No wonder, the most youthful phase of our lives is spent in college. A lot of us were just waiting to get out of our schools and enter the college life because that is where all the fun is expected to happen. It would allow us to enter the life where we could decide the classes that we would like to attend and the ones to miss. The college life breaks the shackles of uniforms, discipline in the assembly, being seated in the assigned seats and more such restrictions. Hence, every youth aspires to enter the college phase of life very soon. Unfortunately, the same college life also gets over too fast for many of us. Apart from few laughing memories with our friends during fests and parties or tours we don’t have much to carry forward in our life. And, too soon it becomes a past which we rarely dig in. On the other hand, the college life was expected to be the foundation for the upcoming working years of our life until retirement. I have tried to come up with the most generic issues that many college students fail to realise during their college years and repent later. Hope by discovering these unknowns you can improve your college life.

1. Unknown 1 - Syllabus: It’s quite a shocking fact to discover that more than 75% of the college youth aren’t aware of their complete syllabus in the course that they have chosen. They just prepare from the notes given by the teachers and enter their exams. The syllabus prescribed for college studies specifies topics that the student needs to research upon and learn. Few textbooks are mentioned for the sake of reference, but the students consider those as the bible of the subject and fail to explore and learn more. The option of choices in answering the question paper has made the students study only the initial chapters and leave the last few units. Since the theory is explained in first few units and applications come in the latter part, many students learn only concepts but no practical applications.

2. Unknown 2 - The right people: Who are the right people to share time with? This is a big question because college brings in students from different parts of the country. As a result, people associate based on language or common school background. They don’t try to network with the unknown faces due to fear of interaction with strangers. Though there are many like-minded people in the same college they don’t get along because they aren’t guided on choosing the right kind of friends to share time with.

3. Unknown 3 - Fears to conquer: More than the fear of exam or fear of death the fear of public speaking has been seen higher in the people. There are principals and academicians who teach lakhs of students in classes but are too nervous to come on a stage to address the public. Such fears can only be conquered if students take action during their college days by taking part in a lot of activities and stage presentations. But, not everyone goes forward and takes a step because there are some expert communicators on the stage already.

4. Unknown 4 - Skills to develop: Reading all the text books and notes and temporarily remembering them such that one can answer during the exams only to forget right after the exams has become the trend of studying for the new age students. Many don’t see much value in transferring information from their textbooks into answer papers and do it just for the sake of marks that can shut a lot of mouths. Only marks determine the benchmark for qualifying an individual for an interview. As a result, the youth doesn’t focus on training itself to develop any new skills at all.
5. Unknown 5 - Real world’s expectations: The world outside and in the cinema looks really rosy for the college youth to see the thorns beyond the roses. The lack of responsibilities on one’s shoulders makes one fly in the air and feel light about life. The moment a student finishes college and comes into the real world and realises the amount of expectations that the parents and the bosses have, s/he is completely confused on how to handle such a complicated life because such life was never even spoken about during the college years.

If you are feeling the existence of such unknowns in your college life, it’s time to rethink and find out the answers for these unknowns because fear is always the resultant of an unknown. If you are in the pursuit for finding the answers to these unknowns, probably I can help you out. Watch out for my next article on filling up the spaces for the above-mentioned unknowns in college life.