It would come in handy for universities to have a manual on how to attract, welcome and work together with international students like yourself, wouldn’t it? A textbook that’s continually updated with tomorrow’s technological inventions, trends of social media use among teens, recent music craze and the newest wrinkle in fashion or cinematography. A compendium to keep universities and colleges worldwide abreast of your interests and habits.
Keeping up with the times
But it’s quite impossible to forecast how international student behaviour will differ from generation to generation, year to year, even with all the research studies in the world at our disposal. So, how does your (favourite) university keep up with these forever-shifting times?
Raised with different incidents, economic factors and cultures in the background, millennials like you have set foot in a society that’s always on demand. Everything is close to hand (as long as you have a good wifi connection, of course), and in a matter of minutes, young international students have it all. Brands like Amazon play with this consumer anxiety released by “not getting what you want when you want it” and provide users with same-day delivery services. Google gives us instant answers to basically any imaginable query in seconds, apps like Tinder connect us with potential soulmates if only we swipe the right way.
The new definition of ‘waiting’
These new habits influence not just our society in terms of social affairs, but in terms of university-student relationships as well. That’s why, when you no longer share the same definition of “waiting” as your university does, it’s up to your uni to reach for a level of compromise. Within limits, of course. Exhibiting an updated and fresh website that loads fast can have massive impact on how much you will want to read about the university, sure. However, you should hold in high regard a university that doesn’t really put everything on one single plate. A society that requests instantaneous answers and feedback is a society that substitutes the pleasure of earned enjoyment with the split-second pleasure of instant prize.
In times when the world is at risk of losing its ability to focus and has the attention span of a goldfish, your university is responsible to speed down the racing mind of young people, train and guide youngsters like yourself into adulthood. And that’s much more important than an instant notification.
