In The Life Changer by Khadija Abubakar Jalli, high school to university is a kind of life-changing phase for a young individual. The novel, based on the experiences of Salma and other students, as written to her children by Ummi, finds a solution to this shift in terms of bringing more freedom, independence, and individual responsibility. College life is depicted as a new place where students are no more under tight control, which takes some of them, like Salm, into the way of bad decisions and romantic adventures. The relative to the strict world of high school stresses how difficult it may be for youngsters to handle the abrupt independence.

The novel also brings out the moral, social, and academic difficulties of such a transition. Students deal with pressures in the form of cultism, academic thievery, and peer pressure, in addition to dealing with issues of identity and career choices. Others, as in the case of Tomiwa, work to transform themselves to be accepted or to get a benefit, a way of showing how university can be a kind of laboratory and of exploring selves. In the meantime, the influence of the parents at this stage is not so strong, and the role of Ummi as as a storyteller highlights the necessity of a good system of values and wise choices of judgments when students start their adulthood.