Students and Their Traits

Mention traits that are associated with university students. Are those perceptions accurate? How do these perceptions affect how others relate with you? Use examples from your life.

What are traits?

These are characteristics that make an individual unique from the rest, Pappas (2017) agrees to this explanation by defining personality traits as individual differences in the way people tend to think, feel and behave. University students have negative and positive characteristics that makes them different from other students, examples of the good characteristics are as follow;

Self driven

University students they are very committed to their school work and they are highly motivated to work hard. Unlike in primary, junior and secondary schools, the university students are able to manage their school work as well as how they attend classes on their own. They also have open mind and easily adapt to change.

Good time management

According to Inomics Team good time management is one characteristic of successful students. In universities there are a lot of fun things that take place around. Other students use their time to attend parties, drink, and smoke as well as bunk school while others who are highly self motivated students they know what they want and how to manage their time very well. They do so by making sure that their weekly school schedule does not affect how they interact with others, how they have fun as well as their hobbies like swimming, dancing and singing.

Communication skills

Good communication skills are usually displayed by university students. This is because they attend subjects like CSS which equip them with tools to communication skills. In this subject they are given a change to make oral presentations, group work and slide shows. Hence help them to be good at communicating with people despite their number.

Even though students tend to portray good traits they also have bad or unwanted personality traits that can make an unsuccessful students. These negative traits are as follows,

Procrastination

Students usually procrastinate whenever they are given assessments to do. They usually prefer starting to prepare when the due date is very near. They wait for the last minute where now they will be faced with having to work under pressure. However procrastination is caused by laziness, spending more time on phones and using the wrong places or areas like the sitting room, bedroom and the toilet for studying or preparing for an examination.

Blame one another for failures.

University students always point fingers to blame others for their mistakes and failures. They never want to be held responsible for their bad grades and poor attendance, suggested Moges (2014). They will rather blame their lecturers and accuse them of not being able to do their work very well. Except blaming others they never stop complaining.

Talk more and listen less

University students are always too loud and noisy because of an ego that they have. They highly think of themselves and have high self efficacy which is good but they display this self efficacy arrogantly, which makes such behavior unwanted. Since they feel superior over others, they always want to do most of the talking while in return they pay less attention to what others are saying.

All of the good and bad traits are just perceptions made by individuals. They are either true or false. Most people build their perceptions based on certain things that they admire in others for example someones fashion style, race or religion, job status and physical appearance. Perception is a way in which something is regarded or interpreted and conclusions made are only based on the impressions concluded Cherry. Because of this all perceptions made of university students are not accurate. Different people view them differently and yet there is no special instrument that can be used to measure the accuracy of their perceptions. Also those students their traits are influenced mostly by the environment they live in, as well as the people that they interact with. Therefore we cannot be sure of how accurate the perceptions about them are.

The perceptions people created of University students have affected how students relate with others negatively and positively. Some of the most important people that relate differently with students based on perception:

Business owners

Since university students are considered to be good at managing time and being self driven, it has now became easy for business owners to be able to hire university students to work for their companies. This perception built a lot of trust issues between students and managers which is really good for their future careers. For example, if a university student apply for a job at Choppies store as a cashier, Choppies managers are more likely to hire the university student unlike just an ordinary person who had not been to University.

Lecturers

According to Munyua, a persons character have an impact on how they relate with other people. University students tend to have tense relationships with most of their lectures in school. This is because of the perception that they usually blame their lecturers for their failures. They accuse their lecturers for not knowing how to teach. For example students doing Business Management once accused their lecturer for Micro Economics for being responsible for their failure. They label the lecturer as someone who is not qualified. Now the lecturer does not relate well with them and she is always harsh.

Landlords

Because of the perception that students usually do not listen but talk a lot since they are fully aware of their rights, it has been difficult for landlords to accept to rent for students at most cases. The landlords fear being insulted by some students. Hence this has affected most relationships between the landlords and students renting. For example some students usually fail to pay rent, and disrespect their landlords mostly when they are in involved in substance abuse and this has made it uneasy for landlords to accept students in their homes.

Parents

The perception of procrastination have ruined or destroyed many family relationships. This is because university students tend to procrastinate when it comes to doing home chores. They will always be on their phones and postpone every task given. For example whenever I am with my parents I always postpone to do certain things and this affected the relationship I have with my mother because even if I do not visit home nowadays, she never bother to invite me or even ask why i didnt show up during holidays.

Churches

According to Moatlhodi and Modubeki (2017), the process of communication involves the message, the sender of the message, the recipient of the message and the mode or manner of conveying the message. University students are known to have communication skills and this has built a strong relationship between the students and churches. With this perception many churches have opened doors to university students because they believe in their confidence. They use these students to help the pastor during Sunday church services and help translate at most time. They also give them the chance to go around in the streets preaching the word of the Lord to others. For example the church I attend named Universal has a lot of students helping around the church, it is dominated by university student. They use those students to help out in every church service and some of them even preach during services.

In conclusion it is very difficult to identify ones traits, based on just perceptions. Also traits plays an important role in how a person is viewed and relate with others.

REFERENCE LIST

1. Cherry, K, (2017). Person perception is how we form impressions of others. Available at: https://www.verywellmind.com/person-perception-2795900 [Accessed 05 October 2018]
2. Inomics Team, (2018). 10 characteristics of successful students. Available at: https://inomics.com/insight/10-characteristics-of-successful-students-602112 [Accessed 02 October 2018]
3. Moatlhodi, T, C., & Modukanele, K, (2017). Communication and Study Skills, The process of communication, [pg 51].
4. Moges, B, (2014). Characteristics of unsuccessful students. (online). Available from: https://prezi.com/m/ptahnh2bl3f1/characteristics-of-unsuccessful-student/ [Accessed 02 October 2018]
5. Munyua, P, K., (n.d). How your character affect the way you relate to others, [online].
6. Available from: https://www.google.co.za/amp/s/www.nation.co.ke/lifestyle/living/How-your-character-affects-the-way-you-relate-to-others-/1218-995726-view-asAMP-ypfqm/index.html [Accessed 10 October 2018]
7. Papps, S, (2017). Personality traits and personality type: what is personality? Available at: https://www.google.co.za/amp/s/amp.livescience.com/41313-personality-traits.html [Accessed 04 October 2018]