A Student's Perspective
By: Rebecca Blakeney, Nicholas Boulton,
Jamie McDonald and Lexi Cucchiara
College is the highest form of education. People go to learn a skill or trade that can be applied toward specific occupations within the career field. Apart from learning the material, students also learn how to work with each other in groups. It is important to communicate with members of the group so that an individual is able to successfully contribute to a project. Their are many ways for students to stay in contact. Students usually prefer to meet each other in person, however, technology provides alternative ways to communicate. Using the different forms of communication, students become aware of the technology that is used within the working world. As college students we do not have the luxury to gradually emerge into a world that is much more real than our limited experience has seen through high school. We are violently thrust into the hustle and bustle of the real world, and what was once a carefully planed school year with a teacher defined agenda each week is now a continuously streaming list of demands, not just from our instructors, but from everywhere. The expectations placed on a college student can be intimidating, if not overwhelming. Of course there are expectations from each instructor for each class, but there is also the school as a whole to consider, you must meet its expectations of certain grades to continue attending. Many of us must also consider the expectations of our parents, whether we are independent or not, our parents look for us to do well and often hold an even higher expectation of us then the school’s minimum demand for grades. For many of us we also have family demands like helping the family, raising children, and attending family functions. Just being part of a family can be demanding in and of itself. Also we all have expectations and goals for our selves and we can be our own harshest critic and be more demanding than any other. Stepping into college life, the demands are not just on grades, but there are also many different social demands. To achieve the well rounded education that every adviser speaks of, one must also include in their schedules things like clubs, school spirit, friends, and volunteering. Each of which comes with its very own set of demands. Many of us also must work while we are in college, which places even more demands on us and takes away even more of our precious time.
With all of these demands placed on us it is hard to know where to start. We must learn how to manage our time. Just how much time are we to allow our selves for homework, studying, projects and papers, chores and house work, our friends, our club obligations, our community and free time (which can be just as important to the overworked college student)? All of this and still find a few hours to sleep at night! Especially at first, all of this can be tricky and seem almost impossible. We learn how to sneak studying in between classes, or while waiting for the bus. We become very productive in small slices of time and use up every minute. But in the end it seems inevitable that we must also learn to sacrifice. We have to find various things to sacrifice to make the time management work and be able to fulfill all of the expectations placed on us, and even then, we must realize that sometimes we may have to sacrifice some expectations to be able to fulfill other more important expectations.
As the college student goes through the semesters, he or she finds a routine and a way to manage the demands placed on them. After the practice of all of their completed semesters, by the end of it all, the successful college student has learned how to manage the multitude of demands that their college career and life has placed on them. Because the college student has learned how to manage a number of these demanding expectations, and has learned what they can afford to sacrifice, they are much better equipped to handle these same sorts of things in life after college. Because they have been exposed to such a grueling, demanding system, they are prepared and will be able to be successful in the real world.
As the college student goes through the semesters, he or she finds a routine and a way to manage the demands placed on them. After the practice of all of their completed semesters, by the end of it all, the successful college student has learned how to manage the multitude of demands that their college career and life has placed on them. Because the college student has learned how to manage a number of these demanding expectations, and has learned what they can afford to sacrifice, they are much better equipped to handle these same sorts of things in life after college. Because they have been exposed to such a grueling, demanding system, they are prepared and will be able to be successful in the real world.
With all of this said, there are many different aspects of a student’s college years that directly translate to their family life after graduation. The most common of these aspects include time management, communication, and organization skills. Academic rigor throughout a student’s college years forces these principles into their lives. Time management is the key to any student’s success, as well as that of a functioning family. Many students are focused on much more than just academics during this phase of life, whether that may include sports, Greek life, or any common social event, all of this contributes their busyness. This busyness is a contributing factor to becoming prepared for a family, thus time management is crucial. Organization skills and communication go hand in hand regarding preparedness for family life. These traits have been instilled in the lives of many college students, in order for them to function appropriately in society.
Through the process of education, we tend to become stressed out, confused, lost, and frustrated. Professors do not always help with the situation and we, as students, begin to feel like they are all coming together and conspiring against us piling on the work, all at one time. A college education should ideally help us find ourselves. Now if we pay attention to the metaphor of "finding ourselves," we notice that finding oneself involves first losing oneself. The choice that many college students make to escape the pressures of academic life include losing themselves in books, magazines, and movies –literary and artistic worlds –which actually helps us find ourselves like a mini vacation get away. Lost in a book, we may identify with a character because their life seems ideal or their situations are more interesting. We feel the need to become them, or walk beside them as they carry on with their lives/journeys. In some ways this can help to make some of our own irritation or pain float away. As students, we tend to overwhelm ourselves and easily become over-stressed. Eric Hoffer, a classical author, said "We feel free when we escape - even if it be but from the frying pan to the fire."1 He is absolutely right. In our society we find it necessary to escape the reality we call life. We often feel a need to find a life outside of our own to make our situation bearable or to merely entertain us.
What people fail to realize is how often they depend on this escape, and how much they start to believe the words on the pages to be true and just. Escaping one’s own reality, even if only for a moment, is alright, as long as it is done with a clear mind, because we often relate to books and characters based on our own lives and situations. People should remember that fiction is not as messy as real life. It is an ordered world created by an author, designed to provoke specific thoughts and emotions from the reader. Hopefully, it will help us understand features of our own worlds and our own choices more clearly than before. The typical “happily ever after” is a hoax, often giving females a false sense of hope and complete happiness, without problems and struggles. Fairy tales are only one outlet of literature people may escape to. Some prefer murder mysteries with their constant curiosities of the presently unknown, or the autobiographical/biographical stories that pull at ones heart strings. However, these stories are often unhelpful and are mistaken for reality. One of our greatest presidents said, “You cannot escape the responsibility of tomorrow by evading it today." (Abraham Lincoln)1. In a way, this means people cannot just forget life as we know it; we have to deal with the situations life gives us, regardless of what that may be, and work with our situations, to resolve them, or push forward and live the way they were intended to be lived.
As people, we are taught to think critically, which forces us to realistically think about our own situations in regards to how that may or may not add to us in the future. Without literature, people would not be the same; it provides us with a temporary escape in order to give us a fresh perspective that we can apply to our own lives, creating within us a new perspective and sense of purpose. People need to believe in something, life is too hard to live without something to hold on to.
As people, we are taught to think critically, which forces us to realistically think about our own situations in regards to how that may or may not add to us in the future. Without literature, people would not be the same; it provides us with a temporary escape in order to give us a fresh perspective that we can apply to our own lives, creating within us a new perspective and sense of purpose. People need to believe in something, life is too hard to live without something to hold on to.