At school, I don't remember having taken classes on 'how to protect ourselves from bullies'. I had to figure it out on my own when one of the students started calling me names and we ended up fighting and slapping him on his cheek. This incident, of course, led to detention, strict parental supervision and also newfound respect from friends. Had there been classes to teach us how to deal with such situations, I wouldn't have earned the nickname 'troublemaker'!

At university, you believe your personality has matured and are bold enough to take decisions and handle unsavory situations that crop up between friends, teachers and others. You are clueless about communicating with individuals whose personalities clash with yours. You end up wishing that a special course would be created to teach to survive this stage or even free your mind from the regret that you didn't register for psychology classes!

After scraping through life experiments at school, college and university you are faced with the biggest test ever - finding a job and building a successful career. So you decide to search for new opportunities and travel abroad - in my case, it was Kuwait. I was very excited, as I considered it as an adventure to meet new people from different places and discover new places.

But no one tells you in advance how it is to live alone in a country that is completely different from yours, with different cultures, traditions and language or dialect. I learned the hard way. In the beginning, I thought I will not survive in Kuwait and wanted to go back home, because I couldn't fit at all. How many times I wished while facing these challenges that there was a survival manual to teach me how to make it without going through all the troubles and pain!

On your first job interview, you think you are ready because of the advantages you have over rival candidates - youth, freshness and enthusiasm. You feel assured that no force on earth can stop you because you have a degree in hand. Your confidence is crushed when you realize that while answering the interviewer's questions, you failed to take a course on how to answer job interview questions, and even doubt if you are properly dressed! If you are lucky, you could pass your first job interview successfully. If you aren't, you will after a second or third trial.

Once again, you are full with the false assurance that your life is secure. Since the university does not equip you with life skills, your new workplace is nothing but a lion's den where you are trying to survive every day. No one teaches you about who you can trust at the workplace, how to behave in an extremely competitive atmosphere, cope with work pressure, how to develop communication skills, or what to do if you are dragged into a fight with a colleague, or for that matter, if it is healthy to be part of a clique. No one teaches you the rules on standing up for yourself when harassed by a colleague or even your boss.

I think it's very important to have a life skills course in school and university. This will help children get a clue about what awaits them in a real-life setting. In school, the lessons are taught first and tests taken later. In life, we take the hardest tests first and learn the lessons later. But although we face ups and downs, trip, fall and get up again in our lives, the journey is full of excitement, passion and something to look forward to every day we wake up.

By Sahar Moussa