Comfortable Zone at University

University, a threshold of retaining mature intellectual thinking, is yielding a drastic terrible condition, especially for newcomers who come from college level with expected a broader horizon to polish their propensities, however, find the contradictory situation. No doubt, the university is considered the last stage of a student’s destination, but this last step proves often devastating for their future. I have seen a lot of newcomers in the semester with implacable and insurmountable inspiration, especially having social mobility-oriented behavior, yet progressively this heightened fire transmutes into depression. See, it is crystal clear psychologically, that high expectations more than of your performance lead to depression. When students come to university, everything in their surroundings starts to convince them that nothing is in their favour because no career counselling, no motivation from the teaching faculty, and no administration policies of friendly environment, but behaving students like they are criminals. Even, having accomplished their respective degrees, they are still familiar that the future is not welcoming for them; needless to say, the catastrophic situation of their future is mainly driven by competitive authoritarianism. But, today we are going to demonstrate the downing factors than the state level behind this unfriendly environment for our youth.

Having spent twelve years in education from kinder group to college life, they are not taught to ask the right question emancipatory that ultimately halts to have research-based mentality. With similar indoctrinated and obscured tendencies,  they move to a high stage of life, that is university level.  With his mission-based lifestyle rather than a system-oriented one starts to tremble down in the liberating environment of the university. Other than curriculum fiasco, educational policies, and state paternalism, the research and thinking power of often students is zero who want and have an expectation of a broader horizon in their future. Thereby, depressing elements, of course in the war of resources and milieu of materialism, periodically violently hit their mind, and finding these elements as non-stop forces with their zero performance they start to adopt a temporal lifestyle of amusement by promoting the culture of boyfriend and girlfriend and by blaming the system flaws, rather than themselves. This ‘comfortable zone’ not only snatches the tendencies of social mobility but also their thinking power besides effective domains. Myself is symptomatic of this realistic face of students’ life in university, at the start of my degree I was in a large social circle because everyone came with high expectations, which is a right of every person, but subsequently, I was rejected by my comrades to whom I was insisting to break the monotony of their comfort zone.

Having spent their two or three semesters, students started to blame their past, like their schooling education is posing them English language barrier. While the preeminence of the past is presented to take a leaf out of past events’ books, rather than coinciding with the perspective of our future. If in the middle of their degree, any well-wishers endeavor to alter their behaviour, they find it cruel who is encroaching in their comfort zone, and unfortunately, I have been blamed this cruelty many times. Whereas we are synonymous with the person who always travels on a smooth path, and cannot touch the height of courage in life since adversity is the best teacher.  Besides students, the motivational level of teachers is very low, and instead of being declared a hero of their students in the code of conduct, because parents are the hero of their offspring who follows them, they become a sign of fear for students. Our Holy Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) used to spend his often time in the cave of Hira for meditation, a precise and foolproof avenue of intellectuality, however, in modern times I have personally observed that social media has taken the place of meditation, students in isolation become netizen instead of paying heed in taking lesson by mediation. Allah says in the Holy Quran, chapter 13, verse number 11: Allah never changes the condition of a person unless they strive to change themselves. Hence, it is proved how meditation is the first and foremost step of transformation, as Bloom’s Taxonomy claims cognitive ability first then effective domains.

There is a redundant problem that every student faces like we have cognitive ability to change ourselves, as we made a mind-map or assertive timetable but we find ourselves helplessly to stay over it persistently, in order words, effective domain shed away progressively, so how to overwhelm over this issues? Simply, to build a shift in your ‘comfortable zone’, you need to bound yourself with any guide or mentor by having a strong sense of belonging; and this sense of belonging will start to formulate a sense of direction, that ultimately transmute you in the last step: a sense of accommodation. As a result, the mission-oriented approach will shift into a system-based mentality, a long-lasting routine of life even after the mission, and depressing elements will start to alter into an intrinsic sense of bliss. Allah says in the Holy Quran, chapter 53, verse number 39: “A human being can have nothing but what he strives for”.   

Written by M.Toqueer Niaz 

Human Right Activist at Punjab University

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