Thriving at University Activities (docx 73KB)
Being at university will be a time of great change for you. Initially, you will probably experience both excitement and anxiety imagining what the years ahead at uni will be like.
You want to not only thrive at university but also make the most of your time and energy as a student right from the beginning with as little stress as possible. However, in order to do this, you should be aware of the particular challenges that university students face.
This module aims at better preparing you as a student by introducing you to some of the issues and changes you will encounter at university, with the goal of making your transition to UTAS a smooth and successful one.
Before beginning, let's first explore your reason(s) for choosing to study.
Knowing your reason(s) behind your decision to study before you commit yourself to becoming a uni student can increase your chances of being successful and keep you motivated, as you are clear about your goals and why you are doing the course you have chosen.
So take a moment and consider:
It may be because you want to prove to yourself you can do it or you are purely just interested in learning more on a particular subject. You may be determined to study due to work-oriented reasons. Whatever the case, there is no right or wrong reason for choosing to study; however, having at least some personal interest in the subject can help keep you motivated
So to help maintain focus throughout your degree, keep in mind your reason(s) for undertaking study in the first place!
A transition is a movement from one phase of your life to another. By attending university, you are embarking on an educational transition. This transition is just one chapter in your career development and can largely influence your overall experience as a student right from the beginning of your degree to when you exit university. Therefore, it's a good idea to be aware of the processes that occur with a major change as you begin your study.
One way to understand what is happening with the change to university is to examine what tends to happen as we follow the transition process. This can be represented by a transition curve.
As you can see from the diagram below, there are a number of stages that most people go through when they are making a transition from one major situation to another. The same stages apply when making the transition to any new situation, such as beginning your first year at university... What stage of the transition curve are you currently at?
There is a period of excitement and challenge and an adrenalin rush as you finally get to experience the transition, meet new people and explore the new environment.
There is a point at which this peaks and the excitement begins to flatten out, as you need to get on with working, studying and dealing with this new challenge.
This is the stage where some of the adjustments to the new requirements start to become overwhelming. For example, finding library books, meeting the assignment load, overwhelmed with meeting too many new people, feeling a little lonely, finding it difficult to meet the lecturers/tutors, having time management issues especially with part-time work etc.
You reach a turning point where you either want to make this work or you want to walk away or withdraw from these pressures. This often happens around week 4.
To make this transition work you need to develop some new strategies to deal with these new situations that need to be overcome. For example, find out strategies on how to best get library books, talk to second year students about how they managed the stress, test out some new trust friendships, find a study buddy or join a Peer Assisted Study Session (PASS).
If you think this is the wrong course or you just can't make it, then you must talk to someone who can help you work out if this is a genuine feeling. It is legitimate for many students to feel this way but it is important to work out the implications etc. about withdrawing or changing BEFORE you act. People to see could be career counsellors, personal counsellors, tutors, lecturers, course co-coordinators.
You start to get on top of things. Maybe you start to get some feedback and settle into a routine, where you begin to feel you can do it!
As you move through each stage of the transition process, there will be a range of adjustments you will need to make in order to advance positively at university. These will be very important around week 4 to week 7 when assignments and exams are due.
Some of the adjustments you will need to make to thrive at university can be grouped under six possible headings and could include:
At this stage, you should be able to identify your reason(s) for choosing study, the transitional process that occurs with the change to university, as well as the adjustments you will need to make to accommodate your university commitments.
Let's now take a look at some helpful tips that can increase your chances of succeeding at university.
Building Your Future is adapted from the Career Development Program of the Queensland University of Technology. Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 Australia License.