Surviving and Enjoying the University Life
By Melody Kasih

* 1st year student of English department

Melody

In life, educational setting plays a huge role. From a recent article from Education Science Tips(2015), it was stated that education gives human the essential basic skills such as writing and reading. Education also improves a person?s opportunity to make a proper living, as well as improving the maturity of a person?s mind; it trains people?s discipline and triggers their sense of responsibility. However, aside from the acquired knowledge, experiences, friends, teachers, and every individual whom a student meets, also contribute in shaping a person?s characteristics. For this reason, it is very important for a person to be able to pass both school and university lives academically and psychologically. Since there is a distinct difference or gap between school and university life, many high-school graduates often struggle to find the perfect balance between their social lives and academic goals. These hardships ?if not solved right away- will lead to various kinds of failures. To avoid these fatal results, there are three ways that might be useful to not only help them survive but also succeed the university life.

The first and most important way is for students to use their daily time wisely. Unlike school routines and activities, which are tightly scheduled daily from morning until noon,university routines are less busy. The lectures and classes may have different schedules from one day to another, which provides students the opportunities to find time for non-academic related activities such as being with peers, playing sports, or participating in clubs. Nevertheless, one must always remember to give time limits for these activities and to not be carried away with a particular activity. University students are challenged to manage their time wisely as their primary purpose is studying. University students, after all, are in the process of earning their degrees. Keeping an organized agenda is strongly recommended as it assists students in remembering their planned activities.

How to Survive

Second, make a reasonable budget for daily expenses. Once a person enters university, the society and his community will consider him/her as a young adult who is responsible and mature to handle and manage financial matters. In most cases, parents are giving more trust to their children to take care of themselves, as they become university students. Therefore, parents also entrust more allowance or ?sometimes- credit cards for their children to manage. Being trusted by their parents, university students need to be wise and thrifty when spending money on things. Setting a certain expense restrictionor budget for a particular length of time (e.g., per week, per month) is a good way to avoid spending too much. List all the obligatory things (e.g., rent, transportation fee, food) and their costs. By doing so, a student may find it effortless to manage their money. Nevertheless, a situation in which the money a student received from his/her parents is not enough to cover the daily expenses is quite prevalent. Perhaps the most creative solution isfinding a part-time job to earn extra money, rather than asking for more from their parents. In every possible way, borrowing and owing money from friends or acquaintances is not recommended, as it may create conflicts and may cause complication in friendships.

TO BE CONTINUED