Having gone through 4 years of undergraduate studies in NUS (I believe it applies for NTU), I realized that most students approach their university studies incorrectly.
Xsmatters had a very well written article about this. While the article is specifically directed at entrepreneurship it also applies generally.
Universities are great places for youths to learn, grow and do something worthwhile. They provide a lot of resources, both physical and psychological for students to use. But how many people actually take full advantage of it? Do You?
It is actually very simple to make most of your univeristy. The important ideas can be encapsulated in three points, three verbs, three action items. Create, Challenge, Communicate.
Create
Being in the university gives you access to the great wealth of knowledge, libraries, the faculty. And other resources like fellow undergraduates, and facilities like the business incubators. There are also many CCAs and clubs which lets students explore many interesting areas. Furthermore most of these are either subsidized or free.
University was the only time when I had the freedom, time and the resources to create something. I did not have any great responsibility, or pressing deadlines. Perfect environment to think of new ideas, work on some of your own initiatives, learn something new, start your own business.
Specifically, I believe that with any course, you can learn a lot more if you try to be creative, come of with new ideas, theories, concepts, and play around. Coming from the more theoretical and ‘stiff’ faculty of engineering, I felt the need to have more creative learning environment. But I will not direct this rant against the education system. In the given education system, the students should take the initiative to be creative.
Challenge
Students should challenge anything that they do not believe in or agree. This is something I saw when I was on exchange. In DTU, students were encouraged to ask question anytime during the lecture. While this might be true for most NUS/NTU lectures, there, most students actually asked questions. Many times the tutors and lecturers were challenged over their material. This might seem a little rude according to Asian culture, but I saw great benefit in it. During some of the courses I had really amazing discussions with the lecturers, providing great insights into the subject.
I believe, students should not accept anything given to them blindly. While this is rampant at secondary school level, university should make students think and come up with their own conclusions. The aim is to create graduates, not mindless sheep who can only follow the leader.
Once, you start challenging things, you realized how many redundant things you are doing. Do you really want to do this? What will you get from doing this? Is it really that important? Can you spend this time doing something more creative, which would help you achieve your personal goals or aims?
Communicate
This is one of the most basic, but most important issue I see in local universities. Again, I do feel its a cultural thing. Students can’t or those who can, don’t communicate.How many times has the lecturer asked a question during the lecture, and received a silence as a reply? How many? And the lecturer ends up answering his/her own question. This is just sad. (This is rampant in Engineering. What about other faculties?)
Students need to communicate well in order to get the most from their university education. They need to tell the lecturers what they understand, what they don’t. They need communicate with their peers to exchange ideas and discuss course work. They need to communicate with people around university to generate new relationships to grow and learn. But, we don’t. We prefer to stick in our own cozy cocoons and never dare to explore.
I have seen so many students, which great ideas or contents for their presentation, but just lack the communication aspect of it. Their presentation fell flat. Isn’t it sad, that while they knew what they wanted to say, and it did make sense, but they just couldn’t get their point across.
While these three points are not the mantra for getting into dean’s list every semester, I found them very useful in achieving a fulfilling experience during the final year. I did take many risks by challenging the norms, going beyond my comfort zone in many instances, and trying out different things. In the end, I had lots of fun, learned many things, made many new friends, and still managed to graduate at the end.