Welcome to another blog post! Today’s post is all about my tips that I have for first year university students. I realise that this post is probably 2 months late, but anyone can change their habits whenever. The inspiration for this post came from my law Instagram, in which I posted a summarised version of this post back in June/July time. You can check it out here.
No one ever really tells you what university is like and how you should approach it. I hope this post offers you guidance.
Attend all of your lectures and tutorials
This may seem like a really obvious tip but trust me on this. It can get extremely tempting later on in the academic year to become complacent and think ‘Oh, I can’t be bothered to attend. I’ll catch up later.’
Don’t do that
I can guarantee that you will end up hating past you for coming to that decision. Why? Because when your friends are out having fun or catching up on the latest Netflix release, you’ll be stuck playing catch up because a deadline is approaching. Of course, illness may mean you end up missing a couple of sessions here and there but I would try and catch up as soon as possible.
If your university uploads lecture recordings online, make use of them
Universities that upload lectures online deserve good things in life. These are brilliant sources for you to utilise, so use them. Of course, the most obvious way is when you are ill and you need to catch up. However, these recordings can be good for revision purposes. Quite often, lecturers can speak really quickly and so it can be difficult to take notes down of everything you deem of importance. I don’t listen to every single lecture recording available but I do listen to ones where I feel my notes are not substantial enough.
Do the pre-reading
It shouldn’t be forgotten how important pre-reading is. Pre-reading is carefully selected by your lecturers to make your life easier. Sometimes, it’s the textbook pre-reading to give you an introduction to a lecture topic. Sometimes it’s journal articles. Whatever the case may be, make sure you take the time to use these.
Textbook readings offer background knowledge to a certain topic, which means that lectures will be easy to follow. When I did the pre-reading for a topic and we then had a lecture on it, I found I was much more engaged with what the lecturer was saying and adding specific points to my notes rather than just copying from the powerpoint continuously.
Journal articles and other readings are brilliant to collate together, as these can be used for any upcoming assignments. It means you spend a less amount of time researching which I really liked.
Don’t be afraid to ask questions
Lecturers are always there for you whenever you need to ask a question. They have so much information to tell when it comes to their speciality and they are always willing to help and answer anything you have concerns about. I found that I ended up developing good relationships with my lecturers when I stayed behind to ask questions. It shows you have an interest.
I hope this offered some guidance to those in their first year of university!
Thank you for reading.
Beth
Beth Olivia 