How to Succeed At University--Canadian Edition. Danton O'Day

      Next, try to fit in the courses that suit your interests. It is important to take courses related to your area of interest. In fact, you generally will find that you do best in such courses because when you enjoy the material learning is easier. However, by including diverse courses you will discover that you are more marketable than the person restricted to one area of interest. For your overall survival it would be smart to take some English and/or French, which will enhance your ability to communicate with others. However, the final selection of courses rests with you.

      The Big Hurdle

      If you study this book and successfully complete your first year at university, you will pass each subsequent year and with each year your marks will get better. But you’ll have to continue to follow the rules.

      What is the big hurdle? It’s your first year at university. This is the biggest challenge of all and for many reasons. The major one is freedom. Believe it or not, freedom is bad. Well, at least it can be for many first-year university students.

      Why? They don’t know how to handle their newfound freedom. It’s too much for them; it’s overwhelming. There’s no one to tell you what to do or when to do it. There will be lots of assignments to do, but no one is going to check to see if you are doing your work. If you get a zero on your work, no one is going to worry. That’s your problem. If you don’t use your freedom properly, you will be one of the multitudes of first-year students who, as the end of their first academic year approaches, wonder where the time went. A simple question will form in your mind: “Why didn’t I study a little harder?” Sometimes studying seems painful, but it’s more painful to get poor grades or to have to repeat a year’s work.

      Attendance is not taken at lectures. Usually attendance is not taken at tutorials or laboratories either except when, because of the expense of operating such facilities, attendance is compulsory so that materials are not wasted. As a rule, though, no one will know or care whether you show or don’t show at your classes.

      When I say “Don’t care,” I should qualify that statement. Your teachers care as much as you do. But you are an adult (contrary to what your parents might argue!) and you are only one of a large number of students at the university. Therefore you will be expected to take responsibility for yourself.

      There are lots of time-wasters. I won’t list them now. First, I don’t want to give you new ideas about how to waste your time; that’s not the function of this book. Second, there are some real time-wasting pitfalls that should, or more correctly, must be avoided. These will be discussed in Chapter 12.

      If you decide to live in residence, you will face the maximum number of these pitfalls. There always seems to be a party going on somewhere in the residence. If you are a social type you might find yourself being asked to go to a lot of these. I won’t say don’t go. What I will say is this: Go only if you have time. Have you done all your work? Do you have an early class the next day? If you respond yes and no, in that order, then go. We’ll deal with time wasting again later on, but now let’s look a little harder at living in residence.

      Living in Residence

      Yes, living in residence can provide the road to a fantastic social life. That road can be dangerous, but it need not be so. The great benefit of residence is that it places you very close to university facilities. You won’t have to waste a lot of time commuting. This will give you more time to devote to your studies and your social life. By not being a commuter, you will be living in a community of students with the same goal as you—getting a university degree. You will develop friendships that will likely last longer than the three or four years you spend at university—perhaps a lifetime. But you will have to remind yourself continually that the reason for your stint in residence is to succeed at university, not just to have a good time. Like real butterflies, social butterflies don’t last very long.

      Developing good relationships with other students in residence will provide a valuable aid to your success. If you need some information, notes or other data for your studies, it will never be more than a short walk away. This will maximize the time you can devote to your work.

      Most universities have some residences and some can accommodate a large number of students. They will range in structure from multi-roomed townhouses where you and your housemates will share cooking, cleaning and other household duties to bedrooms in high-rise towers where you will live like a guest in a hotel with linen provided and meals served in the dormitory dining room. Sometimes you will have a choice of accommodation, but more often you won’t. Depending upon availability, you may only be able to get into residence if you live out of town or have some other reason for needing university accommodation. If you are interested in living in residence, show your interest early, as accommodation may be awarded on a first-come-first-served basis.

      If you share accommodations with other university students, remember to respect their needs and wishes. Do your best to be a good roommate. If you are not comfortable in your residence, this will very likely interfere with your progress as a student. If you do have troubles, try to talk them out with the people involved. If that doesn’t work, then try the don, residence adviser or someone else in the residence or housing office. Often the wrong people are put together, but with a few complaints and a little shuffling of student bodies, it doesn’t take long to get the right combinations together.

      What Do Grades Really Mean?

      There is an age-old argument about the meaning of grades. Does the grade a student gets in a course really reflect what he or she has learned?

      At least in the minds of others, your achievement at university will be demonstrated by your grades. I believe that in the majority of courses grades do truly reflect the student’s performance as perceived by the professor. The professor is an expert in his or her field and, by this token (a standard academic phrase, by the way), the professor’s assessment of you indicates how well you have lived up to what he or she expects of students. However, there is some underlying learning that no professor can ever hope to judge. You will gain something from each course that no other individual will. Your uniqueness will allow you to glean information that others will miss. Possibly you will not realize it until years later, but you will. If you learn as much as you can in each course, the grades will come by themselves.

      Now that’s my philosophy. But this is not a book on the philosophy of education. It is about survival and succeeding at university. Grades are important. That’s the truth. It’s a fact. If you get lousy grades, a professional school will not accept you. On today’s grade market you need, generally, an average above 80% to be even considered for medical school and usually a much higher grade to be accepted. You need excellent grades for any professional school, for teachers college and for other postgraduate training. To my knowledge, there are no lawyers, doctors or teachers who had a 60% average at university.

      Now the problem at hand is to deal with that fact. How can you get above-average grades? I argue that if a student is intelligent enough to be admitted to university then he or she has the potential to get above-average grades. It will take more work for some than for others, but knowing the rules will help.

      The only way for a student to get good grades in a course is for him or her to do all required assignments and to learn as much of the course material as well as he or she can. Good grades are an offshoot