass media is the third most important source for sexuality information” (182). On social media sites, there are pages dedicated to posting stunning women and where they attend college. Beautiful women are a factor that affects individual’s decisions to attend college. Furthermore, social media exposes young individuals to attractive women in order to entice them to attend universities. In addition, this affects the culture because students are attending away colleges to meet beautiful women, and not solely to receive an education. There are pages on social media sites that depict outrageous parties

Cultures vary tremendously throughout the world and within many of these cultures are sub-cultures that do not necessarily operate under the same standards for example, the culture of American college students. “Subcultures, according to Clark and Trow, represent clusters of attitudes, norms, and models of behaviors rather than groups of people” (Warren, 1968). It is hard for someone to not have any ethnocentric bias to a culture they have not yet been part of or witnessed first hand. Transitioning from the subculture I have grown up in my entire life, to the American college culture was a huge change. Before attending college I did not have a strong ethnocentric bias to the college culture because I had already known people who had

I would put the presentation together by first asking the students what they know about college. I would probably bring a bag of candy (ask about any food allergies) to help the conversation. Everyone loves candy! I would tell them my college experience after asking them what they know about college. I would lay out the main points by telling them first the academic aspect such as how to choose your classes, how to best utilize your advisor, academic resources around campus, choosing your major, ways you can pay for college if you don’t think you can afford it, etc. I would then lay out my second main point which would be the social aspect of college. I would explain them how to get involved and how important that is to your college experience.

A student who was studying at a University in China had a annoying problem that many other college students have had to deal with. He had a roommate who was always stealing his food. The student stated that he would buy and cook food, and his roommate would always eat it. He did not even ask if he could eat the food. One day, the student got fed up with it and decided he was going to get his roommate back.

Additionally, disfluency has been shown to reveal metacognitive processes, or thoughts on one’s own thoughts or ideas (Galak, Nelson, 2002). One study demonstrated that when participants were asked to guess the distance from one city to another, those who were presented with a disfluent questionnaire guessed much greater distances than those who received a fluent questionnaire (Alter, Oppenheimer, 2008). In fact, those who were presented with disfluent questions guessed an average of 1,331.7 miles, while those with the fluent questions guessed 641.9 miles. This study suggested the participants used visual text fluency as a proxy for distance estimation, and the disfluent text caused people to guess greater numbers. Stepping back, this study

For the purpose of my research, the goal was to gauge the social views of current college students. The independent variable chosen as a focal point for analysis is sex in this case. There were a total of four people interviewed; 2 females and 2 males. The dependent variables being examined were: views on abortion, views on students from disadvantaged backgrounds receiving preferential treatment during the college admissions process views on a national health care plan, and personal views on the chief benefits of a college education. Prior to conducting the interviews, I expected to find that everyone would be okay with the legalization of abortion. I also expected everyone to be in support of a national healthcare plan and students from

As the door swings open, five young males stroll into the restaurant displaying earrings, dreadlocks, and counterculture clothing, which causes several dozen flannel-clad, middle-aged men to turn their heads. The young men, all Goshen College students, sit down at a table in the corner and smile to themselves while the other customers continue to stare and chuckle at them for a few minutes. After the smirking waitress comes and kindly takes their orders, the guys recline in their seats and gaze out the window at the dawning sunlight, glad to be back for another quality breakfast at Southern Style.

Going to college is a rite of passage in the United States; it is the next logical step after graduating high school. During the course of my educational career my parents would always stress about getting an higher education so I could become more successful in the future. However, there is a problem that is not being addressed one is how professors are evaluated. College professors are not being evaluated based on the students performances; in all reality a professor could have every student fail a class and still keep their job. How can this be? Although this may not seem like a big problem it actually is due to the fact people know that this is happening but no one is actually doing anything about it. The solution to this problem is that students should have more of a voice when it comes to professors being evaluated for reappointment, as well as more in depth process for initial professor selection upon hiring.