Life of a University Student: Constructive Behavioral Changes

Life changes. Some changes are positive and constructive and some are negative. But whatever the change might be, it helps us to build our personality, our ways of behaving and reacting. All the little changes in our life make us the person we are right now or the person we are going to be in the future. Changes can be brought on us by ourselves or they can come unwanted. But I believe that the path we choose or choices we make bring most of the changes in our lives. As we are preparing this assignment, we are all students IBA (JU) and most importantly we are students of the reputed Jahangirnagar University. This is a choice we all made a few months ago, which has literally changed our lives a lot. In this assignment I’m going to write about some positive and constructive changes in our behavior and perception which we have experienced in our first 6 months of university life.

This is a research work done by individual students of Institute of Business Administration, Jahangirnagar University as an assignment of the course Psychology. I thought that this would help the people in other countries to know about the ways and thinking of the students of Bangladesh. So here it goes...

In brief the main behavioral changes which we experienced are as follows:

1. Taking More Responsibilities
2. Better Ability to Interpret People and Tough Situations
3. Leaving behind Prejudices and Actually being “Smart”
4. Development of Our Organizing Skills
5. Leaving Behind the Fear of Trying New Things
6. Composed Behavior

These points are discussed below.

1. Taking More Responsibilities: One of the major changes which is common in almost every student in this period is their noticeable effort to take more responsibilities in their shoulders; which they did not take in their school or college life. In this stage, many students try to earn money themselves and try not be depended on their parents. Students try to get in part-time jobs or tutoring. The point to consider here is their effort to earn for themselves, to stand in their own feet. I might add, their earning efforts are not just to help them, but also to help their parents. I think this is a huge positive psychological boost for anyone. For example, a few days ago we came to know about a part-time job opportunity through a notice in our IBA notice board. Surprisingly majority of the student applied for that job from our batch (most of us were applying for a job for the first time in our lives). This is a clear sign of increase in taking responsibilities.

Students also start taking responsibilities for the environment and the ill fated people. In general the sense of right and wrong becomes stronger. For example a few months back some of us (students of 18th batch, IBA-JU) launched a campus cleaning project to notify the campus authority about the importance of keeping the environment of JU clean. We worked as volunteers and we were directed by our sense of responsibility.

Many of our friends have affiliated themselves with different charity and welfare organization to help the needy people. These efforts are worth mentioning, as these are really important positive changes that the beginning months of JU life has brought on us.


2. Better Ability to Interpret People and Tough Situations: School, college and university- though it might seem a gradual process, the third one is completely different from the first two. In short, mental processes take a leap forward in this level. I believe that constructive changes come through hardship and dealing with tough situations, going through difficult moments and trying. Jahangirnagar University is the only residential university of Bangladesh. Students here stay in dormitories. Most of the students are living away from home, apart from family for the first time in their lives. So in the beginning months of the university life they have to go through some difficult moments adjusting with the new environment and new people. Though this might seem as a problem in the beginning, this gradually enhances one’s ability to cope with new people and new situations more effectively. This ability helps us to find out the “right people” to hang out with. Because of this reason I think that one has a very good chance of creating lifelong friendships from this stage.

3. Leaving behind Prejudices and actually being “Smart”: This is a very common yet important behavioral change. In university life by hanging out with different people, living with seemingly unknown people in dorms, we can break out of many prejudices we used to have. We can now look beyond our affiliations or believes and work together as a team, respecting each other’s views.

Over the last 6 months relationship between male and female students has become a lot flexible; we all are now more cooperative to each other, which is really a good thing. The idea of working in a both male and female group came very reluctantly before. But now, in the university level it all seems very normal. We now form groups based on our likings, similarities and abilities rather than our affiliation or gender. This behavioral change is obviously positive.

4. Development of Our Organizing Skills: This change can be easily explained through examples. As I said earlier we launched a couple of campaigns for the betterment of the society. For the campus cleaning project or the other charity projects that we launched needed a fair amount of organizing skills, which we had to develop. Through this we have skilled leadership, dedication, determination and last but not the least hard work. Our communication skills – both in formal and informal atmosphere - have also developed a lot over the last few months. There are many different cultural and welfare organizations in JU which give emphasis on culture, debating, child education, helping the poor etc. By becoming affiliated with these groups, one can develop his organizing and creative skills. This can also build the sense of leading as well as being led by a worthy leader.

5. Leaving Behind the Fear of Trying New Things: Over the first 6-8 months of university life, many of us have experienced this behavioral change. Now we are not easily afraid of trying new things and expanding our reach. For example, some of our classmates have never even touched a basketball before coming to JU. But they were interested to learn this amazing game so they started practicing with the IBA team. And to be honest, now they are reasonably good at it. From this we can note that if we try really hard, nothing can stop us from achieving the desired result. This positive mentality is really welcomed.

6. Composed Behavior: A teenager leaves a college and an adult comes to the university. One major behavioral change in a first year student is that he starts to act more composed and matured he was before. He becomes more careful about his actions. Career centered mentality starts to develop more rapidly from this stage. For example, it might seem early, but we often discuss about what our major is going to be and what kind of job we would like to have. We also discuss about doing some other non-curricular courses, which might be valuable information for our CV. This careerist mentality was not present in me before.

There are many other small changes in our thinking pattern which are a bit difficult to identify and classify. The above mentioned points are the major changes in our behavior and perception which I think are worth mentioning. To sum up, I’d like to mention that, we are now more responsible, sensible open minded and composed person than we were even one year ago.

It feels great to be the person we are right now…