Semiotic Analysis: Giving Up in College

When I walked into my first class at Fairleigh Dickinson University, I was ready to be dazzled. I knew that FDU was not the best college around, and that it was particularly weak in the math and science areas, but I assumed that my Calculus III class would be reasonably motivated - they had, after all, stuck with calculus for 3 semesters. Unfortunately, my first class did not quite live up to my expectations.

When I entered the classroom at 9:25 AM, 5 minutes before the class was scheduled to start, the room was completely empty. I chose a desk in the front, right-hand corner of the room and prayed that I was in the right classroom. After a few agonizingly long minutes of solitude, my classmates began to enter the room.

The college boys, though reasonably attractive, wore the typical White, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant (WASP) look that boys in my school wear. The girls, on the other hand, were remarkably different. Unlike girls at Chatham High, who spend long hours perfecting every aspect of their outfit, these girls looked practically disheveled. All of them had their hair pulled back into a messy ponytail or bun (except for one girl whose hair was too short to tie up), were above average in terms of weight, and each and every girl was wearing track pants or sweat pants.

I did not want to judge them by their outward appearance, but their levels of motivation meshed perfectly with their looks. Their entire outward aura could be summarized in three words: bored to death. While I did not realize it then, they were merely following a larger trend that pervaded the entire campus. Almost every girl in FDU wore track pants or sweat pants and did not seem to care about their outward appearance.

I saw this lack of interest in both appearance and schoolwork as the physical manifestation of the change in their ideology from high school to college. It was a symbol of the students simply "letting go."

Students who were forced to go to a school such as FDU, especially for math or science, seemed to give up when they got to college. They realized that they no longer needed to try for that A because future employers would only see their final degree, not the grades they received in individual classes. In my eyes, it seemed that once these students saw that they were not good enough to get into a top college, they let go of some of their perfectionism, at least for their freshman year.

This ties together perfectly with the idea that they simply did not want to deal with the effects of the freshman fifteen. Getting back into shape and shedding those extra pounds is very challenging, both physically and mentally. These students found it easier to simply accept that they were larger now, than to fight to fit into their jeans from high school. They chose to take the easier route and wear track pants and sweat pants all the time instead.

Alright, so students who do not get into the top colleges are a little lazy during their freshman year. Why is this so important? Perhaps because it clarifies a little something about human nature: when we try hard to realize a dream or accomplish a lofty goal and fail horribly, we do not immediately want to move on to the next opportunity. Our first tendency is to simply give up and tell the world that we only really wanted to be average, so our failure really is not bothering us.

There are only a few students who will bounce back from their failure quickly, and these are the students who will succeed later in life. These are the students who are involved in their classes, in sports, in clubs, in candle-light vigils, in parades, and in a variety of other extracurriculars. The students who refuse to give up are the ones who will "go places."

As our application deadlines approach and we begin to wait for the admission decisions, I have one piece of advice for myself and my fellow students. If you do not get into your top college, do not give up. What you do in college is far more important. So when you begin freshman year, and start to pack on those pounds, skip the track pants and find the closest gym.