I’m sure everyone has heard from friends or family that during college, you have a great deal of freedom. So much freedom that you won’t even know what to do with yourself. But I’m starting to see that there are certain aspects of college that are decided or expected. As a result, the things we do are not our personal choices. For example, in terms of classes, we have no control over what time and days of the week classes are scheduled, the building your class is in, who is teaching the class and how they teach that class, the books you purchase for that class, the workload, and deadlines. Because we are conditioned by our parents to do really well in school and work hard for a better future, we oblige to these factors. The pressure to do well in school from them and ourselves hinders the freedom we supposedly have in college. We may not want to do that ten-page paper, but we comply anyways because not doing it means a bad grade (i.e. a zero). And bad grades are deemed as unacceptable and do not fit into the way we were conditioned by our parents. So we take every bit of power to get through that paper.
Additionally, one of the other freedoms in college is the lack of curfew. You can stay out and go to bed whenever you want, right? Although you might like to stay up to 3 a.m. every night watching TV or drinking, you probably won’t because you have class the next day. In order to participate to the best of your abilities and do well in class, you need to be sober and attentive. Not every aspect of college provides freedom but even if it did it wouldn't matter; the external pressures we face prevent us from committing the personal choices.
I think it's interesting that we are presented with al of these freedoms but because of the way we were brought up and because of our sense of responsibility they become limited. We respect our professors and want to do well, and while we may want to stay up or go to a particular party, sometimes we just cannot if we want to get everything done. Which brings up another point, where is the freedom with all of this work??
ReplyDeleteThis is all true, but it's still more freedom than we had in high school. We can eat lunch when we want, leave campus between classes if there's time, and we have more say in what classes we take. There's also more freedom in the sense that the students are all adults, and so classes can include material that has more adult themes. Plus, we don't need to get things signed by our parents.
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