Introduction

So I came across a couple of posts in the last 3 days, saying how brutal university is, and how they have found it hard to adjust to the great pressure they had to go through when they went from high school to university. I have also come across a bunch of students and friends telling me why they wanted to drop out of a certain program because it has a heavy course load and they couldn't keep with it. I am currently a third year engineering student at a university in Canada, and even I have had times where I wanted to give up. I have been to my advisor a number of times in the first year, I have knocked at my friend’s door at 4 am in the morning because I couldn't get myself to sleep even after staying up for over 2 nights. I have filed for changing my program because I felt jealous of people in other programs getting better co-ops than me by taking fewer courses. But that was first term, I learned my mistakes, and did considerably better in all my furture study terms, even making it to the top 5. I haven’t been there because I can memorize a 200 page book in 3 hours or find the square root of 14565123123 just by looking at it, but because I followed a certain discipline. After reading these posts, I pondered on what I did in school, talked it out with another friend at an American university, and realized it’s really not hard to score good marks. Just follow a few simple rules and you are good to go…

Study What You Love, Love What You Study

Yes, this is one of the most important things. If you don’t like what you are studying, you cannot score good marks. I have met people who hate programming and circuits, and are studying Computer Engineering just because they were told it’s ‘cool’. If you are not passionate about anything you learn in your department, then no matter how much you break your head, how many sleepless nights you spend trying to understand something, you will be unsuccessful.

There is another side to this coin though. It’s not necessary that everything you study will interest you. Many university programs need you to take courses which may or may not be related to your area of study, but are needed to get a degree. Losing interest in chemistry, just because you are a CS major and probably won’t be needing it when you work full time is wrong. These are peripheral concepts which help you get a overview of how things work in other departments. And you never know, you might actually need them when you apply your core skills in the future. So just dive in deep into every course you take, watch videos, go to classes and interact with your professors for all the courses you take!

Optimize Your Time Well

Every other article and frosh session you go to will tell you to manage your time well. Well, I learnt to optimize my time. Being in a program where we take 7 courses and find an internship (also called co-op) every term, we have so much on our hands that no matter how much effort you put, it is not going to be enough. I realized that going to all my classes was pointless. There are Youtube videos doing better jobs at times. Sometimes the tutorials would cover everything the prof taught you in a week, in a couple of hours. I ended up prioritizing the classes I went to, skipping classes whose material I could learn by myself in less time, rather than going to the class itself. I used that extra time to complete my labs, or get some valuable sleep. With interviews flooding my schedule every week, I decided to take slots during my classes, rather than after, and thereby not losing precious self-study time. Make a schedule for the term when you start, including all the deadlines, and put it right in front of you. Yes, you must put it in a place you can see it, because if you see it while wasting time, you will feel guilty. Make sure you don’t miss the deadlines for assignments, because every mark counts. Having your priorities right, in life and also among courses will make sure you don’t do injustice to any aspect.

Try New Things in Life

I have come across people, a lot of them in my university actually, who literally just study. I have seen them wake up at 4 am and burn themselves out till midnight everyday from when the term starts until the end, and still not do that good. Well, no shit. You have to realize that your time at university is during one of the best years of your life; you simply cannot erase the social aspect from it. You must hang out with friends and people from other departments, go for a run, watch a tv show or play some music. Go to parties over the weekend, or try a new restaurant every week. Anything actually, anything which can take your mind off studying, and give you some respite. The human brain, baring a few exceptions, cannot withstand such racking. So stop living in a nutshell and trying to solve something that you have been trying to for the past 3 hours. Go for a walk, get some ice cream, or take a nap, and it will all come to you when you get back to it.

Don’t Slack Off

Slacking off at school is a very common cause of failure. Procrastination reaches new records everyday with us students. In some cases, it might actually help you by pushing you to the limits, but 95% of the times you will do horrible. Keeping things till the end might give you some free time right now, but just think about the back to back all-nighters you will have to pull during exams. All your courses have interdependent topics, so if you don’t do what’s taught to you on day 1, you probably won’t get anything you see 5 hours before your final. You must have the right balance of work and play, and just remember that what you are studying is not free, so for every extra minute you waste your time, you are indeed wasting money.

Ask For Help

Yes, seriously. If you don’t get something, then instead of racking your brains for the next 48 hours, go ask someone. There are people who are willing to help you. Unlike high school, however, you have to go to get help, it’s not coming to you. There are TAs, professors, your classmates and your best friends, always there to help you. Youtube is also an amazing buddy when you are studying. Stuck on a problem for a while? Get help from someone, go work on something else for a day, and come back to it and make sure you can do it by yourself. Also, if someone comes to you for help, help them; it will just help you get better at what you know.

Don’t Be Under Or Over Confident

Anything in extreme is bad. So is confidence. Under-confidence is a huge issue faced by freshmen, especially at prestigious universities. Been used to top at high school, picked and put in a group of smart Einsteins around, you tend to lose self-confidence. Just remember, there is a reason you got into that program. Your grade is bound to drop, because it is tough out there, but you are not alone. You must constantly work your way up, and not let petty failures affect your fight. It is not a bad idea to talk out things with friends or advisors when you are low, they will make sure you hang in there.

Many people tend to think they are the greatest, if they score a good mark in a test or midterm. Well, you definitely are not if you slack off after thinking that. You might have won the practise match, but the real game is yet to come. You might be a master of math in high school, but you are not in Uni. Everyone starts from the bottom, and most probably everything you learn is going to be brand new. Every rise has a fall, and so try not to climb the tree of confidence, stay on the Earth and continue with the good progress you have been making.