Human beings are different and unique, affecting how individuals relate to each other. However, broad classifications of people’s personalities are based on how well they can express themselves. These categories affect how these people can interact; they include extroverts, introverts, and ambiverts. Extroverts love to express themselves, and their personality making interactions easy and even make friends. In contrast, introverts prefer to keep things to themselves, making it basic interactions difficult let alone make friends. On the other hand, ambiverts blend extroverts and introverts as they are a little bit of both. Ambiverts express themselves depending on their environment; they are often more expressive when around people that make them feel comfortable. While these personalities affect how people relate with each other in every setting, there are some environments where social interaction is required for quality growth and development. On that note, this paper seeks to present the relevance of social interactions to university students and its effect on a student’s academic excellence, mental health, and character development.
Interactions between university students is essential for the formation of deep and intimate relationships that may last for years after leaving campus. While the future of a relationship cannot be determined, there are good chances that people can form meaningful relationships that will last for decades after university education (Twenge et al.). Sometimes people treat interactions among university students as temporary because many of them had already formed more intimate relationships by the time they joined the university. Supposing that these relationships fail to go beyond university education, individuals can still help each other through daily tasks. Doing so may make life in the university significantly easier. For instance, students who are friends could help each other find good part-time jobs or persevere through a difficult period of life. It is unlikely for a student who refrains from forming social relationships in the university to gain such benefits.
Social attachments in the university could be used to achieve strategic goals and objectives or rather to explore various interests. Human beings are social creatures and easily learn to adopt different mannerisms, beliefs, and attitudes because of the people they interact with (Argyle). Unfortunately, there are some students who have interests that will not improve their well-being. On the contrary, one can still learn from such a relationship, which will be a lesson to engage in useful activities in the future. An excellent example of strategic goals and objectives one may have is to excel in academics, where one can form study groups with students of the same intellect or higher to ensure that they improve their academic excellence. On the other hand, social interactions at the university could be used to discover interests, such as sports and entertainment, politics, and social activism. Forming and maintaining relationships with fellow university students who have similar interests creates a nurturing environment where people can learn from each other.
Engaging is social circles in the university help to improve one’s moods, and this is essential to cope with the stressful life situations. University students have to maintain good grades, yet they also experience mundane ups and downs of life like other people and social interactions in the university can act as an escape (Wathelet et al.). It is not guaranteed that social interactions among university students will improve moods because sometimes it may have the opposite effect. Regardless, engaging in enjoyable social activities makes it easier to deal with stressful situations. It is better to relieve stress by socializing instead of focusing on a particular problem or indulging in drug and alcohol abuse, which tends to worsen.
Socializing is an excellent way for people to liberate themselves from their problems, mostly by sharing challenging life experiences with their close friends. Life is full of challenges, which requires a good support system in situations that are likely to cause any form of pressure to avoid matters from deteriorating into depression (Chang et al.). Unfortunately, there are some students who are malicious and may share secret information about a stressful experience that one is going through, and this may deteriorate matters. One does not have to share their problem because some issues are more sensitive than others. Furthermore, it is better to share an issue rather than let it get worse because of the fear of exposure.
Social interactions in university are essential for the development of social intelligence. This term refers to the ability of an individual to understand themselves and the people around them. Universities entail students brought up in different life circumstances, which affects their social behavior. Thus, forming social relationships in the university helps one identify and learn about other people’s behavior, either consciously or unconsciously. One can then decide the behavior to emulate and what not to. Furthermore, one learns how to handle people with diverse personalities through interaction. Such information is useful even years after completing university education. Moreover, the diversity of students in most universities helps one learn about various life experiences of people, which helps to promote social health within an individual. Social health refers to the ability of people to cope with different life circumstances. People’s interactions at university involve people brought up in all types of events, either positive or negative. Interacting with such people helps to know that living conditions vary and understanding how such people deal with their life circumstances could help should one face similar situations.
The negative part associated with social interactions in the university is negative peer pressure. Unfortunately, many people become negatively influenced by fellow students and adopt toxic behaviors. Most often, students who are not committed to academic excellence are the ones that seem ‘cool’ in the university setting, and they have the highest chance of influencing others (Bursztyn et al.). University students are young adults, and as much as most of them are interested in furthering their education, it is still easy to sway them with fun activities, such as attending parties. One needs to be careful to avoid being negatively influenced by fellow peers, which emphasizes the need for one to be goal-oriented and committed.
A university is a great place that brings together people brought up in different life circumstances. It is an excellent place for young adults to develop their social intelligence and health. Even though there is a downside where one can be influenced to engage in bad behavior, the pros of interactions between university students outweigh the cons. As a result, I agree that social interactions are a crucial part of the university experience.
Reference list
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Chang, Edward C., et al. ‘Depression, Loneliness, and Suicide Risk among Latino College Students: A Test of a Psychosocial Interaction Model.’ Social Work, vol. 64, no. 1, 2019, pp. 51–60. DOI.org (Crossref)..
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Twenge, Jean M., et al. ‘Less In-Person Social Interaction with Peers among U.S. Adolescents in the 21st Century and Links to Loneliness.’ Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, vol. 36, no. 6, 2019, pp. 1892–913. DOI.org (Crossref).
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