The Pressure of Being a College Student

              College students do club activities, have a part-time job, and learn many things. Thus, they seem to enjoy their life. However, at the same time, they have the pressures of being a student. College students can have pressures of learning, managing their money, and balancing their lifestyle.

              Many college students get confused about the difference of learning style between high school and university. First, they are sometimes assigned a lot of difficult reports and paragraphs in a university. It is hard for students to write reports because students did not used to write before. Second, university students learn much more difficult things than high school students do. In a university, they learn technical things, so they find classes difficult. For instance, professors tell students many technical terms in some classes, so students often think these terms are complicated. Third, college students need to change their learning style. When they were high school students, their teachers might always answer their questions and they memorized it. But in a university, they often write reports and papers by going to a library or reading some literature by themselves. Moreover, some of their questions have no answers; therefore, they need to research in order to answer the questions.

              College students suffer not only from academic problems but also from financial problems. First of all, they manage money by themselves. Some students go out on their own, so they must be independent. For example, they pay their apartment rent, food expenses, and so on. Then, because of high schooling expenses, they need to save money, have a part-time job, and receive a scholarship. In Japan, the tuition fee at a national university is about 8,200 dollars in the first year. It is very expensive, so some people cannot live without working. For this reason, some people have part-time jobs in two or more places. In many cases, those who receive a scholarship should pay back a scholarship in the future. Thus, they have little money for pleasure.

              When college students entered a university, their lifestyle changed completely. Some students live alone, share a room with their friends, or live in a dormitory because their house is far from a university. Therefore, these students should cook and wash dishes and clothes all by themselves. It sometimes leads to irregular diet. For instance, they can eat three times a day at their home appropriately; however, they may not eat properly because they do not bother to cook, or don’t have enough money or time. Besides, when college students get sick, their parents cannot help us. Thus, they ask their friend to take them to a hospital or go to a hospital by themselves. They cannot depend on their parents whom they depended on; also, they should be independent from their parents. At first, some students cannot adjust to their independent life, for they feel such new lifestyle is not comfortable.

In conclusion, college students feel several kinds of pressure of being a student, which are difficulties of studying in a university, the inexperience of money management, and the inconvenience of new life. But they will make every effort to push aside the pressure, and enjoy their college life.(Akari Ura)