Several different ways in which colleges fail to prepare students for life.

Essay 1 is to have thesis, topic sentences(x3), an introduction (100 words), a full body parapgraph(250-300 words) discussing thesis and at least 3 subpoints, and a conclusion (at least 100 words)Essay requires 400-500 words. Also at least two quotes, paraphrases, and /or summaries from at least one LBR essay. Students are not to do outside research for this essay. Use of real people examples to back up general points, use of MLA parenthetical citations, and careful proofreading.

My essay is selected as "discuss several significant ways in which colleges fail to prepare students to meet the demands of "real life."

[b]Essay 1:[b]
Thesis:
College doesn't teach a student basic infant care, how to cope with children, or how to encourage a child to eat well.

Topic Sentences:
1. College doesn't teach a student about how to bathe a baby, change a diaper, or feed a baby.

2. Among the many things not taught in college is how to cope with the infant when the child has colic or is teething.

3. A student may learn about basic nutrition, but does not prepare the student to encoruage a child to eat well.

Introduction:

Caitlin Petere states in, The Lessons I didn't learn in Real Life essay "...there's a discrepancy between what we learn in school and what we need to know for work...". College students are educated with the basic knowledge which they must learn to apply, but does not prepare students for the demands of real life of employment or personal life skills, such as parenting. Parenting is the hardest form of work, due to the fact it is the only work a person will do twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. College doesn't teach basic infant care, or how to cope with children, or how to encourage a child to eat well.

Body Paragraph:

College doesn't teach a student about how to bathe an infant, change a diapers or feed a baby. Students are not taught to make sure that the water is tepid, so as not to scald or not to chill an nfant. The are also not told how to test the bath water by placing their own elbow into the water to do so. After baby has its bath, a student is not taught how to apply baby powder to the their hand and then apply to baby, so the child doesn't asphyxiate on powder. Another area students do not learn is how to change a diaper and to stifle their gag reflex when it is discovered that baby depostited a nice strange yellow bowel movement, add slimy if Mom is breast feeding. In addition, if baby isn't changed often enough Mom or Dad will discover baby's blotchy looking bottom. A student will not learn in college that infants must be fed at least every three to four hours and that they will be getting up in the wee hours of the morning to do so.A student doesn't learn that babies must be burped and what is ejected is a sometimes small mass of goopy, smelly, white formula and that it is gross, usually making Mom or Dad change their clothes. Quite often a graduated student will wish they had learned, that infeffective burping can cause colic, a gassy stomach will cause baby and parents loss of sleep. Mom and Dad are not taught that there are different ways to ease the infant by excessive patting on the back and walking walking with baby, taking baby on a car ride, and that there are even little baby gas drops to buy.

Conclusion:

The topics for what a student does not learn in college is vast, ranging from lacking the education concerning children to facets of everday life, such as knowing how to write a check and managing checking accounts to filling out job application, to run a household, or time management. College does not teach graduates how to handle customer/client interaction, especially when the grad is faced with an irate customer/client. Many students do not realize, because they do not learn in college, that they are educated with the basic knkowledge in which they must learn to apply and that all the rest are generally life experiences from which they must live and learn. As Petre states, "So much for being a well educated college graduate."

not to chill an nfant ==forgot an i.

instead of discussing parenting only during when the child is infant, you can also talk about the parenting skills throughout life. you focus too much on parenting when the child is an infant.

Three topic sentences would seem to imply three body paragraphs.

Also, the title of your thread is "several different ways in which colleges fail to prepare students for life." Your three subtopics are really all aspects of a single way in which colleges fail to prepare students for life, namely through failing to teach parenting. Focusing in detail on one subtopic can be a very effective way of writing an essay. Often, it is much better than touching briefly on several different subtopics. In this case, though, given the prompt, I think it weakens your essay.

For one thing, I don't know that the lack of focus on parenting can be described as a "failure" by the college, because colleges don't normally promise to prepare students for parenting. That is, we don't normally say something has failed if it doesn't do something that it wasn't designed to do and that the people using it had no reason to expect it to do. For another, this isn't a failure at all for people who choose to remain childless, or who delay having children until long after the effects of their education have faded.

Other things that you mention in your intro and conclusion don't suffer from this problem. Time management skills, for instance, are vital in real life and for success in business. Colleges do promise to prepare students to be successful in business (in some form or another), and so this does represent a "failure" on the part of colleges.

Students are not taught to make sure that the water is tepid, so as not to scald or not to chill an infant.

They are likewise not told how to test the bath water by placing their own elbow into the water to do so . After baby has its bath, a student is not taught how to apply baby powder to the their hand and then apply to baby, so the child doesn't asphyxiate on powder.

Another skill not taught to students is how to change a diaper and how to stifle their gag reflex when it is discovered that baby deposited a nice strange, yellow bowel movement (add "slimy" if Mom is breast feeding).

In addition, if the baby isn't changed often enough Mom or Dad will discover baby's blotchy looking bottom.

Try to make everything you write support the topic sentences. Right now, you give good examples of parenting skills that cannot be taught in school, but be careful not to get sidetracked.

**Like Sean, I wonder why they would want you to write 3 topic sentences for one paragraph... ????

I'm really at a loss starting back to school after so many years. I really can't think of what to write about. We are in Little Brown Reader and read "The Lessons I didn't learn in College" by Caitlin Petre. Her essay centered on many skills not taught in college she thought she should have been, like how to fill out w2 forms, Irs forms,rent an apartment, those kind of things.Something a person would have to learn as you go down life's path.Do you think my first sentence in my conclusion would make more sense, since I picked out parenting. No one learns that in college either? I was just trying to make an example for just one minor area.

the three topic sentences were for each of the three paragraphs I was going to start(when I thought I had to write two more) for the essay. The second paragraph that would have been turned in with this essay would have been about coping and the third about how to encourage children to eat well.

(to Sean) how does using a solitary example weaken the essay? I truly cannot think of a thing to write about.
My teacher added no quotes(afterall-she announced today--write two introductions and two conclusions along with the rest to hand in Thursday. Plus a bunch of questions she wants us to answer on our own essay. Still hoping you all can help...I'll still try and keep going here.

I want to thank you all for your honest input, I'm trying to understand all this myself, and I greatly appreciate all the time you took to read my essay. I'll put some more in later.Thanks!

Well, one trait that is common to all good writing is that it creates some feeling of tension... like from the conflict in a novel. In your essay, you can create tension by saying something in the introduction that is definitely refutable. For example, you can claim that college actually teaches only a very small percentage of one's total necessary life knowledge. You can write an interesting essay if you make a good argument about a point that some people might disagree with.

Try to get inspired! And then remember: Every paragraph is a single thought explained very well. Your essay will actually consist only of a few major thoughts. You explain them and reflect on them.

Using a solitary example weakens an essay that is supposed to discuss "Several different ways" of something, because it doesn't do what the prompt asks. If the teacher doesn't mind you focusing on one example in detail, that's fine -- your approach will probably be stronger than it would be otherwise.

If you say in your introduction that parenting is something colleges should teach but don't, then that would allow you to avoid most of the criticisms I made of the original. If you just say that not teaching parenting skills is a failure on the part of colleges, it raises the question of how exactly that would be considered a failure. This was probably covered in the text you read, btw, but it helps if you set the groundwork in your own essay, which is after all meant to stand apart from the text.

Beyond that, the body of the essay itself is strong, consisting of many graphic, specific details that hold the readers' interest. Mostly you just need to strengthen the introduction and conclusion.