Why College Freshman Need To Take Emotions 101

In Diana Divecha and Robin Stern’s “Why College Freshman Need to Take Emotions 101” they discuss the changes an early college freshman faces and things that are not just the physical environment but their emotional environment as well. These changes disrupt the stability of older relationships and self-identity as a student and as a person. Both of which have after effects that leave these students in a torrent of anxieties and unwelcomed stresses.

Divecha and Stern bring up two surveys done back in 2013; one explaining what a multitude of college counseling departments see as a common problem and the other going down another level, polling students experiencing such commonalities like depression and anxiety. After the surveys, they segue into their main point, “Students need real emotional skills”. This is their call to action as they explain the upside of helping students become emotionally aware and how it can better them in the grand scheme of things. Teaching students various coping strategies can help manage the problem and keep from derailing. After the first go around with this article I was really confused as to why some freshman feels this way. But after going home for a bit this weekend, I now understand why. Many of my friendships and my relationship with my significant other were put on hold as I had left for college and slowly but surely, I felt the weight of it all. It is rough, to say the least.

I completely agree with Divecha and Stern when it comes to teaching, or even just having a short seminar like Pace, us freshman how to cope with our problems, emotionally. It may not solve them but at least it will allow us to move on and be able to focus on schoolwork. Divecha and Stern, both demonstrate their credibility as authors through their own work of research, “…our research at the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence with children in classrooms shows us that these abilities can be taught,” as a developmental psychologist and psychoanalyst. They discuss how children learned the ability to control their emotions and made them better in and out of the classroom. Putting their own research alongside two surveys they used as sources to show they are reputable to their main idea.

Divecha and Stern further support their argument when they explain, “When students are anxious and pressured, the can use strategies they can use calm themselves and proceed on tasks with lowered anxiety”. This use of logos creates a more objective look into why such strategies should be taught to students and allow them to be open about their issues. Both, Divecha and Stern, attempt to appeal to the reader’s emotions by targeting parents experience with college, “You’ve dropped off your kid at college. You may feel sad or nostalgic…You exhale, believing that she’s well on her way.” This whole opening paragraph describes a typical scene of a child parting from their parent for college. Which play into connecting with the audience of this article.