What is college like? Study, study, study! Truly college is more than just studying and school work. At the same time that school work is a very important part of college. College also teaches teens to grow and learn to live on there own. You learn to make decisions for yourself. All these things are what make up college life. This is not how media perceives college life. Not all but most TV shows and movies falsely show you what college is really about. So many times when the college life is shown in media its all about “partying”. In movies what you see happening in college is drinking and having sex in dorm rooms. Media seems to always leave out the real college life.
This situation is also put into a media loop. High school students going to college see how media has portrayed how college life is. Seeing this they try mimicking what that see on TV. With the change of each college generation, media continues to watch and go on with the never ending loop.
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Wow, you have a really good idea going here. I like how you related the concept of the "media loop" from Merchants of Cool to media's portrayal of college and the way college life is actually lived out.
I feel that I have gotten to see a little more of this media loop within the sphere of Malone College specifically since I am a student here, as well as an employee in the Admissions office.
For some stuents, the Admissions office is a place that they go once on their college visit day and never return to. But I spend 9-12 hours a week there.
As a student, I can see how my initial expectations of college have changed because of the assumptions I made about Malone based on the promotion pieces mailed out to my house vs. the actual experiences I've had on campus this year.
When I thought of college I thought of sitting in the quad on a sunny afternoon- pherhaps even reading an essay for a class at a leisurely pace. I didn't picture myself at work for five hours one cold winter night, then returning to my dorm room to stay up to 1:00 in the morning working on a paper.
Was I nieve? Perhaps a little, but I also think that my perceptions were influenced by the message Malone College Media sent out to me as a perspective student.
Working in the admissions office has confirmed this belief.
Disclaimer -I think our admissions office is great-
I'm not saying that an untruths about Malone are portrayed, but rather Ideals. The Utopian Malone is presented to persepective students. This isn't wrong. I don't think that we should have to tell visiting students "by the way, here's the list of things that you wouldn't like about Malone."
I do think that colleges should be authentic in the promotion of our school - which the admissions office here is - and that persepective students have the responsibility to get opinions on a school from people other than staff, and to aknowledge the biases of sources.
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