You have now made it to University

Lal FONSEKA

Congratulations! You were the cream of your high school's Advanced Level class and you can be justifiably proud. The results of the Advanced Level Examination held in 2012 August were just released. A total of 277,671 candidates sat for the examination at 2,093 centres. Another set of students are now getting ready to enter the universities in Sri Lanka.

After having patience for 13 long and continuous years in the school life, only a small minority (say about 12%) will be able to turn their dream into a reality. How it happened?

All the students studied the same syllabus and almost all the students obtained tuition after school. But can we satisfy ourselves with the outcome of the examination? Without exception, all the parents put the tremendous pressure on their children at the grade five scholarship examination to gain eligibility to enroll their children to popular schools such as Royal, Ananda, Nalanda, Visakha and Dharmaraja.

Except for three girls who sat for the Commerce, Arts and ICT stream from Devi Balika Vidyalaya, Up to date, we did not hear any satisfactory news to say that students who represented the above popular schools have performed excellently well in this examination. However the main idea of this article is not to analyze the reason for such performances.

Through this column, my main idea is to make an attempt to submit some thoughts to the students who expect the university admission in a couple of months' time.

What is a university?

"... An institution of higher learning providing facilities for teaching and research and authorized to grant academic degrees..." (Merriam-Webster)

There is no argument, once has to agree on the fact that up to the Advanced Level, parents applied the strict supervision on their children. Altogether it is 13 years. Finally 10% to 12% of the total number of students sat for the examination in August 2012 are about to grasp their first taste of adult freedom.

I know a certain father who happened to be a medical officer, until his son entered the university, without failing one single day he used to accompany his son to the school and back home.

Whatever the protection our parents applied on their children, through the university system they will receive the confidence and life skills as they have to move out of the family home. Sometimes they will have to cook for themselves and start managing a small budget.

This is the time, these students will achieve a great opportunity to meet other like-minded students from diverse backgrounds, and people they would never get to meet and learn from in any other situation. Sometimes up to now though they might have not even touched a bottle of beer, now they are going to taste beer.

Beer is cheap, there are parties, social clubs and communal living - university is fun for some students! This is life. No one can stop this method of living in the universities.

If you do not get associated with others just because you were not familiar with this kind of living, there is no doubt you will be forced to follow this fun. My intention of writing this article is not to make you frighten even before you receive a letter from the University Grants Commission (UGC), but to make some alarms so that you could enter the university without any unwanted fear.

We do not go to university to make fun, but to obtain higher education for which everybody will agree with me. Some parents of these students have undergone difficult times in their day to day living trying to bring the children up to the present level.

May be jewelry of some parents by now had been pawned with the banking institutions. All these parents are not rich enough to spend on these students.

Students are going to be acutely aware that they need to make the most of their time at university and there will be more of a focus for all students on performing well academically, both as a self-imposed pressure and inevitably also from parents. In addition, research conducted by some scholars have revealed that 80% of prospective students anticipate having to work in a part-time job when they attend university to decrease the parents' agony.

Technology is also changing the student experience. There was a time again three to four decades ago when students going to university would all but lose contact with their school friends from their home town and contact with family would be limited.

We still remember as to how we stood in the long queues to get photo copies of some important pages of referral books kept in the libraries. Now a day you do not require taking photo copies. Instead you could download anything from the internet.

Thanks to the age of social networking and mobile communication young people will remain in contact continually with their friends, those that stay in their home town to work and those that disperse to other universities. This can be a positive thing for students, ensuring that they keep those relationships.

However this level of contact with existing friends could act as a substitute for making new contacts. And when times get tough, when revision bites and when a student is feeling lonely at university there will be a strong pull back to their home town and familiar faces.

Students that have traditionally looked to university for 'the experience' may now look closer to home.

Quality of service

Currently the quality of service that students receive varies greatly between universities. Depending on the course and university, you may have wildly differing levels of contact time with a tutor or a lecturer per week.

In a world where students are paying top dollar for their education they will expect to get not only sufficient contact time, comparable to other institutions and courses, but also to get a good standard of tuition and personalized support from a tutor.

In our context all stated owned universities except for open type ones are giving free education to the students. As a result, one might argue on the fact that students at these universities do not get personalized support from the lecturers like in the paid universities in the globe.

In addition to this, students will expect to have quality support services available to them namely the career guidance, welfare support, financial support, medical support and emotional support. Currently universities offer very mixed support services and with the cuts in university funding there will not be money available in most cases to improve those services.

It is entirely likely that there will be a shortfall in expectations here too. Some students due to lack of quality services they receive from the universities form radical movements inside universities with the support of certain political parties.

One important point I would like stress at this point is that all students should realise that they go to university to get higher education and not to fight for their rights. Some radical thinkers would not at all agree with me when I share the above facts with you. One thing is sure. You are the best judge of yours. Take a deep breath and think about it seriously.

Ragging

Now I try to focus your attention to another word surely which you would not like to hear.

That is "Ragging." As explained in the beginning of this article, University life is very important in every body's life because it not only determines the future of a person but also is a time when most students understand the realities of life. But, do all students enjoy their campus life?

According to my experience and the data I have gathered, none of the students enjoy their campus life at least till the end of their first year. This is mainly because of ragging.

This was not the case during our time which is about three decades ago. However, during our period too, ragging was in existence but not like the ragging the present day senior students apply on first year students.

Let us now understand what ragging is. Does it have any advantages? Is it important to a fresher? Well, these are the questions every parent will have at the back of his or her mind. Not only are the parents, but the entire Sri Lankan society is looking for answers for the above questions.

What is ragging? Ragging as per many academics means causing, inducing, compelling or forcing a student, whether by way of a practical joke or otherwise, to do any act which detracts from human dignity or isolates his person or exposes him to ridicule or to forbear from doing any lawful act, by intimidating, wrongfully restraining, confining or injuring him or by using criminal force to him or by holding out to him any threat of such intimidation, wrongful restraint, confinement, injury or the use of criminal force. In plain English, it means plain bullying a new student.

There are two kinds of ragging, one is verbal and the other is physical. Usually, the effect of verbal ragging is lesser than physical ragging and also it differs from person-to-person, ethnic-to-ethnic, and male to female.

In most cases, ragging is determined by the behaviour of a person before he or she comes to university. For example if a person has a big ego and thinks that he knows everything then he will face many problems until he changes his way of thinking.

Ragging is thought to have begun in educational institutions in the 18th Century and was very much in vogue in European countries.

The concept was then adopted in the United States (US) in a milder form known as 'hazing,' and spread across the world during the era of colonisation, entering the Indian sub-continent along with the British education system. Stern laws against ragging have resulted in its eradication from the West and most of the rest of the world. However, in Sri Lanka, it remains.

When other countries affected by ragging introduced drastic laws to avoid this in-human acts of ragging by the senior students, unfortunately no official movements against ragging existed in Sri Lanka.

However, in recognition of the magnitude of the problem, the Sri Lankan Parliament passed a Bill in 1998 entitled the Prohibition of Ragging and Other Forms of Violence in Educational Institutions Act No. 20.

Under this Act, ragging is defined as a punishable act which causes or is likely to cause physical or psychological injury or mental pain or fear to a student or a staff member.

"The Act makes ragging a distinct and punishable offence under which any individual found guilty would be subjected to two years rigorous imprisonment, ten years if the rag were to lead to sexual harassment or grievous hurt. In addition, depending on the gravity of the offense, students found guilty could face expulsion from the University.

More than 15 years after this law became effective however, ragging continues. Fortunately our present Minister of Higher Education has taken steps to severely deal with against those who involve in in-human ragging and if caught, he or she will sure to receive a severe punishment.

In 1975, Peradeniya University was the first to report a major ragging related incident when a fresher of the Faculty of Agriculture became paralyzed as a result of having jumped from the second floor of the hostel to escape the physical ragging being carried out by the seniors. She later committed suicide.

The typical example of ragging girls were making them sing, dance, saying 'I love you' to a stranger, wearing unmatched shoes and ugly looking dresses.

The typical example of ragging guys were making him have a bath early in the morning in ice cold water when the temperature outside is very low, removing the guys pants and making them run around the university with only an underwear on and tying their shoes on to their head. Once I saw a batch of medical students who had been ordered to run along the Kynsey Road tying their shoes on to their head. This happened four decades ago.

One man with courage makes a majority. If you want to protect yourself you should first change the way you think.

If you think you are too feeble you will always be dominated and bullied. You have to tell yourself that there is nothing more important than yourself respect.

If you cannot defend yourself you lose all rights to be respectable. There is a very famouse saying which comes to my mind at this stage. "It is always better to jump in the battlefield and then die fighting rather than dyeing without even trying."

Most of the time, the ones ragging, are the ones who put up a strong face but are uncourageous, actually. Like we say, empty vessels make the most noise. Because ragging usually takes place when you are a fresher, being extra alert then can be of help.

Remember that facing your fears is the best way to fight them. Might is right!

A few tips to think for the new entrants to the universities are given below.

YOU ARE NOW MIXED IN WITH THE CREAM FROM OTHER HIGH SCHOOLS. May be you have come from a village school. The student besides you may be a Royalist. He is no more special than you as now you too are on the same boat. Just because you attained "A" grades in subjects in the Advanced Level examination does not guarantee you will do so in university.

In fact, for most of you, your grades in university will be lower than what you have been used to in high school. May be you need to enter Medical Faculty. You will discover in your first year whether you have what it takes, intellectually and psychologically, to be a doctor. Arrogance is definitely not a prerequisite for Medical School.

HOW CAN YOU ENSURE YOU CAN SURVIVE FIRST YEAR AT UNIVERSITY

You need to dramatically change your work and study habits. Many of you breezed through high school, even got bored by being unchallenged. Your workload in high school was light compared to what you will experience at university.

Besides, there was always some higher authority making sure you went to school, paid attention in class and did your work in high school.

At university, nobody is looking over your shoulders to ensure you do the work. Sure, there may be instructors or teaching assistants supervising your Science labs but they are there to ensure the safety of students and to give assistance to students who want to learn.

Most lectures and labs do not take attendance - in fact, most courses do not care whether you show up as long as you can pass the exams and complete the assignments on which the course grades are based. You are now an adult and responsible for your own destiny.

Therefore, do not forget to attend lectures. The material is nearly always examinable and being able to get the lecture notes before or after the lecture is no substitute for actually being there.

Lecture notes are synopses of what was communicated, but how the material was communicated can make a difference to your understanding.

Besides, information peripheral to the lecture topic (e.g. exam tips, sources of additional references, etc) can be important for exam purposes but may not be incorporated into lecture notes available to students.

You must be prepared to ask questions of your instructors. You are here to learn and they are here to teach. Your interactions will be fruitful if these roles are recognised by both parties. No question is stupid! Only a poor instructor will tell you so.

Reading i s the other area you need to develop in the first year. Read the required textbook for the course. If the textbook is required, there is a good chance that designated readings will be examinable. Even if they are not, the textbook may present a different approach to the subject, which you may find easier to understand.

Modern textbooks also have excellent illustrations to help your understanding. It does not hurt to read around the examinable topics - this is part of the natural process of learning.

Do not let your reading be totally examination driven. You are at university to learn, not just to learn to pass exams.

USE THE LIBRARY! BROADEN YOUR MIND.