Tips for new students (from a student!) Part 1 of 2

Hello! Welcome to part 1 of my tips for new students. These are things that I really wish I had been told (or I was and I just didn’t listen!) and that I had to learn the hard way.

I know you get bombarded with a lot of information as a new student, so I’ve made sure to keep my points concise and have split this into two parts so it’s a bit easier to digest.

Without further ado, here are my tips for new students:

1. Learn how to study alone. You spend much less time in university lectures than you did in your high school classes. It’s important to take charge and study the material on your own time.

2. Learn how to study in groups. As important as good solo study skills are, studying as a group offers a whole slew of benefits as well and I highly recommend doing both regularly. Working with other people adds accountability (so you don’t end up idly browsing the internet!) and allows each person to bring up material that others might not have thought to study.

3. Do the recommended problems! If you’re anything like I am, you didn’t even do most of the required problems in high school and never even took a glance at the bonus problems. University is different – much different. If you want to do well, you’re going to want to do as many problems as you can get your hands on. It’s more than just cramming information in for a test day and then forgetting it too. There’s a lot of material that will bubble up in unexpected ways. If you had told me a few years ago that computer graphics regularly use the calculus we were learning in first year, I never would have believed you!

And those are all my tips for part 1! I’ll be back next week to share more that are less focused on study skills and more focused on student life. See you then!