When students arrive on campus with their parents, both parties often assume that the college will function in loco parentis（处在父母位置），watching over its young charges, providing assistance when needed. Colleges and universities present themselves as supportive learning communities-as extended families, in a way. And indeed, for many students they become a home away from home. Ideally, the college nurtures（养育）its students, guiding them toward adulthood.  Lifelong friendships are formed, teachers become guides, and the academic experience is enriched by social interaction. For some students, however, the picture is less beautiful. For a significant number, the challenges can become overwhelming（压力过大）．
In reality, administrators at American colleges and universities are often forced to focus as much on the new generation of students．Public institutions in particular are often faced with tough choices about which student support services to fund. Private colleges are feeling the pinch（棘手）as well．Although tuition and fees can increase as much as 6.6 percent in a single year, as they did in 2007, the high cost of doing business at public and private institutions means that students are not necessarily receiving more support in return for increased tuition and fees. To compound the problem, students may be reluctant to seek help even when they desperately need it.  Just as colleges are sometimes ill equipped to respond to the challenges being posed by today's students, students themselves are sometimes ill equipped to respond to the challenges posed by college life. Although they arrive on campus with high expectations, some students struggle with shyness or perfectionism, learning disabilities or eating disorders·Still others experience failed relationships; some suffer from acute loneliness, or mental illness.
Unfortunately, higher education is sometimes more of an information delivery system than a responsive, collaborative（合作的）process. We have created cities of youth in which students can pass through unnoticed, their voices rarely heard, and their faces rarely seen. As class size grows in response to budget cuts, it becomes even less likely that troubled students, or even severely disturbed, will be noticed. When they are not, the results can be tragic.
As a teacher of creative writing who has worked with many overwhelmed students, I have found that there are ways to communicate more effectively. Most students have stories they want to share, and students in trouble can be desperate to find someone who will listen to them. Parents, as their children's primary listeners, have a key role to play. Some young people are unable to find their own way out of the dark, and a meaningful dialogue can become a light for them to see by. That is not to say that writing can be used to identify mental illness; rather, I think some of the approaches writing teachers use to enter into a reflective dialogue with students can be adopted by parents and students who want to learn more about each other. Having witnessed what can happen when a student communicates with himself, I believe this kind of responsive, one-on-one communication is more important than ever. Students in creative writing classes may have no idea that they have revealed so much about themselves because, for them, writing is like speaking inside the pages of a journal. In fact, all of us who write reveal more than we imagine. This is one of the reasons why writing, even more than speaking, can provide us with important insights into ourselves and others.
Many of us don't know our students as well as we should, yet it can be easier than we imagine to begin these necessary dialogues.