The moment a high school senior receives their diploma on graduation the only thing that pops up into their mind is freedom. Freedom from high school, parents, and teachers seems like a dream come true but what comes up next is college. However, some seniors look forward to college as they will be free from their parents’ rules and they get to move out of the house only to unfortunately share a dorm with someone else.  Without any parents looking over their teen’s shoulder all the time, a sense of freedom is established. But with too much freedom, things can get out of hand. That is why there are responsibilities involved. College is all about balancing one’s responsibilities and freedom, which is also found in the photo essay, The College Life. These photos were taken to represent everyday life of the average college student. It consists of visual elements such as lighting, background, and space. The viewer can see, that with these visual elements, it is difficult to balance freedom and responsibility especially during college.  

Lighting sets the scene of everyday college life. In images 1 and 4, the dimly-lit room shows that there is no excitement going on which suggests a normal day. The day can be seen as routine and uneventful. In this case, responsibilities come into play. Although boring and meticulous, college students must perform their responsibilities such as doing their homework, attending class, and be involved in the community. The lighting in image 2 shows a bright sunny day which can motivate students to do well in their studies and be assertive resulting into productivity. With this productivity, obligations take over instead of the freedom. It doesn’t even come to mind because students chose to go to college to be successful in their studies. Also in image 5, the lighting is bright and luminous. It reflects on the overall energetic tone of the image which insinuates having fun in college instead of being focused and stressed out of prior engagements. Freedom comes to play in this image because the people in the image were focused on their individual games and they deserved a well-needed break from all the work. Image 3 also has the same concept. The light illuminating unto the soccer field shines brightly during the soccer game. Lighting can influence people’s emotions and in this case, the bright lighting makes people excited and energetic. The people’s active focus is unto the game which means that they are thoroughly enjoying the game. They are free at this point from all their responsibilities and the only focus they have is the team winning the game. 

Background is also a prominent visual element found in the photo essay, The College Life. In the first image, the table is messy and cluttered around the ramen cup. This can significantly indicate that college students face a chaotic schedule so there is no flexibility. At first, a college student may not know how to juggle many things at once and therefore it could be a disaster organizing everything. The second image is a long shot of students and faculty heading to class. There is no focus to a specific person in the photo indicating that everyone has their own schedule in mind and responsibilities to do. In image 2, responsibility and freedom coincide because there is no real indication of the students’ minds of where they are going. Similar to image 2, image 5 has no focus on a specific person. This gives the viewer to focus on the image as a whole while gaining the perspectives of everyone in the game room. In relation to the theme, students can be focused on their own self and studies but can also have fun. The responsibilities in their schedule suddenly vanish because of the excitement and concentration of their game. On the other hand, the background of image 4 is almost empty. The photo was taken on a Friday night when students usually attend parties. So the viewer can assume that the empty-looking library indicates the liberty of having classes done for the week and the result is having fun. There were no regulations or no asking permission from anyone’s parents whether to go out or not because its college. With this much focus on the background, there is no apparent subject. In this way, it makes the reader visualize themselves into the pictures and see how it is to be in the photographer’s shoes.

For the final visual element, space, in terms of spaciousness, is also found within these photos. In the first image, it shows the ramen cup amongst the clutter on the table indicating that there is limited space. In context, freedom is also limited because of the many duties that are taking over. The author may not have enough time to clean up or organize which results to the stacked up activities. At the same time, space shown in image 3 is also limited. The seats were packed in the first row, with the crowd watching and anticipating when the soccer team will score the next goal. In other words, many friendships and interactions are formed in a student’s first year that they hope to make plans but they find out that their schedule is filled with an infinite amount of duties. The audience watching the soccer game could signify the students who are unable to do anything sociable because they feel restricted. Since the fans wish they could do something about the game, in a similar situation students wish they could simply change everything in their schedule just to meet with their friends. In the end, the ability to find balance between social life and college priorities can be troublesome.

Balancing responsibility and freedom can be complicated. The author of the photo essay has a good sense of college life so far just from looking at the pictures. Everyone does have the idea that college students party all the time or sleep all day but that is not the whole picture. Some people do not know that college students can be packed with work on top of doing extracurricular activities. Sometimes students are found in the library studying for about four hours because they are that dedicated to their studies. After all, college is all about setting students for the future, right? Not completely. College is about forming relationships and discovering one’s true self and unlocking their true potential in the process, while having some fun of course. 
