Tuesday 7 October 2014

First week at university-how was it?

Was the first week at university how I imagined?  To be honest, yes. Although I've a few surprises which I will share with you here as words of wisdom. 

Are you at uni? Are you a fresher?  
How has your experience been so far?  
I would love to hear from you. 


I'm so pleased to say I've met some really amazing people and the tutors/lecturers are amazing!
Wow do these guys know their stuff. 
There's not one of them who would allow bad school boy behaviour and woe betide anyone who tempts to challenge that!

Feeling as though I'm a fairly confident person (people often tell me) I have had to find some inner strength this past week and it's certainly not for the faint hearted. 

Challenges?  

Yes there have been many. From finding a long queue out of the door to try and purchase a train ticket and then actually catch the train on time right through to realising I don't have enough bottles of water with me! 
I'm not sure yet if it's the 260 bodies in a lecture theatre or the air con but something is making me very thirsty. 

The difference between a lecture and a tutorial:
I think I'm right in saying that during a lecture, you generally sit tight and listen.  For, like, a couple of hours. 
After that, we seem to go off into smaller groups of about 20 and have a tutorial session.  This is where we go over the lecture and write up a summary. 
I'm still to get 100% clear on what is a summary..... Yet right now it's points to remember (not with examples, just reminders) and condensed down onto 2xA4 sheets. 

Side note: as I sit writing on the train, I notice so many ladies doing their make up! So many people with the new iphone6 and someone smelling gorgeous - I wonder what that perfume is?

Back to the uni stuff!  The subjects covered have been HARD.  I'm finding I really need to focus. There are some subjects I've not covered at all before. I would suggest you get a good night sleep beforehand (even the most brilliant people have been seen napping) and try hard to listen as opposed to taking too many notes.  

My uni has all of the slides online for every lecture. Plus practise quizzes and other stuff to help you and give you a chance to get up to speed. During lectures I have been writing down odd little notes or questions that I need to go and get answers to.  For example, in biochemistry we were talking about "ground state" of items found on the periodic table. I'm not sure what that is, yet I'm pretty sure many others know what this is so I'll use google :)

After a lecture, I've been leaving slightly baffled. I guess it would have been helpful to know that you aren't always going to "get it" at every lecture on the first attempt. Yet after going away and re-studying everything and looking things up independently, it will come. 

Great tip:  we were told of "the Khan academy". This is an excellent learning tool for you which is online based. Check it out. 

The shock factor came when we were informed on my course that we have to pass this first year at distinction level, without this, we cannot progress to the second year. It has put lots of my fellow students off. They are now deciding to transfer to another course for the second year.  I slept on it, questioning my ability. Yet I would never know unless I tried. So I'm going to give it everything I've got and work hard enough to know I've done my best. 

All the while still nurturing my blog, YouTube, clients and family. 

I can do it. It's just using lots of focus (which I love) and super powers of organisation- such as putting out the rubbish a little early......

Much love

Louise xoxo

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