Biology

As I graduated high school, I thought college would just be yet another four years of high school, and I was wrong. College opens many new doors in a young man or woman’s life. There are new responsibilities and pressures that you will have to deal with, and with more freedom these responsibilities and pressures can be difficult to handle. College has changed a great deal over the years and these changes, such as more freedoms, make college a much more challenging experience. You need to start preparing for college now by making yourself more responsible and having more self-control. Although you think college is merely partying with easy classes on the side, I have experienced pressures and work loads that make the experience challenging and time consuming.

The college experience has changed since our parents’ time. My father, Joe Pease insists: “When I was in school, there was no real college experience. I went to the cheapest school because I had to pay for it. No partying, just studying” (1). During our parents’ time, paying for school was the biggest pressure. My father had to work two jobs all throughout his college career just to pay for his schooling. The College Student Journal declares that the biggest pressures of today are change in sleeping habits, vacations/breaks, change in eating habits, new responsibilities, and increased class workload (3). Another large difference between colleges now and then is that as time goes by we get more and more concerned about how well our majors will pay. William Zinsser, a dean of students at Yale University, states that students during the sixties

Pease 2

wanted a map of their lives. They did not ever want to think they would change jobs. They want to know what is going to happen in their lives till they get to their prepaid grave (292). Zinsser believes that students need to stop worrying so much about the pay of their jobs. He wants students to study the subject that interests them, not which career pays the most. There is definitely one unifying aspect that is the same between college now and then and that is there are pressures.

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 learned to make a part of my studies.

I am sure that your ideas of what college will be like are very similar to what mine were when I graduated high school.