How College Life Transforms the Lives of Students - Essay Example

College life transforms the lives of students in more than one way and the article explores the many facets of college life and its effect on the student. Students who opt to live on the college campus stand to gain a lot of independence and freedom to live their life on their own terms. Nevertheless, being away from the family environment can have a lot of emotional impact on the student and hence the time taken by each student to get accustomed to the college environment might vary. However, in the end, every student will have to eventually adjust to their life in college, campus environment, academic pattern, new-found peers and social life.

College life provides students with a lot of freedom and this independence brings with it a lot of responsibility. Students will be expected to handle all their work with maturity and would be solely responsible for all their actions. An important aspect mentioned in the article is regarding the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) which further entrusts upon the student an exclusive right on all their records and forbids the institution from sharing any information even with a parent without permission from the student.

These provisions thus expect students to make conscious decisions during their stay on the campus. The Act, however, does not cover the public lives of the students and no form of protection is offered to the students in this regard. Students will be provided the required guidance about how to conduct themselves within the campus and handle their education by counselors and academic staff, but at the end of the day, students will be left to decide what is best for them.While universities provide immense freedom to students to make their own choices through the FERPA, it refrains from providing any student-related information to anxious parents unless written permission is provided by the student.

Many universities do not encourage parents to hover over their grown-up children as they firmly believe that students have the ability to decide what is best for them.