The Negative Effects Of Peer Pressure On College Students

As years pass, more and more high school students are continuing their education by going off to college. The importance of earning a college degree is higher than ever. College gives these young adults the opportunity to start a new life and work towards a career of their choice. With this new experience, these students have to learn how to balance their schoolwork, social life, and any other extracurricular activities they are involved with. As a result of this, students start to feel pressure from many places. Economic, parental, peer, and self-induced pressures have been problems faced by college students for many years, but since the late 1970’s, they have only got worse due to tuition rising, students overexerting, the use of

Students are constantly around their peers while away at college. This gives them plenty of time to judge themselves off against what their peers are doing. Zinsser states, in the late 70’s, students would see other students spend long hours in the library, so they would go to the library to study. Also, he said that professors would assign five-page papers, so students would go and write ten-page papers to impress the professor and then the student who actually just did the assignment ended with a worse grade for not going over and beyond. Today, students face the same pressure from their peers, but with the use of social media it just adds more. Some students will post their academic achievements such as making Dean’s list and then other students will see these accomplishments. If they haven’t received these accomplishments, they will work even harder to achieve them or, in some cases, feel like a failure and just give

In most cases, the hardest person on the college student is the college student himself. Zinsser states students view that the “transcript has become a sacred document.” He claims students are putting so much pressure on themselves to get good grades and not worrying about how they appear in person (Zinsser). Today, students put just as much pressure on themselves as before, but with the competitive job market, they have to go above and beyond just earning a degree. Employers are looking for students who have experience in the field through internships, achieved good grades, and extracurricular involvement on and off campus. The job market has just added another reason for students to put pressure on