Challenges and Opportunities for Students

good morning, ladies and gentlemen. at present, my fellow students and i have before us great personal and educational opportunities. at the same time, we are running into a variety of challenges.

today's college education provides us with opportunities for bringing out the creativity and talent that we have within us. this is nurtured both by our learned professors, and by the growing dimension of knowledge sources, such as the world wide web and multimedia sources. our educational experience is being transformed both within and beyond the traditional classroom. however, challenges still exist.

at the end of every semester, students in my university are required to fill out a questionnaire as a review of the previous semester. the questions usually cover a broad range of college life, from curriculum adjustment to canteen service. and almost every time, the questionnaire includes one essential question, that is: as a college student, what are your major challenges? and almost every answer includes two aspects: studying and professional. these two challenges will remain our preoccupations as long as we live in such a competitive world.

a series of challenges in our studies start from almost the beginning of our freshman year. we may wonder whether we've chosen the right major. we may wonder if the extracurricular activities add credits to our studies. we may work our heads off to get a glorious a, because b is already mediocre and c is almost unacceptable. later on we may be competing with our hardworking, intelligent peers, including our best friends to get into an ideal graduate school. all of these sound so familiar and they have somehow made our college education so goal-obsessed that we sometimes fail to fully enjoy our educational experience.

apart from challenges in learning, there are also professional challenges. the competitive world today has also brought about the knowledge economy, which requires the effective use of knowledge for economic and social development, and also requires skilled and multi-oriented students with a marketable vocational sense. therefore, sophisticated calculations upon the value of a university degree are being made. graduate employability statistics are being scrutinized. programs like resume writing and interview skills are seen as a must. again as i've said above, when professional concern dominates our college education, we may lose the essence of our educational experience.