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Your university/college experience


GivenToFly

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What was (or is, for those who are students at this moment) your experience with University (or college, for American posters)? I'm asking that mainly because I'm almost done with my degree (about a month left, but then I'm doing a masters so I'm not entirely done with studying) and, while I'm happy with the practical aspects (regarding the degree, knowledge attained and career prospects) the so called "uni life" (or college life, if you prefer) didn't quite happen as advertised.

So just, I don't know, talk about your university experience, reminisce or whatever...

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To be honest I found it frustrating. So many people are there and really shouldn't be. It felt like I was one of few that took it seriously.I did it when I was older which probably had something to do with it.

As for the social side of things, I really didn't have that much free time. All in all it was frustrating but rewarding.

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I'm only in first year, doing a biology degree, but I was generally shocked at how easy the semester one exams were.

I just started revising a week before the exams started and went over my 15 lectures worth of notes per module and they were a doddle.

Easier than high school even, although I never really revised for them to be honest, and just scraped the grades.

I got into a relatively good university (Newcastle, which is 20th or 12th in the English tables depending on which newspaper you read) and expected other people to be real 'try-hards', but it turned out that's simply not the case. It's a piss about and everybody knows it. Exams are very similar every year, so just take a look at the practice exam questions and your sorted.

The social side is great though, and I think that is what attracts people the most. People absolutely love a drink here, with many going out 3-5 times a week. Basically shows you how hard it is, when you can come in hungover to lectures or simply not even bother going, and just watching the lectures online at your convenience.

I think uni' is a bit of a con really, not just in the sense that you will probably come out with no real applicable skills and just minor knowledge, but that you really don't even need to turn up to any lectures (apart from practicals) as ALL the material is uploaded to a 'Re-Cap' service, which allows students to download Powerpoint files or screen videos and audio of a lecture.

But hey, you gotta what you gotta do to get any sort of 'head-start' in this life. I also actually enjoy education which is a bonus, it's just a farce.

Edited by oxocubeingravy
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Guest gunns5

its pretty good so far, met some cool people,

if I could summarize it, its been interesting, exciting in moments as well as stressful.

thats about the gist of it for me so far

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I'm at Uni while I write this, lol.

First semester for me. Took a few weeks to get used to it, but it's been pretty good so far. Haven't had my exams yet so we'll see how that goes.

I'm hoping that some subjects get more interesting ay a higher level, Intro to Sociology hasn't got me on board with the whole thing.

Edited by FuddMckagan
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Simply put, the past 3 years have been the worst of my life. I try not to talk about my personal life on here a whole lot, but I don't see the harm here.

Academically, some of it has been great, and some of it not so much. I'm a music education undergrad, just wrapping up my third year. To be honest, my education courses have been a fucking joke. I have learned nothing about being an effective teacher in my time here, though I have learned that I'll probably hate my job every day when I go in to teach and wish I'd done something else with my life (I've literally had teachers tell me that). However, my music classes have been great. I never would have imagined as a freshman that i'd be playing the saxophone repertoire I'm play now as a junior. I just completed my junior recital a few weeks ago and it went great, including the "standards", as well as some 20th century atonal music I've been delving into. For my senior recital, I'm currently working on a John Cage quartet piece, another "standard" alto sonata, a 12-tone sextet piece, and an atonal solo piece with extreme extended range (altissimo), multi-phonics, quarter-tonality, singing while playing, and multi-harmonics. 3 years ago going into college predominantly as a jazz player, I never imagined I'd be able to read a piece notated like this, let alone perform it:

al27003_02.jpg

The social life has just been horrible, and I really don't want to get into any of that. But in a nutshell, I've been betrayed by a lot of my friends and just mistreated in general.

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Mine has sucked so far because I've wound up going to the Community College's smallest campus (small enough that it's part of a fucking strip mall) that offers next to no classes. I've been taking completely random classes in a half-hearted attempt to at least get a Liberal Arts/Gen. Ed. degree to go somewhere else.

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Guest Len B'stard

i went for about 6 weeks and quit. i was never built for school, i'm difficult to teach, as soon as it was out of secondary school and it became a case of like, y'know, trunacy ain't a concept anymore i was just fucked, that was too much responsibility to give me at age 16, too much to expect me to just turn up on my own accord and like, i jus failed all my A levels, i think i got a D in film and and N and a U for English Lit and History (cuz i jus basically never turned up...ever sat an exam on a book you ain't read? Funny :lol:)

Managed to get in and do Film and Media or something, was a waste of time though, turn up on the freshers week thing and they're handing out johnnys and telling you what pubs to go to, that was the fuckin end of my scholastic career, i just never got out of the pub, was straight pratted for 6 weeks, just off my tits the whole time and then at the end it was like, look, this is a waste of time, the only thing i'm gonna get out of this is a pickled liver so i might as well just fuck off back home and get a job and make myself useful...so i did.

They weren't even gonna let me in cuz i didn't have the grades but they asked for a sample of work you've done so i sent em a script i wrote for a 6 minute short and i was in. Silly now i look back at it, got in to do the thing even though i weren't strictly qualified, could've not been a cunt about it and knuckled down and applied myself and made something out of nothing but alas, i was more interested in a pint of Pride.

Edited by sugaraylen
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To me, college has been a love/hate, wonderful and awful. I have learned a whole lot, though. I would say 70% of college's real value is in the extra shit, not the classes, but I mean the guest lectures, the student organizations, using the various facilities to the max, exploring the library and research resources. The classes fucking suck. They always sound interesting and/or useful in the course catalog and almost never are. I learned some stuff from the classes, but almost nothing from the lectures, which were mostly a useless waste of time. Using other materials and collaborating with other people is where almost all of my class learning came from.

Unfortunately, the classes are what earn you the degree and what you are mostly paying for, and they take up the most time and effort and are basically a drag. It's very frustrating because of all the other facilities, resources, and lectures, etc. that are staring you in the face all day. At times I would say fuck it and spend more time on that stuff than I should have and then lost ground in the classes. The classes are valuable for the degree but the other stuff is what's of true value for your real intellectual growth and growth as a person. Plus, things like student organizations, if they run well and if you take real leadership and responsibility in them, teach you a great deal about working with others and running some sort of enterprise, and are much better than what the classes teach you.

As far as the social life, for me, not as advertised and it has basically sucked, although that is not to say that I don't value the friends that I do have because they are great.

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I'm only in first year, doing a biology degree, but I was generally shocked at how easy the semester one exams were.

I just started revising a week before the exams started and went over my 15 lectures worth of notes per module and they were a doddle.

Easier than high school even, although I never really revised for them to be honest, and just scraped the grades.

It's a piss about and everybody knows it. Exams are very similar every year, so just take a look at the practice exam questions and your sorted.

If your degree is anything like mine there's a good chance you will change your mind later on. (I'm doing an Economics degree at University of Essex.) Year 1 was really easy and first term tests were pretty easy in all modules throughout the three years. But by finals it gets a bit more challenging. And with the second year shit will get real. There's a reason why year 1 doesn't count toward your degree at all.

I got into a relatively good university (Newcastle, which is 20th or 12th in the English tables depending on which newspaper you read) and expected other people to be real 'try-hards', but it turned out that's simply not the case.

Same problem here. The institution has some pretty good departments (top 5 basically in social sciences - Economics, Sociology, Government) but even there the standards of entry are very relaxed. So you've got very good teaching, some very smart students but then there are also so many tremendously stupid people around! The reason for that is it's expanding at breakneck speed, it's still a very small university and it's desperately trying to grow, there's a lot of investment going in, but you also gotta take in more students. Many more! So they've got no standards really, if you wanna get in you're welcome to. Until it builds up a trademark to match its teaching and research quality it's forced to take in lots of morons.

And the tables newspapers publish are not a very good guide. It's all about individual departments. All universities have their strong departments and their weak departments. And it's gonna do you no good if you're say, in the 10th best uni overall but you're in a department that's 59th in the country.

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Loved it, but not the typical experience. Started uni in September of 2001. I liked it really. Cool classmates, easy life, lots of free time. Good parties. Funny thing is, I enjoyed it mostly with my friends I already had. They started uni around the same time as me. Same city, same uni, different buildings, different education path. But yeah, it was a blast. We all came from a medium-sized town about 30 minutes from the city where uni was. Made some cool new friends too. It was just... lots of free time, lots of fun, getting by with minimum effort. Pretty careless.

Then, somewhere along the line, I graduated. February 2006 to be exact. It was kind of a shock to me. All of a sudden it was just... over. Never really though about it or realized it until then. But from there onward it'd be jobs, responsibilities, less free time etc. Took me a while to really adjust to that. Started looking for a job in late March, got one in April. Downside was it started in September (2006). So I had some small mediocre jobs in the meantime. To adjust. When I started to work the shock was pretty big. I liked work instantly, but I had a hard time still seeing my friends as often, having to go home early on weekdays. It really tired me out. Then I got used to it and found my way. It was fine. But it took a while. And I still had (have) some regrets about not stretching it out more. Enjoying it more.

But yeah... it was weird to realize it was over. I still miss it, despite really liking where I am in life. I just miss that care-free party and fun all day and all of the night attitude. A good friend of mine finally graduated last February. Took him almost 10 years to get his degree. Not that he couldn't do it. He's very smart actually. He just did the absolute minimum not to get kicked out and stretched it as long as he could. In the last year or so it started to really bother him. Especially because his girlfriend (who studied medicine) was already finished and supporting him. We had some interesting talks around that time. He really envied me for what I'd accomplished since and getting it all done in time. I really envy him for basically living the life as long as he could.

The ideal path was probably somewhere in the middle.

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I've been very lucky and loved my time at university - although do appreciate that not everyone will have had such a good time. A lot of it appears to be what you make of it, and I was very pro-active to ensure I was involved in as much as possible and trying out loads of new things, which has meant I've really flourished in an environment where I can nurture everything, including my purely academic interests.

But, it does require that effort - and it isn't for everyone, but you can't know that until you try it and stick it out!

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If your degree is anything like mine there's a good chance you will change your mind later on. (I'm doing an Economics degree at University of Essex.) Year 1 was really easy and first term tests were pretty easy in all modules throughout the three years. But by finals it gets a bit more challenging. And with the second year shit will get real. There's a reason why year 1 doesn't count toward your degree at all.

Of course I expect it to get harder in stage 2 and 3. I would like it too even. But to be completely honest, I've looked at the module outlines for next year and modules don't appear to be that different to stage 1.

They have the same structure, with a massive percentage of coursework which is ridiculously simple. No different to high school - maybe even easier. A whole module is completed in the summer over one week of ecology surveys...

Stage 2/3 may have more information in the modules, but it's all just an extra layer of knowledge on top of what we already know. Also, certain modules are also known to be easy; I know for a fact nobody got under 70% in plant biology 3 (stage 3 module) because of its relative ease - told to me by the module leader himself.

And the tables newspapers publish are not a very good guide. It's all about individual departments. All universities have their strong departments and their weak departments. And it's gonna do you no good if you're say, in the 10th best uni overall but you're in a department that's 59th in the country.

I know tables aren't accurate, I just wanted to give people a relative view on the standard of the university. You would think the higher standard would push its students further, but that doesn't seem to be the case.

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I did awful in high school, never really tried, and barely graduated. From there I went to community college, went to school full time and worked part time. At first I was alright with it, but after a while the stress got to me and I gave up much like I did in high school. I'm sure this'll sound immature but I absolutely hate sitting in a classroom, I hate force motivating myself outside of a classroom to work on homework, I just can't do it. I'm incapable. I gave up on college all together this past semester after 4 years of attending part time. Waste of my fucking time and money. I envy those who know exactly what they want to do with their future and can comfortably live taking classes full time, doing everything they're suppose to do. I could never do that.

I did live in East Lansing (home of Michigan State University) last year while taking part time classes at LCC, that was fun.

Edited by sweetness
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I'm on my Biochemistry undergad degree and...

...it's work, work.... oh! And more WORK! @_@

I'm revising for my final year exams next week right now and my brain feels like it'll overload with information (I come on this forum for the usual procrastination). Regardless, it's been a fun run...

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I'm on my Biochemistry undergad degree and...

...it's work, work.... oh! And more WORK! @_@

I'm revising for my final year exams next week right now and my brain feels like it'll overload with information (I come on this forum for the usual procrastination). Regardless, it's been a fun run...

I've done an introductory biochemistry module over the first 2 semesters, and that was hard enough! Just shit-tonnes of information to digest.

Don't think I could handle a full degree on it.

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I'm on my Biochemistry undergad degree and...

...it's work, work.... oh! And more WORK! @_@

I'm revising for my final year exams next week right now and my brain feels like it'll overload with information (I come on this forum for the usual procrastination). Regardless, it's been a fun run...

I've done an introductory biochemistry module over the first 2 semesters, and that was hard enough! Just shit-tonnes of information to digest.

Don't think I could handle a full degree on it.

Yeah, they expect use to learn everything! It's really interesting but heavy on the details. I wish it was just all structural biology, that I can handle.

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