I remember submitting my first essay at University. So nervous, obviously,
but when I submitted it, I got a huge rush; 'wow, I just submitted a Univeristy essay!'
It's a sense of accomplishment;
you feel you're an 'official' University student.
It's very clear how important deadlines are. You're in charge of your own learning, they don't pander.
It's the way life is so it's the way University is. You should be passionate about your studies.
They want you to prepare and say 'I want to do well because this is what I want to do.'
I would advise a first year struggling with coursework, to talk to their Adviser of Studies
They are assigned to when you come to University, and have lots of knowledge about
University and will have come across these problems before.
In first yeat when I got my first piece of coursework back
it came with a feedback sheet from the marker.
It gave me a lot of insight into how to improve and approach my next piece of work.
You can get in touch with the person who gives you that feedback
to maybe ask for a few more pointers, as I did and it was extremely helpful.
It was valuable, especially in first year when I didn't know what to expect in uni,
I wasn't sure if I had answered the question correctly at the level they were looking for
I had just come out of doing Advanced Higher English, getting an 'A' and
I thought 'I'm going to study English and I'm going to do really well'.
The first essay I ever handed in, I got a 'C' and I was floored.
I thought 'Should I be studying English, do I deserve to be here?'
Looking back it seems silly but I was so used to succeeding at school standards
that I needed that shock to understand what university standards were like.
I think the most difficult thing I felt was approaching exams.
They're quite close together, similar subjects happen around the same time
so it was quite difficult to have study for more than one subject, and sit the exams,
to have to balance a lot at the same time.
You have two sets of exams, in December at the end of first semester
and April/May at the end of second semester. First semester is much tougher
You start at the end of September and have 11 weeks of study until
December. Then you will have maybe five days before your first exam from your last lecture.
It's all very crammed. You dont have time for revision. That's why
it's important not to slack off because you dont have time to go back to it.
I spent most of my time studying for exams in the library.
There's countless resources in the library, there are past papers;
pretty much every exam that's been set at University is online for you to download
and practice. There's books, and the ebooks online, if you can't make it into the library there's
lots of resources online to use with the past papers and it's great to practice them.
The experience of doing exams at Glasgow University is quite magical;
you go into this massive, massive hall, usually Bute Hall, which is very old.
You just feel so proper and so grown up and it's fantatsic, you really want to do well.
My first exams, I was really nervous, but it was good because you had your group of friends
who went to the exam with you; everyone was in the same boat as you.
You obviously want to do well
and you realise how much it's up to you to do your research
and make sure you know what you are talking about
and you know what the question's asking and how to approach it.