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Show 1 Each year of college brings its own common problems, from breaking with the past to coping with the future susceptibility. But one overarching cause, noted by many experts, is a sense of emotional isolation. "When you're going through emotional traumas, they become too much to handle when you feel alone," says Nancy Nelkin, a social worker on the Tulane counseling staff. Those who are most likely to crack under pressure are those who cannot find, or fail to form, a support system for themselves. That can be particularly hard when they are part of a minority. A Notre Dame found graduate student who is gay as well as his with In academic overload much harder. that coping 18 for is now alcoholic. he a months, counseling recovering Blacks at mostly white institutions may feel similarly alone. American Studies major George Braxton, 22, at Maryland, says he tries to teach younger students the facts of academic life: "You will be ignored by a professor. You will sit in a class and feel left out." Families can guide students through the storms of academic life or make them worse. Expectations may be extraordinary. Phillip Moore, who counsels students at New York collegians, says, University, many of them "Students whose parents attended college have a more relaxed attitude. They have a clearer perspective about how education fits into one's life in general, and they put less emphasis on their GPA." Many Tulane students who go to Nelkin feel they are living out their parents' ambitions. "When you are going to college for Mom and Dad, and not because you want to, you have less fulfillment," says Nelkin, who adds that less fulfillment means less of an emotional non-Cathol- ic first-generati- reservoir when stress sets in. On the other hand, affluence not automatically afford protection against burnout. Students from wealthy families "have seen the good life and don't want to lose it," explains USC's Bradford King. Unwitting harm: Many students confront homesickness, but for those with broken homes and scattered families, solace is especially difficult to find. Parents often hold together an unraveling marriage until a child is safely tucked away at school and may unwittingly exacerbate the pressures of freshman year. When Patricia Doerries arrived at Tulane last fall, she says, her parents were separating. While trying to deal with a wearing course load, she also found herself crying constantly and avoiding other people. Doerries was fortunate to have made a healthy adjustment. She joined a supportive sorority and says her roommate "was really great. She was able to help me put things in the proper perspective." All too often, however, the unhealthy coping mechanisms win out. Scott Hamilton arrived at Iowa's Grinnell College with a good academic record, but quickly felt as if "I didn't belong with all these brilliant people." He dawdled over his assignments and wound up handing in papers three weeks late. With his father frequently traveling on business, his mother in Oklahoma and his brother in Japan, Hamilton found it difficult to find family members to share his anxiety with. When he started feeling as if he were drowning in work, he says, he used to party hard: "I looked forward to Saturday nights. I would get drunk with others who wanted to escape, too." Finally, thanks to counseling, he decided to drop out for a semester. Jobs as a does A Drug to Lessen Test Anxiety? might as well stand And Tension as SAT's legions of students are concerned. But the results of an experiment at Brandeis could help modify that. Prescription drugs called beta blockers were given to a group of students who were then able to dramatically improve their SAT scores. Though the study represents a breakthrough for nervous test takers, it also fuels the debate about the virtues of "We all have the same worry," says Dr. Harrison Faigel, director of university health services at Brandeis. "If you take impressionable young people and give them medicine to take care of social problems, high-scho- n. OCTOBER 1987 ol don't want to send the message that you can just solve these things with pills you and potions." Beta blockers, which consist solely of a basic individual amino acid, ease the physical effects of nervousness. When the body is under stress, it produces adrenaline. The adrenaline triggers the brain to produce endorphins, which create an euphoria and can also interfere with the memory function. Beta blockers interfere with the release of endorphins and minimize their effects. Beta blockers have been on the market for 25 years. They can be given to heart patients to halt the effects of adrenaline and in much smaller doses they relieve minor screen out learning disabilities before being chosen for the study. Faigel gave propan-oloa beta blocker, to 22 students before they took the SAT again. Though second-tim- e SAT takers usually improve their scores by an average of 28 points on both sections, the students in study improved by an average of more than 100 points. (The other eight, a control group, improved by an average of only 11 points.) Faigel is excited by the study, but he is quick to warn that "there is no such thing as a drug free of side effects," adding that asthma sufferers should be especially careful since adrenaline helps open constricted bronchial tubes. Until more extensive tests are done, there is bound to be controversy over the safety of prescribing these powerful drugs for simple stress. l, stress. Doctors have long prescribed the drug for actors and musicians as a stage-frigantidote. "Sometimes my legs shake uncontrollaviolin bly," says a third-yea- r student at Juilliard. "Beta blockers stop the shaking." Still, most who have prescriptions use the drug in secrecy. As a recent graduate of Boston's New England Conservatory of Music explains: "Some people think it's a crutch." Side effects: Dr. Faigel conducted the Brandeis study in order to add scientific evidence to the talk about beta blockers. He tested 30 juniors and seniors who had scored poorly on their first SAT's due to test anxiety. All the students were tested for intelligence and to ht high-scho- ol Fai-gel- 's Sue Hutchison in Boston NEWSWEEK ON CAMPUS 7 |