Negotiating uni life successfully

In the coming weeks many first year university students will be enthusiastically starting courses that they hope will be a pathway in to their desired careers and ideal lifestyles. 

Many will be excited, but also anxious, about the very different experiences and expectations associated with university study, especially those students coming straight out of secondary school. The transition from school to university can be fraught with difficulties. Quite a few students will even discontinue their studies during their first year.

Dr Jennifer Bleazby from the Faculty of Education at Monash University provides the following information to help students better manage the transition from school to university.

Firstly, university grades matter. Understandably, first year students may still be feeling burnt out from the demanding workload and pressure associated with Year 12. Students often think they have done the hard work of gaining a place in their chosen field and now they can relax, pass their courses and, after graduation, attain a job in their chosen field. However, simply scraping through a degree with Pass grades (or worse still, many failed courses that you had to repeat) is going to make it much more difficult to gain employment when you graduate.

Upon graduation, students will be competing with fellow graduates for the limited numbers of graduate positions. One of the things employers consider when assessing job applications is the applicant’s academic transcript. The degree certificate (the testamur) you receive upon graduation is really more of keepsake – something you can hand on your office wall. The academic transcript, which is a record of all grades, awards and even incidents of academic misconduct, like plagiarism, is the important document.

Often employers request copies of academic transcripts from job applicants. Even when an academic transcript is not explicitly requested, applicants with good transcripts will probably voluntarily submit their transcripts as evidence of their strong work ethic; organisational skills; written communication skills; disciplinary knowledge; and aptitude for, and genuine interest in, their field of study. Those who don’t submit their transcript won’t have such evidence to support their claims that they meet the selection criteria for the position. The employer may assume the reason a candidate didn’t provide a transcript was is because their transcript wasn’t very good. Imagine you were hiring staff for a graduate position and you had to choose between a graduate with an outstanding academic transcript or one with a poor transcript (or no transcript at all), which would you choose? It is fair to assume most employers will take the less risky option, hiring the person who has demonstrated a host of useful skills and desirable attitudes throughout their university study. 

Often first year students are delighted to find out they may only have to attend classes for 12 or less hours a week. Many students get themselves into trouble by assuming they can fill up the rest of their week with paid work or recreational activities. However, a fulltime university degree equates to at least 40 hours of work each week. It is just that not all this work is to be conducted in class, under the supervision of teaching staff. Students are expected to undertake a considerable amount of independent study, which usually includes completing weekly readings and working on assessment tasks throughout the semester, as opposed to trying to learn an entire semester’s worth of content the week before the exam/assessment is due. Simply attending classes is generally insufficient for passing assessment tasks, let alone for achieving good grades.  

That being said, academic success generally requires students to regularly attend class. Often, attendance is not a requirement for passing a course. However, in reality, students who don’t attend class regularly are more likely perform poorly on assessment tasks or even fail. Lectures, tutorials, labs, workshops and reading material should all align with assessment tasks. That is, they provide the information needed to satisfactorily complete assessment tasks.

One of the reasons poor attendance seems to be an increasing problem is that many lectures are now recorded and available online immediately following the lecture. As such, some students choose to listen to recorded lectures from home rather than attend in person. However, it seems that some students who make this choice don’t actually end up listening to the lectures. Listening to the recordings in your own time actually requires much more self-discipline than does showing up to the lecture at the designated time and listening attentively. It can difficult to sit in front of your computer and listen to a disembodied voice for an hour when you have easy access to so many other distractions (eg the internet, house mates, family or television). It is also easy to just keep putting it off, knowing that you can listen to the lectures anytime. Before you know it you have several weeks worth of lecture recordings to catch up on. It may be easier to just get in to the habit of physically attending the lecture at the same time each week.

An increasing number of fulltime students seem to be spending 20 or more hours a week in paid employment, which is a huge time commitment given that fulltime university study is at least a 40 hour week in itself. For some students, reducing their hours of paid employment is not an option. Such students need to work to support even a very basic living standard. If you find yourself in this position find out about all the support available to you at your university to minimise your disadvantage.

If you are not suffering financial hardship, it may be best to minimise the amount of time spent in paid work. If this means having to live a more basic lifestyle while you are a university student then this sacrifice may be worth it in the long run because it may result in a better looking academic transcript, and a more enjoyable, less stressful, university experience. It can also be more beneficial to spend your time doing volunteer work directly related to your course. For example, if you are applying for graduate teaching positions, volunteer work coaching kids’ sports teams or tutoring disadvantaged school students will be more highly valued than will your experience working in a cafe or in retail.

Finally, students often complain about having multiple assessment tasks due around the same time. This is usually not considered grounds for gaining an extension. Academic staff usually have very good reasons for setting their assessment task due dates or exams at particular times. Where I teach, all final exams are scheduled during the official university examination period, which is a three week period at the end of semester. For courses that do not have an examination, if the final assessment task is worth more than 30 per cent, then it to must be due during the examination period. One reason for this is that it gives students ample time to learn, and utilise, all course content, including content from the final weeks of semester to complete assessment tasks. Students are expected to be preparing for this assessment period all semester, rather than starting all the work for assessment tasks in the week that they are due.