Is it wrong of me to 'coast' along my first year of uni

PureAppleJuice

PureAppleJuice

PureAppleJuice

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As the title says really. Should I really be working hard in my first year? How did everyone else deal with their work in the first year?

I see other people doing what I do, just getting an essay done the night before regardless of the quality of work; my essays have got progressively worse but are still of passable standard, it just feels a bit wrong. I speak to second year students who say 'oh hell do what you want in the first year', but it does sort of feel wrong as I feel I ought to make an impression on my lecturers and such.

Another thing I thought i'd bung in here; A levels seem much harder than what i've done so far? I've written 10 essays now in my first term and they're pretty awful but they pass, if I'd written anything like this for A-Level i'd easily be expecting a U.
 
It depends.

Do you have a placement year?

If no, then doss. It doesn't really matter as the first year doesnt count, just dont fail it.

If yes, don't doss, becuase your first year results can be used to gain a placement with a decent company.
 
Na, first year is for doing whatever you want - if it doesn't cont towards your degree then just make sure you pass, but well enough to not be thinking you need to resit - it'll get harder but have fun like.
 
Doss, but get to know the lecturers and get them on side - despite you doing no work. Good relationships with your lecturers will pay off in year 2 & 3.
 
[TW]Fox;10663350 said:
It depends.

Do you have a placement year?

If no, then doss. It doesn't really matter as the first year doesnt count, just dont fail it.

If yes, don't doss, becuase your first year results can be used to gain a placement with a decent company.
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Nope, i'm studying history. However i'm hoping to get work experience at a law firm in the second year (not really similar?), and ultimately I do want to go into law and I suppose any employer might be interested in my first year marks?
Though in theory say I got a 1st for my degree I assume they won't be too concerned? (I'm not a deluded student assuming i'm going to get a 1st btw :p)
 
[TW]Fox;10663350 said:
It depends.

Do you have a placement year?

If no, then doss. It doesn't really matter as the first year doesnt count, just dont fail it.

If yes, don't doss, becuase your first year results can be used to gain a placement with a decent company.
Click to expand...

You obviously dossed your first year then...

Proccess this invoice, answer this phone, do this work then we will ignor it...
 
You are doing History and want to go into law, call me backwards but wtf is that all about, seems like you have the "going to uni = great job" mentality, seen it too many times with friends, waste of 3-4 years.
 
Greenlizard0 said:
I always thought of A-levels being much harder than uni work (especially my first degree) since of the step up they were from GCSE's.
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I think the work im doing at the moment is much easier than A-level Chem.


Im sort of 'coasting'

e.g. need 40% min to pass a module, IT for Chemical Sciences ive got 41.29% and I havnt done the past 4 assaingments for it, only got 1 more to do will I do it prolly not, ill go out and celebrate passing the module. :D
 
cheets64 said:
You are doing History and want to go into law, call me backwards but wtf is that all about, seems like you have the "going to uni = great job" mentality, seen it too many times with friends, waste of 3-4 years.
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I did the conventional law degree etc, but I have to say I wish I didn't do a law degree - and I want to be a barrister! A lot of chambers prefer it if you've done a non-law degree and then do a single year CPE (very very intensive) than just doing a normal LLB as it gives you specialism. Good examples are a someone who wants to do personal injury law who has done a medical degree or someone that wants to do IP who has done a science based degree.
 
iamdjdz said:
Na, first year is for doing whatever you want - if it doesn't cont towards your degree then just make sure you pass, but well enough to not be thinking you need to resit - it'll get harder but have fun like.
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I totally disagree with anyone who says that. You're paying to be there, so you should be working your ass off even if it doesn't count. Following is why:

  • Gets you used to working hard so when it comes to your 2nd year and beyond you can easily get on with your work/study


  • If you plan on doing a year in industry, they like to look at your first year grades


  • In the future they plan on allowing employers to find out what you got for every module rather than just look at your overall grade. How bad would it make you look if you were just getting passes for your modules?


  • If you want to do a PHD, you're more likely to gain funding if you can show you are a hard worker.


When you look at it....you can either go get hammered or learn. You can get hammered at any point in your life, but you only get one chance at uni(unless you want to keep coming back and incurring debt).
 
BlackDragon said:
I totally disagree with anyone who says that. You're paying to be there, so you should be working your ass off even if it doesn't count. Following is why:

  • Gets you used to working hard so when it comes to your 2nd year and beyond you can easily get on with your work/study


  • If you plan on doing a year in industry, they like to look at your first year grades


  • In the future they plan on allowing employers to find out what you got for every module rather than just look at your overall grade. How bad would it make you look if you were just getting passes for your modules?


  • If you want to do a PHD, you're more likely to gain funding if you can show you are a hard worker.


When you look at it....you can either go get hammered or learn. You can get hammered at any point in your life, but you only get one chance at uni(unless you want to keep coming back and incurring debt).
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Agreed.

Besides, for e First year was friggin hard. around 1/3rd of the people failed.

It maybe easy to pass at 40% but you will find getting an A grade much, much, much harder. This is what you should aim for.
If you just scrape through university like that you will be going to the employment office for the rest of your life.

Anything less than a 2.1 is a waste of time and money.
 
Depends what course you're doing. I have a mate who was absent for the entire second term of our first year and he still got a 2:1 and is now in a decent job. But then, he is very clever.

In my current job, my first year marks would only have mattered if they'd counted towards my degree which they didn't. But that didn't stop me from putting in some effort to get in just below a 2.1 in my first year.

You get out what you put in at university: retrospectively, I wish I'd taken the time to learn another language (other than French which I already speak) purely because it can significantly increase the employment opportunities in certain sectors.

However, do not for one second assume your professional law qualification will be anything like your current studies. My cousin did her professional qualification over the two years and it was nightmarishly hard. I'm going my ACA at the moment, and it is far and away the most difficult thing I have ever done. If you think A-levels were hard and that there was a lot to learn, triple the syllabus and quarter the time to learn it. I suspect law will be largely similar.
 
BlackDragon said:
In the future they plan on allowing employers to find out what you got for every module rather than just look at your overall grade. How bad would it make you look if you were just getting passes for your modules?
Click to expand...

There's a place for CVs that do that when recruiting. It's called the bin.
 
If you want to go to uni to get hammered then your going there with the wrong mindset.

In my view the whole point of uni is to learn and get the most out of what you are paying in terms of fees. So if you just 'doss' and 'mess' about during the first year your going to be in for a shock in the 2nd and 3rd year!

You will actually hit a brick wall when the quantity of work doubles and the expectations to achieve higher marks rise. So if you don't try hard during your first year then you will not have any 'benchmarks' on how much effort/work you need to put in during your 2nd and 3rd year - which could actually ruin your chances of getting a good degree classification.
 
Don't doss too much. I scraped through doing sod all.

Then I got to second year, where they kept saying 'and you remember how to do this from first year', except I didn't, and thus had no idea what they were doing now either.
 
I'm on my second year at the mo and on the welcome back lecture thing, the course leader actually admitted we can more or less just coast through our second year and put the hard work in next year.

Something to do with how the marks are worked out or something.

I'm doing alright, not really working my arse off but probably getting about 50-60% on most of my work/essays.

Next semester though we are doing the more practical stuff rather than the theory and that's what I'll excel at :)
 
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