First year survival tips:

Kirsty Chatterton

Top of class in school, but everyone top of class at Uni
No one constantly on your back, making sure you get the work done – up to you to succeed.
Can no longer get away with writing an essay the night before and still scraping an A for it.
Call everyone by their first name. No sit, or Mr/Mrs. Can be weird at first but you get used to it quite quickly.
Uni semester goes much faster than high school. Before you know it, it is week 7 or 8, when most major assessments are due, and not long after that it is week 13 and exams are literally around the corner! Year 12 seemed to drag on forever. First year uni just flew by.

DO NOT TALK DURING A LECTURE!! No one is forcing you to be there, so if you feel you have better things to do, don't ruin it for the people that actually want to learn!!

In the first week, introduce yourself to everyone you sit near. Everyone is in the same boat as you, and the people you meet in the first week or two will be great friends…

Keep up with the reading! Absolutely impossible to do 12 weeks' worth of reading in SWOTVAC

Go to classes. Don't just tell yourself that you will listen to it online later, because I can guarantee you that you won't!

If you are doing sose/bhs/crim combination, you will find that there is some degree of overlap, which can be very useful to you , to the point where you can use textbooks from one subject to find out more about another.

Late = bad. Late to class means everyone turns around to look at you, late to hand in work means you could end up being awarded with almost full marks, but only receive a credit, late library books means bad fines.

Be organised! You will get the due dates and topics for all of your assignments in the first week or two of semester You don't need to begin straight away, but it is a good idea to at least familiarise yourself with the topics, and make some preliminary ideas as to which one you might be interested in doing. Starting light research early on will only help you, as you can spread out your research period, and find out earlier, rather than later, whether the topic you have chosen is the right topic for you. There's nothing worse than picking a topic, starting the research on it, and changing you mind a week before it is due. This may seem difficult to do, especially if the topic you have picked happens to be the one covered in class in the week before the assessment is due, which makes preparing earlier even more important.

Also, unfortunately, a lot of subjects have the due dates for their major assessments all within a week or two of each other. This makes organising your time so much more important. Especially if you are like me and find it difficult to write essays on two different topics at once, even though they are due at the same time. Being organised means that one of them won't be left to the last minute, and also that you are not reaching your library book borrowing limit.

Essays: You should allow at least 1-2 weeks for researching, and 1 week for writing/editing your work. MAKE SURE YOU READ YOUR ESSAY AND EDIT IT BEFORE SUBMITTING.

Go to www.textbookexchange.com.au for all your textbooks. Even if your parents are offering to pay for them, what's the harm in saving them a bit of money?? You can get most of your textbooks in excellent condition for a fraction of the price, and then sell them again at the end of the year! You will not need your text books from last year. Sell them. If you do need them at any stage, they are all in the library. From textbookexchange, you can also join student VIP, which has great student offers. I recently bought Microsoft office unlimited, valued at over $1000 for $75.

It's OK to go out and have fun socialising, but study is just as important. Find that balance between study, friends and work. Perfect example of this: a friend of mine is just as smart as I am, when she applies herself. At the beginning of last year, we both had strong ambitions to transfer into law. I attended classes, did my homework, and rarely went out, but still had fun with friends when it was appropriate. She was out nearly every night of the week, rarely came to classes, and then ended up handing in everything in as late as it was allowed to be before she failed. I got the marks I needed to get into law, and she ended up with 2 credits, a pass and a fail, and has to wait another year before she can try and transfer again.

Use MUSO (now known as blackboard). It is the biggest help. (Hopefully) most of your lecturers for your subjects will post the week's lecture slides on here before the lecture. I highly recommend printing these out and taking them to the lecture, so that you can concentrate on listening to what they're saying and making notes on this, rather than copying down everything on the slides and missing the important stuff. When printing them out, you can put 4, 6 or however many you like slides on one page. This took me until halfway through semester one to figure out, and I was kicking myself for not knowing it previously. Work out how to do this, and if you are unsure, ask someone else. IT MAKES LIFE A LOT EASIER.

Don't fall into the habit of buying lunch on campus every day. You are not uncool if you bring your own lunch. You may however loose some credit if mummy makes it for you.