Did you know that colleges can make or break a person? They are instrumental in shaping the future of an entire generation. While such facts may seem daunting, especially to the fresher at College, who has just been let out of the cradle of schools, all it takes are a few key pointers to be borne in mind, which could be your ticket out for a hassle-free college experience.
While at college, your company plays a decisive role in shaping your character. Having come out of the realm of school life, which could be collated to the Cocoon stage in the metamorphosis of butterflies, a student, as a novelty, has now the newly acquired pair of wings. However, that it’s a novelty ought not be forgotten. Anything new, should be employed with utmost care and wit.
It’s said that one attracts his tribe. Colleges determine to a great extent, the kind of tribe one is likely to form later on in life. Hence, it wouldn’t be an exaggeration, to assert that peer pressure isn’t a matter to be taken lightly. The more you yield to these external pressures, the more you are compromising on your personality. For sure, the resistance can be immensely difficult. But it’s worth every bit, in its consequences. You are much better off alone, than with the wrong crowd.
Righteous friends who motivate you to put forth your best, and are a boost to your intellectual and creative vigour, are none less than blessings for a lifetime. Make up your mind, that you’d rather be with the best, than not.
There has never been, in the history of mankind, any gain without pain. All kinds, and all levels of achievements, have a story of hurdles from the past that the triumphant overcame. So, thought of the ultimate results, shall put a smile on your face when your current, immediate challenges seem insurmountable. The life stories of great personalities from around the globe, would also serve as a guiding aid.
Establish friendship with people who do not take you down the regressive road. A friend with a staunch morale, is man’s greatest asset. For it’s the people one is surrounded with, rather than the materialistic aspects, that harness one’s mental health state. It’s all about the mind-set. Even a destitute would feel rich, once he realizes the entire world to be his home.
On the graver side of matters, are detrimental factors such as narcotics, alcohol, gambling, etc., all of which might seem appealing, and enthralling, to a college student, with his or her newly found freedom. And this is the path frought with utmost danger. You take this route, and it’s a guaranteed path down to degeneracy. Fear not though.
Proper awareness to the fresher, and timely intervention in the case of the already victims, help in alleviating tragedies. More often than not, it is the popularity factor that has one give in to peer pressure.
The rat race to be accepted into, and be a part of the clique, finds the gullible students losing orientations with reality, practicality, and the distinctions of right and wrong. Teachers at colleges, though expected to be less-intervening compared to the teachers at schools, could also help greatly, as guiding lamps to their inexperienced and innocent students, who are alien to the world’s corruption.
Mahatma Gandhi aptly put the essence of an ideal friendship as thus:
“Friendship that insists upon agreement on all matters is not worth the name. Friendship to be real must ever sustain the weight of honest differences, however sharp they be.”
What’s remarkable, and often forgotten is that, your friends need not always be your classmates.
Nor do they always have to be people of the same age as yours. Anyone and everyone you find solace in, the ones you find beneficial for your enhancement as a human being, those who do not deter from the lane of integrity, can be your friend. They may be older, or younger than you, belonging to different social, economic, political, and cultural backgrounds, and what not. The “where from” matters not, so long as the person’s character is fit. Which is exactly why, you could even find your best friend in your teachers, as so many actually have already. Not to allot an unconditional glorification of people belonging to the said workforce, but a general one; teachers, having had their share of experiences and acquaintance with 100s and 1000s to the likes of you in their outstanding teaching careers, can indeed prove the best of guides when the tides seem too fatal.
No matter where, and from whom the peer-pressure comes, you should know enough, and be wise enough to tackle, and rise up above the same.
Greatness isn’t born out of conforming to one’s surroundings, and yielding to the forces that jeopardise one’s morality. Nor from giving up. Greatness is born upon your resolution of
disagreeing to agree, to that which your soul finds misgivings in.
