Making Connections 1

The biggest mixed message in college is individuality. Yes, college is a place to find yourself and shape yourself into who you want to be, but there is also a huge push to conform. Right from day one, you are put in a room with (in my case) a complete stranger. Within weeks you are saying things that they would say and you both have conformed into hybrids of each other, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. Peer pressure can also cause conformity and the most prominent form of college peer pressure involves drinking. We learn that the safest option is to not drink, but shouldn't we learn how to drink responsibly? It is almost inevitable in college. In health class we learn the alcohol content of different drinks, but in college the peer pressure to drink can often be more problematic than the drinks themselves. Sure, we learn about how we should resist peer pressure, but the topic seems to be focused more on middle school age students and tobacco. Like Meghan Daum states in her first paragraph, we don't learn enough about college in health class, even though it can be one of the most dangerous times in our young lives, as 1,400 students die annually from drinking (Sink 50). We don't often think about how influential peer pressure is in college and before you know it you are the "typical" college student. When we are transitioning from high school to college, we are told its a time to reinvent ourselves, but we aren't told that we will be forced to reinvent ourselves. College changes you whether you want it to or not.

Earning and Learning: Are Students Working Too Much?

This chapter is about how students are working more than ever. Whether is be full time or part time students or full time or part time jobs, college students are working more for many reasons. These reasons are due to a higher tuition rate, less grants, reducing loans and just having extra money to live off of. The article also stresses that maybe college kids are working too much and it's taking away from many of them excelling in college. I think Kramer is right to blame high tuition, lower grants and large loans to students working. I was excepted into nine colleges and SUNY Plattsburgh was the only affordable one for me. Even with  lot of financial aid, schools like Nazareth were close to $40,000 and even with a $54,000 scholarship to Adelphi I would still have to pay $12,000 a year. To me that was insane and had I chose one of those universities, I would have had to work. Thankfully I only needed small loans for college, but I have friends here that do have jobs. They seem to not have a lot of free time between work and studying and I'm sure like Kramer states "student with substantial work obligations may not be able to "fit in": study groups". It horrible that students pay money to go to college, but can't reach their true potential due to the ridiculous prices at universities across the country.