All Posts Tagged With: "advice"

What Scott Dobson-Mitchell would tell his Freshman Self

Assuming I couldn’t accidentally cause some sort of butterfly effect that would prevent me being born, I wish I could travel back in time and tell my Freshman Self a few things about university. Considering I’ve already forgotten the answers to every exam, this is what I’d tell the younger me.

1) Plan ahead. WAY ahead.

It happens to every semester. Searching through the course calendar, I find the perfect class. It sounds interesting, it fits perfectly into my schedule and it fulfills my upper-year science requirement. The prof has checks out on RateMyProfessors and the course has a high score on Bird Courses. But I don’t have one of the prerequisites! If I’d been smart enough to plan, I would have that first year zoology credit that’s mandatory for nearly everything. Instead, I’m stuck with Phytochemical Biosystems.

2) You’re richer than you think.

Or at least, you’re less broke than you think. There are plenty of ways to get money beyond student loans—scholarships, bursaries, and work study programs that not only get you some cash, but also valuable work experience. The Ontario Work Study Program is one example. If you’re receiving student loans, then you’re probably eligible. Also be sure to check out the Maclean’s Scholarship finder.

3) It’s going to get easier.

The first year is the worst year. It’s sort of like the first 20 minutes of the movie Inception, when you have no idea what the hell is going on. But if you hang in there, things will start making sense. You’ll realize that university isn’t impossibly more difficult than high school. In fact, once you’ve acclimatized, it’s easier in some ways. And it’s only gets better. Once some of those nasty prerequisites are out of the way, you can take courses that truly interest you. My interests happen to coincide with those listed on Bird Courses.

4) It’s easier to keep up than to catch up.

As a seasoned procrastinator, I can say with experience and authority that procrastination is not a good idea. Especially when you leave multiple things to the last minute. Here’s what I finally realized: there comes a point where writing an essay is less difficult than NOT writing an essay. After you’ve checked your email, looked at your Facebook notifications, watched a bunch of mindless videos on YouTube and then read some random Wikipedia articles, procrastinating actually becomes more difficult than finishing your work. A better option? Keep those pages closed.

Scott Dobson-Mitchell studies at the University of Waterloo. Follow @ScottyDobson on Twitter.

10 ways to study effectively without falling apart

Photo courtesy of comedy_nose on Flickr

Exams, assignments and anxiety: for university students, the end of classes in December is just the beginning. Fortunately, there are ways to make it through without sacrificing your well-being. Here, in no particular order, are 10 tips for surviving and thriving during exam season.

1. Embrace list making. Jot down your exam schedule, assignment due dates and important reminders on a calendar. Make a study schedule and stick to it, but don’t forget to pencil in breaks.

2. Find the right study space. Whether you prefer a bustling coffee shop or the library’s silent floor, find a proper chair and pick a well-lit space. Steer clear of the ultimate temptations: television and chatty roommates.

3. Triage. Let’s face it: you can’t properly analyze an entire Shakespeare anthology in three days.  Time is limited, so study the hard subjects first (when you’re most alert) and prioritize material based on urgency and relevance.

4. Exercise. Regular workouts are shown to improve your mood, boost energy and promote better sleep. If all else fails, go outside. Remember outside? Try skating, tobogganing or a jog around the block for sun and exercise.

5. Put mental health first. Mental health is just as important as its physical counterpart. Familiarize yourself with your school’s counselling service and don’t be afraid to utilize it. The Mental Health Commission of Canada and websites like mindyourmind.ca also offer a number of tools and resources.

6. Eat healthy. It’s a no-brainer: fruits, vegetables, whole grains and protein keep the mind sharp. In a clinch, the perennial granola bar wards off hunger and donut cravings. On that note…

7. Know your late-night snack hubs. Coffee shops with extended hours and 24-hour grocery stores are a godsend during exam season. Bonus: late-night snack runs are great opportunities for people watching.

8. Plan a fun night out. Studying non-stop isn’t healthy, but neither is going on a bender. Keep things low-key and take in a movie, go dancing with friends or organize a night of coffee and board games.

9. Stay off Facebook. Newsflash: All of that wasted time adds up. The siren song of social media is hard to resist, but commit to staying offline during studying hours. You’ll have plenty of time during the holiday season to catch up on your teenage cousin’s thoughts about the weather.

10. Sleep. All-nighters aren’t worth it, according to a study published in the January issue of Behavioral Sleep Medicine. The dazed, caffeine-addled university student stereotype is a cliché for a reason: sleeping six to eight hours a night maximizes brain function, and the study found that students who regularly pulled all-nighters tended to have lower grades than those who didn’t.

Before you send an angry e-mail, read this prof’s advice

Photo by vancouverfilmschool on Flickr

Around this time of year Canadian university students are bracing themselves for a stressful moment: getting back their first assignments. First-year students may be appalled by the number in front of them — do grades even go that low? Even top students can see their grades drop. Here’s how to answer that jangling wake up call.

Don’t be alarmed if the grade is lower than you expected. If you got straight As in high school, you may be shocked to see a B, C… or worse. But in fact, a recent Canadian study shows that those who had the highest marks (90 per cent or more) fall the farthest: about 12 per cent on average. Take heart: almost everyone goes through this at some point. I did, and some schools, like the University of Toronto, explicitly warn students that their grades may drop 10-15 points.

Don’t take it personally. Remember that the professor is grading your work, not you. It’s easy to think that a low grade somehow means your prof doesn’t like you, but that’s not the case. Try getting out of the habit of saying “he gave me a C” and start saying “he gave my paper a C.”

Read the comments, not just the grade. Most professors will provide additional comments, sometimes in great detail, explaining just where the problems are and how to fix them. Make sure you understand the comments and how you can use them to improve. Professors want you to improve and will be happy if you show a real interest in learning. The jerk who gave you a crummy mark today may end up being the mentor who guides you to the Dean’s list next semester.

Don’t contact your professor the same day you get the assignment back. Emotions can run high when you get a disappointing grade, and it doesn’t help to turn up at Professor Stingy’s door with smoke seeping out of your ears, or to fire off an angry email on the bus ride home. Take some time, sleep on it, and then think about asking your professor for more feedback.

If you do seek feedback, ask about how you can do better either by rewriting the paper (if your instructor allows it) or by taking a different approach on the next one. Through it all, try to remain humble. It’s hard to be told that your work was not as good as you thought it was, but take a breath and set aside your ego, and you may see that your professor has a point. Maybe that graph wasn’t designed very well. Maybe that thesis statement wasn’t very clear. Next time, it will be better.

Know that professors go through the same thing. Profs write papers too, and submit them to publishers and journals, and get them back with feedback. Believe me, the feedback is not always positive. I’ve never heard of an academic journal that doesn’t reject more papers than it receives. I once worked through a whole raft of revisions an editor wanted, adding here, expanding there, and then, after resubmitting, was told it was now too long! “Too long!” I thought, “it’s only too long because you made me add all that stuff!” But after I calmed down, I realized my editor had been right both times. Work, feedback, more work. It’s the circle of academic life.

Remember why you’re at university: Getting a shocking grade isn’t easy, especially the first time. But one of the most important skills you’ll learn in university is how to pick yourself up after you fail, and push yourself to the next level.

That’s why they call it “higher” education.

Secrets to success from the editor of Maclean’s On Campus

Photo courtesy of poptech on Flickr

This probably isn’t the advice your mother would give you. She’s going to tell you to get involved as much as possible, to do all of your readings and to stick with whatever degree you’ve chosen. But as someone who graduated with a master’s degree in 2010, I think I know better than mom about what works and what doesn’t. Here are the Top 10 things that I wish I’d known in first year.

1. Meet your professors in person.

Guess how many e-mails a professor who teaches your 600-student course receives each week? It’s a lot of e-mails. That’s why it’s important to make personal connections by visiting them during office hours or by asking them questions after a lecture that particularly grabbed your interest.

Continue reading 10 things I wish I’d known in my first year of university

Don’t make the mistakes I did.

By any objective measure, I was a very successful undergraduate student. I earned A’s in nearly all my courses, won awards and scholarships, and was accepted to all the graduate programs I applied to.

Still,  over twenty years after I first enrolled in university, I am painfully aware of things I could have done better. Since some of you are preparing even now to begin university in the fall, I thought I would share a few thoughts on what I would do differently if I had it to do over again.

1. Take advantage of language instruction. As an undergraduate, I made two half-hearted attempts at French courses (the second of which landed me with the only C I ever got), partly because I thought that’s what smart English Canadians did, and partly because I needed a second language to get my honours degree in English. But like many of my own students do today, I endured the courses; I did not embrace them. Looking back, I shudder to think how much French I could have learned over those two years if I had really worked at it. And if I wasn’t prepared to work at French, I should have tried something else. Today, working as a scholar of the Renaissance, I could sure use more than my high school Latin.

2. Read everything. In my undergraduate years especially, I took pride in getting good grades without reading everything on the syllabus. I knew exams gave you your choice of questions, and I was naturally clever, so I could dodge and weave around what I didn’t know. But I now realize that every book unread is a whole series of missed opportunities, partly for what is in the book, and partly for developing the open-minded discipline that comes with reading what needs to be read.

3. Have more humility. In my first-year English course I was assigned a book about essay writing, which I bought, but promptly tossed aside. After all, essay writing had always been my thing in high school. Surely that book was for other people who had done worse than me in schools easier than mine.  And then the B papers started to come back. Gradually, I came to learn what a university A-level paper was like and I wrote plenty of them, but I could have saved myself a lot of anguish if I had been less cocky.

Coming soon: What I did right.

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Now more than ever, university recruiters have a responsibility to be honest with prospective students

The shine has come off the new academic year, and that means it’s time for universities to start visiting high schools across the country. For yours truly, it meant an 8-hour drive to Toronto from Lennoxville, ending at the downtown apartment I’ll call home until the end of October. From here, I’ll be canvassing the Greater Toronto Area, before heading west to Regina, Winnipeg and Vancouver.

While I’ve written previously about the high-tech ways in which universities pursue students, individual school visits remain incredibly important. A recent article in Ad Age talked about the multi-billion dollar ad campaigns schools like UCLA have undertaken to bring in more students. I finished the article convinced that marketing and advertising were of paramount importance in higher education. That is, until I read the comments section, in which “university people” talked about the fact that personal relationships remain the most important way they can help students choose a university. After all, students aren’t buying an iPod, or picking out a pair of shoes; they’re making a serious decision that will cost upwards of $40,000 and have a lasting impact on their career, lifestyle, and friendships.

With these weighty things in mind, I rocketed out of the parking garage early Friday morning, bound for Upper Canada College. I should mention that if you are lucky enough to come across Bishop’s Dodge Caliber – affectionately nicknamed the “Gaitermobile” – feel free to wave. I arrived at UCC, set up my banner and promo materials, and proceeded to have a great discussion with UCC’s Head of Guidance, David Matthews. The guidance counsellors I met with at UCC, North Toronto, and Branksome Hall reminded me of the pressure GC’s are under on a daily basis. As senior students shift their attention toward choosing a university, counsellors are inundated with requests for assistance. They are responsible for helping students recognize the school that would best serve their long-term goals, even if those goals may shift over the four years the student is away. It’s a daunting task, to say the least. Thankfully, I think the students at the three schools I visited are in good hands, with people like David Matthews and Susan Bates aiding them in this important decision.

So what did I learn in my first week? I think, more than ever, university recruiters have a responsibility to be honest with prospective students. In today’s economy, universities are going to fight to bring students in. With the demographic dip looming for university-age Canadians, the battle will continue to be fierce.

Don’t get me wrong: If I think you’re the kind of person who should attend BU, I’ll do everything I can to make sure you end up there. But if you’re looking for a program or experience unavailable in Lennoxville, I’m not going to waste your time or tuition dollars convincing you of something you’ll likely reject in the end. As a student heading off to university, ask your guidance counsellors for help finding the right fit, so that you can build a short list of schools right away. Once you build that list, have a frank discussion with the recruiters from that university about your goals, priorities, and the life you want to live both during and after university. From there, you can start to get some idea of which school would best fit your needs.

That’s all for this morning. See you out there!

Facebook friending is the new handshake

1. If you move away from home, you’ll miss your parents for the first five minutes. Maybe.
2. Your first-year grades are meaningless but maybe you want to crack a book open once in a while?
3. Male bravado may be tacky but hey, that never stopped anyone.
4. Frosh Week can be obnoxious and humiliating with overzealous enthusiasm but it’s an excellent way to make friends, so go on and build that human pyramid!
5. Nobody cares about anything you ever did in high school. No one is impressed that you wrote the school’s winter production or that this one time, you made a killer joke and the most popular boy in your class laughed. (I’ve tried this, I HAVE TRIED THIS.)
6. Not everyone drinks. Some people read. Sometimes they study. Some smoke. Variety is the spice of life.
7. Engineering students all have a creepy symbiotic and almost inappropriate relationship with each other. They paint their bodies, duct tape each other to lamp posts in busy city squares and march down crowded sidewalks playing horns. Avoid.
8. Half-Baked is really an exceptional film under the right circumstances.
9. The person next to you is probably just as nervous as you are.
10. “Friendcest” will become the dirtiest word in your lexicon.
11. You’re right, I bet you and your high school boyfriend are, like, so in love and you’re totes going to make this long distance thing work and you’re going to get married one day and walk down the aisle to Metric wearing your favorite gold lycra tube top from American Apparel. No, no, I’m the idiot.
12. “Hey, do you want to go play some beer pong?” doesn’t mean it’s a date.
13. You might change your major or you might change your school or you might change your friends, and none of it is such a huge deal.
14. My brother taught me this and for some people more than others, it’s vital to pay attention to: Try to suspend whatever disdain you may have for certain groups of people for the sake of making a friend or two. You can’t roll your eyes at all of the people all of the time and expect to get away with it. (That said, you can’t be friends with everyone, so pick your battles.)
15. Don’t take any advice.

– Photo by Matthew Braga –

For serious academic issues or advice, go somewhere reliable

I’ve seen students in a wide variety of bad situations.  In a very large proportion of them, some way or other, their friends seem to factor into the equation. A student buys an essay online or otherwise blatantly plagiarizes and the first words out of his mouth are about how his friend did it once and was never caught. Or a student misses the deadline to drop a course or defer an exam and again she seems to think her friends’ ideas on the subject are relevant. Or it’s something as simple as a really bad or failing grade in a course – for a student who is often in academic trouble to begin with – and he’s all upset because his friend said it would be easy. I’ve heard almost every variation on the theme and one thing remains constant. The friend is always wrong.

There are so many misconceptions out there, and academic urban legends to debunk, that it’s pretty much pointless to even try. My favorite is the claim that if your housemate dies while you are in school you get an automatic A in every course. I’ve heard that one from multiple people at multiple institutions. Do I even need to clarify it isn’t true? But usually it’s something more insidious than that. Academic rules and policies are pretty complex and they vary from place to place. Most students really don’t know much about them, other than the rumors traded in the hallways and among friends. I don’t mean to fault anyone for this. In a complex institution it’s natural to be fuzzy on a lot of the details and to fill in what you don’t know based on rumor and guesswork. Everyone does it.

Sooner or later, however, those rules do matter. I don’t wish serious problems on anyone but four years is a long time and the odds are strong that you’ll need some real advice at some stage. So please, if that day should come, don’t rely on what your friends tell you or on the rumors and “common knowledge” facts circulated among your classmates. Read the academic calendar for yourself. Read your school’s website. Go to your Academic Advising center and ask someone. Go to your Registrar’s office. E-mail your program supervisor. If something important is going on, it’s worth a little time and effort to be sure of your situation.

Sometimes even the people who are supposed to know how things work can be wrong. Believe me, I know that, which is one of the reasons students sometimes think it makes just as much sense to listen to their friends. But if a university figure steers you wrong (and you’re actually listening to the person you’re supposed to be listening to) then you may have some recourse. I’ve won several academic appeals on that basis. So if the advice seems shaky or questionable get it in writing. And you can always get a second opinion too. There’s nothing to stop you from seeking advice from multiple sources.

Three o-week veterans give us their advice on how to survive frosh

I’ll admit it; I didn’t really participate in the university-sponsored orientation activities when I was in first year. Granted, I stopped by for the cheap food and free pens, but when the circle-sitting and name games started, I knew I had to leave.

Last year, however, I applied to be a Frosh leader (called a “ROC” at Ryerson) and by some administrative error (I kid, of course) I was accepted. I conceded to the idea that this shiny new line on my resume would cost me four days of nausea-inducing icebreakers and embarrassing Ryerson cheers. I was pleasantly surprised, however, and in the end I had an amazing time.

I think my good fortune had a lot to do with the fact that my co-ROC, Chen, and I were given a fantastic group of first-years.  We seemed to bond almost instantly, taking in all the O-Week activities and discovering a few of our own (including an impromptu visit to Toronto’s Stag Shop and exploring Chinatown’s underground eats.).

For incoming students, O-Week can be an invaluable experience. Katie Blodgett and Jason Grossman, two of Ryerson’s O-Team members, certainly think so. I posed some questions to these orientation-enthusiasts to find out a little more about what’s planned for this year. Though Katie and Jason refer specifically to Ryerson’s O-Week, you’ll find that many of their responses hold true for Frosh Week festivities at universities all across Canada. I’ll be popping in my own responses at well—just to provide the perspective of someone not actually employed by the university.

Katie Blodgett is the Human Resources Assistant for Ryerson’s Orientation Team and a Radio and Television Arts student.

Jason Grossman is the Events Assistant for Ryerson’s Orientation Team and a Politics & Governance student.

(Robyn Urback is a lowly Frosh leader)

Q: Anyone who’s seen a bad 80s college flick assumes that the nighttime dorm scene is where the real Orientation action happens. Why should first years bother coming to the organized daytime events?

Katie: The daytime events are great because we hold events that will help first-years get to know Ryerson better. Also, night-time parties are all going to be the same with the same types of people. The daytime events provide the opportunity to meet all sorts of different people.

Jason: Yeah, those movies are pretty cheese and lame.

Robyn: This way, you’ll have stories you can actually tell your parents about.

Q: Will there be beer?

Katie: Nope, all of our events are dry events. The pub night is the one exception, but there is a wristband policy in effect.

Jason: Nope. Having beer involved in activities just creates more risks. Plus, almost all first-years are underage, and we don’t roll like that at Ryerson.

Robyn: Before you ask: no, I’m not going to buy you beer. C’mon, we were all 18 once. You’ve got to be a little more creative than that.

Q: Be honest, is Orientation Week just for keeners?

Katie: Kind of the opposite, I’ve found that the majority of students who come out to O-Week are shy and looking to meet new friends.

Jason: Absolutely not. Orientation is a great opportunity for first-years to get to know campus so they can they hit the ground running when school starts.

Robyn: I think “keeners” would be appalled by some of the things we get up to.

Q: OK then, are the Orientation leaders big keeners?

Katie: Again, not really. It’s mostly just regular students looking to meet new people!

Jason: If by “keeners” you mean “student leaders who love to have fun, help people and volunteer their time,” then yes, I guess they are keeners. But, they are keeners in every positive sense of the word.

Robyn: I am not a keener.

Q: The biggest myth about O-Week is…

Many students don’t really know what’s going on around them… until it’s too late.

With the recent flurry of new bloggers and introductory posts, it occurs to me that folks may not know where I’m coming from. I give a lot of advice around here. That’s kind of my thing. And I have very strongly held views on the subject of university. Those views, however, are not based solely around my own experiences and opinions. I’m not a typical student. The advice I give has far more to do with the students I’ve worked with over the years.

I wrote and published a book about What’s Wrong With University: And How to Make It Work For You Anyway (shameless plug). I guess that’s my major claim to credibility. But I didn’t wake up one day and decide to write a book about university. I just cared about the quality of my education and as a result I got interested in academic advocacy. I got myself elected to the board of my students’ union. For one year I was a department rep and for two further years I was Vice-President Academics – a full time executive position.

Something unexpected happened midway through my “career” in student politics. I thought academic advocacy would be about abstract issues – study space, rules and policies, the course calendar, and so on. That was part of it. But a lot of the time it was just students with problems. Sometimes individual students would come to me with their crises. Sometimes groups of students would approach me with shared concerns. Even policy debates are just about students and their problems. If we’re going to change the rules on probation and suspension, for example, what we’re really talking about is all the students who are in academic trouble, how they got there, and what we could do differently to help them dig their way out.

For the better part of my university career this is what I spent a lot of my time doing. I talked with a lot of students who were having a very bad time of things and I did what I could to help. Some ran afoul of academic misconduct policies – in other words they were accused of cheating. Some were failing courses, getting hoofed out of programs, or risked expulsion. In the case of international students that might even mean deportation. Some were merely struggling and were frustrated with their grades and performance. Often all students wanted was a quick fix that would stave off their most immediate problems. But even though a quick fix might be part of the solution there are still the underlying issues.

Every problem, every consequence, has its roots in some earlier cause. The students who are cheating either don’t understand why the rules matter or think the whole thing is a scam or else they’re in such deep trouble in school they believe they have no choice. The students who are failing often hate their programs but feel, for various reasons, like they have no other options. I listened to students who were convinced, against all logic, that what they really needed to do was defer all of their exams for the third time in a row and somehow four months later it would be okay. Time and again I talked with students who couldn’t even be honest with their families about their struggles in school, so instead of finding support at home they only found more stress. I met a lot of students feeling frustrated, even angry, about their situations. Maybe they couldn’t put it into words, exactly, but they felt like something had gone wrong and they’d been misled. And I think that’s often true.