WE RUN A VERY TIGHT SHIP HERE, AND WE EXPECT ALL OUR EMPLOYEES TO B...

44.We run a very tight ship here, and we expect all our employees to be at their desks by eight o'clock andtake good care of their own business.A.manage an inflexible system B.have a good voyageC.run faster than others D. organize things inefficientlyRead the following passage and mark the letter A, B, C, or D on your answer sheet to indicate the correctanswer to each of the questions.In my experience, freshmen today are different from those I knew when I started as a counselor andprofessor 25 years ago. College has always been demanding both academically and socially. But studentsnow are less mature and often not ready for the responsibility of being in college.It is really too easy to point the finger at parents who protect their children from life’s obstacles. Parents,whohandleevery difficulty and every other responsibility for their children from writing admission essaysto picking college courses, certainly may contribute to their children’s lack of coping strategies. But we canlook even more broadly to the social trends of today.How many people do you know who areon medicationto prevent anxiety or depression? The number ofstudents who arrive at college already medicated for unwanted emotions has increased dramatically in thepast 10 years. We, as a society, don’t want to “feel” anything unpleasant and we certainly don’t want ourchildren to “suffer”. The resulting problem is that by not experiencing negative emotions, one does notlearn the necessary skills to tolerate and negotiate adversity. As a psychologist, I am well aware of the factthat some individuals suffer from depression and anxiety and can benefit from treatment, but I question thegrowing number of medicated adolescents today.Our world is more stressful in general because of the current economic and political realities, but I don’tbelieve that the college experience itself is moreintensetoday than that of the past 10 years. What I dothink is that many students are often not prepared to be young “adults” with all the responsibilities of life.What does this mean for college faculty and staff? We are required to assist in the basic parenting of thesestudents - the student who complains that her professor didn’t remind her of the due date for an assignmentthat was clearly listed on the syllabus and the student who cheats on an assignment in spite of carefulinstructions about plagiarism.As college professors, we have to explain what it means to be an independent college student before we caneven begin to teach. As parents and teachers we should expect young people to meet challenges. Toencouragethemin this direction, we have to step back and let them fail and pick themselves up and moveforward. This approach needs to begin at an early age so that college can actually be a passage toindependent adulthood.