Expectations About College Essay, Research Paper

EXPECTATIONS ABOUT COLLEGE

Urban legends can be found all throughout our society. One of the reasons why

they are so prevalent in our society is because they are focused on topics that play key roles in

our lives. There are urban legends that are filled with horror, anxiety, sadness, humor, etc? but

most of all they prove to teach valuable lessons. These lessons are known to come across so

clearly, simply due to the manner in which they are presented. Legends are always supposed to

be told in a convincing manner no mater how suspect their actual plot seems to be. One of the

most common as well as appealing types of legends is the college legend. In college legends

there are several reoccurring themes that are shared. Several of these themes are related to exams

and trying to pass by any means necessary. There are numbers of different legends that involve

students trying to out smart their professors. Sometimes they win and sometimes they don’t,

which is what creates the entertainment value of these stories. There are many reasons for

these legends, one being that going away to school is a huge step in one’s maturation and strive

towards independence which can be portrayed accurately through college legends. This creates a

great deal of anxiety and doubt that may overcome students attending school away from home.

Which is why these legends are so important and why they have been around for so long. Most of

all it’s the college freshman who gets hit hardest with these apprehensions and uncertainties.

While researching college legends I came across a legend by the name of “flunk

me if you can”. This legend tells a tale of a college student taking his final exam. He, like many

other students, is having trouble finishing within the allotted time. He had so much trouble in

fact that he continued to write for at least five minutes after the professor announced “pencils

down”. The teacher, tired of waiting begins to collect his things along with the other student’s

papers and begins to leave to room. The student realizes this and rushes over to the teacher to

hand his paper in. The teacher in turn refuses to accept the paper due to the fact that the student

has violated the academic code by continuing to write after time was called. The student then

asked the teacher whether or not he knew his name. The teacher replied no, but that he would

after he recorded the student’s failing grade. The student then proceeded to knock the other

completed tests out of the teacher’s hands and mixed his exam in with the rest. Immediately after

he ran out of the room. So as the story goes, the student ended up getting a B+.

This legend plays upon some very important anxieties that almost all college students

face, one being the importance of passing final exams, which I believe to be a universal aspect

of any student’s life. Another aspect of college that this legend plays on is the factor of time.

Time plays a huge role in college, typically it is a matter of balancing your studying and social

life, quickly finding out especially as a freshman that no one is going to do it for you. This is why

many freshmen have difficulty adjusting to college because they are now entitled with an

enormous amount of freedom. Anonymity is another aspect of college that legends play against.

The fact is that if you are in a crowded lecture hall of 100 students or more, the odds are that the

teacher doesn’t know who you are. This is very unlike the way that most high school settings are.

In high school you have the ability to have a personal understanding with your teachers. This is

another reason why I found this legend to be so appealing to college freshman. Also for most

freshman or for that matter any student there is a great sense of powerlessness when faced with

academic regulations and unyielding professors.

There are several other legends that I came across over the Internet that deal with exams

and students struggle with budgeting time. One legend involved a student taking his final exam

and it turns out that he only knew the answer to one of the two questions that he had to respond

to. So, after some quick thinking he decided to pretend that his first exam booklet was lost by the

professor. He accomplished this by writing several closing sentences on the top of his second

booklet pretending to conclude the first question that he never answered. He then proceeded to

fully answer the second question, the one that he originally knew. After responding to the second

question he only handed in that book. Later he receives the exam back with his single

book, attached is his grade “A” and an apology note from the professor for loosing his first book.

In this legend the student wins but there are also other legends that devious students trying to

cheat there way out of exams loose to an all too wise professor. A legend where the professor

catches the students for trying to deceive him involves two students who overslept their Monday

morning exam. They then went to the teacher and told him that they went away for the weekend

and on Sunday night while driving home they got a flat tire and became stranded for the rest of

the night, therefore they missed the exam. The teacher gave them the benefit of the doubt and let

them take a make up exam. The students were placed in different rooms with the same test. The

teacher suspected that the students might have been misleading him and therefore on the exam

asked only two questions. The first question was relatively easily but was only worth five points,

the second stated “which tire?” this question was worth the remaining ninety-five points. So

there are legends where in the student over comes through craftiness but there are also cases

where the all too wise professor prevails.

Both of these legends shared common themes. The two main themes were time and the

fear of failing final exams. In the first tale the student is forced to take a risk in attempting to

trick his professor, in fear that he will fail his final exam which may prove to ruin his academic

standing and potential success in the future. Time is also an issue in this legend, it isn’t

mentioned but I speculate that the reason for the student not knowing the other answer. The

student most likely didn’t spend enough time studying and balancing the rest of his

commitments. In the second legend the students problem was that they overslept and missed the

exam, which represents a scarcity of time.

Time management is one of the biggest downfalls of freshmen college students. In the

article entitled “Freshman Year” this idea is one of the center aspects. This problem

was not only recognized by the author, but in almost all of the students interviews this same

issues arose. As depicted on a chart of 237 surveyed freshmen thirty percent admitted that

adjustment was the most pertinent problem that they faced. In my experience so far I find this

percentage to be low if anything, I’ve been here for about three weeks and I’m still not by any

means completely settled. This article is filled with factual information and statistics as well as

personal accounts from students that cover the same themes that the majority of college legends

entail.

Urban legends are great tools to uncover certain characteristics of a society, and the

culture in which they exist. College legends even though they are a more specific class of

legends they still encompass several aspects of college life, at it’s worst and best. Legends that

deal with particular topics for instance exams almost always have the same type of message.

This message is a fairly accurate picture of some of the anxieties that occur in students. One of

the most powerful fixed resources that exists is time, and if you ask any college student they will

definitely agree with you. This is why so many legends play on this factor in order to create more

entertaining legends. Even in the article “Freshman Year” one of the main focuses is time

management, simply because it is such a large issue. All three of the legends that I wrote about

are all centered around time and the anxieties of exams and the correlation between the two.

College legends are one of the keys to interpreting and understanding anxieties that surround

freshmen.