Hostel Life: Advantages and Disadvantages of Hostel Life

Introduction: Every good school or college has a hostel for his students. It provides board and lodging to students who come from distant areas.

Hostel-life is not a new thing in India. It existed in the University of Nalanda even in the 7^th century.

Hostel is generally, built in the open and has well ventilated rooms. The site of hostel building is healthy and so the students can enjoy the open air. They are left free from the noise and disturbances of family life.

The various advantages and disadvantages of Hostel life has been discussed in this article.

Advantages

There are many advantages of living in a hostel.

1. A hostel provides a congenial atmosphere for study. Serious students learn many good things in hostels.
2. There is a fixed time for everything. The students have to get up when the bell rings. They are to do everything according to the timetable. There are fixed times for study and sport.
3. The students have to lead a disciplined life and they learn regularity and punctuality.
4. In hostels, the students can get help from the brighter students in their studies.
5. They can also borrow books from one another.
6. They have the opportunity of reading newspapers, magazines and other useful books in the reading room attached to a hostel.
7. In a hostel, the students learn many useful lessons of life. They have to do everything for themselves. This creates in them the habit of self-reliance.
8. In many hostels, the students have to manage the mess as well. This helps them to learn how to manage a home and spend money carefully. Therefore, hostel-life is a preparation for the domestic life later.
9. Students of the same age generally live in such places. Therefore, they learn to have regard for others, to live with others and to help one another in times of need. Hostel life thus help to develop in students a sense of fellow feeling.

Disadvantages

Unfortunately, every rose has its thorns. Hostel-life too has some disadvantages.

1. Students have to live far from their parents. Therefore, they do not get the same care and love as at home.
2. The life in the hostel is very expensive. Very few guardians of the lower middle class afford to pay the heavy cost required for living in hostels.
3. Besides these, students learn to live a life of fashion from one another and become selfish. Some become indifferent to homes.

Much of these difficulties can be removed if the superintendent is good and takes keen interests in his work.

Conclusion

Overall, the hostel life is beneficial to good students. They can improve their body and mind and learn many useful things of life.