PRESSURE OF A COLLEGE STUDENT

Pressure Of A College Student

Pressure Of A College Student

Thesis Statement

Presence of many factors can cause stress to college students.

Introduction

Student pressure in today's educational system comes from many different sources. These types of educational pressures can come from family, friends, work, extra-curricular activities and even yourself. People can succeed or fail in today's educational system depending on how each person takes the pressure. Some take it as a motive to get better grades, and some take it as means of life or death. Pressure can be very dangerous to one's physical and mental state.

Analysis

Family pressure usually comes from the parents. Parents pressure their children to get good grades just to see their children have a bright future. Pressure put on children by parents is used to help children, but instead it just hurts them. Parents can sometimes give children the idea that achieving is more important than anything in life. William Zinsser who wrote “College Pressure” says, “They are caught in one of the oldest webs of love and duty and guilt”. Parents would much rather steer their children towards a career of high pay yet children would rather major in a career they like (Wechsler et al, 2002). Parents think that by paying for courses that teach their children how to make money or a profession where they are paid high that their children will never have to worry about their economical state. The pressure on students is severe. They are truly torn. One part of them feels obligated to fulfill their parents' expectations; after all, their parents are older and presumably wiser. Another part tells them that the expectations that are right for their parents are not right for them (Vleeming & Engelse, 1981).

Parents never seem to see the danger of the pressures put on children. It hurts the child's mental state by making them feel like a failure when they fail at an exam. Children feel unloved by their parents when they fail anything at school. Pressure can hurt a child's physical state because children exhaust themselves studying for exams. For instance, a student may spend up to two straight days studying for a comprehensive final in college (Turner et al, 1978). In this instance, students sometimes go to sleep around two or three o'clock in the morning studying for this exam, which in turn, gets them exhausted. Parental pressure can sometimes make a student's life hard when they are at the same time pressured by their peers. Parents can also place pressure on their children even when praising their good grades and efforts. For instance, when a student does extremely well in one subject, the parent become happy and praises the student (Tomarelli & Shaffer, 1985). However if the student is doing poorly on another subject but he/she is just afraid to tell his/her parents because it might make them upset. Parent's pressure can also be deadly. According, to a Penn State study female university students with mothers who are expecting ...