It is almost time for universities and colleges in the Sultanate of Oman and elsewhere to begin a new academic year. This is preceded with much excitement for first year students who are looking forward to a new chapter in their lives. It is also a period of anticipation for returning students who may have had a long gap in the summer. Settling in again can be a challenge.
For those who are just joining a university or college, there is much pressure to choose the right courses and majors, arrange accommodation, commute, and even everyday challenges like eating well. Interestingly, these early lessons are what makes university life a learning experience more rewarding than the actual content being learnt in classrooms.
The lessons learnt in the lecture halls prepare one professionally, but the lessons of life are learnt elsewhere. These are the often-mentioned soft skills that have now become so important, even for potential employers.
Time management is one of the most important of these skills. Knowing how to prioritise, divide chores into manageable chunks, and itemise personal and professional time are all part of time management skills. Harvard University, for example, suggests that students keep a calendar, set reminders, use personalised digital applications, and ensure personal time off. It usefully also reminds students to be somewhat flexible with all such plans.
Effective communication is another important skill learnt by just being in a tertiary institution. Students by default have to learn to articulate their needs and requirements. Many students may come from places where they have had no prior experience of asking for help, including something simple like directions or class timings. Even at the individual level, not every person has the confidence to face converse with strangers – universities provide everybody with such opportunities.
Critical thinking is another important skill learnt in a higher education setting. This is not always about analyzing ideas but just learning to question other people’s ideas or thoughts. This results in coming up with creative, out of the box ideas that will be valuable in later life. After all, viewing life’s challenges from different perspectives is central to education.
Other soft skills include creating a budget and learning to stick to it, taking constructive criticism and working on it, and even learning from one’s mistakes. Public speaking and organisational skills are just as important.
Universities teach students the knowledge that is required for a profession, but it does much more than that. The experience of being in a higher education setting itself is a life-long lesson of facing challenges and overcoming them. These skills may not be immediately apparent, but they reveal themselves over time, even after graduation.
In fact, it is these skills that are more in demand, now that content itself is easily available to everybody through the digital world. Learning to doing is the new mantra.
We all learn by making mistakes and university is a wonderful stage to make those mistakes before real life catches on.
The writer is Associate Professor in the Department of English Language and Literature, Sultan Qaboos University
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