Work at Uni Margate

Chapter 6

Work

If an alien land­ed on earth and flicked through a stack of UCAS forms, they’d prob­ably read about how much you love your course, how you’re fas­ci­nat­ed by the de­tails, and how you’re so ex­cit­ed about dis­cov­er­ing more about an­cient Mesopotamia that you find it hard to think about any­thing else. They would prob­ably come to the con­clu­sion that work is the rea­son we all go to uni.

Right? Hmm. By the time you start uni it can be easy to get so fo­cused on things like what colour pins you’re go­ing to use on the pin­board in your room, and which T-​shirt colour you’re go­ing to go for dur­ing the fresh­ers’ week traf­fic-​light par­ty, that you might for­get about the rea­son your par­ents, teach­ers and fu­ture em­ploy­ers think you’re at uni – to do some work.

But it will soon sink in. For me, it was halfway through my first es­say of term, when I had a sud­den night­mare that in my first sem­inar my tu­tor would turn to me and say, ‘Sor­ry, we’ve just re­alised we let you in by mis­take – it’s best that you go home now.’ I was sure I’d be ex­posed as the stupid one dur­ing class­es among course­mates who I ex­pect­ed to be so clever that they’d re­fer to each oth­er as ‘genii’. I felt es­pe­cial­ly in­se­cure/stupid since I had a gap year, spent al­ter­nat­ing be­tween writ­ing about foot­ballers’ wives at a tabloid news­pa­per and trav­el­ling around on hol­iday – so it had been a very long time since I’d sat down and writ­ten an es­say. Or read any­thing oth­er than Heat.

From school to uni

There are lots of sim­ilar­ities be­tween school and uni – cam­pus food tastes a lot like school din­ners, you cry on your first day (OK, maybe that’s just me), you get ex­cit­ed about go­ing to WH Smith to buy new sta­tionery at the start of ev­ery year… But in terms of learn­ing, there are a lot of dif­fer­ences: at school you get used to be­ing told what to do ev­ery minute of the school day. At uni, you’re on your own to work out which lec­tures are worth get­ting out of bed for, and when you’re go­ing to start work on as­sign­ments that aren’t due for three months.

TIP

‘When you find out who your per­son­al tu­tor is, don’t get drunk – or make an id­iot of your­self – if they are any­where near your vicin­ity. They are the ones who are there to ad­vise you, but they al­so write all your im­por­tant ref­er­ences. In my ex­pe­ri­ence, any­thing you say will be tak­en down as ev­idence! Try to make a good im­pres­sion, but don’t be fake.’

Ruth, 23, Lon­don

It’s a good idea to think about what kind of stu­dent you want to be ear­ly on. Are you aim­ing for a First? Do you want a jam-​packed sched­ule of ex­tra-​cur­ric­ular ac­tiv­ities along­side your stud­ies? When are you go­ing to do read­ing, writ­ing, lab work, at­tend lec­tures, etc.?

At uni, your re­sults will be much more re­liant on your­self – there’s no teach­er look­ing over your shoul­der to check that you’ve read ev­ery ...

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