How do you manage your first few weeks in higher education?
You have now entered higher education. If you've followed the recommendations above, you should be well prepared. However, you will be faced with new tasks, namely making connections, finding meaning and asserting yourself.
- Making connections means taking the time to meet new people and build up a good network of friends in higher education. This is important to support your motivation and help you find the right way to manage your courses. However, getting into a network of friends that pushes you towards student and party life could have the opposite effect and ultimately thwart your success. So beware of the many temptations that characterise social life at university.
- Finding meaning refers to the importance of being able to find the interest and usefulness of your different courses. This will be all the easier if you have made a well-informed study choice beforehand. Nevertheless, some more general courses may be less motivating. This will help you to persevere.
- Asserting yourself is a task that involves gradually gaining confidence in the way you manage your studies. To do this, don't hesitate, during these first few weeks, to try out different study strategies to gradually work out what works best for you. Be careful not to simply reproduce what you were used to doing in secondary school, as that may not work.
A matter of getting off to a good start
As well as the above, the most important thing during these first few weeks is to get off to a good start. The pace of work is particularly complex in higher education. This means that a student who falls behind can quickly accumulate so many gaps that he or she is unable to pick up the pace.
The first few weeks should not therefore be seen as a time when you take your time to discover the world of higher education. On the contrary, a strong and serious commitment from the outset will enable you to keep up the pace straight away and get through the rest of the year with peace of mind.
Nevertheless, it can be tempting to leave this commitment aside in the face of all the novelties and stimuli that higher education has to offer, and given that exams are still several months away. Resisting these temptations is therefore an important challenge that will have many positive repercussions in the long term.