5 Best Habits for first year university students that just want to pass

1.       Turn up. Seriously. Go to lectures. You’ve got an expert sitting in front of you telling you what is in the text book (you know the one you haven’t read yet!)

2.       Read your text book. Or at least the conclusion page. Most texts nowadays have a page at the end of the book that sums up the entire chapter. At least read that.

3.       Start your papers at least a week before due date. This will at least get you brownie points with your parents, tutors, lecturers. Write out a dot point plan of what you will write, then just write a paragraph under each dot point. You’ll be half way there.

4.       Learn the key terms that relate to the topic. Open that text book again and highlight the key terms (some texts have these listed on the side of the margins to make it super easy for you)

5.       Reference everything. Buy the Monkey Love referencing app and get your referencing right.

Freedom Ride

I’m saddened to say that I hadn’t heard of the ‘Freedom Ride’ before. 

Everyone deserves the opportunity to study

I have always supported indigenous students in their journey to achieve a degree and because of this, I have many wonderful, amazing, talented indigenous friends, so any event that helps highlight their endeavours, I want to know about so I can support it. 

So I’m sad because a lot of my indigenous friends didn’t tell me about this wonderful event that happened 50 years ago. Why?

Basically, they hadn’t heard of it either. It was really a lifetime ago. 

So let me tell you quickly what the ‘Freedom Ride’ was and what it achieved. With a journey through northwest New South Wales in Australia a bus with two indigenous students and 28 non-indigenous students left Sydney University and travelled to towns including Dubbo, Walgett, Kempsey and Moree, to highlight the discrimination being experienced by indigenous students, not  only at university, but at public swimming pools, restaurants, public halls and clubs and societies in Australia.  

The original ‘Freedom Ride’ receive excellent media coverage, and due to this, the plight of indigenous people  was able to be heard.  

Many people joined the group.

Action was taken.

Voices were heard.

I’m certainly glad about that.

If you’d like to read more, here’s a link for you.

http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/fiftieth-anniversary-reenactment-of-freedom-ride-goes-north-to-fight-discrimination-against-aboriginal-people-20150218-13hl4l.html

Referencing. The bane of every student’s life really.

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

How many references have I cited in my life?

I remember my first week at uni.  I was a very dedicated monkey and wanted all my monkey family to be proud of me as I entered university life.

 

I went to all the scheduled classes on timetabling, wellbeing, stress reduction, library data base access, IT workshops, class allocations and of course writing and referencing.

The writing and referencing course was listed as ‘extremely’ important to attend, so attend I did.

I met a wonderful lady in this session, a friend that remained with me throughout my uni life and for some years after until we went our own ways. 

This two hour session was long, boring and gave us so much information about writing and referencing that it was just overwhelming.

There were many comments by the facilitator along the lines of ‘Don’t worry,  you’ll get the hang of this’ and ‘ Don’t worry, your lecturers and tutors will remind you about all this each week’.

I remember my new friend, at the end of the two hours, walking out, a little more frazzled than she was when she walked in, saying ‘Thank Heavens that’s over and we never have to hear about referencing again!’

How wrong she was.