So I just took a killer nap and woke up and realized that I want to write another blog tonight. Not surprised I look out my window and I see that the neighbors across my sidewalk are drinking and playing music. As I look out my window I sit here and think to myself, how do they do it? How does any college student drink on a weekday? There is no possible way that they are going to study efficiently tonight and the overwhelming odds say that they have class in the morning. One would assume that drinking during the week has to have a negative effect on their performance. So I took my inquiry to google and I found that there is a correlation between GPA and grades. The study that I read shows that the more college students drink, the more their GPA goes down. My blog post is by no means a smear on drinking on college campuses. The issue is that students are binge drinking and that has a detrimental effect on their performances. I implore those who do drink to do it on the weekends in a responsible fashion. As a current student I have saw interesting things in my first month or so here. I transferred from a commonwealth campus. Being that I turned 21 this past summer I have gone out and experienced some of the bar scene in downtown. Nothing disgusts me more than having a drunk student vomit on the sidewalk by Old Main, or one of his friends stumbling into me because he does not know his limits. However, the one thing that disgusted and angered me the most was the fact that some young adult was unconscious and being propped up by his friend at Beaver Stadium two weekends back. He eventually became conscious and then proceeded to puke on the sidewalk in a huge group of people who were waiting to gain admittance into the football game against Kent State. Needless to say, tailgating in the Intramural fields can be interesting.
Source: College Prowler
So now lets get down to the study that will show that there is strong evidence that the more you drink, the more your GPA will go down. The Pennsylvania State University, yes our University did a study to see if there is any correlation between binge drinking and GPA. In case you did not know, The Princeton Review has a ranking system for the universities that party the most. Penn State was on that list in 2014, and there is a real chance that Penn State is on there in 2016. The study defines binge drinking is consuming five or more drinks in a row for males. The definition is slightly different for females, they define binge drinking as consuming four or more drinks in a row. This could be due to the fact that males weigh more than females, which generally means that men can handle more alcohol. The researchers had approximately 15,000 students and asked them, Can you recall within the last two weeks how many times you had a binge drinking episode? Of the students who did not have any binge drinking episodes within the last two weeks, their average grade point average was on average 3.19. Those students who did have a binge drinking episode, their grade point average had fell to 3.11. Those who had 2 or more had their grade point average fall even more.
Source: Onward State
The purpose of this blog is not to scare any of the incoming Freshmen or Sophomores. I wrote this blog so that the new students here would be informed of the harmful effects that alcohol can have on your education. In addition to the effects it has on your education, alcohol also has many adverse effects on the body including damage to the liver. The last thing that anybody wants to see is students going to the hospital for alcohol poisoning. I also imagine that many of your parents would be livid if they found out that you received an underage or were expelled from the university because of poor grades. The major takeaway from this blog is that if you do binge drink, your GPA will suffer in the long run.