Things you should do while still at university

Written by: 
Leonard Twinomugisha

Joining a University is a step of academic achievement after a long struggle of high school rules and regulations. University is a market place of wisdom, knowledge and qualifications attained majorly through personal responsibility and self regulation.
This level, being somewhat a free world, one ought explore positive and constructive adventures while pursuing their degrees. Below are some of things one should venture in before he is too old to try them out.
Learn a Unique thing about the History of your University. This will make you appreciate it and you will never crave or complain about failing to make it to Makerere or Harvard University.
Visit the Library, read for fun and for the course load. This is the only way you will be proud to associate with authors and always refer to them. This will make you sound informed once hijacked to give a short speech to elites.
Fight to improve your CGPA in every first semester of every academic year. A friend of mine tells me always that he regrets nothing but his low CGPA in all his University life. “I enjoyed all the experiences at campus except for my Pass degree,” Robert Agaba says. CGPA is the only evidence that you were a serious student. Make a choice to improve it at all costs.
Test your ability to apply what you are studying in the real world by volunteering in an organization of your choice. This can be done while on a vacation. It will be best effective if done before the official internship. This will help you build confidence that you have a career and future.
Join a club or association, run for a leadership post and test your ability to influence your peers.
Attend an event of friends with a different culture and learn a new thing. Explore cultural facts about different tribes. Perhaps you would not swear again that you will never marry a Munyankore, Mukonjo, Muganda, a Kikuyu or Kalenjin. If the University you are attending to is foreign or abroad, it is your chance to make a second home country by making friends that will assimilate and absorb you. How will you do this if you are a racist?
Ever tried to make yourself busy, try it at campus. There are many life pressures out in the field, one ought to try keeping awake for 24 hours working on a personal project. Journalism students, work on a video project for more than a week. Computer scientists and software Engineering students, how many program chords can you write in a week’s time? Switch your cell phone off just to attend to personal issues. This habit makes me feel like I am already at work and so will it to anyone who practices it with passion.

Get Wi-Fi passwords of several servers around your campus. Internet is a necessity to every University student in this era. The Makerere students boast of the MAK AIR wireless network but a few know that there are more several servers in the same campus. Sorry for the Universities that don’t yet have good Wi-Fi services. It would be a better reason to demonstrate in this era other than reasons like the increment on the amount of food served in the University dining. For those who have the monies, remember to invest in a laptop lock. I know that anyone who has lost his laptop will agree with me over this.
This may sound unserious but we really need to know it, however crazy it may sound. Agree with a friend to ask you a question that you well know on your day of your presentation. Lecturers reading this must be shocked. Remember that there are students who will just want to challenge your presentation.
I perhaps must tell you that I can’t tell you enough, may be you will need to break some rules, sneak into restricted places of the library and laboratories to see why students are restricted .Try having fun moments, pose with person or at a place well associated with the University by the public. You may want to prove to your grand that you are actually studying not in the Makerere of Mbarara but the Main Campus. I would be unfair not to remind you of doing things that keep you in record. Yes! Write for a University Publication or Website.