BrandonFinalAnalogy

 

To be a student at college is being like a soldier in a war. That soldier constantly has to make decisions regarding his own welfare and the welfare of others. Those decisions can be life or death situations at times. Although the college student is not physically fighting for their lives, they are fighting the struggles of college that will earn them the rest of their lives. Soldiers and students are both either hundreds or possibly thousands of miles away from their families or homes. Soldiers are always surrounded by danger while students are surrounded by temptation. Soldiers are constantly working and doing their jobs while students are loaded down and constantly doing their work. Students rely on other people as soldiers rely on other soldiers and other people.

 

 

Soldiers always have to be willing to make decisions that help the most people. College students are also constantly making decisions. There is the choice of what homework to do when, if to skip a class, what to skip and why, which party to go to on the weekend, what exactly to do at that party, where to sleep afterwards, and for some people, just getting ready every day involves many choices. These decisions are different from the decisions soldiers at war have to make, such as who to put on guard and what target to attack and when, but they have the same basic ideas behind them. Students are looking out for the best interests for themselves as well as to make their parents happy and to be able to create a future with possibly a family to take care of and have a good life, so each decision has an impact on that. Soldiers make decisions that can cause them to live or die, as well as the rest of the people around them and maybe even other people who have no say in the matter.

 

Soldiers and students also both experience the freedom of being far from home. Although soldiers can be on a completely different continent thousands of miles away while students can be in the same town a mile away from home, they are still both distant from their homes and families. Being away from home comes with the responsibility for self first. Soldiers in war are responsible for their own lives and their own decisions and work helps to guide that responsibility. Students at college are also responsible for their own lives, or at least their own futures. The decisions they make and the work that they do influence that. Soldiers may tend to miss their families a lot more than the typical college student does, but the typical college student is probably missed by their parents just as much as the typical soldier misses his or her family and home. Students are missed by their families just as much as a soldier that is away somewhere is missed by their families. There is experience that comes with being free and independent that both students and soldiers go through and that is learning responsibility for their own actions and learning to appreciate the things that they have back home.

Soldiers are constantly surrounded by people wanting to harm them, while students are surrounded by people wanting to pressure them into something. This pressure is usually not pressure to do something you wouldn’t already be doing necessarily, but it is still pressure. For example, if you were to be pressured into playing a game of ultimate Frisbee, you might want to do it anyway, but because somebody else is asking you, technically you are being pressured into it. This pressure can also be something that is dangerous to your life, just like the danger that is put on soldiers by people around them constantly. You might run into the pressure of “here, have one more,” or “here, have this” at college. That “one more” could potentially be the last one ever and could therefore potentially be dangerous.

 

 

Students also constantly rely on other people. It can be a simple reliance such as relying on somebody else to take notes for you or copy somebody else’s notes if they take better notes than you, or even as small as just asking somebody for help on homework. A student might also not realize that they rely heavily on their teachers to actually teach them the information, assuming that they go to class. (Hmmm) If the teacher does a bad job teaching, that student probably will not do as good on the test because he or she relied on the teacher to have covered the material that would be on the exam. A soldier on the battlefield also relies on many people. That soldier can rely on maintenance crews to make sure everything that they use is in good, working order. That soldier might also rely on good intelligence telling them whether something is safe or not. That soldier might also rely on somebody to cook them a meal or put up their tent.

 

While fighting in a war, soldiers experience a lot of things that are similar to those that students experience. The situations may be a lot more severe or intense and stressful than those of the typical college student, but they can have the same basic outcomes. A good decision made by a soldier can lead to them living and having a good life. A good decision by a student can lead to them having a better life than if they had made the wrong one. Both soldiers and students have to learn and exercise a lot of responsibility while doing their jobs. Basically, a soldier fights to keep his life, while a student fights to have a better one, so they are not that much different.