I remember it like it was yesterday. During my final year of school before I went to university, one of our teachers was giving a speech about what to expect. Most of it was boring but there was one part that stuck with me.
Back when I was at school here in the UK, your first five years culminated in GSCE exams. If you performed well in those exams you had the choice to come back for an additional two years, do a vocational course, or go in the workforce. The extra two years at school are known as sixth form.
During the speech, the teacher made a comparison between the step up from normal school life to sixth form and the move from this to university. She stated that it was harder to move from the first few years of school into sixth form then it was to go from sixth form to university.
Instantly, this sounded wrong. I was going to the same school with the same friends and teachers. All that changed was that I was allowed to wear my own clothes rather than a uniform and I didn’t have classes all day. Whereas, going to university meant I would be moving to a new city, living away from home for the first time and meeting new people.
The comparison was wrong when I first heard it and after the first few weeks of university, I realised just how wrong it was. Living without my parents was much tougher than I thought and the increase in my spare time was hard to get used to.
I spent three years at university. I’m conflicted about my experience but there’s no doubt that whatever I learnt academically was not as important as what I learnt about myself and how to lead my life.
University can get an unfair rep, especially from people who’ve never been, but it’s not all bad. You’ll learn many valuable skills that will serve you well for the rest of your life.
How to organise your time
The biggest shock I faced when I went to university was how much spare time I had on my hands. The first year I had about 10 to 12 hours of teaching time a week, by my final year that had dropped to 3 to 6.
That I had a large chunk of time to myself was hard to get used to. Even though it was similar in the final two years of school, it felt more extreme. I remember coming back from lectures and seminars and playing Xbox until the early hours or going out drinking most of the time.
Despite this free time, we were still expected to complete essays on a regular basis. This meant that I had to manage my time. If I spent too much time playing FIFA, I wouldn’t have time to complete my essays. While I didn’t need to spend every waking hour reading books and sources for my studies.
What I soon realised was that I’d have to draw up a schedule to allow me to manage my time. I decided to set aside a couple of hours for studying around my lectures and seminars, leaving the rest of the time to myself or for more studies if I wanted.
This system worked. I never had to stay up late writing essays like some of my friends and I was able to get most of my essays and my dissertation in my final year, completed before the deadlines. It worked so well that I still use it to this day now that I’m self-employed.
We all get the same 24 hours in a day but not all of us utilise them in the best way. University is a microcosm of this. You’re in a bubble, separated from real life, where you can spend your time how you wish to a degree.
If you learn to manage your time while you’re at university, you’ll find it much easier to do so when you’re working in a job that’s more structured, or if you’re working for yourself.
How to be more sociable
When you first go to university it’s a scary experience. Often, you’re leaving your hometown and childhood friends behind to go somewhere different and with new people.
Back when I went to university in 2008, I was shy and reserved. Although I had a lot of friends at home, making new ones didn’t come naturally to me. Despite making a group of new friends at university, I was still terrible at meeting new people.
I was too worried about what they would think about me, instead of just enjoying myself and getting to know people. I think this is one of the reasons students drink a lot of alcohol. As well as the freedom from being away from home for the first time, alcohol takes the edge off meeting new people.
During the course of my three years at university, I became better at striking up conversations and talking to people in my classes. I found it much easier to strike up conversations with people and build rapport. I realised that listening instead of interjecting all the time was best when it came to developing relationships.
The truth is once you get older, your pool of friends shrinks. Gone are the opportunities to mingle with hundreds of people unless you’re working in a particular type of job.
If you don’t learn to socialise before the age of 25, you’re going to struggle to develop those skills later on in life. In truth, you should know how to do this anyway but it’s always harder to strike up a rapport with new people.
This is a skill that I learnt at university and went on to develop when I was travelling in Australia and New Zealand. University is one big social network but in real life. The better you are at developing connections, the easier you will find it in the future.
How to stay curious
One of the things I noticed about many people when they graduated from university or finished school for that matter, was that they couldn’t wait to be finished. One reason stood out. They wouldn’t have to read loads of books or do a lot of work.
I remember people at my school burning some of their textbooks once our GCSE exams were finished. I never understood this. Sure, I was glad to never have to critically analyse poems again, but I still enjoyed learning.
I realised then that some people hated reading and learning. For them, it was not worth making the effort. In their minds, they had better things to do with their time than read books and learn new stuff.
I saw a similar thing happen at university. Whether it was the end of first years exams, or our final exams, the rush to throw away books and pronounce how happy they were to never have to do this again baffled me.
Learning is a lifetime pursuit. There is no point at which we should stop learning. Just because you’re leaving school or graduating from university doesn’t mean you don’t need to learn anything ever again.
That’s not how the world works. We don’t learn everything we need to know at either of those points. The point is we never reach a moment in our lives when we’ve learnt enough. There’s always something new you can learn, some new avenue to explore.
Far from killing the cat, curiosity is what keeps it alive, makes it strong and wise. It’s stagnation and a belief that you know all you need to know that will drag you down instead.
How to look after yourself
When I went to university, I was not prepared for what looking after myself meant. I couldn’t cook, I didn’t know how to wash my clothes or iron them. Even making a bed was a difficult task.
I was so underprepared that most of my meals in the early days were either frozen pizzas, soup, or sausage sandwiches. That was about as much as I could muster up. Looking after myself was much harder than I realised.
When you’re wrong, you take for granted all the stuff your parents do for you. I’d never had to wash my own clothes or cook my own meals. That all changed when I went to university. I had to learn and grow up fast. It was an eye-opening experience.
This is not what you pay for when you go to university, but it’s an integral part of the university experience nonetheless. You’re paying for academic education, but you’re also learning things you can’t put a price on.
Self-sufficiency is essential in the modern world. If you can’t look after yourself, you can’t expect anyone else to. University gets derided for its academic value, while those arguments do have merit, there’s no doubt you learn about how to manage your affairs and look yourself while you’re there.
Going to university isn’t a guarantee you’ll learn all the life skills you need to succeed, but there’s no guarantee you’ll learn this if you don’t go either. What university does offer you is a chance to learn how to look after yourself and live independently from your parents.
When you’re 18 and starting out in life, this is an invaluable skill that you can’t underestimate. The sooner you learn it, the sooner you’ll see success.