In modern society, more and more students go to colleges to further their education and to train themselves to achieve skills for career preparation. However, students start using Adderall, a study drug, as a shortcut to get through colleges because it helps them gain good result easily in academic environment. [1] What is the role of Adderall in higher education? How does Adderall affect the higher education? [2] Adderall compromises the general education mission by allowing students to treat the process of education less important than result of education and miss the skills they intend and are supposed to learn during the process, such as time-management skills and problem-solving skills.
[3] I …show more content…
(Appleby, 4-5) In the interviews, students said they cannot overcome the influence of the absence of parents and teachers, and enhance their self-control ability, so they use Adderall as external force to mitigate the consequences of procrastination, manage their time and get work done before the deadline.
Also, some students talk about they take Adderall especially before the finals and deadline, when they are stressed out. (Loe & Cuttino) We can see from the interviews that students use Adderall to help them deal with the stress instead of managing their time before the deadline. They fail to cultivate their time-management skill and stress resistance skill. Therefore, students try to meet the demand of college and achieving good grades by using Adderall as a shortcut, and avoid cultivating their lifelong skill by themselves, which compromises the general goal of …show more content…
Interviews in Loe and Cuttino’s paper show that some students are diagnosed ADHD is they cannot meet the demand of competitive and challenging college academic environment immediately although they perform the same as what they did in high schools. (Loe & Cuttino) This questions if those students really need Adderall. The fact that students cannot handle the challenge and the transition from high schools to colleges doesn’t mean that they have disability. Possible reasons can be that they didn’t cultivate their skills and ability successfully or they just didn’t try. So, it is possible for them to “cure” their ADHD by cultivating their time managing skill and self control skill, which belong to the general education mission. Also, it is easy to obtain Adderall legally at the campus health center as a prescription by using the phrase “I’m having a little trouble focusing” without a comprehensive examination. (McMahon, 3) In addition, in the video “Adderall = Cheating?”, the main character pretended to have all the symptoms of ADHD and successfully get the prescription. These all reveal the big possibility of misdiagnose. Those so-called ADHD students use Adderall to avoid spending time developing their skills to manage their time and control themselves. Therefore, Adderall help compromises the education