Review Of The Essay 'Helping First-Year Students Help Themselves'

In the essay, “Helping First Year Students Help Themselves”, by Christine Whelan she explains how many college students today need extra help in order to feel like they can succeed in college. She goes on to explain that many of her first year students in college often felt like they had been, “baited and switched.” What she meant by this is that many of the students she teaches feel like they had been lied to by their parents or high school teachers and that they expected college to be easier than it really was. Whelan also felt that many of the college students were not taught earlier in life how to deal with difficult times or issues that occur in life. To help her students combat the difficulties of life Whelan feels that teachers, and staff of schools should help their students by giving them, “empowering exercises” such as them tracking how much money they spend on food and how much time they waste by watching television instead of doing their work. Whelan believes by giving out

According to the article, “Those coming from the workforce will also have their own particular challenges when they lose the structure of work and daily deadlines and demands,” meaning that many students have learned how to deal with the work world already but just need to know how to put this towards their daily school lives. Many students don’t need to be taught how to budget and how to work around a new schedule because they are putting in the conscious effort to already do so. If students aren’t doing it or aren’t making their lives easier by coming up with a budget, or with an assigned schedule then these students just don’t care enough to do