Kelsey Cameron

Lucia Elden
ENG111
06 December 2018
College Failing to Meet Students Expectations

Many students are pressured to make the choice of going to college during their junior

and senior years of high school. People convince students that they cannot be successful

without having the education that college will bring. After making the choice to go to college,

they have to decide where, whether it’s a community college or a large university, the choice

can be challenging and often times weighing out the advantages of each choice can be very

helpful. Some of the deciding factors of going to college or not would be: the money made after

getting the education versus the debt after college, the job opportunities offered to college

graduates is much larger than to students with no education, and college graduates are often

more productive to society than students with no college degree. Then, once picking their

school many students become excited and they begin to form expectations for what they feel

their college experience should be like and that’s where many students start to form their

problem. We expect that the college life will be harder than high school but no one prepares us

for the lack of motivation and the struggles that we actually face in college. We also think that

finding new friends in college will be easy but in reality we just go through the motions of the

day, we think that the weekends will be the time for fun when in reality it’s just an extra two

days to get done all the homework that piled up throughout the week. When we get to college

a majority of students know what they are going to school for and what career they want to

pursue: if students are more interested in their classes; if students make connections with
other students that are in the same discourse community as them; if students become active in

their education, then they will find that they can have a better learning experience. As we go

through college, we find that the expectations we have don’t blend with what the reality of

college is, and because of this, we need to adjust to what we are experiencing, reform, and

then grow; which can help better our college experience.

When I was going through the process of where I should continue my education after

high school, I always thought I would be going to a university with some of my friends and we

would all go shopping for our dorms together. I pictured an organized life, going to class in cute

outfits, always having my homework done, going to parties on the weekends. Let’s just say I fell

for the movies, the “perfect” college experience. When I made my decision, I took many

different things into consideration and the best choice economically and academically was Mid

Michigan College. Although I do think it was a good decision, I’m still not sure if it was the right

decision that makes me the happiest with my education. As I watch my friends live out their

college choices, I sometimes feel like I am still in high school and some things have not changed.

Every time I try to understand the choice, I made to go to Mid Michigan College I have to reflect

on my expectations. We learn from Jack Mezirow, a professor at Teachers College, Columbia

University, who talks about how we can change the way we think and the reflections that we

can make, he states, “We transform our frames of reference through critical reflection on the

assumptions upon which our interpretations, beliefs, and habits of mind or point of view are

based” (88). When we start our college experience we find out what the reality of college truly

is and that is what helps us to understand the words of Mezirow better. When we get to college

we have to reflect on our choice and the expectations that we had already made, some
students find that they were made for the college life and they fit right in, but then there are

others who have more difficulties.

Many other students go through the struggle of not feeling like they are in the right place

at the right time. One of the authors that may have felt like this is Perri Klass, a med student

that found herself in a new discourse community. Klass struggled with learning what everyone

around her was talking about, even because of that difference she didn’t give up on her first or

second day, she pushed through and by the end of the summer, she had learned so much more

than just the terminology. By the end of her internship, she stated, “I learned a new language

this past summer. At times it thrills me to hear myself using it. It enables me to understand my

colleagues, to communicate effectively in the hospital. Yet I am uncomfortably aware that I will

never again notice the peculiarities and even atrocities of medical language as keenly as I did

this summer” (64). In the choices that we make learning just one thing is not possible, Klass

learned more than just a language in her summer as a med student, she learned how to

function in the hospital which is very important when working in the public. Klass learned many

different aspects of the medical field, she couldn’t focus on only taking in one thing at a time.

Without even knowing she took in the words of Mezirow, “Often, adult learners’ immediate

focus is on practical, short-term objectives… It is crucial to recognize that learning needs must

be defined so as to recognize both short-term objectives and long-term goals” (90). When Klass

started she was at the bottom, starting out new but she had to remember that this was only a

starting point to the amount of knowledge she would have at the end. Remembering your end

goal is always important. When starting college, I anticipated working from the textbooks and

having that be the only new information that I learn but it has been so much more. I have
learned how much I can handle, I learned that studying for thirty minutes the night before a

quiz will not result in a great test grade, and I have learned that college will never be like the

movies. Even though college has been very stressful many times remembering that this is just

the beginning and that my endpoint of becoming a nurse will be so much better helps me to

know that the work I do now will be worth it in the end.

When we begin forming our college expectations early, we set ourselves up for failure.

We watch the movies and we watch our upperclassmen go to college and we think that our

situation will be the same. This is where we can let Mezirow’s words influence the actions we

make he stated, “We have a strong tendency to reject ideas that fail to fit our preconceptions”

(87). When we start our first couple of weeks of college there is this sort of newness that we

feel from this different experience that college brings after the newness wears off, we hit

reality. College becomes a lot harder to fit in, without joining any clubs or sports the

overwhelming feeling of loneliness can start to hit. In high school, we often have friends that

we keep all throughout school and then after high school graduation, everyone goes their

separate way. It is rare for your friend to also go to the same college or university so we end up

going to school all by ourselves, making it harder to connect with others. The experience that

we have in college is very important and can either help you succeed or fail, the experiences

that we have can be tarnished by the preconceptions that we have set. are the preconceptions

we have? Are they based on the students or the professors or the actual school itself? I think it

can be a mix of all, we expect that on our first weeks of school we will meet all of these new

people that are in the same situation that need friends but that seems to be less of the case; we

expect our teachers to be more understanding of situations; we expect our school to be

many don’t feel that. The preconceptions are what can change the whole experience. When we

get to college we find that there are other ways to learn than just the ways that our high school

teachers taught, we learn that we can do a lot without our teachers holding our hands, Jack

Mezirow noticed this and claimed, “To facilitate transformative learning, educators must help

learners become aware and critical of their own and others’ assumptions. Learners need

practice in recognizing frames of reference and using their imaginations to redefine problems

from a different perspective” (91). In college there become many new responsibilities that are

added to what we need to accomplish and one of the main ones is how we can be successful in

teaching ourselves. The professors help but it is not their sole responsibility to sit and walk us

through every step of the process, it is important for students to see this and many struggle

with this skill. Many people may struggle with this because this is not the only schooling is not

the only responsibility that students have.

When we think of college students, we often times think of teenagers, that this is the

first thing they are doing after high school but that is not often the case. There are many

students that are at different stages of their lives, some are married, some have children, some

grandchildren, some are on their second career. Whatever their situation, they all have one

thing in common, they all know the importance of an education, no matter what stage they are

in their life they know that education can never be taken away. Many of the older college

students may feel like they don’t fit in well, they may feel as if they are the minority, this was

the case for Lucia. Lucia was a college student that Mike Rose wrote about, a professor at UCLA

who teaches Social Research Methodology. When he explained the story of Lucia, she was a
student who had gone back to college, 28 years old, with a baby. She was almost the definition

of a college minority, having to work harder than the average college student. Mike Rose had

stated, ”…a frame of mind or tradition or set of assumptions that was represented by a single

word, phrase, or allusion was either unknown to her or clashed dramatically with frames of

mind and traditions of her own” (3). Lucia was accustomed to how she grew up learning certain

things she was set in her roots, so when she came to college everything seemed to be different

for her, and she had a harder time than most students understanding different topics. We can

relate Lucia’s experience of college back to Mezirow’s Transformative Learning Theory where

he stated, “A frame of reference encompasses cognitive, conative, and emotional components,

and is composed of two dimensions: habits of mind and a point of view” (87). In Lucia’s case,

she had certain habits of mind that she had to adjust to be able to become successful in college

and I’m sure that’s not a task that she had thought about accomplishing when going back to

school. When we come into college with ideas of what it will be like we can often not want to

change, or we get discouraged when we don’t like what is happening or it isn’t as easy as

expected.

We form expectations in every part of our life, expectations that we need it to be great

at all times, but sometimes we should expect it to be mediocre or awful even. When we start

our college experience, we need to walk in expecting that it won’t be like high school and that

everything won’t be as perfect as we always dreamed it would be. When we try new risks there

will always be aspects that may not be enjoyable and Klass experienced that when starting

med school. Klass didn’t let her first days stop her from learning all summer long, she

continued, and she became a whole new person by the end of the summer. We have to learn
and grow and not let our preconceptions stop us, Mezirow shows when talking about his

transformative learning theory that we can change our habits of mind and welcome new

discourse communities. Mike Rose shows us that many students are like Lucia, she had the

dream of going back to college and she didn’t let the fact that she would be the minority and

she would stand out in every classroom stop her. She moved on and she knew she could

accomplish great things. College is a big step to many students whether they are first-

generation college students, students going to Harvard University or a student going to a

community college for a training certificate, the education that we receive in the end will be

worth it. Even if college fails to meet our expectations, it is worth every step of the way.
 Works Cited

Klass, Perri. “Learning the Language.” Exploring Connections: Learning in the 21st Century.

New York: Pearson Education, Inc. pp. 62-64

Mezirow, Jack. “Transformative Learning: Theory to Practice.” Exploring Connections:

Learning in the 21st Century. Pearson Learning Solutions, 2016, pp. 87-93.

Rose, Mike. “The Politics of Remediation.” Conversations In Context: Identity, Knowledge, and

College Writing. Fort Worth, TX: Harcourt Brace College Publishers, 1998, pp.32-48.