Tip 1 being anxious is ok You may even feel stunned being here. Its - PDF document

Tip 1 – being anxious is ok You may even feel stunned being here. It’s not something people like to admit but it’s true for a lot of people. Change causes anxiety. It is possible that may feel you have no control over your new environment and wish for the safety of your old life. This is ok! Remember that you have been successfully able to manage change in the past; otherwise you would not be here. UCD is a big place and it represents a major change in your life and it’s a challenge to adapt to the language, culture and environment of the campus. You have to do all this while at the same time trying to unlearn the rote methods you were taught in school and which are less relevant here. Students can feel overwhelmed at the beginning but I think it’s impor tant to tell yourself that history shows that you have the inner resources to manage this change. Perhaps you’ve noticed your anxiety level drop in the space of the last week – perhaps you need some more time. Tip 2 – Manage your expectations University can be a romantic notion and from the time when you applied to come here (or even before), you may have had an idea of what it might be like to study here. You may find that this idea has been challenged. It can even make you angry as you encounter the obstacle course and head-wrecker that is the registration system. A lot of you have gone from being a big fish in a small pond to being a little fish in an ocean. Allow for these psychological adjustments and give yourself time to adapt. Tip 3 – Get the balance right Coming to college represents freedom – freedom from home (for some), freedom from work, freedom from a small town, freedom from school. But along with freedom comes responsibility. You are a full-time student and you need to work life around your college commitments, not the other way round. T he road to Aisling’s and my office is paved with the stories of students who took all the freedom without any of the responsibility. Most (if not all) of you are over 18 – in the eyes of the State at least, you are old enough to get married so you are an adult in the eyes of the college. You are expected to behave as such. At the same time, we recognise that for the most part that you are coming from school and we are here to support you. So.......next slide Tip 4 – Don’t be an ostrich If you encounter problems (and most of you will), don’t bury your head in the sand and hope that it goes away. It might, nine times out of ten it doesn’t. You are a full -time student but you are also a person and you being to university all the complexity and challenges that come with being an adult. Just because you are a student does not mean that life in general has stopped. Life can intervene and throw you off kilter while you are here. If this happens, come and talk with one of us about what’s going on for you. Sometimes, all you may need is the space to rant. Maybe you need some practical assistance or perhaps you may need

some more ongoing support. But whatever the difficulty, addressing it early will go a long way to removing it. Tip 5 – Less Think, More Do! Based on some very real experiences I’ve had with students over the last few years, we’ve worked this one into our back of tips. Submitting your first assignment can cause all sorts of worry because you may not have any way of knowing how good it is, or ev en if it’s what the lecturer is looking for. So students stall – they procrastinate. They hold off on completing or submitting assignments because of this block. And when this happens, because a lot of assignments will be due around the same time, you can start to encounter backlog which can cause further anxiety. Our advice is to just go ahead and submit the work. Part of being in first year is not yet necessarily being confident around your own opinions so it’s very much an exploratory year. So just get the work in, get it out of the way and get some feedback on it. It’s all part of the process. Your essays will for the most part be based on your own opinions and having faith in our own views is something which tends to come later in your studies. Tip 6 – Beware the Rumour Mill You will hear many outrageous things on the UCD grapevine over the years – that you will get botulism if you jump in the lake, that you can’t graduate with a Library fine, that there is only room for one third of the class in second year so two thirds of you will fail, that if you fail one module, you’ll have to repeat the whole year, that there’s a ghost on the fifth floor of the Arts black. UCD has developed its own urban legends over time and some of them are humorous but some of them can cause problems. So don’t believe all you hear. How many times have we met students who say, “well I was talking to someone and she told me...........” Part of being an independent learner is finding things out for yourself so ask someone for clarification if you are unsure about something – it can save a lot of hassle. Tip 7 – Do subjects you enjoy Most of you will have decided what you will be studying in first year by now but some of you may be still unsure. Our advice – take subjects you will enjoy. Part of the beauty of an Arts degree is that you may not know what you want to do when you finish so it allows you to take new subjects. Of course, it makes sense to take subjects that you feel will give you prospects but there needs, I feel, to be a less future-driven aspect to it. Some of you will be taking teaching subjects because teaching is the current goal. Taking a non-teaching, third subject gives you a safe space to decide if teaching is actually for you. How many of you are taking Economics because you think you should, or because someone else thinks you should? I’m not saying don’t take Economics but your studies should not be all about the “shoulds” – doing subjects or modules you enjoy will have an impact on the rest of your coursework.

Tip 8 – Get Involved This tip is trotted out every year to new students, by the President, the SU, peer mentors. But what does getting involved actually mean? It doesn’t mean joining every club and society during Freshers’ week and then going to not one single meeting. It means that you are responsible for creating your own university experience. It means taking an active interest in what the next three years will mean to you. Do some research on what’s happening around campus. Be selective about which clubs and societies to join. Join those which appeal to you, either from direct experience or the fact that you’ve never done it before but your curiosity is piqued. If a club and society that caters for your tastes does not exist, create one! Take some risks – if the thought of running for class rep scares the bejezus out of you, then maybe that’s what you should do. What y ou do over the next three years will profoundly shape who you become for the rest of your life. It’s an immensely important and exciting time for you and it will be the quickest three years of your life. So get on board and start steering.