Top 6 Myths About University

“You HAVE to go out during Fresher’s Week! Everyone will think you’re weird if you don’t!”

You really don’t have to go out during Fresher’s Week. Your housemates might find you a little strange if you hide up in your room the entire week and never speak to them, but I’ve never met anyone who isn’t cool with you not going out or not drinking. (See my post here on not drinking during Fresher’s Week).

You’ll be living off of beans on toast.

No.

I’ve tried living off of various tomato sauce covered things on toast. It takes about two days to get bored of that. And you’ll get bored of it to.

Most people are able to afford something a little more extravagant than that. Even my flat mate who goes out every week can afford curly chips and pizza.

And on that note…

You’ll be living in your overdraft.

Ok, I know a lot of people who are in their overdraft at the moment. I’m edging ever closer to it. But if you budget properly, you can make it to the end of the semester, just about…

“You HAVE to join a society!”

Much like having to go out on Fresher’s Week, this isn’t true. You’ll hear me talk a lot about how amazing extra-curricular is, and I loved it the past however many years, but this year I haven’t been doing much society-wise (so far). If you don’t have time, you don’t have time. Though it is amazing for making friends and will “enhance your CV”, it’s not a necessity.

You’ll be living in squalor.

Ok, I’m a student, so maybe I’m not the best person to judge this, and if my mum came round, she’d probably be disgusted at the state of my room, but it really isn’t that bad. Definitely not as bad as people would like to make you think.

I live in halls, where we have a cleaner that comes a couple of times a week but, between the seven of us, we manage to keep the place relatively clean.

That said, sometimes the night after an amazing night out can look… not that great.

Lecturers are really unhelpful.

I’ve no idea where this one comes from, but a lot of people told me it before I started university and this is not true in the slightest.

My tutor last year, bless him, had to deal with a fair bit from me, from sarcastic emails about meetings rearranged into the past, to emails whilst sent sobbing at midnight. He was really helpful, even writing my referee statement for applying to another university.

This year, I’ve spoken to my lecturers outside of lectures multiple times, even stopping them in the street to grab a question that has absolutely nothing to do with the course. Maybe I’ve just gotten lucky, but lecturers being unhelpful is definitely a myth.

 

 

Feature image created by flickr user John Walker used under Creative Commons

Beer Pong image created by English language Wikipedia user Rethcir used under Creative Commons

Fresher’s Fair image created by flickr user stuarts used under Creative Commons

Starting A New College

It’s an essay about you, and how awesome you are. In theory, that should be easy, but a lot of people struggle with writing their personal statement.

I was lucky enough to be in a position where I had a lot to write about when it came to writing my personal statement. All those clubs and extra-curricular activities I’d been taking part of since I was twelve finally came in useful.

Over the summer holidays before my second year of A levels, I wrote a list of all the extracurricular activities I’d taken part of since I started secondary school. For me, that was a lot: school band, eco council, school librarian, drama club, science club, creative writing group, journalism project… Then it came to finding how each of these would come in useful when studying for my degree.

Finding a way to relate playing the steel pan in the school band to a geophysical sciences degree isn’t easy. But it isn’t just about your subject. It’s about being able to manage your time, work as part of a team, and motivate yourself to get things done.

Your personal statement is kind of like a springboard for your interviews. In my interview at Southampton, the interviewer found the fact that I was in the steel pan band fascinating and we spoke a lot about vibrations and earthquakes and music. It’s a way for interviewers to get to know about you.

Of course, your A levels will come into your personal statement too. You’ve already written about what courses you’re taking and how you’ve done in them in the other areas of your UCAS application, but unusual A levels, ones that may seem unrelated to your course, are another thing you can talk about in your personal statement. How exactly does an AS in politics relate to studying geophysical hazards?

Redrafting your personal statement is important. Believe me, you can never have too many redrafts. It’s important to get other people to go over your personal statement too: friends, family, tutor, and subject teachers. Sometimes they can give you conflicting opinions, and you have to decide what you want to do, but it really helps to get an outsider’s view of your statement and tell you what can be added.

Some people say that your personal statement doesn’t matter, but mine was pretty much essential in both my applications. In the first, it got me conditional offers at universities that shouldn’t have been giving me offers considering my grades, and in the second it got me offers for courses I had no relevant qualifications for.

A little bit of tender love and care in your personal statement will not go amiss.

 

What GCSEs did I study?

My GCSE choices were based on what I know about being a volcanologist, my then dream. And what I knew about being a volcanologist was based on a Horrible Geography book…

Alright, so in my school you had to study English Literature and Language, Maths, and a science. The choice in science was between additional and BTEC science. For those that don’t know, BTEC courses are entirely coursework based and, rumour had it, wouldn’t be enough to get you to college studying science. I chose additional science, which was two years, two exams a year. Each exam covered all three sciences.

In my school, you had to choose one technology: graphic design, resistant materials, textiles, cooking, or catering. As I was pretty useless at everything, I chose graphic design. It seemed the least dangerous.

Then, you could choose two more courses. Sort of. If you’d chosen additional science, that counted as one of your courses. So, really, I had one more choice. I chose humanities, because we didn’t have separate humanities courses and I needed to study geography.

Because I was able to take my maths exam in the November of my second GCSE year, I was also able to study statistics. Statistics was my worst subject at GCSE. I absolutely hated it. It went on to become my best subject module at A Level…

Beakers image created by Horia Varlan used under Creative Commons

How I wrote my personal statement…

It’s an essay about you, and how awesome you are. In theory, that should be easy, but a lot of people struggle with writing their personal statement.

I was lucky enough to be in a position where I had a lot to write about when it came to writing my personal statement. All those clubs and extra-curricular activities I’d been taking part of since I was twelve finally came in useful.

Over the summer holidays before my second year of A levels, I wrote a list of all the extracurricular activities I’d taken part of since I started secondary school. For me, that was a lot: school band, eco council, school librarian, drama club, science club, creative writing group, journalism project… Then it came to finding how each of these would come in useful when studying for my degree.

Finding a way to relate playing the steel pan in the school band to a geophysical sciences degree isn’t easy. But it isn’t just about your subject. It’s about being able to manage your time, work as part of a team, and motivate yourself to get things done.

Your personal statement is kind of like a springboard for your interviews. In my interview at Southampton, the interviewer found the fact that I was in the steel pan band fascinating and we spoke a lot about vibrations and earthquakes and music. It’s a way for interviewers to get to know about you.

Of course, your A levels will come into your personal statement too. You’ve already written about what courses you’re taking and how you’ve done in them in the other areas of your UCAS application, but unusual A levels, ones that may seem unrelated to your course, are another thing you can talk about in your personal statement. How exactly does an AS in politics relate to studying geophysical hazards?

Redrafting your personal statement is important. Believe me, you can never have too many redrafts. It’s important to get other people to go over your personal statement too: friends, family, tutor, and subject teachers. Sometimes they can give you conflicting opinions, and you have to decide what you want to do, but it really helps to get an outsider’s view of your statement and tell you what can be added.

Some people say that your personal statement doesn’t matter, but mine was pretty much essential in both my applications. In the first, it got me conditional offers at universities that shouldn’t have been giving me offers considering my grades, and in the second it got me offers for courses I had no relevant qualifications for.

A little bit of tender love and care in your personal statement will not go amiss.

 

Feature image created by UCAS, used under Creative Commons.

 

Goals for the week (4.1.16)

I have a week left before I go back to university and there’s a lot to be done.

Most of my exams were before the Christmas break, but I haven’t done nearly enough revision for my one exam that I have left. My focus this week is going to have to be focusing on that, writing up notes that I’m allowed to take into the exam and revising the roles of the prime minister.

There’s not a lot I can do for the rest of my modules. I’ll read over what’s available about the new modules, but this week is the final week of rest before the whirlwind returns.

 

Going Home Again

I wrote last week about how I’m in a completely different place now to what I was this time last year. And that means my feelings about going home have changed to.

Dread is probably a little bit of an exaggeration, but it’s pretty close.

It doesn’t feel like long since I was last at home. It’s been eleven weeks, twelve by the time I go next week, but it’s gone so fast that I don’t really believe this term has happened at all.

It took me a while this term to get into a routine and now, for the first time in years, I feel completely in control of everything in my life. Going home means surrendering a lot of that control, falling into my family’s routine.

There are some good things about the coming month of so that I’ll be at home, though!

Most of my exams are in the next week, with the exception of my politics exam. Compared to the five I had to revise for last year, that nothing. I might actually get to relax a little this Christmas instead of stress over ancient biology or whatever else I was stressing about last year.

One thing I do feel the same about as I did last year is how uncertain I am about the next few weeks. Hopefully it should be fun, and a lot less stressful than last year. We’ll have to see how it goes.

Review of the year so far

Week eleven starts on Monday. It’s very almost the end of my first semester of my first year (the second time around), so I thought I’d do a little bit of a review and a comparison to this time last year.

So far, the year has gone amazingly. This year has so far been better than I could have imagined, and I think that’s for a variety of reasons.

It’s really been a couple of months of unlearning in a way. Journalism is different from anything I’ve studied before. For the past three years I’ve been focused almost entirely on the sciences, and even GCSEs, which seem a million years ago now, weren’t really enough to prepare me for this. My old way of learning has been made completely redundant and whilst that’s a little scary, I’m glad.

All through secondary school and college, and last year at university, I had to work constantly to get the grades I achieved. My little brother, who sat his GCSEs last year, was able to get away with minimal studying outside of class, whereas I had to be working all the time, so much that I didn’t really get much of a Christmas break during my A-Levels and when my youngest brother was a baby and his crying woke me up in the night, my brain would immediately be trying to work out a made up maths equation. It wasn’t a healthy way of living, or studying.

For the first time that I can remember, I don’t have to be constantly working in order to do well. I’m not saying that I show up to lectures and that’s it. I do work outside of class, but nothing more than the required reading and any set work, really. I can relax and hang out with my friends without panicking that I should be doing something else. It’s a little strange, after so long of constantly working, but I like it.

Comparing this year to last year isn’t really fair. I was unhappy with my course, over-worked, and incredibly stressed. This year, I’m getting the help I need to cope with learning differences I didn’t even know I had last year, and I feel completely at home with my course. This year is an entire world away from last year.

This time last year I was panicking about all the revision I was going to have to do over the Christmas break (which I didn’t end up doing after I decided to drop my course). Most of my exams this year are before the winter break, in week 12. So that’s less revision time and, really, I should be panicking. But I’m not. I feel completely relaxed about my media law and my news writing exams, and a little nervous about my philosophy exam. My politics exam is after the winter break, and I’ll be doing lots of revision for that, but not as much as I was expecting to do over the winter break last year.

This year I’ll get to enjoy my winter break, like I’m enjoying my course.

The Evil Essay

I’m not going to pretend to be the greatest essay writer in the world. I’m not even going to pretend to be a good essay writer. But most of this week has been dedicated to getting the first draft of my essay down and I just thought I’d talk about that really.

In my first politics lecture of the year we were told we would have to write a 2000 word essay and submit it in week 12 (today is the end of week 9). We were given questions to choose from and then would have to choose which to do.

After a couple of weeks (during week 3, I do believe) I decided which question I would go for based on the one I had the most thoughts about without having to do any research. That meant I had somewhere for my research to start, and could take it from there.

Then, during week 5, our lecturer told us he wanted an essay plan by the following Sunday. Great.

To be fair, it was really a kick in the back side for me. I’d been dawdling about, mentally planning what I was going to look up but never actually doing anything. I got the essay plan done in the week and sent it to my lecturer.

I probably should have started looking at sources before this point (I had a couple, but none that actually found their way into my essay), but then I finally got started at looking for sources and constructing my arguments in week six and seven, getting a better plan down (it turns out having done more research actually shapes your plan a lot) and then got down this week to getting the first draft of my essay done.

My essay template is fairly simple:

Introduction: define any key terms and answer the question.

3 arguments on the side you have taken.

3 arguments on the opposite side.

Conclusion.

This is the first real university level essay I’ve written, but I used the format my politics teacher from AS taught me. I’ll update when I get feedback to let you know what my lecturer thinks of this layout.

I know I am a poor essay writer, so I’ve sent my draft to my lecturer to read over the weekend. Hopefully that comes back soon with all the faults highlighted so I can redraft my essay next week and do the same thing before handing in the essay during week 12, which is coming surprisingly quickly.

Cooking

After half a year of living off of tinned tomatoes on toast and jacket potato, I decided to venture into the world of cooking this year. I have a lot of time now that I seem to have figured out my routine and I can use that to stock up on meals. And I’ve found I quite enjoy cooking.

I think I like cooking for a number of reasons. I tend to do it on a Saturday or Sunday afternoon, when there’s not really anybody else in the kitchen. It’s quite calming to slowly and carefully go through a recipe.

I worked towards a career in science for most of my school life and I’m so used to having a strict method to follow: this much of this substance, this much of that substance, this step follows that step and so on. This year has been a real break from all of that. There’s not really much method when it comes to journalism. Not in the same way there is science, anyway.

Cooking takes me back to what I know. Carefully measuring out all the ingredients, checking and double checking the recipe, following it as closely as I can. I feel in control when I’m cooking. It’s calming.

It’s also taking me away from work. Sometimes it’s difficult to pull myself away from work. There’s a need to always be doing something productive. Cooking is taking a break from that. I don’t feel guilty spending an hour or so cooking because I make enough meals for a week and it is something productive, but it’s something different too.

Staying Motivated

One of the hardest things with studying is staying motivated. It’s all very well and good knowing you have to do something, but finding the motivation to get it started, and not to get distracted during what’s supposed to be a “small” break that ends up lasting the entire day, is something that I know a lot of people struggle with.

I consider myself lucky in that I don’t struggle with this as much as my friends and course mates do, and will happily – maybe not happily, but easily – spend an entire Christmas break revising for January mock exams and entire days pretty much locked in my room.

So, how do I stay motivated?

First off, there’s the big picture. I’m not revising to pass exams or pass a course. Whilst I was revising through Christmas break during my A levels, the key motivation was “I want to study at Edinburgh”. Edinburgh University required rather high grades, but getting the As needed wasn’t what motivated me. It was the thinking “study for just another hour and you can study at Edinburgh” and then, once that hour was up, “you did that hour easily, you can do another one, and then you can study at Edinburgh” (once, when I was a kid, my mum tricked me into eating three of these disgusting vegetable finger things using the same method. And it worked then too, though I don’t think Edinburgh University was the reward back then.)

After going on an open day to Edinburgh, I decided against going there to study. So, what’s the “big picture” motivation now?

A job.

Not just any job.

What I told a friend when they asked: “Ok, here’s my secret. Have an obsession. Find a job to aim for within that obsession. Become totally focused on getting that job. Have an unrealistic view that everything will be perfect when you get that job. Worry about that not being true when you have to face that fact. Just focus on getting there first.”

This pretty much sums up the “big picture” motivation.

Of course, that isn’t always going to work, and I don’t rely on that all the time. For long projects, such as stupidly long chapters I have to read or exam papers, I use a reward system.

Chocolate is my reward of choice, but stickers also work for me. You’ve probably seen the picture of gummy bears on a book and, when you get to a gummy bear, you can have the sweet. Same thing. And it works, or it works for me anyway.

These two things are what really keeps me motivated and, most of the time, makes me get everything I have to do in a day done.