Firstly, huge congratulations to everyone who has just received their A-Level results and is starting university in September! This has been a crazy year and I can’t imagine how you must have been feeling whilst waiting for results. I really hope everybody is pleased with the outcome and however things turned out, you should be so proud of yourself! Throughout school and sixth form, I’d always had the goal of going to university and I just focused on one thing at a time: GCSEs, A-Levels, work experience, volunteering, extra-curriculars etc. Even though I always had the plan to go to university, it was only after Results Day that it actually hit me that I was going to be moving away from home, meeting so many new people and transitioning into a new way of learning and a whole new lifestyle. I often get questions about how uni differs from sixth form, how I changed my revision methods and coped with being away from home so I thought I’d share some of my tips here! I study Medicine but I think a lot of these points could be applied to any course at any university 😊 Workload
Looking back on the last 2 years of my degree, I have covered a huge amount of content and have sometimes felt overwhelmed at all the work I had to do but I do feel like the workload gradually increased which meant it never really felt like a sudden jump from A-Levels. I’d say my course eased us in quite gradually (we repeated some A-Level content in the 1st semester and then built on this) and I think most courses would probably do the same. It’s hard to directly compare A-Levels to university as they are just so different. I’d say that I have covered a lot more content at uni compared to the same period of time during A-Levels but I never found this completely unmanageable. Here are my tips for coping with the workload at university:
Methods of learning When I first started my course, I tried to make full sets of notes for every lecture by using the PowerPoint slides and then adding to them during the lecture. I took a lot of time to make them organised (and I’m guilty of spending too long to make them look pretty) and then ended up passively reading over them for revision. I felt like I wasted a lot of time making the notes and not enough time actually learning the notes so I changed my methods a bit from the second semester, which improved my exam results by 10%+! These are some of the methods I used that helped me to work more productively:
Living away from home For me, one of the biggest adjustments when I moved to university was living away from home. It takes me about 2.5 hours by car and 3.5/4 hours by train to get between home and university which isn’t a huge distance but, having never really spent much time away from home, I was a bit worried that I’d struggle with this. I actually coped so much better than I expected myself to – I made my uni room feel like ‘home’ and I just felt really happy and comfortable living at university which made it a lot easier for me. Here are my tips to help with settling in and feeling at home at university:
Making friends Making new friends is such a huge part of transitioning to university lifestyle. I know that things might be a little different this year due to COVID and social distancing but there will definitely still be lots of ways to meet new people and form friendships. However, don’t put pressure on yourself to become best friends with the people that you meet during fresher’s week, there are so many opportunities to meet new people at university and sometimes this can take more time for different people 😊 I did meet a few of my closest university friends during the first few days which was so lovely, but there are also a lot of people who I met once or twice and then never saw again… and that’s okay! Here are my tips:
I really hope these tips are useful to anybody starting university soon and I wish you the best of luck! Please feel free to message me on Instagram (@studyingwithjasmine) if you have any questions at all. Jasmine x
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AuthorI am a 19 year old aspiring doctor and I am currently studying at medical school, after completing my A-Levels in Biology, Chemistry and Maths. I created this blog to share my study tips and techniques and advice on applying to university, as well as some health and lifestyle posts, too. I hope you find them useful! Jasmine x Archives
August 2020
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