Embrace College Life with Vision and Determination

Your transition from school to college is one of life's major shifts. The school days are over, the moment you got your tenth results. Those days are now being transformed into a whole new world that welcomes you with open hands of opportunities and challenges.

Opportunities and Challenges

The clear understanding of opportunities, a firm resolution to tap them and unwavering determination to visualize them will surely make you a dream student. As far challenges, don’t worry, they are other side of opportunities and a flip side of your dream. For every opportunity there is an equal reciprocal force that resists your efforts. So the harder you strive, the minimum will be the gravity of resistance. Therefore challenges are not outward things rather they are your dark side within. You remain a challenge for yourself if hard work is replaced with lethargy; and high ambitions are replaced with hopelessness. So remain cautious about these opportunities and challenges.

Stream Selection

Now, move on. The next thing you need to understand is the nature of syllabus. Well, at this point of time you might have already selected your stream of studies, as a reminder let me put it across to you in a nut shell.

At college level, leaving aside the technical streams, you get along with specific stream of subjects what you have already studied their basics during school days. Mainly Arts, Science and Commerce are the streams that are being offered at the Pre University level. So based on your inclination and future ambitions select an appropriate stream.

Be a different NEW

As early as from higher primary classes to SSLC examinations; you might have got different grades with diverse scoring patterns. Highest marks, to some extent reflect your sense of understanding. But it is also true that scoring low marks or getting grades below expectations doesn’t mean poor sense of understanding. Therefore, no matter what have you achieved so far, or how unexpected and poor results were there for you, come out of that shell and try to be a different NEW.

The college life neither encourages the good performers nor discourages the not-so-good performers, its offering has same pattern for all. The college life is a new beginning for all the students. So you need to feel fresh and firmly believe that you are entirely different one, a NEW entrant with loads of enthusiasm to do better every semester and every year. Simply relying on past good performance and staying over-confident to perform better will not be helpful. Similar is the case of those who, by some reasons couldn’t get results as expected, to feel low; all the students will share the same class and are exposed to same kind of teaching and learning methodologies. What matters here is seriousness coupled with a passion to excel, that’s it, rest of the things follow instinctively.

Teaching Style

The next thing you need to understand is the method and style of teaching at college level. Unlike school, college teaching will be more generalized in terms of expressions and elaborations. The lecturers will try their best to explain, but you need to be open and daring to ask what you haven’t understood. If not, the teaching method appears to be not that fruitful to you. So the conclusion is…teachers in schools are pretty closer whereas lecturers in college demand you to come closer.

Learning

Learning is nothing but a measurement of your success. The more you learn, the brighter will be the chances for you to excel. In college you are your own master as far effective learning is concerned. You don’t find anyone cross checking your sense or level of understanding, or frequently verifying your notes. You have to be disciplined and very diligent to get into the depth of what you are being taught.

The learning process demands double seriousness, patient hearing of the lectures coupled with their fair understand. For both listening and understanding, seriousness is pivotal. Remember, this effective learning is quite different from rote-learning, that is learning without true sense of understanding or that which you try to get by by-hearting.

Thinking beyond scoring marks is the real conception of learning. If focused on marks, understanding restricts to the total allotted marks, if not, the sense of understanding takes you to the length and breadth of the subject and paves the way to master it in true sense. It is this effective learning that enables students to be a part of research, development and exploration centers and do wonders in the field of scientific and other advancements.

Friendship

More than ten years of studies in school has facilitated you to form strong bonding of friendship with your fellow classmates. But here in college, within a couple of years you need to squeeze your experience of ten years to ensure friendship with your fellow classmates. In college, you will be exposed to almost a whole new set of students, all from different schools, backgrounds and different likings. Don't ever wait for others to make friendship with you, go ahead, introduce yourself and shake hand with everyone. This openness of yours will, for sure, boost your confidence and help mingle with one and all. Remember, mutual introduction and a good camaraderie with your college mates helps a lot in concentrating on your studies.

Personal efforts

Now, let us move a little further! You need to evolve your own strategies to stay successful, we call it as your personal, cautious and deliberate attempts, and they are as under:

Goal setting

Set your goal. This should define what actually you want to achieve in your life. Apart from medicine and engineering, there are more avenues to be highest successful. You can think of becoming a scientist, or joining civil services, or exploring new areas in the field of social sciences and humanities. Even politics need specialized intellectuals to make it a field of human and service-oriented. Remember, your goal makes your persona and help achieve what you want in your life. Without goal it’s difficult to be successful as the arrow shot from the bow without an aim will never hit its target. Whatever you decide that sets your future course of action. Be firm and determinant to set a lofty goal.

Do you know what actually inspires to set goal and keep that always in mind? There are three important aspects:

1)            Your parents and teachers expectations

2)            Your own dream of achieving big

3)            Passion for selflessly serving the country and countrymen.

Openness

Remain open to understand new ideas, new approach, new theories and new discipline. It means you need to be open to listen and make other listen what you want to say.

Hard work

Never compromise with hard work. Everything that comes your way, be it sense of understanding or achievement, it is through hard work. If you succeed in putting extra efforts over what you have been taught, it indicates that you are serious, understandable and straight on the mark of your vision. You can say hard work is a parameter to judge how far we are true to our vision and determination.

Adaptability

You may come across with many things, in and off the campus that demand your patience and a sense of adjustment. This is what we call, adaptability. Be adaptive to your college hours, friends, news ideas, and new practices and of course pleasant or unpleasant attitudes.

Again, in terms of leisure periods, in time getting of food and other relevant things may not be as good as what you have experienced in your school days. It’s your firm determination and a resolve to stand tall from the rest, will help you be adaptable to all sorts of instances.

No School Habits

Make up your mind, you are a grown up boy now, shun all those habits of school days that often put you in embarrassing situation or were quite detrimental to your good results. Like idleness, class bunking, carelessness about taking notes, disobedience of parents, talking with friends during class, careless attitude, and disrespect towards teachers etc. You should bore in mind that with these school habits, the college atmosphere will never be compatible and the dream of excelling will remain a dream.

Extra-Curricular Activities

Taking part in sports and other extra-curricular activities refreshes your mind and help sharpen cognitive skills. Don’t always remain serious about studies; give some time for your mind and heart to relax, and these activities are the best option. But you need to be very particular in avoiding excessive usage of mobile phone and spending time on social network. It’s very unfortunate that we Indians spend, on an average, almost 200 minutes per day on mobile apps (TOI - 19 Dec, 2017).

Parents’ Comfort

The college life makes you realize that you are now quite different from a school going student. Your books have changed, your route has changed, your friends are different, your study method not as usual…..all in all you are a different one. Therefore you need to be an entirely different person, very caring, very sensitive about your parents’ feelings, in short, try to be a comfort to your parents. Don’t make them worried about your waking in the morning or going to the college with regularity. Things have changed; make them more meaningful and advantageous with your positive attitudes in and off the home.

Tell your parents what you have learnt in the college; introduce them your lecturers and friends and try to stay connected with them with what you go through in college. This is particularly more important for girl students as sometimes the change of place and other things affect their routines.

Let parents feel that by admitting in college they are really relieved, you are very disciplined and have taken their worries and burden on your strong shoulders. This sense of understanding and sharing parents’ responsibilities is your biggest gift that you can offer to your parents. Let this precious gift for parents be a just beginning, with your serious studies and outstanding achievements more precious gifts will fall at their feet in the days to come.

Don’t forget

Stay in touch with your school teachers and classmates, don’t forget them. Share your experiences and learn from them.

Stay in Touch

Let me conclude with a last piece of advice. Stay connected with your Creator! Truly, His blessings are immeasurable. He expects from us to be obedient to Him, mercy to all human beings and beneficial to what He has created. There can be no greater purpose of acquisition of knowledge than realizing the Creator and knowing the responsibilities towards the country and countrymen.

With school education you have finished the basics of knowledge, now through college and, in near future, other institutes of higher learning, you are going to acquire more and more knowledge, see how best its purpose can be served. All the best, stay blessed.

The author is the Director of AJ Academy For Research and Development, Raichur, Karnataka. He can be reached at [email protected]