Advice for Starting University with @flosstudydiary

hey everyone welcome back to the channel so if you're new here my name is ray and i just finished my second year doing physics here at cambridge and this is my friend florence who like do you want to introduce yourself yeah okay hi my name is florence i have a youtube channel called slow study diary which you may have seen maybe not should be linked down below thank you um i am i just finished my i put this i just finished my first year doing computer science but before that i did do a year of maths i just went back to first year when i decided to change subjects so i am doubly qualified to talk about being in first year i have double the experience everyone else three years of experience of being professional between the two of us of course um all right so

i guess i'll just kick things off by saying like in terms of freshers advice or regrets i feel like one of them for me was taking my work way too seriously to begin with and i noticed this for the first few weeks especially if you go to like a particularly um if you are particularly academic or ambitious and you can have a habit of carrying that on into university i want them to do really well there as well so during the first few weeks i just sort of spent that time in my room like sort of studying a bunch and like trying to like do the really challenging supervision problems to look good in supervision to my supervisor even though that doesn't mean like looking good in your supervisions just is not really that beneficial so i spent way too much time doing that and afterwards i came to realization it just wasn't worth it and i was like saying no to friends inviting me out or like any events that were going on and i really wanted to go to i just thought to myself well i just end up doing two more hours of like supervision work even though two hours at an event could have been so much better for me so yeah like over lockdown when that came around in march time in the uk um i just came to a realization that like i just didn't go out and do as many things in first year and i largely attribute that to like me wanting to carry on that like sense of doing well which really isn't worth it because i hear like um one of the top five regrets people have of dying is that they wish they had like kept in touch with like their friends or they just had like form closer relationships and bonds with their friends and on my deathbed i'm not gonna regret like not completing that supervision problem or something i'm gonna regret not spending that time with friends or something so yeah it escalated very quickly from uni first year to diet your entire life anyway yeah i think um when you get supervision sheets they quite often say oh we don't necessarily expect you to complete every question on the sheet and when you were like that kid in school who did all the work and you did every question and you used to be able to do everything it is pretty hard to adjust it first the fact that there will be questions that you can't do on every supervision sheet and i think if you graph the number of people like throughout the year who do the start questions just like an exponential decrease no like people just realize it's not worth it i think i did the starred questions in like my first one or two supervisions and you should still have a look at them be aware of them like attempt them but if you can't do them that is normal and fine and don't overthink it other people will be in the same boat even if your supervision partner is really scary and really smart i've been there other people will be struggling just as much as you are always yeah i suppose in that point like knowing just when to give up on the work or like give up on a question because some questions compared to a level where a question could take like ten five minutes to do uh some questions can take like an hour onwards to be able to do and just know when to give up and like move on and then actually go out and like meet friends and do things during university knowing when to do that it can be really beneficial so my

top thing that i think i did really well but i know other students maybe didn't is you should definitely get into a habit right at the start of the year of attending all of your lectures even if they're at 9am on a saturday you've been there yes you have a first year nazi was it maths that was on a saturday morning at 9am because i had it the same ones they were even when they were online they weren't pre-recorded we watched them on zoom at nine o'clock on saturday morning all of our other lectures were pre-recorded but not that one but anyway um my point is you should definitely go to lectures if they are being held in person because lectures are a really great place aside for anything else to just meet people obviously you're not there to socialize but you will meet people um there'll be people who are sitting around if you have multiple lectures there'll be a break in the middle between them something like that you'll definitely get to know other people in your course and especially when your university is collegiate like here um there may not be many people in your college who do a course and therefore lectures are a really great way to meet people who study the same subject as you i would say on the points on lectures is that if you do end up missing a lecture like do catch up and don't spend the rest of the time just going to lectures and just sitting there being confused as to what's going on um because you haven't covered that one electron material because that's just like wasted energy really going to lecture in the morning not understanding anything and because you missed the previous lecture and then like just going back um but yeah it's an excellent opportunity especially during the first few weeks to like just say hi to other people in your course and yeah like it's perfectly fine to just go up to anyone and speak some during the first few weeks so like might as well make the most of it during lectures yeah i definitely became very familiar with all of the other people who turned up to lectures 20 minutes earlier just me and a couple of other weirdos but like i knew who they were always and i also felt like i couldn't leave this point without kind of adapting it for covert times because one of the hardest things is that we don't have in-person lectures you this didn't affect you right because you did your first year when you were like a fresher and meeting people of your course when we had lectures in person i have had the covid first year experience as well um we had no in-person lectures and i was doing a new subject or i didn't know anybody and for me like the most valuable replacement for that was my subject group chat which i thought was really great people were really friendly we ended up doing some stuff together they were like subject meetups i think a lot of people like went swimming after exams like to celebrate the end of the year everyone went to the river and swam it was really lovely and i think it's really important to keep an eye on things like subject group chats during the current time so that you can still meet people like you would in lectures without the like disease transmission yeah true um yeah on the notes of group chances if you're like me and you're just an important group chats on mutes and then do check through them often and just see if there's anything going on or if there's any useful information being shared um like events being organized so

another point i'd want to mention is um like applying for anything or everything and just saying yes to like more opportunities um so i applied to like join a bunch of committees a bunch of internships which i was my time applying to because i didn't get any of them um and they were investment banking which i really i know honestly uh which i realized i hate investment banking and consulting but it's a useful experience because i realized that during the process i just hated it so um i wouldn't want to do in the future but yeah it's like so much easier to just say yes to opportunities that come along and then to be able to say no later on um or like withdraw from these opportunities and just sort of be like oh hey like i've been in a bit off i've bitten him more than i can chew or something i miss enough um and like you're feeling overwhelmed and just to like withdraw from like a committee is completely fine and people are usually quite understanding of that fact and yeah like for the opportunities that you are saying yes to in first year you can gain a whole lot of experience from them and that gives you more flexibility in future years to then say no to opportunities because you have sort of had more experience under your belt or you kind of know what interests you and what doesn't interest you and opportunities may be like joining committee um going to like a society's events which you have never been to because like if you realize you don't like the society and it's full of a bunch of weirdos then you can leave like 10 minutes or something which has happened before so yeah

yeah there's always a big societies fair that you can go to the start of the year and it's normal to sign up for way more societies than you could possibly do that's always the way that it works and you will drop them as you realize that they're not really your thing or that you have too much going and they're very understanding of that so don't be afraid to just sign up to a bunch of stuff especially things that are free i think especially look for opportunities that you wouldn't be able to have just during life not at uni for me like at cambridge the big one is rowing right rowing is hard to do it's expensive it requires tons of resources you gotta have a boat you gotta have eight people willing to row with you you're not really going to get a chance to do that very easily especially as a total beginner but at uni like especially at cambridge oxford you can just sign up having never rode before and get that experience and there are a few sports and societies like that where most people doing it will be total beginners i think especially some maybe more niche sports perhaps i don't know definitely rowing ultimate frisbee is a big one ultimate frisbee is huge in cambridge maybe oxford too i don't know all the math news ended up uh going there or something such my behavior yeah when i was in sixth form because i went to sixth form in cambridge even my sixth form i think competes against cambridge colleges and ultimate frisbee which i thought was really sweet but yeah there's tons of societies like that where you can join them without having had any experience before so like i guess go to cambridge sign up for rowing sign up for ultimate frisbee go to all of them and see which one suits you rowing isn't as scary as it sounds the early mornings are not that bad they're not that early because you can't row super early in the dark if you're a novice so don't worry about that too much yeah in terms of societies like just knowing when to quote certain societies as well because um during the first few weeks a few of my friends were going to like cultural societies or like they were going to the indian society because they were in general like so i went to the pakistani society and i just realized um it's just boring all that but i'm sure people really enjoyed it um yeah so it was just boring for me and for some reason i felt an obligation to like go to a few more of the events just because i was pakistani and there were a bunch of pakistani people i'm like yeah then i came to the realization that i just didn't really enjoy this um so then i ended up going to societies which i found more interesting i went to the physics one i realized that i'm nowhere near as interested in physics as many other people here and then i started to go to ea cambridge instead um so the effects of altruism society if there's one at your university then do check it out because it is quite interesting and you do meet a lot of interesting people um yeah and i found that i've really said a lot well into that so i carry on going there i have one like bonus i wasn't planning on saying this but what are your opinions on the union did you pay to join the i didn't cambridge union i didn't either i think especially with things like that um think about it carefully because definitely when i joined i got all the emails about it and i was like i totally need to join the society and how much does it cost it's like 150 70 pounds so it's a lot of money i appreciate that a lot of people really enjoy it and they have some crazy speakers there who are super interesting and super famous and it's a great opportunity to go and see them you wouldn't otherwise get but it's definitely something you should think through carefully and i just want to say like i promise not everybody signs up for the union and pays membership so if you don't have that money sitting around or you just don't think that it's your thing that's totally valid don't do it tons of people don't yeah and so and some societies do run a bunch of like events during the first few weeks to like collect all the membership fees and then just do nothing throughout the year or like being a member usually only gets you like two or three pounds off like a ticket except that the membership fee is like 30 pounds so unless you're going to like 10 of their events you're not going to like break you scammed societies yeah so i don't know um

yeah think a bit a little bit about societies speak to other people and uh find one that you vibe with so giving out solid advice the other thing that i wanted to say is that you need to keep a calendar from the start of your year it can be like a paper one i had a proper nice study planner from mossery which had like a custom cover with my name on if that's your thing do that if you just like to keep track of it on your phone calendar that works too but at the start of term you're probably going to feel like you can keep track of everything right like you just know the day that your lectures start you know that you have like a dos meeting on this day and like is it called a squash like the society yeah they call them fresh as squash fresh you have a fresh squash on them squash which was very confusing for me that really confused me yeah but yeah you have like three events to keep track of you feel fine and then like one more thing comes in here another thing there and before you know it you are losing track of things and you're missing events even if you only have one thing to write on that calendar just start from day one because otherwise you will be missing things if you're uh so like has a small sort of small tip if a lot of the events are organized on facebook at your university then you can press interested on the facebook event and there's a way to link up the facebook calendar uh where it shows you all your upcoming events with your google calendar so you can sort of see everything all in one place um just like searching that online like facebook calendar linking to google calendar should give you like a guide on how to do that but i found that to be particularly useful in keeping track of what's going on because when you're scrolling for your news feed and you see events going on i just press like interested it appears on my calendar and then like later on i can just sort of see what events are going on that evening and then just press like either go to them or not see who else is going and invite friends that is a very good and specific piece of advice that i have not come across before i lose track of anything that i express interesting on facebook so yeah that's a good one i think well i guess that wraps

up the video um so if you haven't seen part one then do check out part ones of part one on florence's channel and um do subscribe to her channel and everything like that as well um i do vlogs mostly i don't do vlogs because my life is way too boring but her vlogs are more aesthetic and uh far more interesting than like never be so do check that out um and i guess that's it for now um i guess i don't know we'll see you next time bye