Category: College Days

Nearly every human feels the need to seek happiness in the most effortless way possible. If humans find true meaning, they can tolerate more than those who do not have a reason. Having true happiness can also bring good health to one’s body. Only the person will be able to determine his or her happiness. The degree of happiness within young first-year community college students is something that can be achieved with effort. In 2018 the state of Tennessee had 30,442 new first-time community college students (‘General Enrollment’). Many of these students were faced with challenges; a domain characteristic of these challenges is being stressed. The problems that these students endure can be cured with happiness. Happiness can be established through three different ways: finding a meaning, stop complaining about simple problems, and knowing that happiness is not always easy to pursue.

First-year community college students face many obstacles within the path to get a degree. A common belief is that one’s college years are the best in life; however, studies have shown that student’s first year of classes are excruciating (Varelas). Professors are running into a major problem with new incoming students; evidence indicates that students are “underprepared in basic skills needed to succeed” (Varelas). If students come into college unprepared, they are going to have a hard time with the materials. First-year community college students also struggle with a lack of time management skills. Time management is a major key to success; it is learning “how to intertwine college with real life” (Cornell). If time management is not mastered within the first year, then grades can be negatively affected which can lead to a hard time passing. Another dilemma first-year students must navigate is alcohol and drug consumption. With college being a place where alcohol and drugs are easier to obtain, the chance and opportunity to engage with this activity will be more likely to occur. Recent research shows students are likely to consume alcohol and drugs within the first 6 months (Kenney). The obstacles first-year students face propels them into a strained lifestyle.

To begin with, first-year community college students can obtain happiness by finding true meaning in life. When one starts community college classes, one begins with a specific purpose and has a defined goal to achieve. While executing this goal, some may get lost within the heavy workload and the long hours spent involved at the institution. Viktor Frankl, a holocaust survivor, expresses there was one specific characteristic that differentiated those who survived and those that did not: how much meaning they have in their lives (Smith). He observed that those who derived meaning from life can withstand more hardships than those who cannot (Smith). One way to derive meaning from life is to find purpose. Having a set meaning for pursuing a college degree is a crucial key to success.

Another concept that can make first-year community college students happier is realizing that it is the journey itself where one derives happiness, not the achievement of the goal. This is the mindset of taking time and making sure one gives the best performance one can instead of rushing. For example, students should not rush through homework because if they do, they may not learn what they need to. Emphasizes on the journey is everything: “Happiness will not come from achieving a goal; it comes from the deed of making advancements towards a goal” (Myers). Taking the harder way to achieve a goal displays that one does not have a fixed mindset. The definition of a fixed mindset is the belief that one is unable to learn any more than one already knows. The opposite of having a fixed mindset would be having a growth mindset; a growth mindset is when one is open to learning new things. “They treat themselves with a degree of compassion that enables them to continue pursuing goals and thus achieve happiness” (Myers). Assuming that all first-year community college students have a growth mindset and believe the hardest path is the best to pursue issues this will assure them to have a happier experience

Lastly, first-year community college students can obtain happiness is to not complain about a slight issue faced. When one is complaining it tends to bring people down around them; thus making no one happy in the situation. If these students turned the situation around and found the good within it, then it will lead to happier times. “By thinking negatively about a specific topic, it can lead to thinking pessimistically about other things” (Stillman). If one has a positive outlook during their first year then they are more likely to see the happier side of situations throughout the rest of the time within the college.

In conclusion, first-year community college students may not see a way of being happy; however, it is possible to be happy during this dense period. First-year students are stressing and struggling with college-related issues, but the ways provided are a solution on how to be a happier individual. As being a first-year community college student, I feel extremely connected to all the issues mentioned and having a constant feeling of being stressed. Being in the situation of a first-year community college student, one must realize that there is a light at the end of the tunnel which will lead to happiness. However, with the three ways of finding a mean, taking the longer path, and stop complaining. I believe happiness can pursue the stressful environment of being a first-year community college student. Struggling will be worth working hard to achieve the end goal.

When students and parents think about college they think of sports, parties, and lots of work but what doesn’t come to mind is not having enough to eat. This is food insecurity. Over 25% of college students are food insecure despite meal plans (Tomar). How does this type of stuff even happen? Students already have enough on their plate between balancing all the work, not to mention income and food. Some people say that schools should do something about this. Other people say this is not the college’s responsibility to feed the students that attend.

Food insecurity is being in a state where you don’t have a reliable food source to get your quality and nutritious food. Food insecurity is seeping into colleges and 36% percent of university students and 42% percent of community college students are food insecure (‘Duffins’). Too many students are not getting three meals a day and are skipping meals because the school has put them in a state of poverty where they can’t afford food on a daily basis. This impacts college students in many different ways and some situations are more severe than others.

Colleges in the past forty years have skyrocketed in price. In the 1970s, private colleges were $1,832 which was better in price compared to today’s extreme price of $31,231 in 2013. The price of public colleges also went up in price from $500 to $9,139 (Tomar). This price is extremely high which leaves many students with crippling debt for many years after college. But this does not cover food or living costs which can be expensive in themselves. Dorm rooms at private schools are on average $10,089 per year (Robert). These prices are too much for a college student to afford who are already struggling to pay these unrealistic prices. On top of these prices, students can buy a meal plan with a range of swipes, which is how many times you can use the card daily to get food. These meal plan prices that have unlimited swipes are $1,850 a semester (Powell). These prices cannot be afforded by every single student. So, what happens to the students that can’t afford a meal plan?

These students must push through the days sometimes without anything to eat. The Article ‘Food, Housing Insecurity’ by Selena Duffin says that “Wisconsin HOPE labs released an online survey if more than 40,000 students at 66 community colleges and universities only to find that 36% of university students and 42% of community college students felt food insecure”. This shows that an overwhelming amount of college students feel food insecure on a daily basis. This impacts college student’s grades and tests which makes it harder for students to graduate because of bad grades. Most students can barely pull this off long enough to earn their degrees. Part of this can be blamed on the high prices of college. In theory, if colleges were not so expensive, students might have money for food and would not run into problems such as food insecurity. Food insecurity heavily affects low-income students who already have little money going into college. These students take a big risk to go to college and get college debts to possibly drop out because they can’t support themselves and buy quality food. Learning on an empty stomach isn’t a part of college and neither is endless amounts of ramen for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Students need nutritious meals to get them through the day.

Some students must make hard decisions on whether to buy a book to study for the class or buy some food. These students must often choose between studying or survival. Some may choose the books, while others choose food. To study for a test or get a job to feed themselves.

A study in the Journal of Nutrition found, for instance, that in a sample of more than 4000 women, food insecurity was a statistically significant predictor of “overweight status. The study found that mildly food insecure participants were a full 30% more likely to be overweight than their food secure counterparts (Tomar). Many students turn to cheap fast food that doesn’t contain much nutritional value. Some students use fast food as a resource but become overweight because of all of the unhealthy components that go into fast food. For many college students, nutrition is simply an unaffordable luxury. Between starving and junk food the choice is quite simple, but it’s not a healthy one.

At this moment in time, we do not have enough data to see if food insecurity is getting better or worse. What we can tell though is the financial safety net is not as supportive as it has been in past years. It’s also hard for students to find well-paying jobs as part-time workers. Juggling school and a part-time job aren’t easy for people so students who can’t hold that massive load of work can’t work. Therefore, their income is limited or nothing which makes obtaining food very difficult.

According to a study done by the university of Cincinnati and North Carolina-Chapel Hill, 14% of women have experienced sexual assault in one way or another, 5% percent of those assaults were physically forced. Yet 11% were done when the person assaulted was incapacitated, incapacitated can mean a lot of things so let us define it, incapacitated is when the person is in a certain mental or physical state that prevents him from defending himself, this can be achieved in a variety of ways, but the most common is sexual battery and it is the unwanted contact with an intimate part of the body for the purpose of arousal, because when the body follows its instincts it goes on autopilot, “One time during sex with a boy…, I told him I didn’t want to go on anymore, and said no several times, he continued to have sex with me. He didn’t physically hold me… like I had lost control…” this was the experience of a female that was victim of sexual assault, this was her instinct kicking in and stopping her from stopping him.

According to the same study mentioned earlier that ~75% of physically forced sexual assaults were done by a former partner or relative ~50% were when the victim is drinking or is at a party, while for incapacitated sexual assaults 80% where when the victim was drinking which is very common with freshmen or 1st year attendees of the college, but on the upside only 3% of people who were sexually assaulted while incapacitated suffered injuries, compared to a 17% with forced sexual assault as the victim is more likely to fight back. In 2015 the New England Journal of Medicine published a study on extremely successful sexual assault prevention programs that essentially trained young women to “asses, acknowledge, and, if necessary, rebuff unwanted sexual advances” and it was a huge success, because just by attending the class you had a 50% less chance of getting raped.

However, by focusing on a potential victim’s power to stop her attackers, it started to put blame on the victims for not stopping the attackers in the first place, so how can we effectively reduce the rate fo sexual assaults the solution is not to teach women how to defend themselves, but it is to reduce their need to defend themselves. This can be achieved by empowering women and promoting social norms that make men and women equal, this can start at younger grades where sexual harassment goes as something “Natural” and is taken lightly and the constant pushing for men to achieve sexually –add to that the natural, sexual imperative(it feels great)- , even a program to encourage a bystander to step in when they see such predatory behavior, a program that teaches the general male population about consent, and if someone didn’t go with the idea of consent then someone else will step in and make it clearer for him.

For example, you are sitting at a bar with your friends and you see a woman struggling to escape the grips of a man that is touching her in the most intimate of places trying to achieve sexual battery, or even worse a woman goes to the toilet, and her date slips a pill in her drink, what would you do? If you didn’t do anything but have this program in your university there will be dozens of people willing to step in and fix the situation before it gets even dirtier, but what if you saw what was happening and your university did not have this program, would you or anyone step in, and help a fellow friend or stranger? Or will you blame it on the woman in the first place for letting herself reach this situation? Or should we blame it on our society for pressuring men to “Score” and ignoring sexual harassment at a younger age?