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0 Written by Grace Horlings
As a new graduate, I look back on my five years of university with fondness and a bit of dread. There were many unconventional things I did out of the tactical need to survive and many more things that I should have done but never did due to my own preconceived ideas. This makes me qualified enough to give unsolicited advice that could make your time spent in post secondary slightly more bearable.
- Don’t Buy the Text Book
There were many classes I passed that I never opened the textbook for. This is not to say don’t bother using the textbook but in some courses it can be more of a suggestion than a requirement. Especially if the lecture content is just a regurgitation of that text. I would urge you to use your own common sense before you drop $500 dollars on course materials. Can you borrow it from someone? Can you find a PDF online? Do you really even need it at all? Work smarter not spend unnecessary income.
- Go To Class
Since I’ve established myself as anti-textbook, I made up for my lack of book knowledge by being a diligent attendee. It’s easy to fall down the slippery slope of missing one 8am and then never going again. This is how you get caught in an endless loop of catching up through lecture notes and recordings, piling onto the time you could spend doing other assignments. Does anyone want to go to a 3 hour lecture from 6 to 8:45pm? No! But you can do a lot of homework during a dry evening lecture. Time management is your best friend and your arch nemesis. If you were already going to be busy in the time allotted for class, just go, it’s not like you’re actually going to do anything productive if you skip the class. Procrastination will make other plans.
- Start the Essay
Just a cover page and a few untitled links to some possible sources should help ease the stress of an encroaching deadline. If you know you’ve got a week till you have to hand it in, at least make a Word Doc with a working title. It’s always easier to start when you know you have things set up. Date, sources, page numbers, use them as stepping stones before you really have to put the elbow grease into writing. If you spend ten minutes making a title page and finding random unusable sources, and half an hour scrolling on your phone–you’ll at least feel slightly accomplished when you leave the library.
- Bring a Snack
You might not intend to spend eight straight hours on campus but you can trust that it will happen and it might even happen twice a week depending on the time of the year and the intensity of your schedule. The University of Lethbridge is also classified as a food desert. That doesn’t mean that there’s no food, it’s just that the edibility and pricing of the food on campus makes it basically inhospitable, except for maybe the coffee and energy drinks available. Throw an apple, a granola bar, a tupperware of last night’s dinner in your backpack before you leave the house. It’ll be much more satisfying and cost effective then spending $15 on a chicken wrap that is made up of mostly kale and a dried out tortilla. The young mind cannot thrive on nicotine and Coke Zero alone, though many have tried.
- Reward Yourself
It’s 8am, it’s snowing, it’s still pitch black outside. Oh my god, you don’t want to go to class. But what if waiting for you when you stepped on campus was a warm vanilla latte, to make the whole ordeal worth the hassle. There’s a research paper you don’t want to even look at that’s due in four days. But what if you wrote two paragraphs and spent the rest of the evening watching tv, cozied up in bed. You have to start bribing yourself early on. A sea lion at the zoo sees no point in balancing that beach ball on his nose if he knows there’s no fish waiting for him. Congratulate yourself on the big and small triumphs, it will make you feel all the more accomplished.
- Leach-Off Campus Resources
It’s important to take advantage of all the resources at your disposal early on so you can really get your money’s worth. Go to campus counseling, visit the health clinic, take out books from the library, go to fitness classes, pocket free condoms and tampons, do lane swimming, take the bus everywhere, talk to a career advisor, use the student pantry, have your work looked over by someone at the writing center. In five years none of this will have a student discount. Use it while you have it before the real world charges you $150 dollars for a therapy session and $5 to ride the bus.
- Go to the Party
Yes, you probably have studying to do and assignments to finish but you will be stressed out about those things no matter what you do. Don’t turn down invitations to have a good time just because of distant future commitments. University is a lot of responsibility but you are also in a season of your life where you have the least amount of things to be accountable for. You can still get good grades while letting yourself have fun on the weekends. If you miss one night of studying for Biology quiz no one will die. One day you’ll be in your 30s wishing you had gone out more before you had a full time job and bills to pay, not thinking about how you did on a 1st year spring semester midterms.
- Don’t Stand in the Way
I know the university is a big exciting building with lots of new people to meet and old friends to catch up with but please for the love of god don’t do it standing in the middle of the Fine Arts stairway. There are plenty of benches, tables, and seating in Uhall that could prevent you from halting the flow of foot traffic by standing in the middle of the road. You also really don’t need to park yourself right in the doorway before the start of a lecture—fighting against the current of students trying to leave an ending class so you can get a seat before your class begins. There will be places to sit, the rooms are built for that purpose. Be aware of your surroundings, it will save you from a lot of dirty looks.
- Be Annoying
If you want a job or a position in a club, you have to make yourself known. If you want to confirm your answer with your prof, continue discussion, or clear up any confusion with an assignment, you have to stay after class or go to office hours. It might feel awkward or that you’re budging your way in, but this is a necessary part of achieving the thing you want. Just like the work force, university requires you to be slightly annoying to push your way into spaces you might not have previously belonged. It may be hard to do at first but if you just keep showing up, sending the emails, or asking questions eventually someone will have to acknowledge you.
- Go Easy on Yourself
University is a long and tiring process, it’s important to be kind to yourself throughout it. If you need the extension–take it, if you need a mental health day–do it, if you need to drop down to three or four classes a semester–you have every right to. The confusion of knowing what you actually want to pursue for your degree, possible minors you can obtain, and the required courses you need, will make for a long journey full of mistakes but you have to remember it’s not a race in the slightest. You’ll be lucky to finish your four year degree in five years and if you do finish it in four you’re probably a burnt out psychopath. There are parts you will love and parts you will hate, it’s important not to make yourself more miserable then you need to be.
