First Month Face Off: Tips to Survive the First Month of University

Ciao everyone!

Summer is quickly coming to a close and the start of the school year is around the corner. To help you navigate the strange (and sometimes choppy) waters of university life I made a list of tips to help you survive your first month at university. My friend Christen got a hold of my list and thought she had "better" tips to offer. So here are our top tips. Let us know whose tips are the best!
[Disclaimer: All advice to be taken at your own risk! ]

Christen & Danielle as they battle for the list of top tips.

Danielle’s Top Tips:

• Keep in contact with your high school friends.You will be meeting tons of new people during university (especially during Welcome Week), but don’t forget about the friends that stuck with you through high school.
• Get to bed early every night. “Beauty sleep” is more than an expression; it’s science.
• Stay hydrated. Just because summer is over doesn't mean that the warm weather has left! Septembers in Hamilton are known to be hot, so keep refilling that water bottle.
• Use your resources. Ask your professors for help and visit during office hours; sign up for the Ask an Undergraduate Engineer Program; use the Math Help Centre - dedicated to first year math courses; visit the Student Success Centre and the Student Wellness Centre to find out about the services they offer.
• Get involved. McMaster Students Union has hundreds of clubs and Mac Eng has over 15 clubs and teams for you to get involved with! Try some out and find one that fits you.
• Volunteer. Join the Mac Eng Outreach volunteer team! Send us an email at goeng1@mcmaster.ca and become one of our fantastic volunteers.

I've saved the best tip for last.

• Have fun! University has been the best experience of my life so far. Make sure you enjoy the ride.

Christen here. While those were some good tips, I have some sage-like advice for you. Listen, you will.

Danielle & Christen - they are actually friends

Christen’s Awesome Tips:

• Meet new people! The best part about university is it is full of thousands of new people. In that mix there is bound to be some that share your love of Shakespearean English.
• Caffeine is your friend. Those late night conversations about the meaning of life and what happened in the last episode of Game of Thrones are where the best friendships are built. 
• You can be whoever you want to be! None of these people know who you are, how ‘popular’ (or unpopular) you were in high school, or where you got that unsightly scar. This is your clean slate! Take it, don’t wait! Be the best you that you can be, because “Today you are You, that is truer than true. There is no one alive who is Youer than You”.
• Get off social media. (Except our blog because we are awesome people). “I’ll just check Facebook for a minute” always turns into several hours of surfing the information superhighway. There are so many other things you could be doing!
• Attend as many events as possible. Life isn’t too crazy during that first month so it’s a great opportunity to get out and see all the options available to you. Challenge yourself and try at least one thing that is outside your comfort zone.
• Find balance. With that said, once you have found some activities you want  to be involved in, make sure you take some time to sit down and prioritize!
• Learn! That’s what you came to school for! But don’t forget, not all learning happens in the classroom. Some of the most memorable lessons happen when you are open to learning outside of class time. 

Well, I hope you enjoyed our tips. (Christen, I still think my tips are better than yours!)

Until next time, 

Danielle

Ho-Ho- Holidays!!!!

 Season greetings from all of us in Eng I Outreach office!

Congratulations to engineering students who finished off exams yesterday! Especially the first years who just finished their first semester as a Mac Eng student!

Take a look at the gingerbread house that some of the upper years made to help the first years celebrate! It’s a little in shambles after the students ate it… but it was definitely a tasty celebration of the end of exams J

I think I am speaking for everyone when I say winter breaks are just so much more relaxing when you are in university. Why, you may ask?  Well, the winter break is at the end of the first semester, thus we are done with those courses for good and can stretch our legs and take a nice relaxing break before the new semester comes and pull us back in the library!

If you followed our survival guide like you should have, I assume you had a swell time writing your finals and most likely are sipping eggnog while reading this. I would like to wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! In case you do not celebrate Christmas, I wish you the happiest holidays and a pleasant winter break. Go pour yourself some more eggnog or make a ginger bread house or climb the Kilimanjaro, sky is the limit!

Give yourself a pat on the shoulder; you made it through another year! Take moment to remember your happiest memories and maybe some moments which were not exactly happy, but maybe made a positive change in you, made you a stronger person and taught you a valuable lesson.

Life is all those memorable moments, so take a break and prepare yourself for a whole new year! May this year to be the best one yet!

The Magic of Midterm Season

No matter what they always seem to sneak up on you. You question your knowledge: have I even learned anything yet? Or, on the flip side, you ask yourself “how am I going to retain all of this information?”

Yes, you know what I’m talking about. Midterms. Now, some of you may have tests labelled as such in high school, but if you’re like me and went to a semestered school, they were a new phenomenon upon entering university. At the end of the day, they’re just another test.

From my experience in first year, there really wasn’t a “start” and “end” date to the midterms. The reality is each of your classes will have 2 or 3 “midterms” so you’ll have them starting around the end of September and going all the way to the end of November. They’ll come in waves, having two in a week and such, but there seems to always be one on the horizon.

The great thing about these magical tests is that since there are two or three per course, the weighting is nicely distributed! If you have a hard time on one, it will not seal your fate on passing or failing the course! There’s always a chance to make up for some mistakes. Plus, there’s always the exam which is a large chunk of your grade in a course.

Second years studying in the Bob Loree Undergraduate Engineering (BLUE) Lounge. It's a great place to ask upper years for help!

So, when you start engineering, and you put those test dates in your calendar, don’t freak. Take a deep breath, and plan ahead:

(1)   Don’t start cramming the night before. Seriously. I know you hear this all the time, but it’s so true.

(2) Do practice problems. Engineering is about application, so don’t just read notes.

(3) Use the resources available – talk the prof or Teaching Assistants if you’re having problems, and also the Internet is a pretty marvelous thing. There are some great videos online.

(4) Figure out how you study best. Some people do the group thing, and some people need to study alone. Some need silence, while others rock out to some classical music in the background.

(5) Don’t cram the night before. (So key it takes up two spaces on this list)

At the end of the day, one of the best feelings a student can have is walking out of a midterm they aced. But sometimes, even when you work REALLY HARD, it’s just not your night. And that’s okay. Just keep swimming. 

Later days,
Daniela