Yeah, I know, I missed the first two days of my reflective diary but I mean give me a break, adulting and studying for the first time away from home is not all fun.
I think the hardest thing so far was coming up with a schedule that works, a grocery cycle that fits my schedule and eating habits, figuring out a way to organise study so I get over 5 hours of sleep every night and have enough time in the morning to grab a quick breakfast, prep my coffee, and get ready without feeling like a slob.
Add to that house maintenance, just some dusting, antibac floor wipes, DISHES, kitchen cleaning, bathroom cleaning, windows, and laundry. And it all has to fit with over 125+40 hours of study (125 hours for lectures, yeah right, as if 2.5 hours is enough to prep and consolidate all the material from the lectures, who came up with that number?, and then an additional 40 hours for lab prep) and some extracurricular activities to keep me sane, I mean...
If Iβm being honest I am not too hyped about going to extras, I mean I like it, I meet people, I get to be the ridiculous blabbermouth that I am, but at the same time extras distract me from studying, and so far I have come to realise even the simplest of topics require you to put in the time to go through the textbook or the appropriate essential, maybe even further, reading.
Which takes em to my next point, I have been studying for classes for just under a week, and it has been like prepping for high school finals. I am totally okay with long hours of study, with just bathroom and snack breaks, maybe an occasional song outside the study playlist to make sure my brain hasnt shut down yet. Iβm all for that, but the thing is when I was prepping for finals (any of the 3 types of finals, really) I had a specific curriculum I had to go thruogh: chapters 5+6+8+15+these paragraphs from chapter 22. Thatβs not how uni works, and I was mentally prepared for that, but you can never be prepared n practice until the time comes, for stuff like this I mean.
Our bio department is awesome; very organised, I know the BARE MINIMUM of what I have to read to prepe for a lecture topic, I can go through the slides before class, take the major notes so that in class I can just make sure I understand everything. Itβs okay, really, I just have a lot of individual reading to do, but it definitely isnβt chaotic.
In psychology itβs different... I donβt know how far into the chapter relevant to the lectures I have to go. Like do I stop at neurotransmitters or do I go into how drugs imitate their use? Iβm cool either way but having some guidance to help me lay the foundations of my subject knowledge would help me concentrate on what I am doing at present instead of worrying about whether I missed a paragraph or if I went overboard and now I donβt enough time to catch up with other subjects.
And then thereβs economic and social history. Wonderful subject, I love it, I really do. I love how itβs not facts, rather interpretations and explanations that weβre after. But some times the slides for the lectures are not at all helpful, I sometimes have a hard time making sense of what the lecturer is trying to say, and some professors can be very monotonous in class, which makes it that much harder to pay attention when itβs 3.30p, and you have been learning since 9am.
But other than lectures, what took be aback when I started reading for lectures is that I have to figure out different techniques depending on what Iβm reading. Yeah, I know, it sounds obvious, and youβd think it was, but it turns out itβs one of the many things I had to see inpractce to completely understand. I knew I had reading to do, I saw the reading list before I started, I was prepared.Β Β
What I wasnβt prepared for was that I had to filter an extra 3 times the texts in the history reading list to see what I would take a note of. In bio and psych every little sentence can be important, I canβt be extra picky with my notes, I need them to be complete. In history, the first reading I did I think the notes I took took more pages than the text itself. It sounds ridiculous, I know, but when you have zero guidance on what to look for, what to ignore in introductions, you just try to make sense of everything and you ened up with every other sentence being important. So I guess the fact that I took very few ntoes from my second reading, but still remember it well and have some helpful hints in my notes to help me handle critical questions, is a sign of progress. It took me half the time to finish the second reading, I think Iβm starting to get a hold of this.
Okay, itβs getting late and my 9am bio lecture is canceled but Iβm still going by the library at 9am to get my bio studying on, I really want to make the best of my time while Iβm here.
hang in there fellow freshers
p.s. pls ignore any typos, itβs late and Iβm tired
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