Pep Talk With Dedun: Guidelines To A Successful Completion of Uni
10:19:00 PM
Happy Midweek!! Hope your week has been blessed so far? Mine has, thank God. Today's topic will be part one of next week's post. After almost seven years in a strange land University, I'm certain I will be able to give important points to help you navigate the University system. Mind you, this is not specific for Medical school but applicable to everyone. Here are the main guidelines I could come up with, if you think I left some out, please comment below and I'll update this post
- Be at least 90% sure you chose the right field:
Littlestory here, I remember vividly the day my mum and bro sat me down to ask if I really wanted to study medicine. Reason was, they believed, and actually it was true, that I was an excellent student in Maths and Physics and my folks thought I would follow in the family's footsteps by studying Engineering but nah I was so stubborn I didn't let them persuade me. A-levels and a year of Basic Medical Course (BMC) later, I'm finally in Medical School! Yay I suppose but let's rewind a bit to 2nd Semester of BMC, I called my Mum to tell her I wanted to change to Engineering because Biology was giving me a headache! (NB: I didn't fail, I did not fancy the long and boring chapters I had to study for a test). My mum wasn't having any of my crap because I used up the only chance I had to change my field of study and so I pushed on having in mind that it's Medicine or nothing. My point here is, if you are lucky and you know before it's too late that the field you started with is not for you, please don't force it. Weigh your options and make the right choice.
- Be active: Be aware of rules and regulations for the academic year and follow through. Ask students in upper years how the current year you are in was like for them, the difficult courses and how you should go about them. Trust me in any area of life you find yourself, someone has already gone through it and learning from another's experience is the best teacher!
- Attend important lectures and seminars: Look what we have here (my classmates will understand this). I for example have a very very short attention span and since this isn't new to me, I only took the mandatory lectures and seminars serious.
You know why.
- Create a study schedule: Before you create this schedule, you have to know how your body works. For example, I'm not a morning person so studying in the morning was never a thing for me. And aside from that, you should also consider your classes. As this is no secondary school where you have a fixed time for classes everyday of the week, Uni lectures and seminars can be anytime the honorable lecturer wants it to be. Once you've established the best period you can study for, write the plan out and stick to it!
at least 80%.Don't be hard on yourself, make sure you put break times on the schedule.
- Start
readingstudying as early as school starts: As much as it is very easy to ignore the books during the early weeks of a new semester, I will advice that during the early weeks, just read whatever you can like a novel. You are not necessarily studying to understand completely but just to have an idea of what the course is about and also to know if you need to take the study serious as early as possible. Don't take this early studying for granted. It will definitely pay off when tests and exams start knocking.
- Have your notes/highlight your printed notes!: There's always something for everyone. If you are like me that understands better when it's written down, by all means, buy cheap writing pads and write everything you can. And if you do not like writing or you feel writing will take too much time, buy those colored highlighting pens/ page stickers and highlight away! After all you own the text book right? Lol if you don't own it, just use the page stickers so you know where to revisit when you want to study again.
- Don't miss your tests: I noticed that sometimes when some students are not prepared for a test, they would rather miss it than see "fail" in the result sheet. Even if you are not prepared for an exam, go for it because you will see how the questions are asked, the format and everything as these will help you in preparing for the resit.
- Get and study all the past questions you can find: In my Uni for example, past questions are not that hard to find. The danger of past papers is relying on them alone. Don't do that. Study first and use past papers to test your knowledge, keeping in mind that most, if not all, won't be repeated.
- Ask for help: Pride will get you nowhere. If you think a course is taking forever to understand, ask your class mates or upper year students to help you. There are tutors that charge decent fees to guide you through a course, make use of them if you have the means to and if you don't have, you can ask your mates to explain anything you don't understand.
- Surround yourself with good friends: Your family is not here with you. They can only support you over the phone. You need a good support system while you are in school, your made-to-fit cheerleaders. They will understand your struggle better and be there when you need them (and be there for them too. One sided friendships don't work)
- Always remember when the going gets tough, why you chose the course: If anything other than God has kept me sane in Uni, that will be this point. When you feel you can't take one more step, always remember why and how you got to the present level. We fail sometimes but how you overcome that fear of repetitive failure depends on you but you have to do it! You have to push forward. Never give up! Someone has it worse than you do.
Now let's bag that degree like it's no man's business. Countdown to getting mine. Enjoy the rest of your week.
Love,
Dedun.
 |
| When that degree comes through |
0 comments
You know I'd love to hear from you. Please comment. Mwah