Agreeing to Schlossberg

Agreeing to Schlossberg, the 4’s theory helps us to understand how transitions occur in our own lives. Think about any situation faced during the time of your transition in life, how did you get support to challenge it? How do you feel about yourself when it happened and how were your strategies to get things back on track?

Students’ coming to college has a great variation of situations such as having a good time entering in a new life, or realizing their own dreams or is just escaping from a bad environment at home. Situations can be mixed as well, with bad and good feeling about this transition, it is really normal to be happy for being starting college but sad for leaving family and friends slight apart. Support is one more variation of the transition from college students, and it can be found on families, friends, counselors, school faculties, roommates and further. Support can include feeling such as affection (caring and love), affirmation (agreement that you have done is appropriate or under stable), assistance or aid (tangible help like tutoring, editing, study groups, party mixers for finding dates) and feedback (responses that reinterpret situation, provide a different perspective, challenge or reaffirm your interpretation). (Chickering & Schlossberg, 2002 p.50). According with Schlossberg’s theory, the self is the personal and demographic characteristics such as status, gender, age, health and ethnicity (Schlosberg’s transition model). What was brought to the college transition, it can be found not only in schooling or special courses but in daily life, past relationships, life experiences and further. Discovering the self can be helpful to move through during college life, self-review or self-assessment is one of the great guidelines that Schlosberg uses to help her students to find their own self and expectations after college. Finally we move to strategies, where students need to put themselves together and it means inspiration in most of the times. Strategies are the control meaning, the management of stress and ability to modify a situation (Evans, Forney & Guido, 2010 p.218). However, changing uncomfortable situations requires lots of strategies flexibility, depending on what is going on. Schlosberg’s theory requests it as the four coping modes, which includes information seeking, direct action, inhibition of action, and intrapsychic behavior (Evans, Forney & Guido, 2010 p.218). Learn how to ask more question during classes, focus on motivation to study, keep a weekly planner for time management are some of the good advices for strategies.

Applying Schlosberg’s transitions theory is helping the students going through states such as moving in, moving through and moving out. Students need interventions, and it can be found when the theory is applied. Moving in is related to the first changes in life, the first step to maturity, identifying self and knowing who you are can be a big step to moving through, which is taking mature decisions to your future, such as choosing a major. Students when on moving through stage are highly recommended to see advisors and make careers planning; it can help seek to alternatives fields on your own major that you may are willing to follow, and it can also suggest things such as, how to be prepared for an internship. Moving on or moving out of college is the most concerned and feared stage for college students, moving toward the future can lead to successful, but with lots of ups and downs and students should be aware of those variations. It occurs because after four years college, they are seeking for their own independence, so then they start an intense job searching, and after couple of months of unsuccessful, it can led to frustration, thoughts of time “wasted” during college, or the recognize that the job wasn’t what he or she was expecting. However when applying the theory, informal and formal assessments theory are used, such as The transitional guide and questionnaire (Kay& Schlossberg,