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First year at university is a challenge for everybody.
Your first year at university in particular could be really challenging.
You have to learn to manage your time.
You have to learn to navigate your way through a very large organisation
with many, many structures and many systems,
and a different way of doing things.
All without someone telling you what to do.
Well I was presented with a whole new experience
when I came to Macquarie University.
First year of uni is a big slap in the face.
It was really probably shocking for me firstly coming in.
I thought I could write essays based in high school and I came in for my first unit
and really got a shock because I got a 50 for my first essay.
I think the most difficult thing is trying to figure out what they want.
It's been really difficult finding actually what the lecturer wants us to do.
I found that really difficult.
It's not clear.
It's a different way of interacting with others.
It's certainly a different way of interacting with your educators.
How they've presented it on iLearn itself
and even telling us as well what's required
I've found it really difficult to understand what the first thing, or what the questions are.
It's not like being in a relationship with a teacher at school.
All of a sudden you have to learn to interact with lecturers and tutors.
Sometimes students have a lot more skills
and a lot more different strategies than they realise,
but the assignment doesn't bring it out.
Yeah.
And they're not sure how to translate those skills
that they use to be successful at study to this new situation or this new subject.
When you come to university you have to do everything by yourself.
At University, they're not going to tell you specifically what you have to do
except that they'll give you the assignments
and say 'Go forth, go forth and do these assignments.'
You'll be expected to work much more independently
and make decisions for yourself about the work that you're doing,
and to organise what you're doing a lot more yourself without the aid of teachers.
If you are in the Sciences they may point you towards a specific textbook telling you how to write a report.
If you're in the Arts then they may point you towards a textbook on how to write an essay
but at the end of the day these are pretty formulaic
and might not actually tell you what you need to know.
They'll give you really general tips and some of the general tips are great,
but what they won't tell you is actually how to argue your point.
That's something you're going to have to figure out for yourself for the main part.
If I understand it, I understand it.
If I don't I'll try to find ways to figure it out through asking questions or talking to my friends
You're going to be expected to provide for yourself,
figure stuff out for yourself
and it's a really big learning curve
and it's a really great journey as well.
Figuring stuff out and learning that independence is very satisfying
and you can't be afraid to do it.
Usually you're just completely ''Oh my god, I'm so in awe of these people who have so much knowledge."
You tend to be in that state
where you're not necessarily willing to ask questions or contest statements.
When I wasn't as comfortable with English and the English environment
and things like that.
So you would just accept everything.
I know in some cultures there's a sense that you receive knowledge in a particular way.
You receive knowledge from someone who's older and wiser
and that's not contested, that's not interrogated,
you don't interact with that.
You accept that.
Some students come from a background
in which they just listen to what their teacher tells them and then reproduce it in the exams.
This is different.
University is not about regurgitation,
uni is not about regurgitation and wrote learning and saying everything word for word
it's about understanding and forming your own opinion.
Academic knowledge requires you to think critically about different topics.
It requires you to debate with certain topics, with certain information.
In some subjects maybe you do have a lot of background knowledge that you've picked up over time
but the person reading your essay doesn't know this for a fact
until you've actually explicitly explained why it is that you think you know this.
The whole point of developing academic skills is
to develop knowledge on top of knowledge that's already there.
So this is knowledge, how can I add to it,
to make it better, grow it, change it,
rearrange it?