Student Drinking Perspectives

Have you ever wondered why college students drink or thought about the effects drinking can have on students? The college years of a student can provide exposure to alcohol and partying, and those things can have effects on students.

Nick Robinette is a senior at Salisbury University majoring in finance and feels like students can achieve a balance between leisure time and schoolwork.

His philosophy is that if students get their assignments and studying done during the week they should have free time to drink or do other things on the weekend.

“I feel like students can drink on the weekends and still get stuff done during school hours,” Robinette said. “…so Fridays through Saturday they can get it done.”

While he does feels like a balance can be achieved he does admit that he’s experienced problems in the past where he lost focus on his academics.

“Definitely I can say that there’s been times where I’ve prioritized drinking when I should have been studying or something,” Robinette said.

Mental health is a topic discussed in college with students. Students have different ways of coping with stress ranging from jobs and internships to the highs and lows of dating.

“As a student you definitely stress about things and drinking can definitely help with it in my opinion,” Robinette said. “In others opinions you might think differently.”

Brooke Davidson, who is a sophomore majoring in accounting feels like it can be tempting to want to hang out with friends and night. She points out the dichotomy between having a social life versus being a successful college student.

“It’s definitely hard because everyone likes going out every single night and you want to go out with them, but you also have exams the next day or homework due that night and you’d prefer to go out sometimes more than likely.”

Davidson feels like she’s able to know when not to go out with friends. She likes to dage (daydrink) on the weekends, but she will decides not to if she has a test or exam soon.

“If I do have an exam coming up, but I know that I have to not go to a dage this weekend,” said Davidson.

There are advantages of drinking she pointed out that one might not have considered.

Davidson believes that drinking can give a student the opportunity to network or mingle with other students. Plus, if a student is not too drunk they might also be able to help out another student who is in drunk than them.

“You definitely meet a lot of people. It sounds weird, but you can also help other people who are more drunk than you because when you go out you’re more than likely drinking and if someone’s worse than you, you can walk them back as a group, you can help them out,” Davidson said.