Summary Of College Pressures By William Zinsser

I was intrigued with the article “College Pressures” written by William Zinsser. I was fascinated by the way Zinsser exposed the true thoughts and emotions of not only the students, but professors or anyone who deals with students. This article was interesting because it is relatable to many students. I liked this article because I connected with it on a personal level. The way he started off the article was genius. He really portrayed how the students pestered the dean with excuses and problems. Which leads me to what I love about the article. I love how connected the readers become with the writer on how he faces theses situations, how he wants so badly for his students to understand, but he never gets through to them, and how he realizes the students are consumed by competition that they never see their own worth with what they could achieve in life. The connection really opened my eyes when the article got to the parental pressures.
Therefore, the section in “College Pressures” where Zinsser states “But her father is strongly opposed. He thinks that an artist is a “dumb” thing to be” really hits home with me (452). Zinsser was trying to tell the young girl that “she deserves to follow her muse” no matter what anyone thinks (452). This caught my attention because I had realized that I was just like the students Zinsser was writing about, who are consumed with the competition and focused on getting the jobs that pay the best. I was surprised that I was becoming that type of student more and more as the years went by without acknowledging that I was programming my mind to inherit the trait of a competitive student. If you think about people mindlessly becoming different, it is quite scary because it means that we have the capability to program our mind without any