My first image is Syracuse University and it represents a college or university. My first question or subtopic is what is the definition of college and I believe this is a general representation of how a college looks. It shows a broad overview of the campus and I chose this picture instead of others because it stood out to me. As a high school senior I went on numerous amount of college tours; and if the college campus looks appealing it made me think twice about attending. If the buildings are old fashioned, and the campus doesn’t look nice then a student may not want to attend that school.
My second image shows about 6 or 7 college textbooks stacked on top of each other with the dollar sign next to it. This is a metaphor to the true meaning of college, which is college wants an exuberant amount of money from its students for such a small return investment. They want students to pay for 5 to 6 textbooks each semester which is absurd because college textbooks can cost students $500 to $700.
My third image represents the average college student. Each college student at certain point in the semester goes through a time where they feel like giving up because the work becomes overwhelming. As a college student I sometimes wonder if this is all going to be worth the stress and hard work. Trying to balance extra curricular activities, classes, and work is a lot for someone to handle, so being stressed out and overwhelmed is a natural feeling.
The fourth image is a simple
According to Lupien, McEwan, Gunnar, and Heim (2009), going off to college involves significant adjustments to their daily routines; sleeping and eating habits, time-management skills, and stress levels will be altered in one way or another. First-year students have to adjust to the new school environment, different social settings, and new schedules, all without the help and guidance from their parents, who have been there for them for eighteen years. Over 30% of college freshman report that they feel overwhelmed (Klainberg, Ewing, & Ryan, 2010), where some students even opt to work as they juggle their class and work schedules. Some students work at a job or study harder than others, but they are all trying to get degrees so maybe one day they will have meaningful and significant lives. It is a constant struggle for everyone who is trying desperately to make him or herself into a success. And every college student wants to be involved in society in a positive manner, allowing contribution of their ideals and values to others.
In “ College Pressures,” William Zinsser discusses four types of pressures college students go through. Even though he wrote this in 1978, college students today still experience all four of the pressures. The four pressures Zinsser discusses are economic, parental, peer, and self-induced. Today’s college students are becoming more and more disconnected with their passions and are being thrown into the world of practicality. College should be a place of experimentation and discovery, but instead it’s turned into feelings of stress and fear. students are becoming overwhelmed and stressed with the same “economic pressure, parental pressure, peer pressure and self-induced pressure” Zinsser speaks of in his essay. College students today undergo even more then the college students from Zinssers ' time.
Attention-getter: How much money have you spent just this year alone on college? Hold on now, did you include all the fees? Living expenses? Your meal plan? Obvioulsy the answer is going to be in the upwards of thousands of dollars. Depressing, I know! College should be a time where you are truly discovering who you are and what you want to do with your life. It shouldn’t be about how you’re slowly but surely giving your life away to student loans. Oh yes, student loans, the mortal enemy of any college student. The college tuition alone is already high enough to put you in debt with student loans for a majority of your life. There are many things that factor into the price of a college education, some reasonable, others however, are a different story. Today, I want to talk to you about the scam that is going on concerning the price of college textbooks. An interesting statistic by The Huffington Post tells us that the cost of college textbooks has increased 253% faster than the cost of college tuition over the decade. How come college textbooks are so expensive? And what can we do to stop this? Well let’s get into it shall we.
College pressures dominate our lives. They begin to levitate around us and slowly derail our lives. William Zinsser elaborates about the college pressures that modern generations are facing. He reveals multiple commonalities that the typical college student encounters on a daily basis. Zinsser states, “They want a map-right now-that they can follow unswervingly to career security, financial security, social security, and presumably, a prepaid grave” (12). He is spot on, the pressures demand my attention and won’t take no for an answer. So far I’ve gone head to head with these pressures every day since I started my freshman year in college. For the time that I’ve been here, my mind is overwhelmed and distraught with the amount of stress that gets piled on top of me every single day. I drown in these unrealistic expectations written in those faulty suggestion bars about how to be successful in college and college 101 tips. College pressures surround me like a dull gray cloud. It showers me with expectations and unfinished checklists. College itself is similar to carpooling to hell and back, but with no actual guarantee with a ride back.
I. ATTENTION GETTER: Ian Ayres, a professor at Yale Law School mentioned in The New York Times how textbooks and school supplies account to 26% of all student fees in State Universities and in Junior colleges it is about a 72%. Just how much money do we have to put in textbooks in order to get an education.
The Cost of College Textbooks Today, there is a significant number of people financially unstable and unable to attend college due to the high expenses. Although junior colleges and universities need money to operate, students are struggling to pay for college textbooks because they are extremely expensive. There are loans and grants students can apply for, but getting textbooks is a necessity at the beginning of each semester and students cannot wait for the loans to come in. This abhorrent pricing Murray State College is extensively enforcing is only forcing college students who are trying to better themselves into a downward spiral resulting in a tornado of stress, money loss, and self-deprecation, which can be prevented.
“The Campus Beautiful” is a phrase coined to describe the plan that has been implemented to sustain Eastern’s campus, community, and classrooms. Goals set within the plan impact students learning and living atmosphere and can be greatly influenced by their decisions. The initiative lead by University President Michael Benson ensures environmental prosperity and sustainability. Eastern Kentucky University’s campus is changing, and students are witnessing their school shift in real time.
With the increasing trend of students attending college after high school, the number of college students are increasing rapidly as well as expectations to do well in every aspect of it. In the article by Amy Yao “Never Let Them See You Sweat: The Myth of Effortless Perfection”, she describes how students are being put more and more pressure to be “perfect” in all aspects that are important in college, especially females. Her claims and use of quotes bring about a perspective of how students may be overworked by the many complicated aspects that go into being a successful student, but it can be looked at with a new perspective of stress builds character.
In today’s society, there is a stigma that one needs a college education to be successful. Due to these overwhelming societal pressures, college students encounter numerous challenges. Two authors who explore these challenges are William Zinsser in his article “College Pressures” and Eric Greiten in his book “The Heart and the Fist”. Both Zinsser and Greitens consider the everyday struggles that college students face. While discussing the same topics, the authors use different writing styles and techniques to illustrate the same idea.
Being a non-traditional college student is hard for anyone, for someone who gets anxious easily it can be even harder. I remember my first day of college, I had spent the previous week sick and could barely talk because I still had a lingering cough. Pacing back and forth at home, I contemplated if it was too late to back out and quit school before I had even started. I changed my clothes several times and thought about giving up so much that I was nearly late to my first class. Additionally, in all the excitement I only took the time to know when my classes started and not where they were actually held. I had no idea why I was even here.
One of the main reasons why college textbooks are so expensive is because they are overpriced. The publishers set the prices. The bookstore has no control. The publishers of the textbooks are in the habit of bringing new editions quite frequently. Most students hesitate to buy old editions fearing that they will miss out on
Over the course of the past three years, I have easily spent over $1500 for textbooks alone. With college students on average taking out $20,000 loans to pay for college, the added expense of textbooks should not be so overwhelming. (Perry) Some new books can easily cost over $300 and used books are not much cheaper. With book stores reselling used textbooks for a very large mark-up, the used textbook to a student is still expensive as well. (McDuling)
Attention Getter: How many of you have said that there are too many options? Whether you are talking about choosing a college, class selection once you get to college, or even something as simple as choosing what to eat for dinner tonight. If you made a choice on what career field you will enter after college, you come to find out that there are many a lot of choices for classes to take. Or there may be too many prerequisites to take before you can begin your classes for your choice of major. And if you are like me, you have no idea what you want to do and in this case, there are more options than you can count. Today we are going to talk about the stressors that come along with being a college student. Once we identify all the stressors or the most important and most affective, we will then discuss how to reduce and omit them to help make your choices easier.
With an increased demand for skilled labors, many students nowadays find themselves needing to complete some form of higher education at college to ensure their success in the workplace and their future career goals. Although freshmen students often enter college with high expectations and ambitions, many eventually drop out of college. Why does that happen? In an ever-changing and more competitive environment, the demanding expectations on college students now soar at unprecedented heights, creating stressful and unpleasant experiences for many of them as they try to keep up with all the burdens inflicted upon them. In their writings, Dr. Christine B. Whelan, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Alan Schwartz, and Nisha Ramachandran explore and illustrate some of the stress-creating challenges that freshmen struggle with today. Even though many factors contribute to the huge list of problems for first-year students, many of the problems that create stress for college freshmen fall under the categories of academic factors, (what adverb to add) teachers, and personal-life conflicts.
In college life, students face many pressures. One of my biggest stressors was keeping my student scholarship. After coming in to college with a 3.3 grade point average, I knew that keeping a 3.0 in college, for my scholarship, was going to be a challenge that I had not yet experienced. This caused me to work even harder and sometimes even too hard. The scholarship played a large factor in choosing Baldwin Wallace as my school of choice, so retaining my reward is of the utmost importance to both me personally, and my parents financially. As I began classes I realized that the work load seemed a lot larger than high school, and sometimes as if it were never going to end. I soon realized how to balance my time between school work and making grades, as well as meeting new people and having fun. There are many enjoyable things that make college the great experience it has been so far, so finding an equilibrium of hard work and good times has been one the best new attributes I have