10 Tips for your First 10 Lectures
Welcome to our final Freshers’ Week special, and arguably my favourite because I love a good tips & tricks article. Today’s is quite simple, yet incredibly helpful as I for one definitely went into my first week of lectures a bit blind which I’m hoping to prevent for you! The first week of lectures can be quite stressful as you’re learning to find your feet in the academic side of uni and, fair warning, the chances are that you won’t properly find your feet for a while - but that’s okay! Articles similar to this one will continue to pop up over the course of this semester to help you on your way. Regardless, this week’s tips will certainly help with getting you to where you need to be, on time, and ready to go, so here are my 10 tips for surviving your first 10 lectures.
MIA’S TOP 10 TIPS FOR YOUR FIRST 10 LECTURES:
Don’t show up on time, be early! - I made this mistake for my very first lecture and ended up having to sit front row, so don’t do what I did! University is quite different from school where because your timetable isn’t nearly as full and there’s (for most universities) a decent gap between lecture slots, getting to a lecture early is the standard. For most of my lectures, we run a 45 minute slot from the start of the hour, which means that arriving 10-15 minutes before your lecture is pretty standard! Find yourself walking in the door 5 minutes before start and you’ll discover it’s already quite busy, and walking in dead on time? Odds are the lecture’s already starting and you’ll need to do the walk of shame all the way down to the front of the lecture theatre (avoid this at all costs). So, heed my warning! Be early!
Always check that your laptop/tablet is actually charged before going - I’ve made this mistake more times than I’ll care to admit and most lectures halls don’t cater for when you forget to charge your device = sitting there awkwardly with nothing to really do for almost an hour. Always make sure that you’ve charged whatever you’re using during your lectures overnight (if this is a notebook then, obviously, you don’t need to charge it - don’t start a fire please) and if you know you have a full day of lectures ahead of you, bring your charger to campus!
Know where you’re going - It does seem kind of obvious (and don’t feel bad if you get lost, everyone does), but feeling like you know your way around can do wonders for helping you get to places on time and not feeling ridiculously stressed. Most universities will either have an app that contains a campus map, or have one available somewhere on their website, so make sure to find it before the week begins! Also, it’s highly likely that your lectures will be scheduled in the same/similar places each time, which makes this particular tip useful for the start of semester, but once you get the hang of it you’re all good!
Find someone to sit with - Odds are, you’ve met and made friends with a few people on your course during Freshers’ Week so go find them in your lectures! Having people to sit with always makes the first few lectures a little less nerve-wracking, but be careful and don’t get too distracted by chatting because your lecturers definitely won’t be afraid to call you out!
Try to be prepared - Nobody can force you to prepare for a lecture, nor can anyone expect you to know everything that’s going to come up, but it is a good idea to at least have a general sense of what the lecture you’re attending is about before you walk in the door. Having an idea of what you’re walking into not only prevents you from being caught off guard, but it also helps you to understand what’s going on much faster because you’re already on the right track!
Keep your notes organised - I personally use Notability and love it (as a former GoodNotes addict), but any way that works for you to keep all of your work organised is a must! Whether it’s having all of your notes for one module in the same place, or having different notebooks for different subjects, having a system to keep you organised during your degree not only makes your life at the time easier but also your life in the future when you need to refer back to something (which I guarantee you will)!
Wear layers during Winter - It’s always a hit and miss with what the temperature will be in a lecture theatre and sometimes, they’re blisteringly hot. Whilst it might be freezing outside, I can guarantee that once you walk into the sauna of a lecture theatre you’re going to want to be able to shed some layers in order to not sit in a puddle of sweat, so make sure to wear easy layers to take off whether that be your winter coat, a scarf or a thick jumper.
Always put your phone on silent mode and make sure you don’t have any alarms! - It’s happened (thankfully never to me) so many times during lectures that someone’s phone will ping or a stupidly loud alarm will go off and whilst it’s really not that big of a deal (everyone forgets a couple minutes later), it’s always the type of embarrassment you want to avoid, especially at the start of the year when you’ve got enough going on, so make sure you check your phone before heading into your lectures.
Have a dedicated uni bag - almost everyone I know has a uni bag that they use for their lectures, going to the library or going to seminars, and then other bags that they use for the gym or other activities. Not only does it ensure that your laptop won’t get dirty from your running shoes (for example), it also means that you won’t ever forget any essentials you need to have with you for lectures (I’ll be doing an article on my bag essentials next month so keep an eye out for that)!
Don’t just copy the lecture slides - my final tip of the day, and an important one at that. The unfortunate thing about lectures is that to get something out of them, not only do you have to actually pay attention, but you also need to understand what’s going on and the worst way to do that is to copy the slides which is for a couple of reasons. It means that you’ve just read and highlighted the information on the screen, not actually understood it in a deeper way and whilst it feels like you’ve done something by copying them into your own notes, this is a complete fallacy that you will get caught out on later when revising for exams. I’ll go more into detail about working during lectures in a mini sometime, but for now my advice is to write a question from what you’re reading, don’t write what you’re reading. For example, if they’re talking about the fact that Sally wore red shoes on Sunday because she wanted to stand out, don’t write that down, ask ‘what shoes was Sally wearing on Sunday and why?’ - I do this for all of my lectures and swear by it so trust me, you’ll get a lot more out of it and your memory will thank you.
And so we’ve reached the end of our final Freshers’ Week special! Hopefully you’ve found some useful tips in amongst it that you can apply to your upcoming lectures, or even those that have already begun, and have enjoyed the week of bonus articles!! We’ll be returning to regular scheduling next week so keep an eye out on Tuesday for the weekly article and don’t forget to sign up to the newsletter!
Comment below if you have any other questions about getting through your lectures, I know I had a lot, and remember that you can always email with any other questions you’ve got and we’ll get back to you as soon as we can.
Have a lovely weekend and beginning of the new week (my first week of lectures for this year too!) and as always, thank you for being here. Keep refining.
Mia