Referencing is extremely important. Academics have already researched
this work which you have to reference and show how your work correlates.
I came to first year from college where they were pretty lenient with referencing.
In first year I had three different courses and they all had different referencing systems.
That was quite tricky to get used to.
I had no idea about referencing.
The only essay I'd ever written had just been a point, and a quote to prove it.
At Uni it's mostly Harvard referencing.
You need to do your research and read people who have written about the subject
and use that to fuel your argument.
It's quite hard to understand that you do have to reference just about everything.
You have to be careful not to plagiarise even if it is your thought.
You have to make sure you understand referencing and don't just copy Academic's work.
Anything you have written that isn't your idea
you have to show where it came from.
The good thing is that there are step-by- step guides given to you in first year
on how to reference, and tools online to help you make sure you are doing everything right.
There's so many online resources and a lot of them, you just put the information
into the site, press refresh, it gives you the reference at the end of it,
and you get to choose whether it's APA, Harvard Referencing, so it's actually quite easy
as long as you use the materials that are available to you online.
I was supplied with a referencing guideline. It laid it out so simply;
if it's a journal you do it this way, and this has to be in italics
and it changed every essay I ever wrote.
There's definitely a lot of support at University.
Before I came to Uni I was kind of under the impression that you were more on your own
and there wasn't enough support. That's completely untrue.
There's support groups, there's study groups. The library has
so many different workshops you can go to
if you're stuggling with any aspect of your coursework
there's always someone who can help with that.
The only thing is you have to go seek it yourself.
It's just another thing not to be scared of.
Just another thing that if you need help on it ask for help.