What are the key issues faced by first year undergraduates - Essay Example

Download file to see previous pages Therefore, the issues that this easy intend to discussed are in terms of personal challenges, academic challenges, environmental challenges and social challenges. Every issue will present basic idea with a practical example. Moreover, the essay will further detail these issues that students in first year face as well as the reasons why these issues have become an obstacle for their retention and integration in the university. To begin with, Personal challenges that first year students face at the University might cover several challenges but let us talk about loneliness. Loneliness is usually an emotional feeling that arises when someone feels that she/he has been left out by friends, usually in an entirely new environment. In addition, this is a quite common problem faced by most students in their first year at Universities when they leave their families so as to seek abroad studies in higher institution of learning. A practical and a classic example is when these first year students feel Home and lovesick which normally happens when they are missing their family or someone so special to them in life, who is far away from them. Fortunately, this sort of emotional feeling can only last for few weeks or months after which they recover from it, as they will meet more friends in due time. Besides Personal challenges, there are environmental challenges first year student face that that threaten their retention and integration into the university system. Learning in a totally new environment is not that easy as one may think, as it demands adaptation to that new Environment which is not an easy task for everyone. The mode of learning and teaching methods may be different from those that these first year students at the University may have used while still in high schools. For instance, the using the library catalogue is a new idea to most students in first year. Additionally, there can be sluggish learning progression in a too crowded and noisy environment for the student in first year at the University. A productive and a successful learning outcome requires a conducive and private environment and therefore most students in first year at the University find difficulties in learning in crowded environment, since it associate with numerous negative impacts; for example, lose interest in learning processes and lose of concentration. However, after a couple of semesters, the students in first year at the University need to have been adapted and familiarized with the system if at all they are eager to learn and not pull out from the university. The third issue is educational challenges these student in first year at the University face. This issue is always of concern as well to a good number of first year students. Academic side in institutions of higher learning are highly professional than High Schools contrary to what the majority of first year students may expect, therefore, a good number of them are never serious enough with their time management. First year students are devoid of efficient time management skill which simply explains how a person plan and allocate her/his daily activities in accordance to time available. At times, first year students lose opportunities to obtain additional marks in their final assessment simply because they never planned well for their time at the university (Gibney, Murpy & O’sullivan, 2011). For example, they might fail to attend or be late to attend to labs and tutorial, which implies they will lose marks. Moreover, procrastination is always a toxic attitude towards time management. This attitude is referring to the behavior of keeping tasks like homework and assignment to be done in a later date. Consequently, this attitude of University`s first ...Download file to see next pagesRead More