Flickr user CSU Monterey Bay
You weren’t born yesterday:
Student life is exciting yet challenging and stressful. You choose a college, decide on loans and personal finance strategies, all while studying, and doing your best to survive assignments and exams.
The harder you try, the more it hurts to hear the rumors and myths about college life nowadays. For incoming students, these misconceptions can give them the wrong picture as they enter college, leading to stress and disappointments.
Wouldn’t it be more sensible to nip the myths about college students in the bud? The misconceptions are many, but these top five are just screaming out for debunking right away.
1) All students’ motto is “Just Google It!”
Millennial and Gen Z students don’t imagine life without the Internet. But having the tech doesn’t mean knowing how to use it right. While some believe it’s enough to have Google for surviving a rigorous academic setting, most students understand they need special skills to research relevant data, as well as use programs for learning. Many assignments even require ‘print sources’, so students don’t solely research via the internet.
Educational websites, apps, and tools all require training or special know-how in order to navigate. Students are tech-savvy, and they get the most out of technology to succeed in academia.
2) All they do is party hard
Oh, those sweet rumors about students spending all college years on campus, clubbing and partying hard. How we love thee! Certainly, students might talk a lot about weekly parties, but, as you know, it’s the empty can that makes the most noise.
The reality is that most days in college involve lectures, homework, projects, and tests (eating ice cream in pajamas and watching Netflix with friends). Students have fun in different ways, and more often than not it’s not that wild as myths describe. They’re there for an education, after all.
3) Students are lazy
With essays, theses, and other papers – it seems that college life consists of nothing but time-consuming writing assignments. You may think most students will stop at nothing to avoid these tasks or, at least, ease them to the maximum. With searches like: How to start an essay, where to find online editors, how to do research for academic papers, what to do to get A+ for dissertation – such a buzz exaggerates the myth about students’ hatred towards assignments.
Students are incredibly busy. Between classes, assignments, student orgs, and part-time jobs, many students seek ways to ways to ease the difficulty of an assignment or to streamline its process. It isn’t laziness per se, but rather efficiency. And with many online resources available to help students out, they can still produce quality work while saving time and earning good grades.
4) They need to be rich to survive college
Yes, education is expensive. Tuition fees rise, textbooks are pricy, apartment rent and food are far from free, too. Last time we checked, other expenses are required too—like clothing and movie tickets (a person has to have fun every once in a while).
Paying for college can be daunting, but one doesn’t need to be a Rockefeller to handle it. Scholarships, grants, and student loans are ideal ways to pay for college. Many students also have part-time jobs that help to make ends meet (as well as getting job experience for their future careers).
5) They don’t care about the world them
The most common misconception about college students is they don’t care about anything that happens around them. Rumors have it, campus life, good grades, and diplomas are the only things that matter to Millennial and Gen Z students.
Countless students are committed and do care about issues other than their own. Personal, political, environmental, and cultural issues are hot topics on campuses. The “I don’t care” attitude myth is just that, a myth. Just ask or talk with them about current events, and you’ll see they know a lot. Social media and the internet allows people to be more inter-connected and up-to-date on current events than ever before.
Thanks to the modern techs, college students are social and caring: they create organizations, bring injustices to light, volunteer abroad, get funds for groups, and are the most active generation ever.
So maybe it’s high time to forget stereotypes about peers and not trust myths and common misconceptions?
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