Christina VarvisWhen you’re finished your university career, you’ll likely ask yourself, ‘What advice would I give my first year self?’
Throughout my time at the University of Alberta, I’ve thrown on my hindsight goggles many times and thought, ‘Jeez, I wish I had known that like two or three years ago.’ Another funny thing about looking back on yourself and all of the mistakes you made is remembering all of the legitimate advice you rejected that actually turned out to be completely correct.
In my first year, both my parents told me I should take notes in class. That seems really, really obvious right now, but back then, it seemed absurd. For whatever reason, I figured that I would best absorb the information if I just sat in my desk and listened to what the professor had to say because taking notes would be distracting, or something. I mean, that’s what the textbook is for, right? All of the information that you can’t quite remember from class, you can dig up later when you need to.
Another piece of advice I completely rejected was the importance of using some kind of calendar or agenda book to keep track of my schedule. I was told it was a convenient way to track the dates of papers, seminars, and exams because when you’re in five classes, you’re going to forget a lot of stuff. Again, being the genius that I am, I thought it would be a pain in the ass to write everything down in an agenda book that I might lose, and that it’s easy just to look at eClass every once in a while to remember what was going on.
At this point, you’ll probably be able to guess how my first year went.
I ended up having to dig through textbooks for more hours than I probably should have because when my finals in December rolled around, I couldn’t remember anything that was taught in September. It’s unfortunate I didn’t have notes for those lectures, or anything. This all happened last second, of course, because I didn’t have a clue when any of my exams were because I didn’t bother writing them down.
For all the good advice I was given that I stupidly ignored, there’s easily twice as much terrible advice that I want to travel back in time and either smack my younger self on the head for accepting, or pat that same younger self on the back for ignoring.
I was told by multiple people that it’s a great idea to take early morning classes because then you can be finished by noon. I was also told that night classes are terrible because sitting in one class for three hours is just unfathomable. For two years, I avoided night classes like the plague and I filled my schedule up with a continuous block of courses that went from 9:00 a.m. and went to noon. Some people seem to like this for whatever reason, but I absolutely hated it. I ended up skipping damn near all of my 9:00 a.m. classes because I hated waking up early, and when I did manage to pull myself out of bed, I missed the bus.
But to what extent can we accept other people’s advice? I mean, it’s easy to look back in hindsight and see what we missed out on and how we could have done better. But if that was the case, this whole university thing would be a hell of a lot easier than it is. Looking back, the most important thing I learned in university was the fine line between embracing the advice and wisdom of others, but still understanding the necessity of learning from your experiences thinking for yourself.
I’m not going to fill this with a whole bunch of great advice that you need to follow in order to do well. We’re all different people who have varying preferences, strengths, and weaknesses. I can tell you until I’m blue in the face that taking four classes a semester and two in spring session is the greatest thing you can possibly do, but a lot of people would vomit at the idea of being in a classroom in May. You can tell me that being on campus late is awful and I’ll do better in morning classes, but I hate waking up early and I do my best work when I’m here at midnight.
Listen to people when they’re giving you advice. Hear them out and give them a chance, especially if it’s somebody who knows you well. If you choose to accept it, don’t do it just because somebody said so. Do it because you actually genuinely think it’ll help you do better. If it doesn’t work out, accept it and don’t make the same mistake again. University isn’t only about what we learn in class or through reading textbooks. It’s a time to learn about ourselves, what makes us happy, and what we do best in order to be successful.
One day, you’ll probably want to go back in time and tell your younger self to do something different, but it’s through trial and error, taking risks, and learning from the choices you made that help you figure out who you are.
That’s what we’re here for.
