Free Student-Athlete Life Experience Essay Sample

To start with, it is my honor and obligation to thank my university for this chance they have given me to nurture my athletic career. Since my tender age, I always wanted to become a renowned athlete, a dream that came true when I joined the Auburn University. The Auburn University has been popular due to the large number of students and many faculties.

Most important is the fame that emanates from its richness of athletes who have conquered their opponents and scoped many awards across the United States. I am a person who was lucky to have background information about my current university, because it made it easy for me to choose what I wanted academically, as well as co-curriculum activities. My invitation to this university for my further studies was not more of a surprise, but a step on a way to shape my future career in athletics. I have adhered to this until today and it is sad that soon I will be leaving the institution; but given the achievements I made, I have no doubt that everything will be fine. So you are welcome sit back, kindly read, and digest the contents of this paper in order to understand the difficulties and goodtime of an athlete in the Auburn University.

Background Information of Auburn University

It is geographically located in Auburn (as the name suggests), in Alabama State. It is a public university with an approximate population of 25,000 students and around 1,200 faculty members, currently.  Historically, its popular name was East Alabama Male College up till the 7^th of February, 1856, but it was later renamed as Auburn University in 1960. The focus of the university was initially to offer subjects related to arts. Dr. William Leroy Broun, whose vision was to facilitate the expansion of the institution as well as the individual stakeholders, introduced agriculture followed by sciences and classics.

In order to do justice to the topic of our discussion, the university enjoys the presence of strong team of both men and women who have put the university to a glory of awards winning each year. Due to high contribution of these sportsmen and sportswomen, their team adopts the title, Tigers, which participates in division I-A under the management of NCAA. Since the renaming of the university, we have scooped massive awards and championships, especially the Intercollegiate National Championship and other sporting categories in Southeastern US.

The availability of facilities and determined athletes might have played a role in the diversity of the athletics activities in our university. We participate in all kinds of athletics such as swimming, football, men’s basketball, woman basketball, baseball just to mention few. The experience in our athletes has attracted the attention of most of prominent sporting clubs in the US. For instance, most of the players in NBA are recruits from Auburn University e.g. Eddie Johnson, Mike Mitchell among others.

My Experience as an Athlete

As a student, I knew that I had a great task ahead of me as soon as I joined my university of choice. I had to balance my academic work with my athletic activities. Soon after my admission, I trained with the track & field and cross-country team where I rediscovered myself as potential short races athlete. I trained extra hard so that I could secure a place in our university team.

It was not as simple as I thought it could have been, since I met experienced and strong athletes who were indomitable. Competition was stiff and, unfortunately, in my first year I hardly participated in national championship event or SEC championships. I mostly joined the team whenever there was an event organized either internally or externally. This gave me a great opportunity to interact with other athletes, as well as learning some tactics and techniques of becoming a tough athlete in a world dominated by stiff competition. I knew that my closeness to our team could motivate and keep my ambitions alive and it has worked even beyond my expectations.

In my second and my current year of study, I have done wonders in track and field events. I have become unstoppable, especially in short races, and during this year NCAA championship, I progressed up to the finals of both 100 and 200 meters events. Having in mind the next year’s championship, I had to prove to my fellow sportsmen that I was ready to “rule” in these two events. I had gained momentum and composure during the final and I had all the chances to show my best. During this year’s final, I recorded the most spectacular records and I overturned previous records set in 1990s among the universities.

I have no doubt that future have better things for me and I am very eager for the next championship or even a tournament. I have just come to realize that perseverance pays and indeed it did to me. My target is to join the United States athletic team, although, I am in dilemma, since I fear this would take more of my time required for my studies.

What overwhelms me is the fans turnout, which has been increasing tremendously. I must commend my university for having considered the security of our supportive fans through the appointment of GuestAssist Company, whose mandate will be safety and security maintenance via improved customer service to our fans. This will ease the communication through text messaging to a unique code in case of a situation that needs urgent measures in Jordan-Hare Stadium – our main stadium that is capable of holding 87,000 fans.

My passion for athletics has elicited a series of questions to me on whether college athlete should receive payment for participating in the athletic and football events. I know you may wonder about the same, but this is debatable. To some extent, I think we as athletes who make our university shine in the glory need a token of appreciation. This can be through the university giving us some symbolical payment. However, my worry is whether this move can affect our motivation and our performance. Payment of college athletes as proposed by Steve Supurrier, a university of South Carolina football coach, was a move that elicited much debates and the results were not in his favor, since his proposal faced strong opposition from other major stakeholders in NCAA. I do not believe that this issue is ignorable, since some institutions are already doing it while others are not. Therefore, it is my proposal to NCAA to revisit their rules to evaluate possibilities of amendments, so that all the athletes were uniformly treated.

To sum up, I have come to realize how hard it is – to balance the academics and athletics. We receive many criticism on many occasions that we just focus on athletics and forget books. In one way or the other, there is some truth in it, but not all of us are unconcerned about our education. Critics by Watson is unbearable to me, because you cannot standardize all the athletes to be lazy, pampered and to make matter worse in suggesting that they go to college just to participate in intercollegiate athletics.

How Students Abuse Alcohol

Alcohol abuse among college students is no longer a secret, since there are many reported cases to an extent that some are critical. We must admit that alcohol is not recommendable for students due to the effects it has on them. For instance, we expect the students to have focused and composed minds, but alcohol will disorganize everything and make the student look confused and loose concentration in studies. So how do they abuse alcohol?

For many decades, alcohol abuse problem has attracted attention of most researchers. The reported cases of students’ death emanating from alcohol abuse created a research problem and a public concern.

It is hard to prevent them completely from engaging into alcohol due to forces brought by peer pressure. Some students realize that they have been addicted to alcohol after a practice that was meant to ‘just having fun’. Peer pressure is the main means by which most students get into trap of taking alcohol. Some students are influenced by their colleagues to take alcohol, which they do willingly, while others receive threats for not taking alcohol or even do it to avoid ridicule. Once introduced to this alcohol taking habit, some students lack knowledge on how much alcohol to consume. Although it is fun, it ends up mounting to a serious problem of taking excessive alcohol.

Further studies revealed a worse scenario on students’ drinking habit. Study carried out by National College Health Risk Behavior Survey, an umbrella under CDC in 1997 gave shocking results. From a sample of 4,838 college students, about sixty-eight percent took alcohol once in previous month and forty-two percent took five or more different alcohol brands at once. This is a serious danger that these students do not tend to get. It is not advisable to consume different kinds of alcoholic drinks, since there are possible negative effects likely to come up due to this mixture.

Reasons Why Students Engage In Alcohol Abuse

There is high correlation between peer pressure and drug abuse, although, this is not always the case for all peers. Some peers have mutual benefits, especially, when students involve themselves in group discussions and communal activities. Students who join such gangs find it impossible to avoid doing what the rest of the members are doing. Therefore, students end up engaging in alcohol abuse with intension to become comfortable in the group.

There is a notion that people who take alcohol are tough and courageous. I don’t agree. Some students end up taking alcohol in search of “fame” among other students. The effects of this alcohol taking make them feel excited and they are always violent.

Another factor contributing to student abusing alcohol is evident from Gfroerer et al. study.  In their study, they analyzed survey data between 1991 and 1993 on same aged peers. Their main objective was to investigate the alcohol abuse tendency between college students and same aged peers who were not in college. At the end of analysis, it was clear that more of the students who were away from their parents consumed alcohol at a higher rate than those college students who lived with their parents that is 16.9%, and 7.2%, respectivel.

Alcohol abuse in colleges may be associated with the moral decay in our colleges and lack of proper rules and regulation. In some institutions, alcohol taking is just a normal practice among the students and students seem to be ok with the situation without takingtaking into consideration the danger that is likely to result from this behavior. For instance, drunkards are likely to cause chaos and unfriendly environment for other students who are serious in their studies.

Conclusion

To sum up, we must admit the burdens that students face in terms of workload of assignments, exams fever, as well as academic excellence. Some students are not able to manage all these burdens and, as a result, look for the means of relieving the stress. Unfortunately, instead of getting assistance from professional peer counselor, they end up consulting their fellow students who misguide them to try alcohol for purpose of releasing tensions and stress. The availability of well-established alcohol business and industries near the colleges has made it easy for students to acquire alcohol easily and at a cheap price. Lastly, promotion of alcohol products has created a condition that attracts curiosity of testing alcohol among the youths.

 

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