Can’t believe we’re now in April. This year is flowing by. It’s been an absolutely life changing 3 months since 2017. I can honestly say, this is a part of my life I’ll never forget. I am now at the end of my second year of University and can happily say, I’m glad to be finishing and have the next six months off to plan for my final year project.
Here are a list of Do’s and Don’ts in University.
1. Do not leave everything to the last minute: Leaving things to the last minute means you’ll be under massive amounts of pressure. It also means you won’t be able to do work to the best of your ability. Whilst speaking to older students who have been doing their dissertation and more, they’ve advised to start as early as you can, in second year in fact, so you have the most amount of time to make errors and correct them. (This also applies to College and School students)
2. Don’t stress over things you can’t control: Stressing over deadline dates, work and more only means your work won’t be to the best standard it could be than if you weren’t stressed for example, when you’re stressed your mind is all over the place and writing essays or even doing work means you’ll make too many errors. Have a free mind and take things as they come.
3. Do not think that you have enough time to complete things: I promise you a semester will go incredibly quickly. One minute you’re in week 1, just being assigned your projects.. You’ll then wake up tomorrow and it’s week 12 or 15 and you’re at the end of your semester. Start from the moment you have been given your assignment, there’s nothing worse than rushing at the last minute like I stated in #1.
4. Make sure you organise your time effectively: This is something you MUST DO in order to achieve amazing grades and an amazing experience at university. Organising your time goes from making sure your work schedule will not interfere with University work, to making sure you don’t hang out with friends when you have essays due. Organisation is so important so that you can stop any distractions. Things like scheduling when you need to do what and when it needs to be finished by can help you keep on top of your semester. Remember not to worry about missing events out with your friends, you’re here for YOUR degree and you will be the only one having to live with your grades at the end of it.
5. Make sure you put little amounts of money into your savings account each month. This is something you can do to help relieve stress. Every student has been through the ‘broke’ moment, where they have £0 in their account. (Believe it or not it’s happened to everyone I know). If you keep adding little amounts of money into your savings each month, when you get to that point of no return, you have some extra money in your savings account which you’re allowed to put back into your account to ‘save yourself’. (I wouldn’t advise taking our your whole life savings, just the savings you’ve saved each month from uni). It just means you won’t have money worries at the same time as your deadlines.
6. Enjoy your time at Uni. I believe if you do all these things you’ll enjoy yourself more at University. You’ll have less stress, no money worries, great grades and it’ll also help you become more organised in the long run. My final DO is that you believe in your ability to do well.
NAIMÁH MCKIE 