So a lot of you guys may be at uni or planning on going to uni... or still thinking about it OR don't want to go to uni at all. Well for all of you guys that have maybe looked online about life at uni or been to talks about surviving at uni you have probably heard a lot of hints and advice that will help you live that university life successfully.
BUT did you know that most of these tips are complete and utter trash. I know what you're thinking... "who does this guy think he is, telling me that everything I've learnt is nonsense". I'm a 3rd year student so actually know about the realities of university life. So let's begin.
Budget - LOL what does that even mean? I'm not saying you shouldn't budget. But you're going to budget anyway surely. You don't have do all these calculations and set yourself an amount of money to spend every week. Because chances are you won't keep to it. If you're not a complete moron, which you shouldn't be seeing as you're at uni, you're going to know if your rich and broke and keep this in your mind when making purchases. Just check that bank balance once in a while and you'll be fine. I'm not exactly the richest guy. But I have never found myself having money troubles at uni. Three words ASDA smart price.
Go to every lecture - If you've been to every single lecture please step forward.
Eat properly - I "cook" healthy wholesome meals very little. Am I dead?
Sleep - What is sleep? All these theories about the minimum amount of sleep you need I've found is highly inaccurate. Well I guess it depends on the individual. Obviously it's best to get as much sleep as possible but there will be some days when you get very sleep. When I have lectures i literally have 5/6 hours sleep. I still beat my alarm and I wake up fresh as a flippin' Daisy. But hey that's just me, just don't feel like you need a certain amount of sleep to be able to function. You can always catch up on the weekends.
Go home once in a while - LOL. If you're home sick the worst thing to do is to go home to be honest. The best thing to do is to give your parents that cheeky phone call tell them you're alive and get to partying. You have all of Christmas and Easters and Reading weeks to be home.
Start assignments early - To be honest with you I believe in this one... I just never do it. The mindset I have is that I know I'm not going to miss the deadline and I'm going to have to do the work sometime so right now I'm just going to chill. Does mean the work could suffer though.
When going into 2nd year find a house early - NO. DON'T do that. For 2 reasons. 1) Houses come on to the market at around February and March most of the time some of the better houses. You don't want to live in some average house because you couldn't wait a month or so. 2) How do you know who you want to live with. Yeah these people may seem like your friends now but after you sort your house out 2 months down the line you're going to think "oh this guy isn't my friend, in fact he's a total arsehole". Yeah exactly.
Look for second hand text books - The only reason why I debunk this is because I haven't bought a single textbook for all the time I've been here. Before i came they were like "get these books". I bought them, have I used them, no and I'm not doing too bad in uni to be honest. GOOGLE SCHOLAR FTW. Or you can use that building that allows you to borrow books.
There just a few tips that I feel are very wishy washy. Because to be honest there is no one experience at university. We as individuals are going to go through university in so many different ways therefore we're going to cope in different ways. And although these tips may be like "the best" and most efficient way of surviving chances are you ain't going to stick to them mainly because you're a human being.
I do have a tip of my own though in terms of assignments. For you freshers. WIKIPEDIA IS NOT A SOURCE... BUT it does use sources. These sources can be found at the bottom of the page which are actual sources which you can use and is actually very helpful. That's how I get a load of my source material anyway. We all remember the secondary school days where we rinsed that copy and paste button. Yeah get out of that habit and get out of it now. Wikipedia is very good at explaining what you need to know and then when you need an academic reading Wikipedia most of the time have used loads. So yeah just a cheeky tip.
So yeah uni... have fun!
