This year has gone crazy fast. I am about half way through my first year of university already! After years of thinking that I wasn't going to start uni straight after school, I find myself sitting in the library watching 'Hey Arnold' and listening to Japanese Wallpaper whilst waiting to go to my next tutorial. It's funny to think that nothing really ever goes how you expect it to go, and that's alright. I had a really nice coffee catch up today with one of my friends who is about to finish her law degree at the end of this year! The days are so, so short. I have definitely learnt a lot of things this year (so far): academically, socially, mentally and spiritually. For starters, I never knew that I had the capacity to pull an all-nighter til 5:30am (on the day my assignment was due), take a 2 hour power nap and get back up at 7:30am to complete the assignment at 11am, go to uni, submit it at 3pm and crash for 5 hours afterwards! To justify myself, it was a very extensive assignment that I didn't leave til the last minute! Here are some more things i've learnt/discovered about myself over the course of this year at the moment (there are still a few months to go but I've completed most of this year anyway so why not).
1. Packed lunches are good for your health and bank account
Sometimes it's nice to be a little fancy and grab a burger or something from the local food alley at uni, but spending about $10 a day on food, everyday (and I have uni 4 days a week) begins to get painful, especially if you're studying more than you're working. I know it's common sense, but packing your own lunch is really so much better than forking out $$$ for a meal that will sustain you for about 3-5 hours. It may require you to get up a little earlier in the morning to chuck together some salad or a sandwich but you won't regret pocketing that extra $10 to invest into something more meaningful (like your future children or an in-ground trampoline). And bring your own water bottle!
2. Check your emails!
There is quite literally nothing more inconvenient than rocking up to a class that has been cancelled, especially when it's the only class you have that day. Tutors usually email their students a few days in advance if there won't be a class on so its good to check at least once a day. I made the rookie mistake of coming to a class that wasn't on and spent three hours watching random videos in the library.
3. Uni is not the place to find your potential suitor
At uni, you will cross paths with some individuals who were blessed with quite pleasing aesthetics. This doesn't necessarily mean that you are going to marry them hahaahahahaha. People come from all over the place and have very different backgrounds, beliefs and standards of morality so it will be quite rare to meet someone that ticks all your boxes. There are also so so so so many people at uni, so the people you see around are probably only a fraction of your entire uni population (people have classes at night too, yuck). Besides, remember that you are at uni to study!! QUT cuties and Harvard hunks for another time in life (Harvard isn't even in Australia what the heck).
4. Group work is challenging
There are two things that most humans do not particularly enjoy - country music and group work. For my uni degree, a lot of my assessments are done in groups (and thankfully not exams, or else I would be working full-time at maccas right now) and it has brought out sides of me that I didn't even know existed. For most of my school life, I always thought I was that chilled, just-go-with-it kind of person when it comes to these things, but recently i've found that i'm actually a bit of a psycho. It's scary. Like, who even am I anymore. Every single one of my subjects are predominantly based on group work this semester and it's been really interesting so far! It's allowed me to meet more people, some people that I definitely would never of met if I wasn't doing these assignments with them and I actually don't mind it. However, things do begin to get difficult when group member X doesn't do their part and you're freaking out because it's due in less than a week and so on. Overall, it's a real character building experience.
5. Take full advantage of your uni's facilities
I don't mean stealing some toilet paper and taking it home so you don't have to buy your own, take advantage of the resources like books, exclusive-access sites, equipment and softwares. For my sound design subject, we get to use a music computer lab with music producing softwares and equipment like MIDI keyboards and microphones etc, that would be quite expensive if you had to buy them yourself! You're paying for your degree anyway so you might as well just use what they've provided to it's full capacity.