How many of you are under 21 and drink? I’ve heard that college is supposed to be the best four years of your life—we have classes that assign heavy workloads, work-study during the week, on the weekends we get to let loose and “turn up”, and that we will meet some of the best people here, along with finding out who we really are. Some of us think college is like what movies portray them; everybody’s drinking, smoking, and partying, with very little studying and barely any homework. The realities of college don’t set in until students encounter the coursework that presumably consume their time. Until then, college students tend to have more fun than they usually would back home because of the lack of parental supervision.
During the first few weeks of college, students, especially freshmen, are at the highest risk of alcohol-related harm. With the pressures of classes and social acceptance, freshmen feel more anxious about making their way into the college life. "We see a spike then because anxiety is high, and the rigors of coursework haven't yet taken hold” (Cleveland). The drinking problem starts with the way college is portrayed—as a life that revolves around alcohol. Freshmen come in expecting it to be that way, so behave that way, the excessive drinking and reckless behavior are all mirrored from movies and media. According to national surveys conducted by Harvard School of Public Health, 44 percent of all college students binge drink and many suffer alcohol-induced blackouts.
Scott Walters, professor of behavioral health at University of North Texas Health Science Center, looked at data gathered from surveys of 77,000 incoming freshman. The students were questioned about their drinking behavior during the two months before college started and during their first month of freshman year. Not only were freshman drinking more in the fall than in the summer,