Starting university is a new experience for everyone and many new students don’t know what to expect. Luke, a psychology student at BCU, thought back to his own first year as a student and shared his thoughts about his experience…
Despite my first week at university seeming to have taken place ages ago – I remember feeling quite nervous before starting the entire process. For me, I felt that university was this massive and scary place that I was always told would be the hardest thing I would ever go through and that it would be the most stressful period of my life. Now, I’m not sure about you guys here, but to me – hearing sort of thing really made me feel quite anxious about going to University. It also made me feel like I needed to hear about university from someone who had been through the experience recently, instead of listening to sixty year old men on Facebook discuss a process they had never actually went through. This blog is for people in a similar situation to me when I started. I’m hoping that, through retelling my experiences of my first year, it’ll show you that University really isn’t the hellscape that it’s cracked up to be, and I’m also hoping that this blog helps absolutely anyone who reads it feel excited to go attend their first weeks on campus.
Because this post is going to be a bit long (you’ll get used to that from me. Don’t worry, I’ll try to make it interesting) I’m going to split this up into various sections, which you can skip to by following the timestamps below:
Part one – The Induction week
Part two – Semester one
Part three – Semester two
Part four – Making the most out of university
Part five – Conclusion
Part one – The Induction week
I should probably start off this whole thing by talking a bit about what you guys are currently going through – induction. Looking back, I very distinctly remember my online induction period being something of a weird time for me. I had just moved into my accommodation, I was getting to know my new flatmates, and while I was happy, I didn’t really feel like I was doing things correctly. There’s sort of a weird stigma that goes on around the time that freshers rears its head where you need to be hanging out with your flatmates all the time, you need to be going out to drink yourself half to death every night in a row, and you need to become so attached to the group of friends you’ve met but barely know in your first week that you prematurely agree to rent a house with them for the next year. For me, because I wasn’t doing all of that stuff (well, maybe a little. I would never say no to a bar crawl), I felt like I was a bit outcast from what I thought was the “typical” freshers experience. Looking back on all of that, I really don’t think I should have felt that way. I think that this period of time between your online induction starting and your in person induction starting should be a time where you should do what you want to make yourself happy. One hundred percent push yourself out of your comfort zone, be sociable, make new friends, and participate in absolutely anything you can that is both legal and fun to you – but also be sensible and treat yourself right during this time. For me, treating myself right involved only really going out to drink if my body felt right for it, making friends in what I consider to be a normal way (I.e – not being around them for twenty four hours a day), and actually exploring Birmingham a little bit so I knew the city at least a little bit before committing myself to spending the next three years there. To you that might be something completely different (if you’re not moving out of your house, for example, it might be something like looking about for course mates and planning something to get to know them), but as long as you’re happy I really don’t think there’s a ‘wrong’ way to go through the online induction period. That’s especially true because this period is more or less designed for you to do that. The tasks that are set for you are pretty easy going, and the course isn’t demanding in the hopes that you’ll then spend the rest of your time falling into a good routine and doing your best to have a great pre semester one experience. If you’re like me and you do that, then you’ll have absolutely no regrets as online induction ends and you get introduced to the world of university during…
…In person induction! Listen, I know that was a really bad way to segue into a new paragraph, but cut me some slack here. I can remember my in person induction experience being somewhat eye opening for me. While the task changes a little bit every year (kind of) – being at university for a little while has taught me one thing, the task that you’re set might have changed since I was going through induction – but the way I felt about it is probably the way you’re going to feel about it. I remember going into my first day of induction feeling really nervous about everything. This was the first day I would meet some of my lecturers! In person! It was also the first day I would meet my course mates who I didn’t share a flat with! In person! Similarly it was the day that I would be told what I was going to be doing for the next three years! By Emma! Just thinking about all of the life changing things that would happen to me on my very first day in campus sort of my head spin a little bit, but as the king of over-reactions – I look back on all of it and sort of laugh at myself. Like, sure – Induction at first is really scary – walking into this big building that you know nothing about to be told by a bunch of people that you do not know that you’re going to be doing things you’ve never done, all the while making friends (that’s it. Making friends. I just don’t like doing that to be honest). But the key words out of all of that is “at first”. After about half an hour (or if you’re not me – five minutes. It takes me a while to adjust) all of those worries sort of exit your brain, as our resident Neuroscientists would probably say (don’t quote me on that, it’s wrong and Pariac would skin me alive). You’ll come to find really quickly that being introduced to everything really isn’t as hard as it’s made out to be, and that doing everything is much less of a worrying prospect than it is a challenge that is broken down this year. If you’re ever unsure of something or worried about anything, you also have a bunch of Connect mentors to turn to for help, so there will never be a point during your online induction where you don’t have support to turn to. After the first day, the only thing I can really remember being told that was of note was to go to everything offered by the induction team. You get free textbooks so it’s worth attending anyways, and it’s always a good way to learn more about your course in general. Towards the end of the week I also remember presenting what we worked on throughout the week – and that’s also something that seems fairly nerve wrecking at first – but as you get into it, it’s really not that bad. The presenting aspect of everything is particularly good practice for later assessments during semester one, which I’ll talk a bit about in the next section.
Part two – Semester one
I remember going from my induction week to the first part of semester one quite well, honestly, mainly because I remember attending my first ever lecture, which was focused around research methods. The one thing I think that stuck out to me the most was how different lecture halls were in my head to how they are in real life. I think you go into a lecture hall on your first day usually thinking that it’s some stuffy room filled to the brim with people, with a lecturer at the front who really does not care about what they are teaching. And while I’m sure that there are some topics that lecturers just want to get through in general (if I were a lecturer that would probably be anything that looks at a psychodynamic perspective in detail, although anyone who enjoys that sort of stuff would probably say my hatred of Freud stems from my childhood) for the most part, lectures aren’t like that at all, even the online ones. Your lecturer will (for the most part, see my rant on Freud for more info) love teaching the content to you, and most of the stuff (Do I even need to make a sarcastic comment here? You know what I’m thinking) is really interesting due to the virtue of Psychology being a naturally interesting subject anyways. While right now the stuffy room and the crowded people stuff isn’t really… relevant, the rooms are also a lot more spacious than you might think, and by the time we do get back to in-person learning, I think it’s really important to note that lectures in general have a really chilled out atmosphere to them. There are also usually breaks every hour – and I absolutely encourage you to harass your lecturer if they forget to give you one, as the harassment is fun and you get about fifteen minutes to run to the in-campus shop, buy any food item that suits your fancy, and hurriedly consume it in the hopes that it’ll help you learn better. To me – that’s peak university living.
As far as other types of lessons go – Seminars are kind of the same, but also quite radically different. In lectures, you’ll often find yourself speaking to the lecturer if they give you the opportunity to, and in most cases speaking up is encouraged but not really necessary to your learning, since there isn’t always much of a “big debate” to be had unless you’re in a contemporary issues module. In seminars, on the other hand? I’ll let you in on a bit of a pro tip, if you want to get anything above a 2:2 in a module – attend your seminars and speak up often. Seminars are where your core debates happen, where you get to critically evaluate your content, and you get to learn about cutting edge research only if you actually speak your mind about it. Seminars are amazing – they’re like Christmas but it’s held three times a week and instead of gifts you get journal articles – but to learn anything from them you need to want to learn something from them. If you’re scared about presenting or speaking up – doing so in a seminar room is also really good experience at that. I know someone who went from being the most absolutely shy person you will ever meet to being confident enough to speak at length in a recent presentation all because they gained their confidence during seminars. Skills and confidence do develop, you just really need to want to develop them. Seminars are also really good because they do an awful lot for the final thing that you’ll experience that’s really new in your first semester – assignments.
Okay, so picture this. You’re me (oh only if you were so lucky) and you’re just fresh out of A-levels, one week into your university experience. You’ve been taught your entire life that Universities will only set exams. They never set coursework, and when they do it’s usually a precursor to an exam. Now imagine that you’re me (I’m letting imagine it twice because I’m a good person, which is what all good people need to say constantly to reassure themselves obviously) but you’re me after being told about two days later that, no actually, two of your modules for this year are coursework only, and the other one is an exam that contains a bunch of multiple choice questions. Needless to say, when I was told that, my jaw sort of dislocated itself and found its way to the floor, it’s been lost ever since – and if you find it around Curzon it would be really appreciated if you returned it to me as soon as possible. Now, I don’t want to get too into what types of assessments there are and how I did them because that’s a different blog post in the making – but I do want to tell you that the way you do assessments at University is something completely different to secondary school. You’ll be properly guided throughout everything, but for me – it was really one of the most refreshing things about attending university. Not only do you get to do things that aren’t just exams, but you get to do them (usually) about things you like! For example (HUMBLE BRAG INCOMING. I REPEAT. HUMBLE BRAG INCOMING. PROCEED WITH CAUTION.) for my contemporary issues module, I got 92% for doing a presentation on Incels, which I certainly worked very hard for – but enjoyed doing work on because it was something I enjoyed. I’ll talk about this a bit more in my other blog post, but my assessments at University were all a really fun experience. The main hard part about it all is doing the work and research, but if you do the semester flies by and you really get to enjoy what you’re learning about. Of course, then the semester ends and you go home (or stay home. Or go on holiday to Spain as I have learned recently some people celebrate Christmas, if that’s you that’s great and all but that scares me a little) and you wonder about what waits for you in semester two. Well, I’ll tell you what happens in semester two right now – just so you don’t have to wonder.
Part three – Semester two
So, another difference I found about the gap between the first and second semesters is that it’s a lot longer than you would expect it to be. For me, I finished my first semester on the 18th of December and came back on the 27th of January, which was an absolutely bizarre amount of time for me. During that period I tried my best to relax, but I also tried my best to get ahead with my academia, since one of the things I learned during my first semester was that it’s hard to manage three very demanding courses at once and not occasionally fall behind on reading (don’t tell Athfah I did this, but I once didn’t do the recommended reading for a week! I am fully expecting my Psychopathology grade to drop from a first to a fail after posting this). Personally, I didn’t really find semester two to be that entirely different to semester one, the thing I find most different about everything is that things aren’t exactly new to you anymore. This isn’t a bad thing, if anything it’s comforting, and honestly it means that you can fall into one of two camps, or both at the same time if you’re me. In one camp, you have people that are used to the course and are able to get on with their work just fine, ploughing through things just as fast as you would expect an anxious university student who’s desperate to go out on a cold February night to be. For these people I find, their work isn’t that much of an issue to them in terms of organisation, it’s just the content that’s a struggle. On the other hand, you have the camp of people who, while being used to University, can get a bit demotivated by the whole experience – and because this is something that I don’t think is talked about nearly enough, I want to cover it in extensive detail by using my own experience.
I find that the second campers usually start off the semester quite well. They come in quite prepared, they understand the content quite well, they’re inquisitive, all those good things you would expect a well functioning student to be. Then, as the winter drags on, something changes slightly. Maybe not in the quality of their work at first, but certainly in their consistency. For me, for example, I was still doing my work quite regularly, but I also kept delaying the start date of some of my assessments, and slowly but surely I was also dropping my side projects because I didn’t really feel as into them anymore. Over time, for some, that can lead to a bit of a drop in performance – maybe not even in grades, but in how often they show up to lectures and seminars, and how much material they can absorb in one space and time. I remember for others who felt a similar shift, they stopped coming to as many seminars, started going home a bit earlier, and stopped submitting formatives at their deadlines etc. I feel like this is sort of a common phenomenon that people experience in their second semester – a lot of people can lose their motivation half way through for a variety of reasons, and that motivation seems hard to build up again. In my experience, I learned that you can even sit between both of these camps, and do your work well while still being demotivated. It’s okay to feel that way at any stage, but it’s also okay to recognise that you feel that way so you can talk to someone about it. For me, talking to my friends and my Personal tutor about it helped the most – it allowed me to understand that I was going through a period of demotivation, and it allowed me to pick up where I left off by motivating myself extrinsically until I was motivating myself intrinsically (you’ll learn about those terms throughout your degree if you’re not sure what they mean yet.) To me, that was the hardest part of my second semester experience, but I still genuinely loved that semester as a whole. Going through and completing my first year felt like a real achievement, and honestly – by the time the summer hits, you barely even remember that just a couple of months back in September you were absolutely terrified of the concept of even going to University, never mind sitting six exams and completing a year of it.
Of course, I did a lot more than just do university work during my first and second semester. In my next section, I want to talk about what else I did, and what I personally think you should go out of your way to try and do during your first year as well.
Part four – Making the most out of university
So, in the last section I really briefly mentioned talking to my personal tutor. Her name is Laura, she’s brilliant (don’t tell her I said that!), and she’s currently supervising my dissertation for this year – which (by the time you read this) I will have probably met with her about, before profusely apologising for the fact that I have chosen to write about my dissertation instead of actually finalising the rest of my proposal for my dissertation. My predicament aside, I meet with Laura about once a month because, by doing so, I am doing one of many things to help make my university experience about the best possible experience it can be. You’ll meet with your personal tutor at the very least once during your university experience, to introduce yourself to them before talking about your interests and bonding, essentially. From there, your personal tutor will be able to do as much as they possibly can for you. Whether that be answering any of your questions, helping advise you on areas of university that aren’t specific to “how do I do XYZ in module XYZ”, or even just having a general chat over a cup of coffee (The option I prefer, as I personally do not shut up about myself). Your PT can also help you out with opportunities that aren’t entirely easy to otherwise get, so long as they have the ability or connections to do so, so it’s always good to maintain a good relationship with your PT while also often asking them if there are any opportunities you can get from them. While this is one very ‘expected’ way to suddenly end up with an opportunity in your hands, there are also a bunch of other ways that you’ll be able to make the most out of your time at BCU. Partaking in programmes such as the Research apprenticeship scheme in your second year, for example, can provide really vital work experience while also helping you learn more about the research process. Volunteering throughout organisations related to BCU when they advertise for you to help can also be a great way to make the most out of your experience. But there are also a lot less obvious ways of making the most out of your time that I’d like to cover really quickly, before you get too bored of this article because I haven’t told a joke in about a sentence.
So lets talk about this blog for a second. I promise you, this will go somewhere, it’s not just another opportunity for me to brag. Last year, I was in a similar position where I wrote a blog post on my experience with university life. Once that blog was posted, I kind of felt a little bit good about myself. Like, I’ve always enjoyed writing – but I never really knew that I enjoyed writing to the extent that I was willing to write an entire blog about my own experiences at Birmingham City University. Well, that lead to me to thinking “what if I wrote a bit more?” which then lead me to actually writing a bit more, stemming more blog posts. From those blog posts, I then started thinking “well maybe I could publish these posts somewhere!” – and so I did, with the help of members of the Psychology department. What started as just one blog post to me turned into a love of writing that not only inspired me to write more often, but helped me out with my academic writing and inspired me to write not just about my own experiences, but about things like justice, which I currently am writing an article about. The point I’m making is that seemingly mundane actions can lead to absolutely amazing results – and these are what I personally define as unexpected ways to make the most out of your time at BCU. They’re harder to come by at first, but the best way to do them is to just do more expected ways of making the most out of university. Take opportunities. Make the most out of them. Give your all to projects and do research into them beyond the basics to find your interests. All of these things can lead to even more great things down the road, you just need to take the first step to take about nine hundred more.
Part five – conclusion
So, I want to dedicate this paragraph to the demographic of Facebook users who believe that University is a hellscape that people should be scared of, who then scare others into thinking that way. Universities like Birmingham City University are nothing to be afraid of. Sure, the landscape is really different compared to a college or high school. Sure, you’re introduced to a lot of new changes, and change is hard. And sure, you might even have to talk with me for more than two minutes, a true challenge I know. But at the end of the day, you’ll love it here. If my time at BCU has taught me anything, it’s that attending here is, if you allow it to be, one of the best decisions you will ever make in your entire life. I more than certainly expect that it’ll not always be sunshine and rainbows, but I can tell you that the next three years of your life (at least! More if you want to do a masters or a doctorate.) are going to be some of the most interesting and fun years of your life. That’s really not something to be scared of, and while it may not always seem that way at first – I guarantee you in about three weeks you’ll totally forget you even felt that way.
– Luke Mccombe, Psychology student at Birmingham City University
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