Summary Of College Pressures

By William Zinsser

William Zinsser, a famous writer, journalist and a master at Yale, published an article in 1979 which spoke of the pressures that students faced. Zinsser believes that students should realize that there is no one right way to a successful life and that ''the road'' ahead is swirly and long. Though his article was written in the late 70's and was primarily focused on the situation of the time, as a freshman at Columbia University today I cannot help but feel the same, if not bigger struggles of which he speaks. In his essay ''College Pressures'' William Zinsser discusses the pressures American society puts on college students. Zinsser uses a metaphor of the road through life, stating that students want a straight path to security, which he perceives as death, instead of allowing themselves to take chances, to fail and to grow. According to his essay there are four pressures students encounter: ''economic'', ''parental'', ''peer'' and ''self–induced''. He claims the first two are intertwined as parents are usually the economic support of the student and have dreams of what their child should study. As well, William states that peer and self–induced pressure are intertwined, as students fear their peers might be working harder than them and therefore overstress themselves and do more than is assigned. The author tells us that this generation of students is raised in fear and obsession for success. He asserts that the students must break their ''parents' dreams'' and their ''classmates' fears'' and must believe in themselves. As a legendary American writer, critic and professor, Zinsser'swriting through the essay expertly and empathetically speaks of students and their anxiety which is induced by their society and themselves. He opens the essay by confusing the reader, some notes written to ''Carlos'', but who is writing them? He then immediately explains that it is the students haplessly writing to their dean. The essay further moves smoothly and in a straight forward manner. He argues logically and with clarity so that not only a professor would understand his point of view, but a parent and a student should be able to apprehend. The information given to us is accurate for the time he was writing

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The essay College Pressures was written by William Zinsser. College Pressures was published in April of 1979 in Blair and Ketchum's Country Journal. The main focus in this essay is about the pressure that is put on college students. Zinsser breaks down the college pressure into four different kinds of pressure that is put onto the students. The four pressures that Zinsser describes are economic pressure, parental pressure, peer pressure, and self–induced pressure. The first pressure talked about in the essay is economic pressure. The way economic pressure is described in the essay is that college students feel the need to get good grades in order to makes a successful career. Every year the cost of college is rising. Since the cost of college...show more content...

Parents want their children to have a successful career, so they feel obligated to choose a career path that will do just that. Parent tend to want to send their kids to college to obtain a medical degree, law degree, or business degree because they want them to make a lot of money and not ever have to worry about debt. When a parent chooses a career path for their kid, it puts a lot of pressure on him or her because they want to make their parents happy or have them pay for their college. So, this leaves the students not enjoying the classes they are taking or the college experience because they are doing what mom and dad want them to do. The third pressure is peer pressure. Peer pressure makes the students compete with each other for the number one spot in the class with the highest grade. From the students working so hard, they do more than what is expected for the assignments. Once most student continue to over exceed on assignments, the students just doing the original assignment don't get the grade they deserve, so they begin to have to work harder to bring their grade up. The students are over run by grades and feel they need to do better than their other

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