William Zinsser College Pressures Analysis

Many people imagine the foundation of college as a time for students to be carefree and experience a newfound freedom. In actuality, the majority of students is preparing for exams and overwhelmed in schoolwork. This is a highly stressful period for college students and will therefore undergo a mental illness created by stress. William Zinsser’s essay “College Pressures” focuses on four main pressures faced by Harvard students in 1979. Economic pressure, parental pressure, peer pressure, and self-induced pressure are the pressures students experience as they transition to the college realm and continue to affect college students today. Zinsser was a lifelong journalist, nonfiction writer, and taught writing at Yale University. These major …show more content…
College students that strive to have unlimited intelligence and are planning to transfer to a four-year university or graduate programs are undertaking high levels of chronic stress because of the college admission requirements. William Zinsser mentions, “A is for Admirable and B is for Borderline… and good is no longer good enough, especially for students who hope to go onto law school or medical school’’ exhibits the self-induced stress among students because of the strict academic performance to secure a position into impacted universities (211). Students produce these high rising levels of stress because of the intense amount of pressure to achieve the highest grades on exams, essays, and final grades. Pressure by colleges to attain top scores has created unstoppable levels of self-induced stress among today’s youths. Self-induced students spend a minimum of at least three hours outside of class for every hour in it and stays up till mid hours of the night preparing for exams to receive a grade that impacts their final grade for the quarter or semester. Besides from high-qualified exam scores, essays are also imported into final grades and are required for college admission. College essays results in a paper regarding an assigned topic in a specific course that students stress on, because they spend countless hours adjusting their papers to ensure they …show more content…
Anxiety and depression rates are increasing each year because of the mass stress students are witnessing. Anxiety and depression are different conditions, but commonly occur together. Anxiety illness is a feeling of worry with an uncertain outcome, while depression is an illness that involves the body, mood, and thoughts. Individuals who become depressed have faced a series of anxiety in the past. Anxiety and depression illnesses result in individuals to worry excessively, feeling of sadness, discouragement, hopelessness, and lack of motivation in day-to-day activities. While anxiety and depression affect people throughout the world, college students are suffering from these primary health disorders. Students across the United States that are enrolled in college have become depressed because of self-induced stress to perform academically. They push their abilities to their limited capacity incurring student’s bodies to encounter behavioral changes. Once a student has anxiety or is depressed, their motivation decreases, no longer attends class, and loses responsibility for their success. Henrique’s addresses, “The College Mental Health Crisis”, “A 2013 survey of college students found that 57% of women and 40% of men reported experiencing episodes of “overwhelming anxiety” in the past year” allows students to drop out of college and is a gateway to