Negotiating the Freshman Year: Challenges and Strategies Among First-Year College Students

This study explores the concept of strategies as a means for understanding how students negotiate the transition to college. Based upon a qualitative study of eight first-year students at an urban, commuter, public four-year college, it explores how students experienced challenges, perceived influences, and devised strategies during the freshman year. Findings revealed that challenges and influences ranged from negative to positive, and occurred both inside and outside the institution. Implications for first-year seminars and further research are discussed.

Success for college freshmen is often defined in terms of making the transition to the college student role. Sociology-based theories identify multiple factors, both inside and outside of college, that may influence that process such as: students' initial goals and commitments; their collegiate experiences, including their academic performance, extracurricular activities, and interactions with faculty, staff, and peer groups; their relationships with people and communities outside the college community, including parents, peers, employers, and community organizations; and their personal attributes and characteristics (Tinto, 1993; Weidman, 1989). While the theories effectively capture the range of factors influencing students' transitions, they fall short in addressing how students experience, perceive, and subsequently manage those various and varying influences. The question remains: How do first-year students negotiate the transition to college?

This question has received some important attention among scholars (Attinasi, 1989; Padilla, Trevino, Trevino, & Gonzalez, 1997; Terenzini et al., 1994), with the concept of strategies emerging as an important theme. Strategy is useful for considering freshman transitions because it recognizes the part that students play in managing their experiences and actions in college. Because sociological theories propose that situations occurring outside of the institution also influence students' transitions to college, it is reasonable to suggest that managing those external experiences may similarly require students to devise strategies. A complete understanding of freshman transitions, therefore, must accommodate both internal and external contexts and strategies.

The purpose of this study is to explore and expand the concept of strategies as a means for gaining a deeper understanding of how students negotiate the transition to college. By following students' experiences during their first year, this study will explore the dynamics of strategies among college freshmen by looking at the kinds of challenges, both inside and outside of college, that prompt students to strategize during that important time and the circumstances that appear to influence them in that process. Implications for enhancing institutional practice to foster successful student strategies and understanding student transitions are also discussed.

BACKGROUND

Groundbreaking qualitative research into the nature of students' transitions to college offers valuable insights into the internal and external contexts and factors that can influence the process. For example, Terenzini et al's (1994) exploratory study sought students' perspectives about the college transition, including how they become involved in the college, and the people and experiences that influence the process, both positively and negatively. Using focus groups from four distinct types of institutions in terms of student demographics and institutional characteristics (i.e., urban community college, residential liberal arts college, urban commuter state university, residential research university), the researchers concluded that the process by which students become involved is circuitous and poorly mapped (Terenzini et al., pp. 72-73). Specific findings showed that the transition to college could be vastly different experiences for traditional and nontraditional students. For traditional students, college was a familiar experience in their families and an expected step in their life passages. These students perceived social integration as the most prominent challenge in their transitions to college. For first-generation students, however, attending college represented a departure from their families' experiences and expectations. For these nontraditional students, the transition to college was a more complicated, difficult blend of academic, social, and cultural challenges. Validating experiences were critical to facilitating their transitions; unfortunately, parents and high school friends could be both assets and liabilities to students in that process. Finally, in addition to classroom activities, students indicated that the "real learning" of the transition process included

developing "survival" skills (e.g., money and time management skills, personal goal setting); developing the self-discipline to "just do it" when a task or obligation was recognized; taking responsibility for one's physical, financial, and academic well-being; and developing a clearer understanding of oneself and one's goals through interactions with faculty and peers who held goals, attitudes, or values different from the student's. (Terenzini et al., p. 68)