Written by Melody Pininta Kasih

In every human 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.

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 restriction or 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 is finding 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.

The third and final way of surviving university life is that students must set their priorities. Their purpose of entering universities is to learn in their chosen majors and to earn their degrees. Therefore, it should be listed first in their list of priorities. If other purposes are written before the academic ones, there will be a chance that a student will be distracted from his/her study and may result in a delayed graduation. For instance, if a student spends too much time being with his/her friends until late night, that student might face difficulties in waking up in the morning and follow the lessons, which are being taught.

To sum up, there are three ways which will help high-school graduates in surviving and succeeding their university lives. Generally, university life is considered as one of the best times of a person’s life because at these exact moments, students are no longer considered as merely “children” or “teenagers”, but rather considered as “young adults” who are independent and mature enough to manage their lives. With organized daily activities and balancing both academic and social activities, there is a wide opportunity for one to be able to look back at his/her university times and say in pride, “My university life is truly an amazing experience”.