Considering a lot of you will be starting first-year uni next year, I figured it might be good to have a thread like this, where current uni students can talk about what they've learnt. :) Basically, this thread is for anyone to give advice to first-year uni students - stuff you wish you could go back in time and tell yourself at the beginning of your first year.
I'll start!
#1: If you find it hard at the start, it often gets better
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Trust me when I say that very many people struggle with the transition from school to uni. It's super understandable, too; for ~13 years, you've been at school, with structured classes, teachers who know you, routine. Then, you're sort of thrown into what will probably be a bigger campus, with more (and new) people, different procedures and class styles, and with lot of new terminology to learn. For those reasons, the initial period can be pretty tricky.
It'll change from person to person, of course. Some students will adjust really well - the uni lifestyle suits them. For others, it'll take a little longer. I wasn't much of a uni fan for at least my first semester - and probably more broadly my first year. I was very close to dropping out because, plainly, I just wasn't enjoying it. But I think a big part of that was the lack of familiarity. I was used to high school assessments, six (and later four) periods a day, bells, designated lunch times - shit like that. It's just not like that at uni, and at first, I found that threatening.
I'm very, very, very glad I didn't drop out, and stuck with it for a little longer. Gradually, I became more familiar with what was happening, got more involved as a result, and subsequently enjoyed the whole process a whole lot more. I ended up having four years at uni, and I intend to go back in the future. So my advice to myself would be something along the lines of: stick it out - it'll get easier.
#2: Grades and shit are useful, but perhaps not most useful
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I worked hard at uni, and was pretty particular about my grades. It was actually the root of a lot of anxiety, which wasn't a good thing overall.
Don't get me wrong, uni grades can be important. For example, if you're hoping to snare a place at a prestigious law firm or as a doctor, your marks will very likely be taken into account. And I'm certainly not suggesting they don't matter at all; that would just be flat-out contradictory of me haha.
What I am saying is that they're not necessarily the most important part of university life. In hindsight, I think I would have been more involved in uni in general - so like, clubs, making new friends, leadership and volunteering. The extracurriculars really help you develop, and also encourage you to be more engaged with the whole process. Even if my marks suffered a little, I don't think my job prospects would have. In fact, they may have even been enhanced. These days, you don't get a job by having a degree; you get a job by being suited to the role. Being suited to the role will probably involve things like initiative, independence, communication skills - things you'll very likely develop through extracurricular activities.
Again, I'm certainly not saying grades don't matter. I worked really hard at maintaining a decent GPA, and I'm proud of what I achieved. My advice to myself, though, would be to push yourself outside your comfort zone a little, and experience all of uni - not just the academic side.
#3: It's probably worth making some connections
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Good for career, sure, but more pertinently, just good socially.
I made very few friends through uni; often, I actively avoided interacting with others. I'm probably proof that you can go through uni without doing much socially and still benefit greatly from the experience, but like, uni's (potentially) such a great time to make new friendships and connections. If you don't know anybody going to the same uni as you, or doing the same course as you, making friends will likely help in the long-run. You can share experiences, and lean on one another when things get tough.
#4: Learning how to reference is important - do it early
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You can lose many a mark through incorrect or inconsistent referencing, so it's important to know how to do it properly. If nothing else, accurate referencing should go some way to protecting you against plagiarism concerns, which is another consideration.
Different schools, different faculties and different unis will have different preferences for referencing style - it might even change unit to unit. Be mindful of which referencing style you're meant to be using; your uni library might very well have a guide for each style. I made the referencing guidelines my homepage for a while haha - that helped me, I think.
It might also be worth learning how to use referencing (Endnote or similar) early on. I actually never learnt, and did all of my references manually (anal),
but that's certainly not the most efficient use of time. So my advice: learn how to reference, and learn how to reference early.
#5: Use the first few weeks to explore
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Check out where your lectures/tutes/labs/whatever else will be, find some good coffee, work out where the libraries are. Uni campuses are often quite large; even in my fourth year, I didn't have much of an idea where I was going sometimes haha. To avoid being late to class in your first few weeks, though, you might like to scope it out prior.
My advice? Consider the first few weeks as a bit of a tester. You probably won't have (m)any assignments, so it's a good time to just... explore!
Over to you, pals. :D
Would have loved having this thread at the start of this year haha. Huuuuuge +1 to the referencing. I know at Monash, the library run sessions that teach you how to use particular referencing systems, so if you're nervous about doing referencing without guidance - maybe give that a shot! Otherwise, make sure you have the how-to guide downloaded. :) Often referencing is worth a reasonable amount of marks in your assignment, so it can be easy marks to pick up as long as you do it properly.
Social stuff
- Stick yourself out there and interact with people - everyone else is starting over, too, so they also need to find friends! Don't be afraid to start talking to the person sitting next to you in a lecture, or the people who you're discussing questions with in a tute. Even if they don't become super close friends, they're faces to say hi to when you pass them at uni! :)
- Relating to the first point - persist with interacting! I'd say I didn't make close friends until semester 2, so I'm really glad I kept on talking to people and all that! It takes times for friendships to form, so don't be disheartened if someone you've known for 6 weeks isn't as close of a friend as someone you've been friends with since year 7.
- Stay in contact with people from high school (or rather, the people that you want to stay in contact with!) - if they're going to your uni, great! But if they're not going to your uni, actively try to catch up once a month or something similar.
- Don't be disheartened if people you thought were your friends in high school stop talking to you. There's plenty of people who are only your friends because you see them 5 days a week. And people also change when they start uni! One door shuts, another door opens - I was a bit sad that there were people I thought were pretty good friends that just sort of stopped talking to me, but in return I've now become friends with people I went to high school with who I didn't really connect with at school. :)
Work stuff
- With noone there to remind you of due dates anymore, make sure you're aware of when things are due well in advance. Maybe stick some A3 calendars on your wall where you can write stuff down.
- You'll probably have to spend a bit of time figuring out how to independently learn, because you get spoonfed a lot in high school. So don't be afraid to try some different systems, and don't be disheartened if it takes you a bit of time to find out what works best for you.
- Not understanding the content straight away is okay and very common! In uni, you're getting huge info dumps in lectures, whereas in high school you had someone walk you through the content over say, the course of a week or something. You'll have to get used to doing more work outside of uni (which I found hard to adjust to, given the fact I'd spent years at high school doing all my work in class so I didn't have any homework haha), too.
- Being behind is also okay. Maybe if you have a really light workload, it'll be easy to stay up to date, but I can guarantee you just about everyone will be behind in your course at some stage.
- If you don't understand, don't be afraid to ask questions, because noone's going to come up to you and check that you're understanding the content. But, make sure you have specific questions - you can't just get the lecturer to explain the whole thing again haha. Come to them (or email them) with your question, where you've looked already, and perhaps with some ideas. They'll appreciate your effort, and also, (probably depending on the faculty) a lot of lecturers/tutors won't answer a question until you've done research yourself.
- You probably won't have to buy many of your prescribed textbooks. The uni library will probably have heaps of copies, and if the newer editions are only 7 day loans, just borrow an older edition that you'll be able to have on loan potentially indefinitely. If you're going to buy textbooks - wait till you're a few weeks into semester to see what you're actually going to need. Lecturers will probably mention whether you actually need to buy it or not, and you'll also be able to ask older students who have done the unit.
- When you're doing referencing for your assignment, do it as you go along, and not at the end. You'll be less likely to make mistakes, and you'll have more opportunity to pick up on any mistakes that you have made.
Miscellaneous stuff
- Scout out the good places to study in the first few weeks. Particularly if you're at a big campus, it can be hard to find spots to sit in the library, so go exploring for the quieter areas and all that.
- Know what services the uni offers, and where to find them. So, find out where the health services are, disability support services, learning advisors, etc.
- If you're going to Monash and you're going to buy a parking permit, make sure you know when the sales open and get on it ASAP because the first round sell really quickly and you'll have to go on the waitlist for a few weeks if you miss out, which can be annoying.
I think my big point, and one I wish someone had told me at the start of the year is: change isn't bad, and don't be afraid of it - embrace it.
If anyone has any advice for second year, I'd love to hear it ;)