Transcript
Page 1: Ethnography Report - Second Draft

Christian Best

Robert Arnold

UWRT 1101

Ethnography Report

College freshmen are complete party animals; college freshmen don’t party enough.

College freshmen barely do any work; college freshmen have too much work. College freshmen

are mature; college freshmen are needy and clueless. College freshmen eat too much; college

freshmen don’t eat enough. College freshmen sleep too much; college freshmen don’t sleep

enough. The following statements listed above show examples of the many stereotypes that are

formed about college freshmen. Many people think they understand what college freshmen do on

a daily basis; but in reality they don’t. Everyone takes glances at our lifestyle and form their own

opinions and bias about our lives, only to realize that they only know half of the real story.

Just as everyone else, I made assumptions about the college lifestyle before I actually got

here and began experiencing the lifestyle firsthand. I thought that college would be a constant

party, a buffet every night, a new found freedom, but also the hardest thing I would ever have to

experience. Little did I know that the party sometimes ends early when you have an 8:00 AM

class every Monday morning. The “buffet” will quickly become a quick bag of chips and some

apple juice every other night. And the hardest part of the work is actually getting the motivation

to do it.

So what is the outside perspective? While trying to find different perspectives from

outsiders I found that the younger population views college freshmen as more of a party animals

and think that we are always jumping from party to party, adults and parents view college as

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more of hard work and dedication, and society as a whole views us as inexperienced little kids

claiming to be adults just trying to make it through life. Neither side was completely wrong but

neither side was completely accurate, it was more that both sides were just lacking the actual

reality of our lifestyle.

“Is it not like what they show in the movies?” This is the first response I received when I

asked an average high school freshman how she viewed college and college freshmen. She

seemed to think that college is all about the parties, the fraternity strolls, and pulling all-nighters

with your new college BFFs. Please understand that those movies lied to you! Yes, college

consist of parties. Yes, you will come across a couple of fraternities strolling. And yes, there will

be the occasional all-nighter pulled. But this is not the everyday college lifestyle and the movies

just show a bunch of stereotypes that lack actual reality. There isn’t a party every day, the parties

usually start on Thursdays and we don’t attend every single week. Strolling, although very fun to

watch, isn’t a constant thing; the fraternities and sororities aren’t sitting in every corner waiting

for a battle to happen. And all-nighters only happen when we have tons of work due the next day

and we procrastinated until the last minute; we HATE pulling all-nighters. Movies have given

the misconception that college is fun all the time, when in actuality fun isn’t always lurking

around the corner in college.

Honestly the best response I’ve received was from the high school senior. “College

freshmen should be excited that they’re out of their parents’ house. I’m ready for college!” As

soon as the words left her mouth I began laughing so loud, which seriously confused her. Like

most high school senior, I was just as excited to get out of my parents’ house when school

started. It wasn’t until I got to college that I truly appreciated being under my parents’ roof. “I

can’t wait to get back home!” is probably the most frequent phrase you will hear coming from a

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college freshmen. Every college freshmen thought it would be all fun and games, that is until we

realized that we had to buy our own groceries, remember to wake up for class on our own, and

had no one to whine to when things got hard.

“I know it’s a lot of work and it’s probably really hard, but I have serious faith in every

one of you.” Parents can be so encouraging, and that is why we love them! You know that pep

talk that parents give to their children before the start of every school year? That annual pep talk

soon became a weekly pep talk for most college freshmen. In the beginning of the semester no

one wanted to call home because they were living it up and having the time of their lives. It was

when the classes began to set in and the assignments started to pile up, that every college

freshmen begins to dial mommy’s number. “I’m tired, I’m stressed, and I need a break!” Every

one of us whined the exact same statement. Quickly after the “new college feel” wore off, we all

lost motivation. This is when we often start missing classes, forget to turn in assignments, grades

start dropping, and the naps start extending so we’re forced to call home and be reminded that we

can make it. We need the refocusing pep talk to get us through!

“They’re all a bunch of party animals!” “They’re lame and don’t know how to turn up!”

These are the two stereotypes that people mostly focus on when they think about college

freshmen. During my research I found that many online sources, such as YouTube videos,

specifically emphasized the partying aspect of college. These videos usually show that we either

party all the time or we don’t party enough. These stereotypes never show the other factors that

play a part in the choice of partying. Those “lames” that don’t know how to “turn up” usually

choose to turn down because they know they have an 8:00 class the next morning, those “party

animals” that stay out all night usually don’t have much responsible to take care of the next day

and if they do they don’t care that much, and those “homebodies” that always stay in their dorm

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room every night are usually the type that doesn’t even like the scene and choose to stay in just

because they don’t like coming out of their comfort zone. Even though we tend to be looked at as

all the same, college freshmen don’t move as a whole. We all have great differences and make

different decisions based off of our personal obligations and personality traits.

“You should never be hungry, you have a meal plan!” This is the number one phrase that

is thrown in the face of every freshmen when they come home complaining about their hunger.

Everyone seems to think that we have an endless buffet in the cafeterias. I will be the first to

state that this is a complete misconception and there are no endless buffets in sight. Many people

fail to remember that the cafeterias aren’t open all day, we still have classes so we don’t get to

just camp out in the cafeteria waiting for food, and they usually serve the same meals every day

which is quite annoying. I don’t know where the idea that because we all have a free meal plan

(that really isn’t free) we should be eating all day. And usually when we begin to explain the

reality of our actual eating habits is when the scolding begins. Most of us really only get one

good meal a day and we are eating snacks most of the time. And even when we do get that meal

in, it’s usually consists of pizza, salad, and fries. I’ve heard many freshmen say that their day is

often moving so fast that it is probably 7:00 PM before they even realize that they haven’t had a

real meal that day. So no, we don’t spend our day at an endless buffet and yes, when we say

we’re hungry we actually mean it!

“Child, you don’t even know what stress is yet!” Just a word of advice: we ALL hate

when we hear this statement and you should probably stop saying it. Yes, we actually do know

what stress is and we tend to call it “college”. To some college looks like an everlasting party

and they believe that we don’t have anything to worry about. Others seem to think that just

because we come I taking general education courses that it’s not really anything to stress about.

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And there’s those other people that think if we just show up to class and “do what we’re

supposed to” then there is nothing to stress about. Contrary to many beliefs, for some freshmen

the stress begins as soon as they realize they have been taken out of their comfort zone. College

is a major adjustment in every aspect. We’re relocated from a place we’ve been for the last 17-18

years and thrown into a sea of strangers and expected to survive, our work load begins to slowly

increase right before our eyes, and we are very sleep-deprived. College sometimes becomes a

blur of due dates, naptimes, and classes and we never really realize how stressed we are until

someone asks how we are doing and we’re brought back to reality. No, we don’t have the stress

of paying bills, or taking care of children, or whatever it is that adults stress about so much; but

we do have the stress of succeeding and proving to the world that we’re not just another lazy kid

that can’t handle college life. We’re young, but we still have stress!

Speaking of stress: you all remember that one teacher in high school that always went on

and on about how college is paper after paper and the work is so hard? They were so right but

they were also very wrong. Yes there is the stereotype that college students have tons of work to

do all of the time. My little sister once called me and said she was surprised that I wasn’t

somewhere writing a 30-page paper. Who comes up with these things? I won’t deny that there

are a mountain of papers to write but they aren’t as hard as they seem. The papers we usually

receive as college freshmen are only 1-2 pages long and no one ever mentioned that there would

literally be a writing class that helps you improve your writing, which would’ve been a nice fact

to know. I can also agree with them saying that we would have a lot of work because as college

students we do have a load of work due all the time, but they also failed to tell us that just

learning to manage your time and avoid stacking classes would help with the heap of work.

Teachers always managed to scare kids in high school by telling them how mean college

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professors are and they hand out tons of work all the time. No one ever tells those kids that as

college freshmen we are mostly taking general education classes and those “30-page papers”

doesn’t come around until your junior and senior year.

We don’t all gain the “freshmen 15”. We don’t all get here and start slacking off. We

don’t all turn into party animals. We don’t all consider ourselves this know-it-all adult. We don’t

all sit in the library with books piled in front of our faces. We’re not all writing 6000-word

essays every night. And we’re certainly not up all night laughing over cookie dough and Netflix

with our new college BFFs. Thanks to many different sources over the years everyone has

formed their own opinions and stereotypes about what college freshmen do when they get to

college. As someone who is currently experiencing the college lifestyle firsthand, I will be the

one that says college is not what everyone thinks. There are times when you’re glad that you’re

away from home, but when you get back you finally realize how much you miss it. Yes, there is

a lot of work but finding motivation to do the work is probably the hardest part of the

assignment. And of course you make new friends when you get here, but please don’t expect it to

be High School Musical 2 in here because that makes people feel weird. The food is definitely

better than high school food, but you will definitely get tired of it and will begin to appreciate all

those home-cooked meals your mom forced you to eat. College is a new experience to every

freshman and contrary to what everyone thinks, we all react differently when we get to college.


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