Temptations

The word college tends to elicit different reactions from different people. Some associate the word with headache, others with success, and some would associate it with dropping out. In today’s world it’s all too common of a thing for a young people to drop out, especially in their first semester. But one has to ask why? Why do so many freshmen drop out in their first year, or at least are tempted to. I conducted a survey with six people, two male, four female, to attempt to find the answer. The participants consisted of a college graduate, three college seniors, a freshman, and college dropout. Their ages ranged between twenty and twenty-four. All but one of the students were traditional students with the exception of the freshman were traditional students. The participants went to various schools such as Southeastern Louisiana University, Louisiana State University, and Baton Rouge Community College. The study was conducted over a two week period of time. The results were somewhat expected. The main reasons that the participants gave for dropping out or being tempted to were time management, difficult subjects, and pressure of life.
The reason most repeatedly mentioned within the interviews was time management. For Trish, a twenty-four year old married mother and non traditional freshmen at Southeastern, this seemed to be the greatest of her woes. “I have very bad time management skills. A lot of times I’m writing my papers the day they are due. I either forget about them or I don’t manage my time well enough. I’m also pregnant, so I’m very tired all the time. It’s hard to get it all done and maintain a household.” Jon, preferably called Big Jon, is a dropout student from Southeastern University; for him time management was the cause of his academic downfall. However, when Big Jon dropped out he did not just drop out, he dropped out with style. “Made the job more important than school, I didn’t budget my time properly and got burnt out Spring of 09 in finals