Over the course of my uni life, I have met overachievers who are pursuing two degrees, holding more than one part-time job and are involved in activities. I have no idea how they do that, but their energy and commitment definitely amazes me! Vis-a-vis, I am currently only studying one degree and already finding it a huge leap to juggle it with an additional 12 hours of work, I do feel rather intimidated and insecure. Definitely, when the employer compares both candidates, I’ll definitely be in the losing end.

However, I found a little comfort at career seminars in which the counsellor said that it is not necessary to be involved in everything that the university offers. After all, we’re not superman and yes, we would like to have a life other than university. Her advice was to select our activities carefully and that we are sure that we are interested and can commit to it. Which is true, why stay in an activity that you don’t like especially when there are abundant of choices available? Moreover, it is important because you would be called to draw on your experiences in these activities and it would be a setback if you aren’t able to relate the purpose of your participation in the activity other than to ‘make your CV look good’.

I am currently easing back into a schedule in which I can juggle both work and studies together, and hopefully, learn a new skill- swing dancing. Not a student organisation, per se, but hey, it’s something that you get to learn and use in the future… somehow.

That said, definitely, join an organisation, be it, a student-based, church-based or work-based, it is a good place to find a group of people to be with, grow with and learn more about yourself and sharpen your skills. You wouldn’t know how great an effect that it will have you until you have the chance to look back after it has all ended.

When picking subjects, these are the rules I generally follow:

1) I’ll enjoy studying this subject. The topics sound good. How do I know this? I’ve read what brief information there is on the university website (e.g, on a course profile or a faculty page), or I’ve done some really basic reading on the subject (e.g, handy Google, Wikipedia searches), or I’ve talked to someone else who’s done the subject, and they told me what they studied.

2) The lecturer’s pretty capable. Or he/she totally rocks. This is a little harder to find out: if you’re in your first semester, you’re probably best off ignoring this rule, or asking your seniors, if you know them. But if you’ve been around a while, you’re likely to know more of the lecturers and hear more feedback from fellow students. Trust me on this: a bad lecturer, whether he/she be boring, rambling, a slow speaker, a heavily accented speaker, a too-fast speaker, a nose-in-book type, a face-to-blackboard type, etc, can utterly screw up your learning experience.

3) It fits okay in my timetable. There aren’t any timetable clashes that absolutely cannot be resolved; if there are, I’ve checked with my faculty officers/counsellors and they’ve found a way for me to bypass the problem. The classes are all during hours I’m quite satisfied with, or at least, I can tolerate them. Personally, I made sure I had no classes before 10am each day, since it takes me 1.5 hours to travel to uni, and I’d probably have to set my alarm clock at some absurd hour to get to an 8am class. I did have an 8am exam once, but it wasn’t too bad, because the procrastinator in me was awake all night studying anyway.

Also, watch out for really long days with back-to-back classes. I’d advise against doing this unless you really can’t help it, or if you’re sure you can handle it. Depending on your subjects and how intense the lectures may be, you might find yourself utterly drained of energy before classes end.

4) The assessment tasks won’t kill me. Meaning I’ve compared the assessment schedule for this subject with my other subjects, and I won’t be having major 2.5k word essays worth 80% of my total mark due in the exam period when I’m also going to be having 80% weightage exams. Preferably, my assessment is spread out during the term, and I’m seeing small percentage weightings for each of them – a 30%, 20% 40%, and a 10%, for example. I screw up in exams, so I’ve chosen a subject where the final exam is only worth 30% (also for example. I know some of you crazy kids actually prefer exams to essays. ).

5) If there’s a lot of take-home work, it’s not more than I can handle comfortably. For example, in Literature, we read about 6-9 books per subject, so four literature subjects would average at about 30 books. Some of these are massive, like the 1000+ page Dickens’s Bleak House… hence I’ve never taken four lit subjects at once. I’ve spread my electives out as much as I could, and taken the lighter-reading literature subjects that also fulfilled criteria #1: Interest and enjoyment. This semester I’m doing Creative Writing: Poetics as an alternative to that fourth lit subject, so instead of reading an extra load of literature texts, I write haiku and sonnets.

6) It counts toward my major/degree. Well, it can be an elective/contrasting subject, in which case replace this criterium with It’s useful in some personal way to me. Basically, don’t do a subject you feel will never have an effect on your future life.

7) I’ve sat in on a few classes before, and liked what I’ve seen. This, despite how much it sounds like gate-crashing, is actually the best way to figure out if the subject is for you, or not. In the first week uni, there’ll likely only be lectures, and first lectures are usually overviews of the subject plus summaries of assessment, criteria, etc. Sit in on these. They help wonders.

Of course, how much control you have over selecting your subject varies from course to course, uni to uni. The University of Queensland’s English Literature degree recently got revamped, and I had to spend some time making sure I could still follow the old syllabus and not the new one, because the new one was not being friendly to my predicted graduation date. But at the same time, I still had these compulsory subjects I absolutely had to take. So I made sure I knew what my compulsory subjects were, early on, so I could schedule in which year and which semester I’d have to take them – especially when my compulsory subjects were sometimes dropped from the “currently available” subjects list for a semester. (Always do your homework and know what you’ve got to take, so you can apply early for any amendments to your enrolment/graduation if you need any.)

Eh, that’s all I can think of regarding subjects for today. It’s 2.30am, and sleep calls! Let me know if I’ve missed anything you think I really ought to add.

Edit: Pay your fees on time. That’s a useful tip, I’ll bet! I almost forgot to pay my fees today, and it’s the last day for payment before they start throwing penalties at you.

I remembered back in high school, there was compulsory CIP hours which we had to fulfil. I found it ridiculous that it could be reflected in my resume as ‘community service’, when it was just a mere few hours rather than a long sustainable activity like how some people have devoted themselves into. As compared to those, these few compulsory CIP hours seem so trivial.

The point is, is it possible for us to step out of the school’s set obligations and pursue our own interests? I know I wrote in the previous post about the beauty of formal education, having us to do things that we normally do not bother with. However, is it possible to challenge this notion and find enriching activities by ourselves? Indeed, it can be hard because we may be alone in our venture; it can be difficult when we meet various shut doors because we are not of authority. However, there are many opportunities available and if we dare try, surely, there is someone who must be willing to accept us.

So this semester, I am trying to find my own worthy ventures. Rather than relying on leadership programmes offered by the university that requires compulsory hours of community service, I wonder how far can I go as an individual…

My year 2 subjects- Principles of Marketing and Principles of Market Research do look extremely promising, albeit the 1000, 2000 word reports that I would need to write. Nonetheless, I’m excited because this is what I’ve been waiting for- specialisation and learning things that I’m really interested. I’m also doing Global Politics this semester, which looks pretty much like a crossover between history and philosophy.

Another reason why I’m excited is because I’ve signed up for a bunch of activities to fill my semester- volunteering for the Starlight Children’s Foundation and hosting orientation. I’m feeling more confident in taking active steps to be more involved in university considering that I’ve finally settled in.

There is a tendency for international students to feel unproductive and fruitless in their first year as they try to adapt to the new environment and having to adjust expectations. Another reason is also because of the unwillingness to be spending money to join activities. This is perfectly understandable because they are pricey after all. However, this is what a friend of mine told me: ‘really try to do as many things as you would dream to do in uni life, because once you start working, chances will be limited for us to do so.’

How true… another quote from a book that I’ve read recently: ‘that’s the beauty of a formal education- it makes you read a lot of stuff you’d normally never bother with’. That’s for reading, but it applies to many others as well. I wanna learn many things- dancing, a musical instrument and most importantly, start the habit of reading again.

Conclusion? Dare to do things that you never thought that you’d ever do- skydive, speak in another language, play a musical instrument. Remember you are your worst enemy.

So. First year. It’s transition, in many senses of the word: you’re leaving the uniform-and-timetable affair of secondary school, you may be going to a different place from most of your friends, you may be leaving home or the country altogether. Quite naturally, the first year experience isn’t going to be a breeze, especially if you’re starting uni overseas, without many family members or friends around, and you’re going to a “western” culture from a “typical” asian one. There’s so much you can say about the first year, so I’ll do a relatively quick impression of the whole experience. In a bunch of words though: drifting, freedom, loneliness, independence.

On the whole, I had a relatively smooth entry into university. (See Sunny’s first year[s].) I had the luck of knowing what I wanted to major in and ultimately get a degree in. It helps a damn great deal to know what you want to study, and the earlier the better. It’s tough choosing courses/programs. (An aside: I recently met up with an old primary-through-to-secondary school friend who’d been almost always at the bottom of the class, smoking, skipping classes, fooling around a lot; but who’d had the ambition of being a pilot since he was eight. Now he’s almost got his pilot license, flying regularly, perfectly content and independent with his own car and home. I’d say that if you’ve got some general career you’re pretty interested in when you’re in your mid-teens, you should go ahead and explore it further, and see if you can imagine yourself studying/working in it in future.)

And then it was also good that I’d spent the previous two years away from home already, and in a junior college system that worked with lectures and tutorials. So I knew what it was like to pick your own subjects, have a strange-looking timetable (with several-hour long gaps between classes), and to despair over losing your milk to the hostel’s thieving fridge-raiders.

But first year is so many other things too. I was going to a country I hadn’t lived in since I was 8, and was therefore pretty foreign to me, and I was going to be studying English Literature and therefore be almost definitely the only Asian student from overseas (not an “ABC“) in the class – and some of my subjects, which the online enrolment system told me were compulsory, required me to actively participate in tutorials (oh no! I had to speak in class? Horrors!!**). And then I was going back to living with family (plus an infamous grandmother) – which ironically was more stressful than living away from home. I’ll talk more on the coming-back-home syndrome another time. Basically though, there are a lot of worries to cope with, some that linger on even now in the middle of my second year, such as how to balance being “asian” and “australian” at the same time – I find that especially troubling, since I work with almost entirely Caucasian people.

Note that I don’t intend to be racist. I’m just stating what is absolutely obvious: that there is a huge gap between the western and asian cultures and trying to cross it can leave you stranded in between without stable ground to stand on.

Back on topic – the best thing about starting uni was that there were all these people who liked the same subject area I did, and were willing to engage in enthusiastic, intelligent discussion about it. Fantastic! The first day of classes was a blast. I looked around at all the hundred or so, mostly young, generally excited students and this unshaven, barefooted, bespectacled professor in the lecture theatre (PHIL1010, Introduction to Philosophy, for curiosity’s sake) and thought: damn, this is exactly what I thought it’d be like: people from various backgrounds coming together to discuss a common subject of interest, and take the discussion wherever their minds took it, with only slight guidance by the tutor/lecturer. No more limitations to the textbook, no more fixed topics, no more stop-talking-in-class, no more being embarrassed to raise your hand in class. Woohoo! Freedom! It was worth the loneliness of realising that coming fresh from overseas and then living with family and not renting a place with other housemates, makes finding a good friend almost certainly impossible.

The loneliness is the only thing marring my uni experience, really. I drift from class to class, subject to subject, course to course, and semester to semester meeting and forgetting people, simply because of the few class hours you share (in Literature, and most Arts courses anyway. With the sciences and business, you tend to get more groupwork, and therefore more chance of forming a closer bond with other students). The drifting has its upside and downside: the good being that you can pick your own subjects and timetable, and the bad being that you don’t have enough time to know people that well. There’s the simple solution of moving out to share a house/flat with other people of course, or finding work, or joining a club; and that all depends on how much time and money you have, which I’m still trying to sort out.

And of course, all these things are usually all your own problems, which you solve by yourself, independently. So I discovered. It’s exciting and empowering being able and capable to become self-sufficient without anyone else’s help but your own, and to study anything you want (almost, see Sunny’s posts on subject selection and frequently useless faculty staff. I’ll rant about them too sometime later). But it’s also lonely.

Possibly the best scenario for a beginning uni student, is to enrol with a bunch of friends, or make sure you’re staying out with people who look like they might become close friends with you, or befriend your fellow firstyears as quickly as possible. If that sounds predatory, let me tell you that my own uni life would be as close to perfect as I want, if I had my best friends with me right now.

Then again, since ages ago, people have been writing about how life is essentially lonely, and aimless. I suppose you can’t quite say you’ve lived life until you’ve suffered through it a bit. Nothing without effort, eh? And as Sunny has said, greener grass! Get to the greener grass!

**You get much better at it. Trust me After three semesters, I’m not just regularly contributing to the discussion at each tute, but I actually look forward to giving the occasional seminar presentation. And courses tend to build up toward that aim: of initiating, inspiring and maintaining your own discussions and theories and theses, rather than simply answering questions. But a lot more on subjects, and course structures, in an other post. This “overview” has gone on long enough!

However, rather than being put forward as cynical or even, trying to be overly possimistic even if there is no reason to, I would rather just say the truth. This truth, though, does not come with all ‘woe me, my world is doom’ kind of thought, but a more hopeful one, because we have to fall in order to stand up. We have to lose something before we can truly appreciate what we have. A sense of hope. After all, this is what the journey is about- finding our own light at the end of the tunnel.

No doubt, tertiary education can be daunting, but if you are willing to take things step by step, you’ll find the experience extremely rewarding and you will become the person you never thought you could be.

My idea of university degrees is only limited to the more popular ones- Commerce, Medicine, Law, and since I was an arts student, Arts. I came from an education system where career guidance was very limited. We only had one careers’ counsellor in the entire college to 800 students and only the crème de la crème is immediately assigned to a teacher mentor, while the rest of us wade in deep water, and trying to find the nearest bay. I never had much of an idea what I wanted to be. 

So when I was thrown into the deep end of deciding what to pursue for my tertiary education, I had little idea. My older brother graduated as a Commerce student with a major in Accounting and Finance. I knew that I had no interest in those, because honestly, numbers and I aren’t the best of friends. I knew I would rather be out and about learning through action rather than just direction. I knew that having some background in business would be advantageous because it is part and parcel of life. I also knew that I would kick butt in organisational and management stuff because I’ve been doing that all my life and breathe it. By narrowing down my selections based on what I knew, I thought that studying hotel management was the ideal choice for me. To throw the cherry on top of the cake, I get to learn a new language too (since it is compulsory in European hotel schools)!

One thing I didn’t know however, was what I saw myself in the future. A good friend of mine and I used to talk about aspirations to be the next CEO of the some big company. Now that I brought it up to her again, she laughs it off as a joke. Some wild dreams, aye? It just seems that when we were younger, anything seems possible and now, everything seems impossible.

Fate had it when my parents pulled the axe and refused to fund my education should I choose hotel management because Switzerland is too far from home and that hotel management is just not suitable for girls. Frankly, I cannot really blame them- it’s just inopportune that my parents are rather conservative and overprotective of me. So coming from a traditional family upbringing, the only route left for me was a traditional one.

I dare say that my first choice – Bachelor of Arts – was the right choice. I am more free-spirited and enjoy words over numbers. The only reason why I am in the Bachelor of Commerce now was because I lost my guts and became a conformist, thinking that a Commerce degree is more recognised than an Arts degree. But eventually, as everyone who has been through it says: ‘An undergraduate degree is merely a stepping stone. Most important thing is to enjoy what you’re studying.’ This is where you throw all those bombastic words such as “passion” and “love” in.

There is no foolproof method in ensuring that you get it right on your first try. Most of you may, whereas others may require some trial and error before settling on the right one. In any case, do consider the following when deciding on what courses to choose:

1. Your passion (take a gap year, volunteer, work, dare to try anything to discover your own likes and dislikes)
2.Your aptitude (you may like it, but need not necessary do well in it)
3. Your financial resources (scholarship options, parents’ loan)
4. Your parents’ opinion (especially if you are taking on their loan)
5. Career opportunities (it is a factor, but not the most important factor)
6. Lots of perseverance (because even the best route is never easy)

Remember, a university degree is merely a stepping stone to your career. Most of the time, you would already have forgotten what you have learnt the previous semester as you are halfway through the next semester. A university education, and I believe, every education’s purpose, should be about being focussed on developing skills rather than equipping knowledge. After all, you can pick up knowledge just by reading articles on the news or documentaries (voila! I know a little but more of cooking just by watching Jamie Oliver). However, skill development requires practice, endurance, failures and success before you can truly declare that you have mastered a skill.

There is no hard and fast rule as to how you should choose your course. However, it does determine part of who you will become because of the experience that will shape you.

All the best!

I entered university with the great expectation that it would be far more intellectually stimulating than college and high school. After all, when the last six years were so exam-driven, we hardly had time to discuss the things that matter. The teachers were all rushing to complete the appointed syllabus before the year ended and the examination period loomed, such that the only things I associated education with were nothing but a chore and studying.

I took a six month break after completing my A levels, which was very welcome, though much to the dismay of my parents, who wanted me to complete my education as soon as possible. I spent those six months learning French and it totally changed my perspective on education. I met great friends and had such a good laugh with the things that we learnt (like asking the professeur how to swear in French). I enjoyed learning so much that I even volunteered to take the language assessment exams at the end of the semester.

It was definitely disappointing to be in the education system again where the lecturers were just trying to cram the whole syllabus in the whole semester of 12 weeks. Thankfully, I had a more enjoyable experience in my tutorials as the tutors were friendly, open to questions when a concept was challenged and of course, to finally get to talk with some familiar faces from the tutorials in the lecture halls. Some friendships were forged pretty well, while others remained as mere acquaintances, which I will talk about later on.

One thing I really appreciated the university for was the coursework-exams grading system. I am a jitterbug when it comes to facing the exams; hence, I welcomed the given opportunity to do well in my assignments. Coming from a stringent education system, I had more than my fair share of failures and the lousy feeling of being mediocre. As such, when I was studying Auckland, having doing well in my coursework, naturally, it boosted my ego and encouraged me to do even better for exams.

Another thing is that the classes I was taking were foundation classes, hence the class sizes were huge and all that information seemed to be sweeping by- massive concepts, fancy jargon… Nothing is very specialised in a merely introductory course to advance levels. Fortunately for me, I have never done any of my first year subjects before, so all were new and fresh to me. However, I have heard from friends who had to learn the same things again, such as microeconomics and accounting courses which they had already learnt in pre-university level. Definitely, for anyone who thinks that university is about furthering whatever you have learnt, hold your horses! It only happens after the first semester.

I think I speak for most students studying in universities when I say that it is a very lonely environment. In high school/ college, we have a homeroom, a class that we are assigned to, a certain group of people we’re certain to spend most of our school hours with. You wouldn’t be sitting alone in a boring lecture trying to keep your eyes wide awake as the lecturer goes on and on, in the cafeteria munching away at your sandwich while staring into space. In university, you would be fortunate to have a friend who shared the same faculty as you. You would be even more fortunate if you took the same subject as him/her, and both of you might as well be soul mates if you had managed to share just half of the same lecture/tutorial slots together.

That said, it is not a battle lost. Attending the first lecture may be intimidating because you wouldn’t know anyone among the sea of people entering the same lecture hall, however, as long as you wear a bright smile and friendly disposition, you will be able to find friends somehow, somewhere. My first semester in university was full of uncertainties. Firstly, I went to Auckland alone, not knowing anyone until later on. Secondly, although I stayed in a hall, I was one of the only two people in the group that I hung out with who was a first year arts student. I entered my first psychology lecture as a lone ranger. However, at the end of the lecture, I was fortunate to meet this student whom I sat next to while waiting for the lecture halls to be opened (but not during the lecture) and we have been good friends ever since. The thing was, while we didn’t speak during the waiting period, it just didn’t seem right to have walk out the lecture hall without having to catch each other’s name. Lesson learnt- be open to meet new people. She is my first Samoan friend who is a mature student, studying part-time at the university.

I think that first year in university was not as fantastic as the time I spent in college; I spent most of the time adjusting to my living environment, the academic environment, and the social life… Adjusting all of my expectations of what university life should be. As my friend puts it, I caught the ‘freshman bug’.

So, where to from now? I’m glad that the semester has officially ended, with exams all done and over with. I am officially a year 2 next semester, (YES!) enrolling myself into two level 2 subjects in marketing. I already have in mind some activities to be involved in- volunteering at the children’s hospital, finding a job. Hopefully, next semester onwards, it will all be more fruitful and productive. Cheryl says that as long as I pass through first year, subsequent years would be much better.

Lastly, the grass is always, always, greener on the other side. I had to learn it the long hard way…

What this blog will be, then, is a collection of stories about our education experiences: the problems we encountered (and are encountering) and how we got around them. We’ll do our best to provide factual information along with our opinions, and we’re also hoping for other students to provide their own anecdotes. If you’re currently trying to apply for a place at university, or currently wondering what to do after high school, then do post a comment on one of our posts about what you find frustrating. Alternatively, send us an email at twelveroads [at] gmail [dot] com telling us what you’d like to see on the blog.

We’ll try to get things rolling quickly. Christina’s still got one last exam to go, but I’ve just finished mine for the semester and am trying to find something to fill my suddenly-empty timetable – keep an eye out for new stuff, and welcome to TwelveRoads!

We hope that by reading our experiences, you will gain a better insight of what is to come in your life. Anecdotes of your own stories are also welcome:)

Watch this space!