148 A. BARTLETT GIAMA TT I

abiding , some pattern and some impu lse that cou ld come together to

make a reality that would resist the corrosion; and because, after it had

fostered again tha t most hungered-for illusion, the game was meant to

stop, and betray precisely what it promised.

Of course, there are tho se who learn after the first few tim es. They

grow out of sport s. And ther e are others who were born with the wis­

dom to know that nothin g lasts. These are t he truly tough among us, the

ones who can live without illusion, or without even th e hope of illusion.

I am not th at grown -up or up-to-date . I am a simpler creature , tied to

more primiti ve patt ern s and cycles. I need to think something lasts for­

ever , and it might as well be that state of being that is a game; it might

as well be th at, in a gree n field, in the sun.

Thin king about the Text

1. A. Bartlet t Giamatt i focuses on a parad ox in his essay, writ ing

that baseball is both "our best invention to stay change" and one

that "brin g[s] chan ge on" (parag raph 7). Wha t does he mean by this?

How does his essay demon stra te thi s paradox?

2. Giamatt i seems to suggest that listening to a game on the radio is

bet ter t han watching it on "the all-seeing, all-falsifying te levision"

(paragraph 2). Why? Which medium do you prefer- and why?

3. Write an essay reflec ting on somet hing that occurs annu ally that has

specia l meani ng to you-a sport, a holiday, a music festiva l, or some

othe r event. Like Giamatt i does in writing about baseball, show why

you consider th at annual event significant.

WILLIAM ZINSSER

College Pressures

1979

WILLIAM ZINSSER (1922-2 015) wrote journalism and other

nonfict ion, often on the craft of writ ing. He is best known

for his book On Writing Well (1976). From 2010 to 2011 he

wrote for Zinsser on Friday, hi s blog for the American Scholar that covered topics such as writ ing, the art s, a nd pop cul­

ture. He wrote "College Pressures" when he was th e he ad of

Branford College, a resident ial college at Yale University. It

was first publi shed in Blair and Ketchum's Country Journal

(1979 ), a small circulation bimon thly magaz ine about rural

life , which ha s s ince ceased publi ca tion.

Dear Carlos: I desperately need a dea n's excuse for my chem mid­

term which will begin in about 1 hour. All I can say is that I totally

blew it thi s week. I've fallen incredibly, inconceivably behind.

Carlos: Help! I'm anxious to hear from you. I'll be in my room and

won't leave it until I hear from you. Tomorrow is the last day for . . .

Car los: I left town because I star ted bugging out again. I stayed

up all night to finish a take-home make-up exam & am typing it to

hand in on the 10th. It was due on the 5th. P.S. I'm going to the denti st. Pain is pretty bad.

Carlos: Probably by Friday I'll be able to get back to my studies.

Right now I'm going to take a long walk. This whole thing has taken a lot out of me.

Carlos: I'm rea lly up the proverbial cree k. The problem is I

rea lly bombed the history final. Since I need that course for my major I ...

Carlos: Here follows a ta le of woe. I went home th is weekend, had

to help my Mom, & caught a fever so didn't have much time to study. My professor ...

Carlos: Aargh! Trouble. Nothing original but everyt hing's piling up at once. To be brief, my job intervie w .. .

Hey Carlos, good news! I've got mononucleos is.

Who are these wretched supplicants, scribbling notes so laden with

anx iety, seeking such miracles of postponement and balm? They are

men and women who belong to Branford College, one of the twelve resi­

dential colleges at Yale University, and the messages are just a few of

the hundred s that they left for their dean, Carlos Hortas - often slipped under his door at 4 A.M.- last year.

COLLEGE PRESSURES 151

But students like the ones who wrote those notes can also be found

on camp uses from coast to coast- especially in New England and at

many other private colleges across the coun try that have high academic

standards and highly mot ivated student s. Nobody could doubt that the

notes are real. In their urgency and their gallows humor they are aut hen­

tic voices of a generation that is panicky to succeed.

My own connect ion with the message wr iters is that I am master of

Branford College. I live in its Goth ic quadrangl e and know the students

well. (We have 485 of them.) I am privy to their hopes and fears-and

also to t heir ster eo music and their piercing cries in t he dead of

night ("Does anybody ca-a-are?"). If they went to Carlos to ask how to

get through tomorrow, the y come to me to ask how to get through the

rest of their lives.

Main ly I try to remi nd them that the road ahead is a long one and

that it will have more unexpe cted turns tha n they th ink . There will be

plenty of t ime to cha nge jobs, change careers, change whole att itudes

and appro aches. They don't want to hear such liber ating news . They

want a map - right now-t hat they can follow unswerving ly to caree r

secu rity, financial securit y, Social Securi ty and, presumably, a prepaid

grave. What I wish for all student s is some release from the clammy grip of 5

the future. I wish them a chance to savor each segment of t heir educa­

tion as an exper ience in itself and not as a grim prepar ation for the next

step. I wish them t he right to experiment, to tr ip and fall, to lea rn t hat

defeat is as inst ruct ive as victory and is not the end of the world.

My wish, of course, is na ive. One of the few rights t hat America does

not proclaim is the right to fail. Achievement is the national god, vener­

ated in our media-t he mil lion-dollar athlet e, t he wealthy executive­

and glorified in our praise of possessions . In the presence of such a

potent state religion, the young are growing up old.

I see four kind s of pressure work ing on college students tod ay:

eco nomi c pressure , parental pressu re, peer pressure, and self-induced

152 WILLIAM ZINSSER

pressure. It is easy to look around for villains- to blame the colleges for

charg ing too much money, th e professors for assigni ng too much work,

the parents for pushing their childr en too far, the students for driving

th emselves too hard. But ther e are no villains; only vict ims.

"In th e late 1960s," one dean told me, "the typical question that I got

from studen ts was 'Why is ther e so much suffering in the world?' or

'How can I make a contribution ?' Today it 's 'Do you th ink it wou ld look

bet ter for getti ng into law school if I did a double major in history and

political science, or just majored in one of them?"' Many oth er deans

confirmed th is pattern. One said : "They're try ing to find an edge-t he

intangib le somet hing th at will look better on paper if two students are about equal."

Note the emphasis on looking better. Th e transcr ipt has beco me a

sacred docu ment, th e passport to security. How one appears on paper is

more important than how one appears in person. A is for Admir able

and Bis for Borderline, even though, in Yale's official system of grading,

A means "excellent" and B means "ver y good." Today, looking very good is

no longer good enough, especially for student s who hope to go on to law

school or medica l school. They know that entrance into the better schools

will be an entrance into the bet ter law firms and bette r med ical prac­

tices where they will make a lot of money. They also know that the odds

are harsh. Yale Law School, for instance, matricu lates 170 stude nts from

an applicant pool of 3,700 ; Harvard enro lls 550 from a pool of7,000.

It's all very well for tho se of us who write letters of recommendat ion

for our students to stress th e qual ities of humani ty that will make th em

good lawyers or doctors. And it's nice to think that adm ission officers are

rea lly reading our let ters and looking for the extra dimension of com­

mitment or concern. Still, it wou ld be hard for a stud ent not to visua lize

these officers shuffl ing so many transcrip ts studded with As th at they regard a Ba s positively sham efu l.

10

COLLEGE PRESSURES 153

The pre ssure is almost as heavy on stud ents who just want to gradu­

ate and get a job. Long gone are the days of the "gentleman 's C," when

students journeyed through college with a cer ta in relaxat ion , sampli ng

a wide variety of courses-mu sic, art, philosophy, classics, anthr opology,

poet ry, religion- that would send them out as liberally educa ted men

and women. If I were an employer I would rather employ graduates who

have this range and cur iosity than those who na rrowly pursued safe sub­

jects and high grades. I know countless students whose inquir ing min ds

exh ilarate me. I like to hear the play of their ideas. I don't know if they

are get ting As or Cs, and I don't care . I also like the m as peop le. The

count ry needs them, and they will find satisfying jobs. I tell them to

relax. They can't.

Nor can I blame them. They live in a brutal economy. Tuition, room,

and board at most private colleges now comes to at least $7,000, not

countin g books and fees. Th is might seem to suggest that the colleges

are getting rich. But they are equa lly battered by inflation. Tuition cov­ers only 60 percent of wha t it costs to educ ate a stude nt , and ordinarily

th e rema inder comes from what colleges rece ive in endowments, grants,

and gif ts. Now th e rema ind er keeps being swallowed by t he cruel

costs- higher every year-of just open ing the doors. Heat ing oil is up.

Insurance is up. Postage is up. Health-prem ium costs are up. Everything

is up. Deficits are up. We are witnessing in America the creat ion of a

brotherhood of paupers-co lleges, parents, and stud ents, joined by the

com mon bond of debt.

Today it is not unusual for a student, even if he works part t ime at

college and fu ll time during the summer , to accrue $5,000 in loans

after four years- loans th at he must sta rt to repay within one year after

graduation. Exhorte d at commen ceme nt to go forth into the world,

he is already behind as he goes forth. How could he not feel under pres­

sure throughout college to prepare for this day of reckoning? I have used

"he," incidentally, only for brevity. Women at Yale are under no less

154 WILLIAM ZINSSER

pressu re to just ify their expensive education to them selves, the ir par­

ents, and society. In fact, they are probably under more pressure. For

although they leave college superbly equipped to bring fresh leadership

to trad itiona lly male jobs, society hasn't yet caught up with this fact.

Along wit h econo mic pressure goes parental pre ssure. Inevitably, the two are deeply intert wined.

I see many student s takin g pre-medical courses with joyless tenac- 15

ity. They go off to th eir labs as if they were going to th e dentist. It sad­

dens me because I know them in oth er corners of th eir life as cheerful people.

"Do you want to go to medical school?" I ask them.

"I guess so," the y say, without convic t ion, or "Not really." "Then why are you going?"

"Well, my parents want me to be a doctor. They're paying all thi s money and . . . "

Poor stude nt s, poor paren ts. They are caught in one of the oldest 20

webs of love and dut y and guil t. The par ents mean well; they are trying

to steer their sons and daughter s toward a secure futu re. But the sons

and daughter s want to major in hi sto ry or classics or philo sophy­

subjects wit h no "practical" value. Where 's the payoff on th e hum ani-

ties? It's not easy to per suade such loving paren ts that the hum an ities do

indeed pay off. The intellectual facul ties developed by studying subjects

like history and classics-an ability to synth esize and relate, to weigh

cause and effect, to see event s in perspe ctive-ar e just the facult ies th at

make creat ive leaders in business or almost any gene ral field. Still , man y

fathers would rather put th eir money on courses that point toward a spe-

cific profession- courses th at are pre-law, pre -medica l, pre-business, or, as I somet imes heard it put, "pre-rich."

But the pressure on stud ents is severe . They are tru ly torn. One part

of th em feels obligated to fulfill their parent s' expectat ions; after all,

t heir parent s are older and presu mably wiser. Another part tells them

COLLEGE PRESSURES 155

that the expecta tions that arc right for their parents are not right for

them . I know a student who wants to be an art ist. She is very obviously an

art ist and wi ll be a good one-s he has already had severa l modest local

exhibit s . Meanwhile she is growing as a well-rounded person and tak­

ing humani stic subjects tha t wi ll enri ch the in ner resources out of

which her ar t will grow. But her father is strongly opposed. He thinks

th at an artist is a "dumb " th ing to be. The student vacillates and tries to

please everybody. She keeps up wit h her art somewhat furtively and

ta kes some of th e "dumb " courses her fath er want s he r to ta ke-at least

they are dumb courses for her. She is a free spirit on a campus of tense

stud ent s-n o small achievemen t in it self-a nd she deserves to follow

her muse.

Peer pressure and self-induced pressure are also intertwi ned, and

they begin almost at the beginni ng of freshman year.

"I had a freshman stud ent I'll ca ll Linda," one dea n told me, "who

came in and said she was und er terrib le pressure because her room­

mate, Barbara , was mu ch brighter and studi ed all the time . I cou ldn't

tell her th at Barbara had come in two hours earlier to say the same

thin g about Linda ."

The story is almost funny-exce pt tha t it's not. It's symptoma tic of 25

all the pressures put togeth er. Whe n every stu dent think s every other

student is working harder and doing bett er, the only solution is to study

hard er still. I see stud ents going off to the library every night after dinner

and coming back when it closes at midni ght. I wish the y would some­

tim es forget about the ir peers and go to a movie. I hear the clacking of

typewriters in the hours before dawn. I see th e ten sion in th eir eyes when

exams are approac hin g and pape rs are due: "Will I get everything done?"

Probably they won't. They will get sick. They will get "blocked." They

will sleep. They will oversleep. They will bug out. Hey Carlos, help!

Part of the problem is tha t they do more th an the y are expec ted to

do . A professor will assign five-page papers. Several students will sta rt

156 WILLIAM ZINSSER

writing ten-page papers to impress him. Then more students will write

ten-page papers, and a few will raise the ante to fifteen. Pity the poor st uden t who is still just doing the assignment .

"Once you have twenty or thirt y percent of the student population

deliberately overexerting ," one dean points out, "it's bad for everybody.

When a teacher gets more and more effort from his class, the student

who is doing normal work can be perceived as not doing well. The tactic works, psychologically."

Why can't the professor just cut back and not accept longer papers?

He can , and he probab ly will. But by then the term will be half over and

the damage done. Grade fever is highly contagious and not easily

reversed. Besides, the professor's main concern is with his course. He

knows his student s only in relation to the course and doesn't know that

they are also overexerting in their other courses. Nor is it really his

business. He didn't sign up for dealing with the student as a whole

person and with all the emotiona l baggage the student brought along

from home. That's what deans, masters, chaplains, and psychiatrists are for.

To some extent thi s is nothing new: a certain number of professors

have always been self-contained island s of scholarship and shyness,

more comfortable with books than with people. But the new pauperism

has widened the gap still furth er, for professors who actually like to

spend time with students don't have as much tim e to spend. They also

are overexerting. If they are young, they are busy trying to publi sh in

order not to perish, hangin g by their finger nails onto a shrinkin g pro­

fession. If they are old and tenured, the y are buried under the duti es of

administering depart men ts- as departme ntal chai rmen or members of

committe es-th at have been thinn ed out by the budgetary axe.

Ultimately it will be the students' own business to break the circles in

which they are tr apped. They are too young to be prisoners of their par­

en ts' dreams and their classmates' fears. They must be jolted into believ­

ing in themselves as uniqu e men and women who have the power to shape their own future.

30

COLLEGE PRESSURES 157

"Violence is being done to the und ergraduate exper ience," says Carlos

Horta s. "College shou ld be open-ended: at the end it should open many,

many roads. Instead, students are choosing their goal in advance, and

their choices narrow as they go along. It's almost as if they think that

the country has been codified in the type of jobs that exist- that they've

got to fit into certa in slots. Therefore, fit into the best-paying slot.

"They ought to take chan ces. Not taki ng chances will lead to a life of

colorless mediocrity. They'll be comfortable. But something in the

spirit will be missing."

I have painted too drab a port rait of today's students, making them

seem a solemn lot . That is only half of the ir story; if they were so dreary

I wouldn't so thoroughly enjoy their company. The other half is that they

are easy to like. They are quick to laugh and to offer friendship. They are

not introverts . They are unusually kind and are more considera te of one

another than any student generation I have known.

Nor are they so obsessed with the ir studies that they avoid sports

and extracurricular act ivities. On the contrary, they juggle their crowded

hours to play on a variety of teams, perform with musica l and dramatic

groups, and write for campus publications. But th is in turn is one more

cause of anxiety. There are too many choices. Academ ically, they have

1,300 courses to select from; outside class they have to decide how much

spare time they can spare and how to spend it.

This means that they engage in fewer extr acurri cular pursuits than

the ir predecessor s did. If they want to row on the crew and play in the

symphony they will elimi nate one; in the '60 s they would have done

both. They a lso tend to choose act ivit ies that are self-limiting. Drama,

for .instance, is flouri shing in all twelve of Yale's resident ial colleges as

it never has before. Students hurl themse lves into thes e product ions­

as actors, directors, carpen ters, and technic ians-w ith a dedicat ion to

create the best possible play, knowing tha t the day will come when the

ru n will end and they can get back to their studies.

They also can't afford to be the willing slave of organizations like the

Yale Daily News. Last spring at the one-hundredt h ann iversary banquet

35

158 WILLIAM ZINSSER

of that paper-whose past chair men include such once and future kings

as Potter Stewart, Kingman Brewster, and William F. Buckley, Jr.­

much was made of the fact th at th e edito rial staff used to be sma ll and

totally committed and that "newsies" routinely worked fifty hours a wee k.

In effect they belonged to a club; Newsies is how they defined themselves

at Yale. Today's student will write one or two art icles a week, when he

can , and he defines him self as a student. I've never heard the word Newsie except at the banquet.

If I have descr ibed the modern undergraduate prima rily as a driven

creature who is largely igno ring the blithe spirit ins ide who keeps try ing

to come out and play, it's because tha t's where the crunch is, not only at

Yale but throughout American edu cat ion. It's why I th ink we shou ld all

be worri ed about the values tha t are nur turing a genera tion so fearful of risk and so goal-obsessed at such an early age.

I tell students that ther e is no one "right " way to get ahead-th at

each of them is a differe nt person, sta rtin g from a different point and

bound for a different destination. I te ll them t hat change is a tonic and

that all the slots are not codified nor the frontiers closed. One of my ways

of telling them is to invite men and women who have ach ieved success

outs ide the academic world to come and talk inform ally with my stu­

dents dur ing the year. They are heads of compan ies or ad agencies, edi­

tors of magazines, politicians, public officials, te levision magnates, labor

leaders, business executives, Broadway producers, art ists, writers, econo­

mists, photographers, scienti sts, historia ns-a mixed bag of ach ievers.

I ask them to say a few words about how they got started. The stu- 40

dents assume that they star ted in thei r present profession and knew all

along that it was what they wanted to do. Luckily for me, most of them

got into the ir field by a ci rcu itous route, to their surpr ise, after many

detours. The students are start led. They can hardly conceive of a caree r

th at was not pre-planned. They can hardly imagine allowi ng the hand

of God or cha nce to nudge them down some unfore seen tra il.

COLLEGE PRESSURES 159

Th inking about the Text

1. What college pressures does William Zinsser identify? How are they

inte rtwi ned? Are there any pressures you wou ld add to those he lists

and describes?

2. Zinsser's essay was published in 1979. Which par ts of his essay still

see m relevant? Which par ts seem less relevant? In what ways have

specific pressures changed, intensified, or lessened?

3. Zinsser claims th at one source of pressure for college stud ents is

th at they are too focused on specific goals and futu re employment. He

suggests listen ing to the stor ies of t hose who have beco me success­

ful in a particular field-often "by a circuitous route" (paragraph 40).

Interview an d then write a profile of someone who ha s a career in a

field th at interests you.