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Of the 60,600 students who left high school in 2015, 60 per cent enrolled in tertiary education the following year. However, 43 per cent of university students do not graduate. Mahurangi Matters asked former Mahurangi College students, Tre Wells and Calum Rice, about the challenges of being a first year student and we also spoke to Krysana Hanley about what made her leave after one semester and what she learned from the experience.
Tre Wells, 19, who is doing a three-year Bachelor of Commerce degree at the University of Auckland, lives at home.
Describe your first week at university?
I spent it figuring out the best bus route to take, where to grab a bite, and what the hell the courses I was taking were. Luckily, the courses were outlined thoroughly in the first lecture and let me know what I needed to do, and helped settle the nerves. I expected uni to be a bigger leap going from Year 13, especially since I took 2016 off, so I’ve been pleasantly surprised.
What do you enjoy about uni?
The freedom has been a big plus, being able to choose what lectures to attend and prioritise my time better than I could at school. Also, I personally have felt that I don’t take it for granted like I did at school, since I’m paying for it.
What are the challenges?
There’s far less hand holding at uni; you’ve got to take more responsibility for yourself than at school.
You don’t get reminded to study and get your assignments done, something I found out the hard way last semester.
What advice would you give to a first year student?
Be open-minded, don’t be afraid to ask for help, if something is bugging you get it off your chest and talk to someone. Most importantly, stay on top of everything. Things can slip away from you quickly if you’re not careful.
Would you have done anything differently?
I should have spent more time studying on campus, rather than leaving early to catch up at home. The facilities at uni are fantastic and are there to help. I’ve taken my own advice this semester, but I wish I had done it sooner.
Calum Rice, 18, who is doing a four year engineering degree at University of Canterbury. He lives at the Uni Hall.
What was your first week like?
It was just about settling in and going to some of the orientation week events. Uni is pretty much what I expected with late study nights and going to social events and early morning lectures. The big difference between uni and school was the need for self-motivation, which I was quite unprepared for at first, but I got used to it quickly.
What do you enjoy about uni?
The social events and the collective living.
What are the challenges?
Mainly the self-motivating issue because it is easy to just stay in bed in the morning.
What advice would you give to a first year student?
Just do your best and try to stay self-motivated.
Would you have done anything differently?
I probably would have tried harder in the first few weeks of the semester and brought some more warm clothes.
Krysana Hanley, 18, who was studying psychology and gender studies, at University of Auckland, left after a semester.
What was your first week at university like and what did you do?
The first week of uni was a very gradual introduction into the courses. Lecture theatres were full, with some spilling over into overflow rooms. People were very approachable in the first week. First year students were very willing, on the most part, to make friends with people taking similar courses to them.
There were no tutorial classes or labs so my timetable wasn’t as busy as it became in following weeks.
I wasn’t in halls so I didn’t have any halls activities to take part in. They had pop-up stands all around the uni the whole first couple weeks for clubs, sports and just general questions and guidance. I didn’t join any clubs or sports as I wanted to focus on my uni work and not have to bus in to the city too much as I was a 30 minute bus ride each way. As someone who is very confident in talking to people and making friends, I ironically felt quite alone. Most of my lectures were in the larger, 400 capacity theatres which made it difficult to establish a group of friends. Each week most people would sit in a different seat.
What advice would you give to a first year student?
Go to the halls or a student accommodation for your first year to establish a group of friends. The hard part from moving from school to uni is that, unless you are in halls, you don’t have a group of friends that you see everyday. Also, be willing to introduce yourself to anyone.
What would you have done anything differently?
Hindsight is a great thing. Looking back I can see that if I had gone into halls, I may have had a better time at uni and stayed longer. However, that being said, I’m not sure right now was my time to be at uni. I think it is better for me to gain some life experience in the form of moving away from home, paying my own bills, and getting a full time job where I can save up to travel. I think after breaking out of the too familiar education system here in NZ and experiencing a bit of what the world can offer me, I will be better prepared and more motivated to gain a higher qualification and get a better job. In terms of psychology, I think that having my own experiences would assist me in helping and understanding others.
Was is a hard decision to leave and why did you leave?
I think the decision was relatively easy to make. I had a very supportive family and network of friends who understood and could see the bigger picture for me. Going to uni a couple years down the line won’t make a difference in the long run. I left for many different reasons. The first was because of the ongoing stress I was experiencing. It wasn’t putting me into a very healthy state of mind. It made me put off doing my work and resent the course I was doing.
The second would be the overall social experience. At school I was told uni was going to be so different from school, you make heaps of friends and you’d be studying something you are passionate about while the teachers treated you like an adult. The reality for me was not what I had been promised. I was finally doing the subjects I wanted to do, but I made a total of around seven friends who I could only see during lectures. The layout of the material and marking schemes were largely the same as NZQA, but with less teacher-student interaction and a lot of dealing with the uni’s website. Maybe this is my need for human contact speaking, but I felt less like I was being treated like an adult and more like I was one in a sea of many first year students – a mere number to an anonymous marker. Which is probably the exact and understandable reality of the situation, but this aspect wasn’t better than school for me, it was worse.
The third was money. The price of feeling so unhappy and solitary was very expensive. If I was going to be paying for this education and university experience, I wanted to make sure I was getting my money’s worth. And at the time, I just wasn’t. Better to come back later keen and ready, knowing what to expect, to make the most of what is being offered.
What are your plans from here?
I plan to get a full-time job and make a bit of a nest egg for myself. I want to travel and see how others live in the world. Take it each day at a time and make memories and experiences I can look back on for years to come.
