Psychopharm Going 'Mainstream' In Schools?

PizzaFace writes "Back in the day, college was a place where a lot of kids tried recreational drugs. Now the world's more competitive, psychopharmaceuticals are better targeted, and millions of students are routinely using drugs to work better and longer. Stimulants developed for attention deficit and narcolepsy are giving mentally healthy students an edge like athletes get from steroids or human growth hormone. These psychotropics seem fairly safe, but should they be banned in the interest of fairness, perhaps with enforcement by urine tests before exams? Or do we tell our kids that, if they want to compete in this brave new world, they better find some Adderall and jack their brains up like their classmates'." If college students are doing it, how many programmers are? What say you?

Comments

Re:New? Try old.

[CastrTroy]

I was reading the first paragraph, and immediately jumped to thinking about what you were saying in the second part of your post. I rarely studied more than 3 hours for any 1 final exam. Most of the time it was about an hour. I went over the general material, and anything that I was unsure about, but never really felt that I had to cram. This was because I payed attention during the semester, and stayed awake in class. The classes I didn't stay awake in (Calculus 2, first year physics) were classes that I didn't do very well in. I ended up graduating Magna Cum Lauda, so my approach couldn't have been that wrong. I always grimmaced when I saw the people cramming for final, because they copied the assignments and skipped all the classes, and realized that they'd still have to do well on the 60% final to actually get a good mark in the class.