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.

Universities and parents have a duty to educate

Photo by Dave Chidley/CP

From the editors of Maclean’s

Some predictions can be made with absolute certainty. The tides will shift. The sun will rise. And young university students will drink to excess.

From Tom Brown’s Schooldays to Animal House, exuberant drinking by underage students has long been a part of the experience of going away to school. Realistically, there is little society can do to change this fact of life. But what can we all do to cut down on the harm it may cause?

Last week, Canada’s university community was shocked by an orientation-week death at Acadia University in Wolfville, N.S. A first-year student from Calgary, just 19 years old, was found unconscious in a basement dorm room at the school suffering from severe alcohol poisoning. He later died in hospital. Fellow students told reporters he’d been playing a competitive drinking game called “flip cup” and had consumed an estimated 40 ounces of alcohol during the night.

This follows two student deaths at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ont., last year that the provincial coroner’s office attributed, in part, to a “culture of drinking on campus.” Both men, aged 18 and 19, fell to their deaths after drinking, one from a residence window, the other from the roof of a library.

The accidental death of a son or daughter is an unimaginable tragedy. But the death of a freshman student during their first few weeks away from home seems particularly difficult for any mother or father. While a university can never become a surrogate parent, it is nonetheless expected that campus residences will be a sufficiently safe place for teenaged students to live as they make their final strides to adulthood.

The recent deaths thus raise two difficult questions: who bears responsibility for instructing teenagers in the risks of alcohol abuse; and how should schools deal with students’ inevitable desire to party.

The obvious place to begin educating about alcohol is at home, as it is with most other topics. Someone needs to let every teenager know that drinking 40 ounces of alcohol in one night is reckless and dangerous behaviour, and parents are the obvious candidates. A full and frank discussion on drinking and its consequences is as necessary before heading off to school as packing sufficient underwear and pens.

In fact, many parents believe monitored underage drinking at home is the best way to teach teens about learning your limits. Depending on the situation and teen involved, this may make considerable sense, and be entirely legal. Of course there are serious risks to this sort of parental permissiveness as well. This month, an Orillia, Ont., mother found herself facing criminal charges in New York for providing alcohol to her 14-year-old son. After being served a few beers by his mother while camping, he wandered off at night and drowned.

As for universities, most now recognize an important obligation to protect the youngest students from their wildest instincts, at least during those first few days away from home. The initial week of school was once a time of unremitting partying. Today many universities have banned alcohol entirely from campus during this time. Most have also changed the name from frosh week to orientation week to make this distinction clear.

Going further, some forward-thinking universities have declared first-year residences to be dry throughout orientation week. The University of Guelph has had such a policy in place for the past two years. Where kids once showed up at university residence with a case of beer among their luggage, Brenda Whiteside, assistant vice-president for student affairs at Guelph, says those days are now over. The new week-long regime “sends a strong message about creating a new culture in our residences,” she says. During orientation week at Acadia, on-campus activities were alcohol-free, but the residences were not, as the flip cup games attest.

It seems reasonable that every Canadian university should set an appropriate tone for the school year by eliminating alcohol from first-year residences during orientation week. And some schools should be encouraged to experiment with the more drastic step of banning alcohol entirely from all first-year residences—particularly given that a large number of those students will be underage. This might even become a marketing advantage, at least from the perspective of nervous parents.

University students will drink, and it is naive to ignore this fact. But parents and universities—and the students themselves, who have an equal responsibility to look out for one another—must find ways to make our campuses safer, regardless of life’s inevitabilities.

Residences are full. Courses are too. Welcome to first year.

Photo courtesy of Tulane on Flickr

On your first day of class, you could find yourself scanning the room for an empty seat.

The University of Regina has grown by 11 per cent this year. The University of British Columbia (Okanagan) has grown 12 per cent year-over-year. And Ontario welcomed its biggest first-year class ever this fall.

Are universities ready for the students?

Some schools have planned for the growth. Although they have 400 more students than they expected, McMaster University has added extra classes and created more study spaces to cope.

Thomas Chase, Provost and Vice-President (Academic) at University of Regina, told Maclean’s On Campus that Regina is ready too. He said that class sections are not expected to get any larger and that residences are expected to be nearly full, but no first-years have been turned away.

Things haven’t gone as smoothly elsewhere. The University of Guelph had to set up a deal with the local Best Western hotel to provide dozens of students with rooms after its residences filled up to capacity.  And although Carleton University opened the doors to its new residence building on Monday, the building will be under construction until at least the end of October. Many students who were promised a single room will find themselves with a roommate until the building is complete.

At the University of Alberta, some students complain that they are unable to enrol in mandatory classes after 300 extra students signed-up this year. There aren’t enough teachers to meet the demand.

But at least one school has a potential solution to the increase. Eric Bercier, of the University of Ottawa’s registrar’s office, said that his school raised admissions standards to cut down on the overwhelming number of applications it received this year. Even after hiring 250 new teachers in the past five years, there may not have been enough resources to go around. And so, they didn’t risk it.

Rudayna Bahubeshi is a fourth-year humanities student at Carleton University.

Study, research and procrastinate like never before!

Photo courtesy of kennymatic on Flickr

1) AbeBooks

There’s nothing worse than paying $100 for a book that’s going to make your life miserable (I’m thinking of you, Organic Chemistry). In some cases, you might think that you’re actually finding it interesting, but it’s probably Stockholm Syndrome. Once rescued from your hostage takers by the sweet December holiday break, you won’t want to see that book ever again.

That’s where sites like AbeBooks come in. You can buy used copies for a fraction of the regular price, or older editions that are even cheaper. In most cases, older editions are practically identical to new ones, except for a few diagrams. When you’re finished, sell the books back to the site.

Continue reading Five websites all students should bookmark

A warning to first-year students

Photo courtesy of il_Morta on Flickr

Residence has its upsides. You have a built-in social life, easy access to parties and somebody in your dorm is bound to have an Xbox. But here’s what else you have to look forward to:

1) You and your roommate aren’t just sharing a room.

You’re also sharing your food. And your toilet paper. And your toothbrush. Maybe in theory you don’t mind sharing your sleeping quarters and bathrooms with a complete stranger. But here’s the question that you need to ask yourself: will it bother you that Mr. Toothbrush is right next to Mr. Toilet? Every time they flush, your brush is in the blast radius. The lesson? Guard it closely.

2) 24-7 parties aren’t always a good thing.

Continue reading Residence: One giant cesspool of human interaction

Entertaining (but true!) advice from a third-year student

Photo courtesy of rofltosh on Flickr

There’s still over a month of summer vacation left, but as a soon-to-be freshman, the advice is already starting. Everyone is telling you what you need to do, talking about how you’re going to ‘find yourself’ in university, and prattling on about how you need to stay on top of the readings.

So we thought we’d provide you with some anti-advice. You know, the top five things you shouldn’t do in your first year. Here are the top five:

1) DON’T: Listen to the podcasts that your professor uploads after each lecture

It’s a slippery slope. At first it’s just a study tool,  a way to reinforce everything you heard during the lecture. After all, repetition is the best way to learn, right?

But the next thing you know, your chemistry class is no longer a lecture hall with hundreds of other students three days a week at 8:30. It’s a bedroom at 2:30 in the morning the day before the exam.

2) DON’T: Bring your laptop with you to the library

Stop kidding yourself. You won’t be using that laptop to research your lab report, or to write your essay, or to flip through the PowerPoint notes from biology class. You’ll be watching this video.

It’s much better to just bring your books.

3) DON’T: Use the word “including” in your 2,000 word term paper.

Why? Because “such as” is two words, cutting the required word-count effort in half. And if your word count is still coming up short, throw a chin-stroking “perhaps” or two and an: “As evidenced by…”

4) DON’T: Sit at the back of the lecture hall

Do you remember sitting at the back of the bus on the way to a field trip? The land of spit balls and minimal teacher intervention? The back of the lecture hall is a similar territory.

But unlike the back of the bus,  you’re not dodging paper airplanes — you’re surrounded by Tetris players. And unlike the front of the lecture hall, you’re not learning about valence states and atomic structure — you’re overhearing how wasted Jake was last night.

If you actually want to hear what the professor is saying, don’t sit in the back.

5) DON’T: Utter the words, “There’s no final exam, so this course will balance out my physics and chemistry courses.”

That’s a direct challenge to the Elective Gods. Their response is usually a 5,000 word essay about the juxtaposition between modern man in a consumer-driven society and the ambitions of Macbeth.

When you write an exam, it’s over after two hours. You either get a good mark or you bomb and then vow to change your study habits. Then you do pretty much the same thing for the next exam.

And that is much easier than an essay.

Do grade 12 students freak themselves out too easily?

Note: This post has been edited below.

Ditch the plan. Throw it in the dustbin, tie up the bag and take it to the curb. It’s not doing anyone any good.

It’s January. University applications for high school students are due next week. But the first round of acceptance letters have already gone out, so panic is settling in as the rat race kicks into high gear. High school students are now comparing letters, entrance scholarships and who was admitted where.

But the fact is this: Those who have done well to date are more likely to continue to do well. Those who have done poorly are less likely to get into university. And the statistics back it up.

The race has already been run – now it’s just a question of who gets to run the next leg.

In 2005, approximately 57,000 high school students were admitted to an Ontario university. Considering more than 328,000 high school students applied applications were received for university programs that same year, acceptance is anything but a given. In Ontario, students can apply to three schools for a flat rate of $120, and each additional school costs $40. The Globe and Mail reports that the average student submits 4.4 applications.

But that raises the real issue. Is it true that only 17 77 per cent of applicants are qualified to attend university? Or is it more likely that, despite the premier’s investment in post-secondary education there are still likely qualified students being turned away?

The situation is improving. Investments are being made. But for the time being, the annual high school panic session seems warranted.

Five reasons why university is a happy place

For some unexplained reason, lots of high school teachers describe university as a scary place. Sometimes, after assigning a ridiculous amount of homework, they’ll say something like “I’m just getting you ready for university.”

Yeah, sure.

Why not have a bulldozer smash half your house off before a tornado strikes, just so you’ll be “more adjusted to it.” You know, in case it ever happens.

There is a lot of work in university, but here’s the part your high school teachers aren’t telling you: for a million different reasons, university is way better than high school.

Here’s the top five:

5) You set the pace

How much homework do you have in university? To a certain extent, it’s up to you.

On the first day of classes, most professors give out a detailed course syllabus. There’s a list of readings and study questions, which help prepare you for the midterm and the final. In some courses there aren’t any assignments, essays, or research papers- for the whole semester, you’re preparing for two major tests.

Yeah, I know that doesn’t sound like a good thing. It might seem a bit scary to have your entire mark resting on two tests, but it gives you a lot of study flexibility. In university, you’re given lots of tools to succeed: in addition to a detailed schedule of readings, you’re often given study questions and practice quizzes. When you’re preparing for a midterm or exam, you’ll know exactly what you need to do, and you’ll know when you’re ready.

This might sound extremely lame, but in university you’re given a formula for success. There are a certain number of steps you need to take- reading the textbook, doing the study questions, looking over the practice quizzes- and then you’re ready.

4) Bully teachers are a thing of the past

In high school, everything depends on your teacher. It doesn’t matter if you normally love a certain subject: if your grade 12 biology teacher is a bully who decided on the first day of class that she simply doesn’t like your face, or the way you exhale, you’re not going to enjoy biology very much that year.

In university, things are different.

Sure, there are lots of professors who are worth seeking out because of their enthusiasm and engaging teaching style, and there are some professors who should be avoided at all costs because they’re boring, or make it clear they’d rather be anywhere else but standing there in front of 500 first-years.

But unlike in high school, your professor doesn’t determine whether you love or hate school. You’re an anonymous student in a sea of hundreds and hundreds of first-years. It’s never personal.

3) University is a safe-haven for nerds

In university, there’s room for everybody. If you want to party, there are definitely plenty of opportunities available. But if you’d rather study and get good marks, nobody will hold it against you.

2) Four months of summer vacation

May, June, July, August. Seriously, I’m not kidding.

Sure, most of us have part-time jobs year round, and full-time jobs during the summer. But four months away from school is still four months away from school.

1) Three day week? Totally possible.

In high school, you don’t have much control over your schedule. Once you’ve filled in all the mandatory courses, you get to choose between visual arts and music.

University is completely different. Depending on your program, you still have a certain number of mandatory courses. But there’s even wiggle room when it comes to these core courses: you can often choose between a one-hour lecture three times a week, or a three-hour lecture once a week.

And the rest is completely up to you.

University gives you a chance to pursue your interests and passions, with a range of courses spanning dozens of subject areas.

Or, if you’re anything like me, you can score a three day week.

In my first year, I managed to cram all three of my labs and my physics, chemistry and biology courses into a Monday, Wednesday, Friday schedule.

Of course, university is an opportunity to expand your horizons and challenge your ways of thinking. But why not expand your horizons while maintaining a three day week? Just something to think about.

And in later years, there’s always the possibility of a two day week…

-photo courtesy of dave_mcmt

For first-year students, the transition from high school to university can be difficult

If you’re a third-year student you probably won’t start thinking about the new academic year until mid-August − or maybe not even until the evening of September 6. Many first-year students, however, are getting nervous already, wondering what university is going to be like.

After having spoken to dozens of students and professors the verdict is in: it’s going to be really different than high school. But the news isn’t all bad. While there will be some difficult transitions, many parts of university life are much better than at high school. Students say there is less social pressure (it’s no longer cool to bully people), they like having freedom from parents and teachers who take attendance and university campuses offer limitless opportunities for having a great time. But the one thing that everyone agrees on: it is up to you to make your university experience a good one, and much more so than it was in high school.

This new-found responsibility to take care of oneself starts in the classroom. Rey Buenaventura, an academic advisor at Simon Fraser University, says, “No one is checking that they’ve done their homework. Nobody is checking on their attendance that closely. Sometimes students feel like there is no one who really cares about what they do, whether they even show up. That can be a problem.” By seeking out professors and TAs during office hours, setting up study groups with classmates and participating in seminars and class discussions, students can create a more meaningful connection with a class that may have 300 or 400 people in it − but it’s up to the student. “In a class of 500 students, the professor isn’t going to come to you; you have to go to the professor,” he says. “You can create your own experience.”

Some students, particularly those who went to a relatively small high school, feel like they get lost in the crowds of people. No longer do their professors know their name and they may spend the whole day on campus without running into anyone they know. But other students found this aspect of university life a relief. “It was easier to find people that shared similar goals, values and interests,” said Michael, a student at McMaster University. Kady, a McGill University student, says, “A big difference for me was the new establishment of myself. Coming into school without any connections to specific people, teams or clubs gave me the opportunity to reconstruct my McGill life exactly how I wanted it to be.”

For the experienced university students out there: what were the biggest differences you noticed between high school and university? How did you cope with the transition?

Ten tips for the common sense student

Lest we forget, going to university actually includes doing some homework. And as Todd Pettigrew pointed out, high school doesn’t always leave you prepared for what awaits when the mid-terms start popping up in October.

The work will be more difficult, generally, but first and foremost it will be different. The way classes are structured, the papers you are expected to turn in, and the marking schemes probably won’t be what you’re used to. And in order to avoid that reality-check (slash soul crushing) grade on the first assignment, there are a few basics tips I think can help you get prepared.

Now, these won’t ensure you pass your exams, nor will they even tell you how to write one. They’re just tips to cover your basics in the first couple weeks (particularly if you’re in arts), and they will seem like common sense – but it’s the kind of common sense I wish had occurred to me a bit earlier in my first year!

Step 1: Learn to use the library.

Unless your parents are librarians and you were reared on the Dewey decimal system, you will probably take a little while to get used to your school library. The trick is to do this early, not the day before your first paper is due.

You can get an upper-year student to show you how the library works, or you can ask a librarian (but be wary, the kindliness of university librarians is never a guarantee!) However, in many cases, you will just have to wander around for a while becoming steadily more impatient, frustrated and possibly sweaty, until the little numbers on the books mean something to you.

This means practice. Pick some books you actually want to read, and go find them. (Trust me, this will save you much first paper anguish.)

Step 2: Learn to use online journal databases.

This is just as important as the library these days. If your professor or the library holds an information session on how to find journals, or provides hand outs, pay attention. If you’re on your own, it’s time to ask around and do some digging on the library’s website (usually links are well marked or under FAQs.)

Unfortunately, if you go to say, Guelph, I can’t tell you where to look. I can just tell you it’s important that you find out.

Once you’re in to the journal database, try sites like JSTOR to help you find articles in multiple journals at once.

Step 3: Learn how to source your research.

This is a big one in university, and not only do you have to keep meticulous records of where ALL your research comes from you have to be able to reference them properly.

The two sourcing methods are APA and MLA. Before you ever write a paper, buy a basic book on essay writing, or print guides off the internet. For each essay, find out which one your prof prefers, and stick to it!

Here’s one to know before your prof tells you: never, ever use Wikipedia as a source!

Step 4: Go to every class. Sit near the front.

Technically, your professors are not taking a record of your attendance. That’s because you are the only one who will suffer if you don’t go. You may be tired, sick, or hung-over – but you’ll learn more just being there, even if you’re half asleep and drooling, then you will from the power point slides or some other kid’s notes. Because most of the time these won’t be legible, or will be full of unexplained graphs.