Throughout the past year, nearly every person I meet who had been through the university system told me that “first year is the worst year, and it only gets better”. I had been dubious I have to say. Unfortunately, I wasn’t dubious because I thought “how could it possibly get any better than this?” (which would have been nice), but because I thought “how could one year make such a difference?”. Well, lo and behold, I was wrong.
Aside from the obvious added confidence that comes with knowing your way around campus as a second year, there were many other perks that I simply didn’t think would happen. For a start, I actually knew people. Everywhere. In fact, there wasn’t a moment where I walked across campus without running into someone I knew. Now that’s a nice feeling. On top of that, even in lectures where I didn’t automatically have any friends studying with me, there were always faces I recognised and people I could wave to. Compared to first year, where for some of you, you will literally walk into a room and not know a soul, this was quite a nice change.
Similarly, the lecturers no longer give you the ubiquitous first year spiel about checking out the library and so on. On top of that, there seems to me at least to be a more clearly defined covenant between the student and the lecturer. It’s pretty clear that if you’re taking a second year subject in something, you’re actually interested in it, rather than doing it because your mates do it. Not that that is necessarily the case, but certainly some people do seem to choose subjects based on who is in it, rather than whether they’re interested or not.
Then there are all the plain old wonderful things about being a student: getting up late (I don’t start uni till 11 any day!), having lazy lunches in Glebe or Newtown, grabbing a beer after uni. Of course, it’s early days yet, and having just picked up my text books and readers for the semester, I’m expecting the work load is probably going to increase. All in all though, everything points to a good year ahead, and I’m so glad to be back on campus. For all of you first years wandering around thinking “will I ever make it here?” the answer is “yes, absolutely”. You’ll love it before you know it.