This is an article that talks about how the psychology of univeristy students works in general and what drives them after they enter some elite institution e.g. IITs, IISc, etc. in case of India.

After you got accepted into the college of your (or your society’s) dreams, you might have drawn validation from society or even yourself but does that validation (already purchased) still satisfy you while living on campus. Ask yourself what is driving you now and why?

In the hierarchy of human needs, validation occupies a spot right above the basic physiological and safety needs i.e the basic needs. We seek validation from our actions, for our choices and more so, it is sometimes the case that there are certain behaviors and actions in which humans engage with the sole purpose of validation. To dig deeper into this, we need to have a closer look at the theory of human motivation, why and how something drives us.

We may take help from the American psychologist Abraham Maslow, one of the pioneers of humanistic psychology, born in 1908. His paper, “A Theory of Human Motivation” published in Psychological Review (1943) answers most of the questions raised about human actions. With the emergence of social media in recent times, his works have become even more relevant, as we are heading into more and more self-doubt.

Maslow described human needs as arranged in a progressive hierarchy—a compelling need would need to be mostly catered before someone would give their attention to the next highest need. Most importantly he has categorized these needs in a hierarchical order, which really probes the facets of human motivation, the reality check of where we stand and how do we really grow up and reach the highest level. One of the beauties of this idea is that it is universal, i.e. it applies to every single human being on this planet. Restricting our sample space to our case, consider the subject being a professor, student, it really works as a good metric to how people have progressed in life in terms of being a human in the first place. Have a look at the following pyramidal description starting with most basic needs at the bottom.

Speaking in general, one may conclude that for most of the students at even premier institutes like ours, people haven’t reached much up in this ladder or have been stuck at some level i.e. just above the basic needs level. Think about why it is happening and think about yourself, where do you stand. Look at this table again, think what is driving your current actions, reason out the root causes of these actions. You would realize the hard truth.

And all the best for your journey in reaching the epitome of this hierarchical ladder!

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