The Academic Life of the Emerging Somaliland Universities

 The academic life is not as interesting as you may believe, it demands an enormous amount of time to be given on gaining knowledge on the area that you want to become skilled at, because universities require hard working students who are keen to finish their courses and related assignments on time with distinction. 

Currently, students are not serious at least in this part of the world since unemployment is getting higher and higher by the day and students are needed to expect brighter future upon completion of their studies. On the contrary if a person carries out his/her duties seriously than they can make a difference both in education and beyond. Nonetheless, student’s time on preparation and course work is far less than good the old years for a variety of reasons including the time they spend on watching TV, browsing the internet the rising unemployment etc. However; techniques or ways and means has to be explored to remove barriers that impede student learning abilities to effectively control his / her time spent on the workload.

English is a major problem but one has to read as many English books, newspapers and magazines as he / she can find in the local library as reading helps a lot with English improvement, especially with grammar, also they must try to listen to radio stations . I recommend on radios and variety of TV channels that broadcast in English and also they should visit websites that are designed to help English learners. You have to avail the support required to master the art of English and the time necessary to carry out the work.

The girls may not be able to concentrate on learning English and other subjects because they have got other chores especially household tasks to be completed before the school home work is finished and may not be able to follow either the above recommendations because of the said family chores in contrast with the boys in the context of Somali culture.

By the way the more you struggle the more you rise in the ladder of achievement, to that end one has to develop a mentality to over come any challenge come what may in order to be glorious in the life and that success does not come through coincidence, chance but with uphill struggle. And for that you could do with time management and division of your responsibility in compliance with the tasks available. Unfortunately, girls cannot compete with the boys though with exceptions in the academic life because of time limitations but we hope that parent’s attitudes are changed on girl’s education and hopefully girls may grow to be more engaged in education.

The emerging universities should set up Student Activities Board (SAB) which is a planning and programming body for student activities on the campus. Any student interested in a variety of campus activities should be allowed to contribute his / her/ ideas and talents by actively participating on the board. Inter university teams are fielded in boys and girls basketball, cross country essay competition, tennis, soccer, girl’s softball and boy’s football should be arranged as an extra curriculum activity.

Enriching the minds and lives of the students demands a lot from the institutions and parents alike to attain we need cooperation among the stake holders of the sector to enhance and encourage associations of the students within the campus if they are existed or else set up within the universities to make sure that their talents are produced and sorted out properly within academic years.

Mr. Abdirahman Ibrahim Abdilahi

Contact: Abdirahman119@hotmail.com