College Pressures

A Recipe for Dangerous Behavior
In the United States, college is a journey that can teach students some of the most important lessons that they will carry throughout their lives. Author William Zinsser write in his essay “ College Pressures ” that students can face a wide variety of pressures like parental, economical to even the most common type, self induced pressure. Although college is supposed to help students develop as individual people, they are placed into an environment that is extremely competitive when it comes to over all grades. This creates students that torture themselves over the grade places on their transcript and can increase the need for some students to look for an escape. Also, this type of self induced pressure can lead a student to make negative health choices. With these ingredients mixed together, self induced college pressures can influence students to make bad decisions. The overwhelming self induced pressure to get good grades affects students in a way that they make choices that negatively impact their health and well being. Zinsser states, “long gone are the days of a “gentleman’s C” ‘(452). Nowadays, students think that getting a “C” is equivalent to failing. Not only do they want to succeed but this pressure has cause some students to look for a way to gain an edge by using illegal prescription drugs that allow them to study for hours on end. Ritalin is one of the most common drugs used to gain this advantage. Vitamin “K” as it’s called is a drug that increases alertness and concentration in people with attention deficit disorder when it’s prescribed by a doctor. There is an alarming and increasing trend in the use of this drug across college campuses in the United States. According to professor and researcher Allan Desantis of the University of Kentucky, forty five percent of students interviewed at that campus stated that they use or have used Ritalin without a prescription to study long hours before a test. The long term affects, as stated by Allen Desantis, can lead to irregular heartbeat, cardiac arrhythmia and psychosis. This type of illegal use of Ritalin is dangerous not only due to its health affects but it gives a false edge that can lead students to be dependent on its use even when they get into the public work force.
The pressure student’s face from their studies demands an escape from time to time. For most students, this escape is found in socializing. Zinsser states “. . . they (students) are no introverts” (455). College life demands that students be social beings. What a better place than a university or college campus! For most students, college is the first time they are away from home or the first time they are left to make their own decision in the real world. This type of absence of authority gives students a false sense of freedom to do as they like. When the stress from their studies starts to build up, alcohol is one of the easiest drugs to use as an escape. It is very rare that you find a college party with no alcohol thus students are more likely to drink when socializing. According to the Core Institute, seventy percent of college student between the ages of eighteen and twenty four have reported to be binge drinkers. Since there is no type of authority present, the exercise of self control when it comes to drinking can be very minimal and leads to this excessive use of alcohol. Heavy drinking cause students better judgment to be impaired. In California alone, 1,825 students were injured in 2013 from traffic related accidents according to the national highway traffic safety association. Students need to be educated about the dangers of alcohol. For most students, college can be some the most memorable times in their lives. The self induced pressures that they create can ruin this by influencing them to make bad decisions. Not only do students over worry about their grade but they are forced by this worry and stress to look for an escape.
Alcohol and prescription drugs are some of the dangerous remedies they turn to for relief. There need to be some type of education that teaches them about the dangers of using these drugs.