Succeeding at University is something that all students struggle with. Everyone is trying to balance out their friends, study, fitness and sleep.
I’m going to share with you, what I have found, to be the optimal way to balance my uni life. While this exact strategy may not work for everyone, there will certainly be aspects that you can’t take into your own life to make it better.
There are three things which I believe have had the biggest impact on my success at university. The first is being strategic by which classes you choose to attend. This can help minimise the time you spend at uni while maximising your understanding of the course content. The second is getting assignments done. When to start, when to finish and the optimal strategies I have found that allow me to get top grades. The third strategy I use relates to meeting people, this may be more girls in the hope of a relationship or perhaps just more friends interested in similar things to you. In the next few paragraphs we will unpack these strategies, and see how I get things done.
Lectures and other university classes are the core of University life. While not all of the classes are compulsory, it’s important to be strategic in which classes you attend, so that you can achieve maximum results, in minimal time. At university, you can split classes up into two groups, lectures, and non-lectures. I have found that lectures are never compulsory to attend, while many of the ‘non-lectures’ require attendance to get marks for that subject. Lectures are also recorded, which means you can watch them at home, even on 2x speed which saves you at a lot of time. Travel time to and from uni, as well as watching the entire lecture in half the time, can save a few hours each day. This won’t affect your understanding either, as you can pause the lectures or slow them down if the content gets too confusing. You will also interact with your peers during the ‘non-lecture’ classes, allowing you to have friends to ask questions of if you’re stuck. Using this method, you can minimise the time spent at uni, while maximising understanding and time available to spend on other things.
The second technique I use is that of getting assignments done. Everyone has left assignments to the last minute at some point, and the evidence is clear that the extra stress is unneeded and unwanted. At University there are two types of assignments commonly handed out, weekly assignments and larger (more than weekly) assignments.
The key with the weekly assignments is to get them done as soon as possible. Once the lecture covering the assignment material has been covered, the assignment should be started, as the information is fresh in your mind, so you won’t have to revise later. Starting straight away also means you can finish straight away, as weekly assignments typically take less than one hour. The confidence boost from finishing the weekly assignment as soon as you can is incredible, and will be much easier given that all the information is fresh, much better than relearning everything later for a possibly lower grade.
The same principle of starting early can be applied to larger assignments. Take a look at the questions being asked as soon as the assignment is released, so your subconscious brain can get started on the problems. Starting these assignments earlier means you can do little bits at a time, so that when other people are trying to cram the assignment in the last minutes, you are relaxed.
Following the ‘start early’ policy with your assignments at Uni has really helped me personally in reducing my stress levels, and increasing my confidence.
The third policy I use at university is that of attending as many events as possible. A big part of Uni is the social life, and in order to maximise this, we need to get out and meet people. Attending every event, from pub crawls to guest lectures, will all help you meet people. The more people you meet, the more opportunities you get to meet even more people. Most people meet new people through mutual friends, so if you have a lot of friends, then you have even more mutual friends! Once you get the train going, it’s easy to get a large number of friends at Uni.
Once you have a large group of friends, it’s likely that at least some will be attractive girls, so that should hopefully solve your problems there. I’ve found it’s much easier, though perhaps less effective, to meet girls this way that cold approaching.
In summary, there are three main techniques I use to maximise my abilities at Uni. The first is to only attend important classes like tutorials, while watching recorded lectures at home. The second is to get started on assignments as soon as they are released, in order to minimise your stress. The third method is to attend heaps of social events, in order to grow your friendship group and have people to hang around with at Uni. All these things have benefited me, I know they can benefit you also.
