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UNIVERSITY
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If you're wondering whether or not to go to university, then all I can say is DO IT. There is no doubt about it, and any one will agree, that these are the best days of your life (basically because afterwards you have to start working). I would also urge you to live away from home - I didn't and I do regret it. I chose to stay at home to save money and reduce the pressure of starting at a new strange place and not being able to relax at home in the evening.
But being at home, you can never feel the same freedom as your peers living on campus - you are always thinking about catching that last bus/train home.
Times are getting hard for students, and if you are worried about finances, you could always spend just the first year living in and then return home for the rest of your course - something I didn't think of.
Depending on your course, you may find new found freedom in the amount of free time you appear to have. But don't be fooled. A degree course takes more than just attending lectures. The two key requirements for university students are self-motivation and organisation.
Lecturers will give you plenty of work to be getting on with - all of them - and it is up to you to do it.
Apart from coursework, lecturers will not chase you for work, and, without any self motivation, you will get behind in work. At the end of the year you may find yourself doing alot of catching up just before exams and increasing the already intense pressure that exams cause. In saying this, you may not have time to do everything set by lecturers, and you must use your own guidance on whether you understand a topic fully enough to skip some work, or if you really should practice.
Organistion is critical when attending university. Each module that you study will have its own nots, question, and coursework assignment. It is a good idea to keep these neatly filed at least to the point where you know where everything is.
As a warning, lecturers do have a pact and they all set coursework at the same time. This means that deadlines bunch up at several points during the term, so try your best to spread the work over the whole term. Inparticular, try to avoid rushing to finish work at a deadline. Everyone else tends to do that and if you're unlucky you will find all the relevent books in the library on hire and all the computer terminals taken.
On-top of this, if you're living away from home, you will need to keep track of expenditure and home affairs.
So all-in-all it is a good idea to keep everything organised. It may take those extra minutes at the end of the day, but it does save you the stress and panic when things begin to get ontop of you.
But life is not all doom, gloom and work. Being at university offers you far more things to do than you will ever need. Your guild will always be organising events and there's always the sporting facilities and, if you're really good, you may make to university team.
Sporting links to: the premiership, the FA, cricket, rugby union and sumo wrestling!!
So if you're now convinced that higher education is the thing for you then take a look at what being a student does to you by reading the student pages made by other nutters at Aston.
You can check out what I do in my spare time by glancing across my personal projects.
