A great bunch of Pulsers are school going. If it’s not HSC, it’s campus or postgraduate studies and other technical skills. Much as this topic doesn’t just cover school discussions, it is necessary for them too.

But just so we’re clear, group discussions are essential for every step you embark on in life and personally I wouldn’t encourage you to solely take a life changing decision. You need input from friends and family.

In school, the learners’ biggest challenge is maintaining concentration all through the lessons/lectures from say 8am to 5pm without some distractions. Bluntly, education can be boring but we love it and need it so it may be hard to concentrate, but we must concentrate and what better way than to use discussion groups?

“When students develop a habit of listening to tutors only, most of their attention gets diverted. In such case Group Discussion allows them to hear different voices and opinions” Schneideit, an E-Learning website notes.

Discussions also encourage students to interact with each other more clearly by asking questions and speaking out opinions. Sometimes, you have questions during the class but for fear of dragging everyone back or being seen as a slow learner, you decide to literally “die” with your question. In the discussion however, the main aim is to ask questions where you don’t understand.

“I owe my degree to my discussion group. Without them, I don’t think I would have survived because I learnt concepts better from discussions than from class” Cathy, a lawyer in town, intimated to us.

Not to sound insensitive, but discussion groups could be the reason some students at the university right now are still on normal progress. It is a fact of nature that some students are brighter. It is also an unwritten fact that lecturers are not going to teach everything and that’s when these discussions come in handy. Take note however, that it’s not a discussion group of it doesn’t have some of the brightest students in the class to help steer it forward. You don’t want to go for a discussion and just keep looking at yourselves with no one taking charge.

On the flip side, even for other life choices and decisions, you need discussions. From a personal experience, I had a business plan with some colleagues and we really talked about it. Discussed possible investment and expectation/outcome. To cut the story short, it was a nightmare. We made huge losses but because we had discussed about it before, we collectively assumed the risk and set out on mitigating the losses. We invested over one million and brought back about shs 450,000 at the end of the venture and I don’t want to imagine the regrets, and self pity if I had undertaken it alone.

So much as the road is not always smooth, a discussion will always ease things for you Pulsers.

Make better life choices. Talk to someone next time. Discuss ideas and collectively own them because only then will you be able to either excessively gain from them or lose but with lessons learnt and people to help you go through that loss phase.