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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
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
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
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.
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
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.