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Brianna Cueva
Professor Vana Derohanessian
English 114B
18 February 2014
High Schools Negligence towards College Responsibilities
Ones responsibilities never seem to cease at any point in life but they more so seem to
broaden. The older one gets, the more obligations you seem to acquire. The numbers of
responsibilities not only grow as a whole but additionally seem more sophists when it comes
down to the importance. No one seems to notice the amount of responsibilities they have when
they are well taken care off. When you leave the nest of your long-lived home and venter off into
the role of adult hood, that comes when you enter college, you begin to notice that you have
suddenly taken upon an outrageous amount of responsibilities. High schools do not prepare their
students well enough so that the transition from adolescence in a high school to adulthood in a
college becomes a smooth transition. Most are never prepared for the drastic changes in
responsibility. This transition in life is one of the hardest one must go through. It is not a bad
thing that one gains all these diverse responsibilities because its lifes way of teaching one to
become an adult. It is foreseen as a bad thing in the beginning because once you set foot on your
college campus you are emerged by all the responsibilities you have to take care of as your own
self, as an individual. The differences between high school responsibilities and college
responsibilities are those of a dramatic change, and that is why college students during the first
years of college begin to drown under the stress the hovers above them. The root of this problem
is centered in high school. They do not prepare their students enough in order to be ready to fully
take on the responsibilities they will gain when entering college.
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As you get older and start developing into your stage of adulthood you seem to find yourself
in a position of despair by towering responsibilities you once didnt have. You go from one day
being taken care of to the next, having to take care of yourself. When living at home with your
parents you got everything handed to you. Now in all the aspects from within college you must
hand everything to your own self, and that is where high schools fail to prepare their students. In
the article, College Preparedness by Alex Kuczynski-Brown, he brings up the point in which a
high number of high school graduates take off to college without being well acknowledged about
college life nor being well prepared for the college courses. According to Cincinnati.com,
two-thirds of those students attending four-year colleges in Ohio and Kentucky fail to earn their
degrees within six years (Alex Kucsynski-Brown)
The different stress level between high school and college students becomes extreme. In
college you have education, financial, and house held responsibilities. In college, you have your
educational responsibilities meaning you are held responsible for your own education unlike in
high school your teachers tend to baby you as a student. When in college, it is your obligation to
get all your work done, get to all your classes, and put forward your best effort because second
chances are not given. In high schools when you miss a class, your teachers come up to you and
let you know what you missed the day of your absence. This is not preparing students to fulfill
their college responsibilities. Financially, college students tend to create holes in their future
banking credits because high schools have failed to mention the importance of savings and the
dangers of taking out loans. Managing a functioning house hold falls under the parents teaching.
In order to have their children survive they must know they need to teach one to know the
importance of your own selfs house hold responsibilities. If the adults in all of these situations
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took the chance to equip their students or children in all these aspects of responsibility, the stress
level in college students could be lowered.
In the novel, Stress and Mental Health of College Students by M. V. Landow, he expresses
his feelings towards the main factor of stress within college students. For example, with age
there is an increase in the number of roles and responsibilities(172) There appears to be no
college student who has said they are under no stress and when frequently asked why, the
response is because of all the responsibilities they must fulfill. According to Landow, One of
the most frequent environmental factors of stress for nontraditional students was the feeling
overwhelmed or conflicted about fulfilling all my role responsibilities(172) All the stresses we
all have are due to the responsibilities we have whether you are a high-school student, college
student, or a working adult. Having responsibilities is a natural cause for stress, on the contrary,
without responsibilities you will never be able to better yourself nor have the chance to further
your own expectations towards yourself. Having stress in your life is unavoidable... college
students have a lot of new things they have to navigate (Emily Discoll) Although all the
stress college students have cant be avoided a hundred percent college preparedness in high
school would take off a lot of the stress college students have. It will also give college students a
better chance at success because they would be well enough prepared when hitting adult hood in
college.
Our college responsibilities differ from those we used to have in college. High schools could
take it upon themselves to make sure they strengthen ones ability to know the responsibilities
they will be walking into when making the decision to further their education. High schools
should be held accountable for the negligence they show their students when neglecting them the
right to practice the responsibilities they are going to be held accountable in college as
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responsible adults. For example, teachers in high school should not be so lenient because
professors in college will not be as sympathetic. If teachers in high school were to prepare their
students to face on the responsibilities, they will be attaining when in college, as college students
their stress level would not be as high as they are today. One is used to paying no attention to the
responsibilities they have because they were not obligated to do so in their earlier years, this is
why college students tend to gain a severe amount of stress throughout the years.













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Works Cited
Landow, V. Mery. Stress and Mental Health of College Students. New York: Nova Science
Publishers, Inc, 2006. Print.
Driscoll, Emily. Stress in College:What Causes it and how to Combat it. Foxbusiness.com, 31
march. 2011. Web. 17 February 2014.
Brown-Kuczynski, Alex. College Preparedness Lacking, Forcing students into developmental
coursework, prompting some to drop out. Huffingtonpost.com,18 July, 2012. Web. 17 February
2014.