You made it to university. Congratulations! Things are way harder here. Many students find the first year course load challenging, suddenly nostalgic for the structured classes that seemed so hard in high school but are now revealed as a pretty relaxed amount of work. Back then everything was organized for you, laid out so that you knew what to do and when to do it. And when you first went to high school it showed you how easy elementary school had been, so much more play than work, even though it seemed so hard and boring sometimes.
That process isn’t even nearly over. Every new level is more work. First year of university is way harder than high school. Second year ramps things up again after you’ve gotten used to first year. Third and fourth year kick it up another notch, and another notch, and THEN – well, wow, then you’re in the real world or a post-graduate degree. And that’s when the real work starts.
Which sounds sort of bad. But the most important lesson you’ll ever learn is that knowledge is power. And now that you know there’s more to come you can enjoy first year as much as possible, using it to prepare yourself and get ahead of the curve. You’re here to learn things that will make you smarter, more useful, better than you were before.
That’s your main job right now. Before any of your courses or exam schedules you need to improve your own ability to work. You don’t have teachers standing over your shoulder, parents prodding you to complete your homework, and you certainly don’t need to sit in a classroom all day. You’re being trusted to just get things done all by yourself. You have to develop new work habits. That’s where that future knowledge comes in: you know that there’s even more coming in the future, so don’t just about make it in first year. If you get ahead of the curve, working as if you were in second year, you’ll find every year from now on that much easier.
If you’re always just keeping up with the workload, skating the edges of deadlines, cramming material the night before the exam, then you’re always going to be in overload mode. Because work habits which only just keep up with first year are going to be smashed by second year. Shoveling through the work in the nick of time through second year means you’ll fall behind and have to desperately upgrade again all over again in third year, and fourth year, and it’ll be no fun at all.
You’ve got the ultimate academic fresh start right now. Use it! Start some habits that’ll help you for the rest of your university career. Rewrite your notes each week. Make summary cards when lectures are still fresh in your head instead of ages later. Try assignment problems as soon as you get them, so that even if you can’t finish them they’re already priming your mind, brewing in the back of your brain, and that much easier to solve when you get back to them.
You’ve got a lot of great work ahead of you. And the sooner you decide you want to do it well, instead of having to get it done, the better you’ll be.
That process isn’t even nearly over. Every new level is more work. First year of university is way harder than high school. Second year ramps things up again after you’ve gotten used to first year. Third and fourth year kick it up another notch, and another notch, and THEN – well, wow, then you’re in the real world or a post-graduate degree. And that’s when the real work starts.
Which sounds sort of bad. But the most important lesson you’ll ever learn is that knowledge is power. And now that you know there’s more to come you can enjoy first year as much as possible, using it to prepare yourself and get ahead of the curve. You’re here to learn things that will make you smarter, more useful, better than you were before.
Work habits which only just keep up with first year are going to be smashed by second year.
That’s your main job right now. Before any of your courses or exam schedules you need to improve your own ability to work. You don’t have teachers standing over your shoulder, parents prodding you to complete your homework, and you certainly don’t need to sit in a classroom all day. You’re being trusted to just get things done all by yourself. You have to develop new work habits. That’s where that future knowledge comes in: you know that there’s even more coming in the future, so don’t just about make it in first year. If you get ahead of the curve, working as if you were in second year, you’ll find every year from now on that much easier.
If you’re always just keeping up with the workload, skating the edges of deadlines, cramming material the night before the exam, then you’re always going to be in overload mode. Because work habits which only just keep up with first year are going to be smashed by second year. Shoveling through the work in the nick of time through second year means you’ll fall behind and have to desperately upgrade again all over again in third year, and fourth year, and it’ll be no fun at all.
You’ve got the ultimate academic fresh start right now. Use it! Start some habits that’ll help you for the rest of your university career. Rewrite your notes each week. Make summary cards when lectures are still fresh in your head instead of ages later. Try assignment problems as soon as you get them, so that even if you can’t finish them they’re already priming your mind, brewing in the back of your brain, and that much easier to solve when you get back to them.
You’ve got a lot of great work ahead of you. And the sooner you decide you want to do it well, instead of having to get it done, the better you’ll be.
