College Pressure at Lehigh University Essay

In †College Pressures†, author William Zinsser spends most of the time talking about students’ pressures, especially in the 60’s and 70’s, based on his experience at Branford College at Yale University. The article shows that students are facing pressures in lots of aspects, such as economic, parental, peer and self-induced aspects. However, these pressures are not rare in just a few universities. Economic pressure, parental pressure and peer pressure is present even in a prestigious university like Lehigh. Pressure is the new disease that is spreading through many universities and causing students to lose sight of the actual purpose of school by focusing only on test scores. To begin with, the tuition of Lehigh University increases each year, student’s economic pressure goes up as well. Since students don’t earn too much money, they have to plan each use of money carefully. For instance, in order to save money, students buy e-books instead of textbooks, buy things on Amazon, and sell things they don’t use anymore on E-bay. They have to save money for pursuing higher degrees later. It seems that the biggest pressure most students confront is the economic pressure. As Zinsser mentioned in the article, â€Å"The pressure is almost as heavy on students who just want to graduate and get a job.† (Zinsser, 1979, p.73) For international students, parents pay a lot for their children to study abroad because they want them to get a better education and thus lay a good foundation for their future. Studying in America costs lots of money, therefore, students have more pressure and push themselves to study harder. Additionally, competition for jobs and internships actually starts from freshman year. Chuxin, one of my friends at Lehigh University, goes to career services frequently to seek internships. I asked her why, and she said its better for us to care about our career since freshman year. Through internships, we can gain experiences for when we are looking jobs after graduation and add some excellent items to our resume as well. This obsession with getting a job as soon as possible is due to the desire to lower the economic pressure on the family of student. Moreover students have to face reality and make the best decision for their major and future direction. Sometimes a secure job is much more important than personal interest. As an international student in Lehigh University, I sometimes questioned myself about my purpose of studying abroad. Since seeking for good jobs has been a cruel race for undergraduate students in recent decades, pursuing higher GPA in college has truly stressed them out. Secondly, the parental pressure is another factor that is causing students much distress. One simple example, comparing their children to other children is one favorite way for parents to encourage their children, but this behavior sometimes can annoy children. Even though sometimes parents don’t intend to push their children, the children feel even more pressure. Parents work hard to pay for their sons and daughters; therefore, students should work harder to repay them. Take me as an example. When I was young, my parents divorced, eventually, my mother became a businesswoman and raised me up all by herself. I exert myself to get good grades so that I can return what she offered me one day. Hence, when getting bad grades on examinations, I feel sad and blame myself because I disappointed her, and because of my uselessness. For this reason, when I get bad grades, it will always be a long time for me to refresh the emotion. Furthermore, parents like to make choice, which in their mind, that considering the best for children’s future. My cousin, dreams to be an engineer, applied Lehigh University. Instead, however, her mother wants her to be a doctor because doctor has high social status, respected by others, and earns higher salary. She was matriculated by Case Western University already, which is good at medicine, but she is still waiting for the result of Lehigh University. She told me that she’s nervous because she doesn’t want to be a doctor at all. This creates the scenario in the article, where Zinsser said: â€Å"It is easy to look around for villains — to blame the colleges for charging too much money, the professors for assigning too much work, the parents for pushing their children too far, and the students for driving themselves too hard. But there are no villains, only victims. †(1979, p.73) Not only do students have to worry about parental pressure they are also concerned with peer pressure. From what I observed, half of students come with AP credits. I was once proud of m yself because of the superiority 14 credits in AP. Recently, however, I know that two of my friends already have 36 and 37 credits, and a few have more. One of my friends said to me †Hurry up, then we can graduate together!† I feel so nervous because everyone pursuits the higher-level academic performance and I stressed out because of the drastic competition. About 70 percent of my friends will go to summer school in the coming break, either in China or at Lehigh University. It seems that graduating in four years can’t satisfy us anymore; only if we study harder can we chase others’ rate of progress. Since competition among students becomes more severe, it causes peer pressure. Also, students care about each other’s study. One of my friends complains to me that her roommate cares her â€Å"way too much.† Her roommate always asks her where she is heading up to or what she is studying for. When the examination’s grade come out, she asks my friend’s final grade but doesn’t tell my friend hers. This kind of situation happens not rare. Students are interested in compare other’s grade with their own. In order to get greater achievement in study, students have to make the balance between time to study and time to do the activities. One of the students I know, for the sake of pursuing a higher GPA in this semester, has even give up the time for doing sports and participating extracurricular activities and dedicates his time to study to improve his academic performance. From my personal perspective, students will stress out by doing these kinds of things. I have a friend named Kai. He is a sophomore and has double major in mechanical engineering and electrical engineering. He overloads several credits each semester and the most important is that he got a 4.0 GPA in freshman year. Therefore, he becomes the â€Å"target† for all freshman students. When he walks on the street, some people, even not familiar with him, always stop him and ask him how he handles the study. We once chatted, and he told me he is just interested in engineering and wants to obtain real knowledge. He just does what he likes and is not the kind of person who succeeds by studying hard for tests. While, pressures young people face become universal today. Pressure on students is an â€Å"epidemic† in Lehigh University basically in three reasons: economic pressure, parental pressure and peer pressure. These are pressures that are conspicuously faced by a large number of students, and stress is more likely based on students’ academic study. There are still some other pressures caused by professors, friends or even students themselves. Pressure is not totally bad because it can motivate students to move forward and explore themselves better; nevertheless, students can’t let academic performance dominate their entire campus life, and it’s good for them to relax a little bit; otherwise, students sacrifice their education by becoming skilled test takers rather than truly gaining any knowledge in college. Reference Zinsser, W. (1979). College Pressures. Blair and Ketchum’s Country Journal, 6(4), 72–78.