Week 11 Newswriting

 The Life of a College Student

Being a college student brings on the stereotypes of stress, work, partying, ramen noodles, and cheap living. While some of these stereotypes may be true in a broad sense, they may not be relative to everybody. In this short article, I will describe the daily routine of Max Albert, a student at NDSU, and compare his life to what is considered to be average among other students. 

Max begins his day by checking his schedule. After he does this he goes downstairs and makes himself breakfast. Average breakfast for him might consist of eggs and a piece of toast. After breakfast, he heads over to campus for his first class. Classes this year are still limited due to the Covid-19 pandemic, so Max claims that while he does make an effort to attend in person, he does still take advantage of the synchronous option that some courses still offer. After classes are done for the day, Max does his homework, goes to the gym, and eats dinner. Finally, he finishes his day by either playing video games, watching an NFL or NBA game with his roommates, or hanging out by himself in his room. The last thing that I asked Max about was drinking. He responded by saying that he does not drink much and reported that he had not drunk any alcohol in the last 3 weeks. 

After spending a day following the life of Mr. Albert, I realized that college life can be pretty normal. Many people in the United States associate college students with a lot of stereotypes that revolve around partying and struggling. This was not the case with Max. 

This brings the question
of where do these stereotypes come from? And are they true? After some research, I found a couple of articles from https://www.mvorganizing.org and from https://www.huduser.gov that explained my suspicions. First, college drinking is something that stems from a myriad of different things. These range from peep pressure, misassumption over how much others are drinking, and the association between drinking and college. I also found that 53 percent of students nationwide participate in weekly binge drinking, and 70 percent participate monthly. 

Student housing was the next thing I took a look at. I found that 41 percent of students nationwide have had some sort of housing issue while they have been at school. These issues range from poor ownership, problems with dormitories, bad living conditions, and even homelessness. 

After reviewing my findings it is safe to say that the stereotypes surrounding college life are mostly true. Compared to the rest of the students in the college community Max Albert has it pretty good.