Unity + Diversity = University

Recently Rohan, a colleague of mine asked me what ‘University’ meant. I went on a dictionary-type definition of the word, and that’s when he interrupted me and told me that university stood for

UNITY and DIVERSITY

That evening, this two-word explanation of the word university got me thinking and I tried to recall how it related to when I was studying. During my early years in school, I did make friends, but not many of them turned to lasting friendships. This changed when I moved from Kenya to India to attend high school; I really felt my first sense of unity within an education campus living in the school’s hostel (accommodation/dormitory term used in India). We were a close-knit group of 30 odd boys who supported each other in good times and bad. I still remember the first day in the hostel when I was feeling very homesick, a number of my hostel mates who had just met me that day came to cheer me up.

Fast forward two years down the line, moved to Chennai and I was studying Bachelors; my experience staying in the hostel was different from the one in school. There were many groups or cliques as it is called, some based on the states that you were from, some based on being non-residents and various other reasons. I tried to blend in with all the groups and definitely made friends, but I wouldn’t say that they were lasting friendships. Friends that I made for life was in the classroom of the university. These are the same friends that I travelled together to study my postgraduate in Australia and spent two years living as housemates.

Studying in Australia also led me to find new friends in an entirely different setting; people were from different countries and I learned that I had to be sensitive to the cultural differences among all of us. This was also a great opportunity to learn how culturally diverse people thought about a concept in different way or the way one reacted to a situation. Even with all this diversity, there was unity among the different students and I really experienced when students got together to do projects or group assignments.

I personally felt that I experienced this two-word meaning of university when I studied in the Australian university. It is very important to meet new people, learn new cultures and see how to meld both in your studies. I would advise students to see university not just as a place to study, but to also forge new friendships as well as learn new meanings to life. 

Please share your thoughts on this article, your experiences while you studied in university whether similar or different.