Hello first years or anyone bored with a dead battery, this is an advice column. This is different advice than what you receive from your family or friends because I don’t care about you. Not really, anyways. I don’t have the same vested interest in your emotional and financial well-being as the people you grew up with.
While I’m not the best at doing the right things, I’ve done enough of the wrong things to know what to avoid in the future. I may not know exactly what I’m doing but, I’ve learned enough to ensure that my first year in university, a decade after my inaugural attempt, is better than the debacle that started in 2003 and ended in 2007 with the Ottawa Senators not winning the Stanley cup and me spending $40,000 to not get a piece of paper.
If you are only here because you think you have to in order to be successful, or your parents want you to be here, you should seriously consider taking a year off and doing something other than university. Double down on that suggestion if you hit the end of this year and with all of your intro courses done you still haven’t found anything that really interests you.
Slogging through four years of school to get a degree is a challenge. Slogging through another ten years of a job you don’t like, because your degree is useless, just so you can pay the bills while you eat ramen because cooking for one sucks as much as student debt and why doesn’t anyone ever swipe your profile to the right!? Anyways… It’s a level of existential crisis and depression that’s probably best to avoid.
So, you’ve decided to stay. Classes. They are a thing you cannot avoid. Seriously. Once you realize that no one is going to make you go to class, the desire to sleep in or sleep off your hangover becomes very tempting.
Something that no one told me my first time in university is that classes are way easier to pass if you show up to all of them. If you attend you’ll find out pretty early which part of the readings are important. You can read less. (Side note: You’ll probably never be able to do all of your readings.) Studying gets easier. Going to class allows you to understand the concept instead of memorizing words. That directly translates to higher marks and more enjoyment in classes. If you’re not enjoying what you’re learning in your major and you aren’t attending class you’re doing the wrong thing.
Don’t let home hold you back. If you have a high school sweetheart, it is super unlikely you two will go the distance. A successful relationship ends when one of you dies. That’s probably 60 to 80 years from now. The human brain doesn’t even finish developing until 21 so, by the end of university you will be a completely different person than you are right now. So will they. Will those two different people want to spend the next 64 years with each other? Set yourself free now, don’t torture yourself missing out on your university experience for Skype dates.
You’ve probably stopped growing at this point, or are pretty close to it. Unless you’re exercising frequently you are no longer the bottomless calorie pit you were as recently as last year. If you eat and drink too much you will get fat. Also watch out for munchies, that bag of chips didn’t disappear, you ate it. It will catch up with you.
Finally, no one cares as much about your well being as you do. If you need help, no one is going to notice. Be proactive. If you need help reach out to friends, family or doctors. If you think you deserve better than you got on an essay, drop in on your prof or TA during office hours. Don’t be a dick about it, but you have to be your own advocate. Find out where you went wrong, and don’t do it again. Life isn’t going to stop happening to you. Take charge of your time here because no one else is going to do it for you.
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