How to Not Screw University Life

Scared of misfortunes in university? There are ways you can ace campus life. Take these pieces of advice from the seniors.

College is not a fairy tale.

Many students think that college life is an escape from the hell of high school. Free life, stress-free, and an end to die-hard studying. College life is not a fairy tale. A piece of advice for future students is first, do not treat college like it is back in high school. Everyone is spoon-fed in high school where teachers guide you on little things that you do not know or unfamiliar with. All of that will change as soon as you enter college where responsibilities should be your key priority in everything you do from balancing your work and study life to completing assignments and tasks.

Be Accountable.

Responsibility plays a big role, especially when you are teamed with group mates and you cannot escape from them as you do not know who is good and who is not during your years in college. In reality, you may think that you have a free will to choose your group mates but that is not the case as with certain subjects, lecturers will choose your group mates for you and you to have no choice but to stick with them throughout the semester. It may be beneficial to you if you are grouped with people who are hardworking and take on their responsibilities well, but unfortunately, there will still be a bunch of people called free-riders that exist in college and they are the ones who take on credit for the work that other group mates have done for him/her.

Not only that, as a college student, you have to know and understand your peers, not just the lecturers, but also the people around you in the same class. Lecturers will give you heap loads of tasks, assignments, or tests all cramped up and you cannot make excuses on asking lecturers to extend the deadline just for you. Once you have missed it, that is it. Lecturers do not give any exceptions to the student for skipping tests, going on holidays and late submission of tasks or assignment. You will not be entertained if there is a request for make-up in order to compensate for it.

Buy used textbooks

As compared to high school, students may think that everything is available to read via textbook or slides uploaded by lecturers are sufficient enough to study but that is not the case. Textbooks are relatively expensive in college where it can go up to RM600 for one book and not many students are willing to pay that amount for a textbook that is going to be used for just one semester. A tip to new students is to buy used textbooks and sell it after you are done. Used textbooks from previous seniors or students who have taken the subject before will usually sell it at half or ¾ of its original price. These textbooks are usually photocopied as it is cheaper compared to the original book. Regardless of it being original or not, it is still useful for students for extra notes and research purposes.

Attend Classes - it matters.

A piece of advice from seniors is that you have to pay attention during lectures, try your best to not use your phones in class. Lecturers forbid on the usage of phones in class as it will distract students and cause them to miss out specific information being told in class. You should always take notes given by lectures as it can be helpful to you. However, attendance is another vital key to college life because class attendance carries marks where some lecturers will take attendance as additional marks that will help you during the final exam. Lecturers will also give a pop-up quiz or extra credit work to be done in class and it will be added into your final grade.

Stay Active

Lastly, with all being said, students may wonder after all the stress they have gone through during every semester, how are they going to release stress? The answer is to join extracurricular activities in school such as clubs where they will organize different activities. These activities act as a stress-reliever to students because you are able to participate and involve yourself in activities such as movie screening, dinner night or a blind date. Students can interact better with their peers by connecting and meeting new friends during these activities.