student sample essay
How Soon Is Too Soon? Have you ever wondered why a student with a 3.0 grade point average in high school would fail out of college his first semester? Maybe it is because he was not ready for the change from being told what to do, to not having anyone telling him what to do. It is a problem that many students face when they leave home and head off for college.
It is a well-known fact that some students are not ready for college right out of high school. Going from first grade all the way through twelfth grade without any breaks, excluding summer, really makes a student burnt out on the whole school thing. One of the best ways to take care of that problem is to delay going to college for a while.
I guess the main thing that bothers me is parents thinking that their child should be going to college right after he or she graduates high school. I think that is one of the biggest mistakes that parents can make. Sending kids to college when they are not prepared means that there is a greater chance that their grades are going to suffer. That would end up being a waste of their parents’ money and the kid’s time.
My view is that parents should support what their kids want to do. We are young and now is the best time to go out, to adventure and live life. My grades were dreadful my first semester of college, so I had to withdraw from all my classes. I think if I had waited a year or two and had done what I wanted first, it would have made me grow and realize what I really want to do. For example, I was going to enlist in the U.S. Army Reserves. I think doing that would have helped me grow and become more responsible. It also would have helped me get money for school. Unfortunately, my parents are very much against my joining the Army. In fact they went so far as to say that if I did enlist they would disown me.
My friend’s parents, on the other hand, are the greatest. They support everything he does within reason. Right now he is at an art institute near Emporia State, but he hates school just as I do, so he was thinking about moving to Colorado or Montana. What he is going to do is work on a ranch for several years or until he saves enough money to buy his own ranch. His parents tried to talk him out of it, but said they would support whatever he decides. They figure he is young, so now is the time to do all the crazy things, before he has to provide for a wife and maybe even children one day. To a certain degree I am very much like my friend. Neither of us can stay in the same place for too long; if we do we start to go crazy. Or maybe it is just that we have not found the right place yet.
After high school many teenagers are eager to head off for college. Not for the school part of the experience but for the partying aspect of it. Kids cannot wait to get away from their parents for the first time. Everybody acts differently. Some get homesick and go back home every weekend, some party the entire time, and then there are the responsible ones who actually study. The college experience can be what that person makes of it. (593)
