Will an Apple a Day Really Keep the Doctor Away?

This week in Inquiry class we’re changing things up a bit. Instead of the professor teaching us about a topic, she’s handed over the power to the students. We were told to get into groups and pick any topic (as long as it was college level appropriate) and research it. Then we were going to spend 30 minutes teaching the topic to our fellow classmates. But it’s not as simple as just standing in front of the room and lecturing for 30 minutes. It was our job to make the class engaging and assign readings for everyone else so the class had a general background about the topic being discussed.

The first two groups are covering the topics: nutrition in dorm life and sex, drugs/alcohol in college. Both are very important and relevant to the class because whether you live on campus or commute you have to eat at some point and you’ll probably attend a few parties while you’re in college. Let me start off by talking about the first group.

The first group posted a few articles about health and nutrition on campus. One article really stood out to me. It can be found onwww.bucknell.edu. What’s interesting to me about this article is that the author doesn’t just sit there and give you a bunch of facts and statistics about college kids gaining weight. They give solutions to help stop college students from overeating and gaining weight. They write about healthier snack alternatives, a better eating schedule, activities to do instead of eating from boredom or stress, ways to fit in exercise between classes. I found this article useful because I could apply some of these to my daily life and better improve my health.

The second group posted a few articles about sex and drugs on campus. Now it’s stereotypical for college students to be skipping classes and failing exams because they’re hung over from a previous night of partying. But this group posted an article that had facts and statistics about actual drinking and drug use for college students. Some didn’t surprise me while others did. One fact that really shocked me was that athletes are the most likely group on campus to binge drink. I know that college athletes drink along with any other group on campus, but I didn’t think they were the highest percentage. I would think that they wouldn’t be as high because they need to stay in shape for their sport. And between classes, homework, and practices/games they wouldn’t have much time to party and binge drink.

I’ve learned a lot about two topics that I thought I had a general understanding of. Just goes to show you that even if it seems like you already know a lot about a topic there’s always more to learn.