Rite of Passage
Learning Team D
BSHS/342
January 12, 2013
Meredith Sharpe
Rite of Passage
Adolescents make several transitions in life before entering adulthood. Many of the changes are considered rites of passage. The transitions are symbolic and are influenced by family, peer groups and cultures. The focus of this paper is to discuss the adolescent’s rite of passage to college as one form of entering adulthood. There are three different stages that are significant in rites of passage and they are separation, initiation and reintegration (O’Hare, 2010). The adolescence that do not attend college would signify the end of their high school years as a rite of passage into adulthood, however this papers main focus is on the young adults entering college.
Separation
In this step, the adolescent will have to lose his identity through leaving the home and becoming more independent from their parents. It will involve separating him from the current support system he enjoys by sending him away from home to college possibly in a different city and live on his own (Blumenkrantz & Gavazzi, 2005). He will obtain minimal financial support from the family in the first few months to cater for his rent and upkeep. The adolescents will have to decide on choosing new friends and choose the kind of lifestyle to lead. During this time the adolescent will make minimal communication with the family members, especially after securing employment. He should engage in as many activities as he could but take into account the consequences of irresponsible behaviors
Initiation
Entering college life can be quite overwhelming for some students. Maybe not so much if you are still living at home and commuting back and forth, but if you are living on campus, adjusting to new classes, class schedules, class workload, possibly fraternity or sorority enrollment, and living in dorm with a strange new roommate can be quite an adjustment. Most teens do fine and make the adjustment quite well, others, sometimes find it difficult to make this adjustment.
John-Mark Day gives some humorous but realistic pointers in his article, Freshman Advice: What to expect in College, his list below points out some of the things you really don’t think about until you arrive at college and reality sits in.
In logical time, an 8 a.m. college class should feel like an 8 a.m. high school class. Well, college doesn’t operate on logical time. College operates on I-only-got-two-hours-of-sleep-last-night-because-the-guy-next-door-plays-that-one-Nirvana-song-over-and-over time. In this new time frame, an 8 a.m. college class seems to occur somewhere around 4:15am logical time.If your roommate cuts his hair in the sink, no one is going to clean it up, ever! Trust me on this one, I know.Along those same lines, the floor does not vacuum itself. At home I have this thing that sweeps in and eliminates all messes automatically. I called it Mom. They forgot to put one of those in my room.Senior sorority girls really don’t go for freshman guys. Sad but true.
If there was something you were good at in high school, at least 53,000 people are majoring in it and are much better at it than you.
Being nine hours from home does not seem that bad until you watch your parents leave to make the trip home without you.A $600 food budget lasts about a week.On weekends the campus empties out leaving anyone stuck there without a car, stuck there without a car.Community bathrooms. Enough said.
Although humorous sometimes it can be these small things one doesn’t think about that can cause quite a bit of stress in the adjustment to this new lifestyle.
Most college websites have information for new students entering their first year of college, which prepares them for the academic aspect of college. The things they stress most are of course class attendance, organizational skills, time management, study skills, and knowing your own learning style and adapting to the teaching style of different
