Sources

While brushing the surface of this topic,  I came across several interesting sources of material online.  Some were government websites while others were medical journals,  psychology reports,  clinical studies, and testimonies from experienced authors familiar in the subject.    Some information that I found caught my attention and made me realize more about my topic.  There is this sort of "paradox" that exists within college drinking.   While many sources claim that underage drinking at college is harmful in many ways, it is clearly socially accepted and it relieves many social anxieties.  So on one hand, alcohol is said to cause stress and depression, but on the other, it relieves it.  I looked at this in a new light.  If alcohol is "responsible" for many problems in college life,  how can it also be an escape?  It seems redundant.  The cure is also the cause.  So thinking this way, I said to myself,  maybe alcohol is merely an amplifier for underlying issues within the individual.  Maybe college life would be the same with or without drinking.  According to collegedrinkingprevention.gov ,  the individual is highly accountable for his or her actions based on personality.  Alcohol, like I hypothesized,  is just something that extremely exaggerates qualities that already exist in the individual

Personality

"Studies of student personality are among the most common with respect to alcohol use. Personality typically refers to characteristic ways of thinking, feeling and acting that show some consistency when measured across situations and over time. Research on personality and alcohol use and misuse here is organized based on three, broadbased personality constructs: impulsivity/disinhibition, extraversion/ sociability and neuroticism/emotionality"

  (http://www.collegedrinkingprevention.gov/supportingresearch/journal/baer.aspx)

here you can see a basic break down of how alcohol is measured within one's personality.  this website is also the most linked on Google when searching "college drinking" or "underage drinking at college"

It seems important to me to follow this research because there is a good deal of information that already exists on the internet as well as in many scholarly articles and books.  Because such information already is out there, it will give me a good foundation to start from.