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One of my biggest worries coming into university was will I do well in school? All of my grade 12 teachers made such a big deal of how tough my university courses were going to be, which certainly didn't make me any less nervous.
You're probably feeling the same way right about now. If you're not there yet, you'll be there sometime in the (very) near future. That's why I wanted to get some perspectives from both sides of the university classroom - from both faculty and students.
Today, you'll meet Dr. Toni Serafini. Toni is the chair of our Sexuality, Marriage, and Family Studies (SMF) department and teaches PSYCH 101 (Introductory Psychology) at St. Jerome's. Toni will be talking about her experiences teaching and working with first-year Arts students. You'll also meet Ashton, Kaitlyn, Ariel, and Meaghan, who are all SJU co-registered, first-year Honours Arts students. They'll be talking about what they've experienced so far in their first-year courses.
I hope these interviews will help you to understand that while the first-year transition can be an intimidating one, you're never alone. Never be afraid to reach out - to your Profs, to Student Success staff, and to your friends. All it takes is one term to get fully adjusted to university - and once you can get through 1A, you'll be more than set for the rest of your undergrad degree.
What do you notice as your first-year students start, and then go through, a course?
A couple of things stand out for me. One is around being unsure of what to expect around testing. What are the tests going to be like? How do I study for the tests? I do get a lot of questions about that, and it’s challenging on my end because I’m not always 100 percent sure what to say. I don’t know if they’re looking for some kind of magic solution, you know? Like *snaps* “Do this and you’ll be fine.”…So part of my answer is, well, we have diverse learners. People learn in different ways. So it’s hard for me to answer specifically because I don’t know how [individual students] learn. I ask students a few things – what worked for them in high school, and what kind of grades they got. Students will be honest with me and say, “Well, I didn’t really study a whole lot in high school.” Obviously, university’s different. Not really focusing and still getting good grades? That’s not going to be much help in university, where the material is overwhelming for one class, let alone four or five. What worked for them in high school might not necessarily work for them in university. But some of this is individual – you have to be ready and willing to face that.
Two, a lot of students ask me how they should approach studying. Again, I don’t know what kind of learner they are, so it’s not as easy to answer as it sounds! The tips that I would have for students are based on studies that I talk about in PSYCH 101.. Repeated exposure is really helpful for learning. It’s what the research says. I think they really should talk to their Profs and ask them what they think – then ‘filter’ their advice through what they know about themselves as a learner and what works for them as well.
Another question I get is, “What can I do with a degree in x?” I get that a lot with first-years. “If I major in Psych, what can I do with Psych?” Questions like that. Well, the neat thing about being an Arts major is that it opens you up to diverse pathways, right? There are so many things that you can do with a BA. With an undergrad in Psych, for example, you get exposed to important content but you also develop a lot of skills that can transfer to different jobs. The problem I see is that students are seeking something concrete. There’s definitely a stigma or stereotype surrounding Arts degrees that they don’t lead to successful careers or self-sufficiency, so I get it. My sense is that they want to hear from me, “With x, you can do y,” right? There are so many different pathways you can take with a BA though, the list is huge!
Where do you sympathize with first-year students in Arts?
Multiple choice tests. They’re miserable. I hated multiple choice tests in university, and as a psych major in the first couple of years of university, everything was multiple choice. There was no writing. Third and fourth year I got to write a bit and I was in heaven! I mean, PSYCH 101 was my lowest mark in my first term. It didn’t mean that I wasn’t smart or competent, I just wasn’t accustomed to being assessed this way. I think students need to be reminded that they shouldn’t – and can’t – let their first term marks define them, because if you get too caught up with that it will only bring you down. You cannot let your first term define you academically. I can’t stress that enough.
Weighting can be tough too. Things are worth a lot more. It’s a big shift. Here, you can have tests worth 40% of your grade depending on the courses you take. That’s extremely stressful but it’s just the nature of university courses.
What should Honours Arts and Honours Arts and Business students expect academically in their first year?
If I have to speak in general terms, then I would say that they should expect to be surprised. It doesn’t matter how many people around them say, “This is what you can expect in university, this is what it’s going to be like, you need to prepare for this,” little sinks in until you’re actually experiencing it. What I have heard from first year students is that their high school teachers didn’t prepare them for what university will be like. I don’t know what they’ve been told – but they’re saying that there’s an incongruence between what they’re prepared to experience and what they actually experience.
I think that they can expect, at times, to feel overwhelmed. The logistics around organizing and planning that are so integral to being successful as university students will really stretch some students beyond what they’re comfortable with. If you didn’t use a planner in high school, you certainly will have to use one now, or I don’t know how you’ll be able to keep track of anything. In high school you might have been able to keep track of events in your head because the demands were different…can’t do that here, I’m afraid. I mean, you can, but you won’t do very well.
Unfortunately, I do see lots of feelings of shame or guilt in first year – not being able to meet their expectations or expectations that others might have for them academically – especially when you’re used to getting really high marks in high school and all of a sudden you’re getting 70s in university. A 70 is not bad! It’s an average mark in first year. But when you’re used to getting 90s, a 70 feels like you’ve failed. I mean, it certainly did to me. But then you realize, okay, this is what a lot of people are experiencing, and a 70 in your 1A term doesn’t set the stage for 70s in every course for the rest of your degree, right? Usually, what happens is that in first year - and to some extent, second year - students’ marks drop a little bit, but once they get to more specialized courses in third and fourth year that they’re really excited about, their marks tend to reflect who they really are as a student – at least that was my experience.
I think there’s also a strong invitation to become isolated, you know? I think it’s wrong to have the mindset of I’m at university, my sole focus should be on getting good grades. Well, that should be a significant part of your focus, but not at the expense of your physical, emotional, social, and mental well-being. Again, back to the planner: you’ve really got to plan out your self-care time. If that means watching an episode of The Walking Dead because that’s your favourite TV show, then you better book out an hour of your day to watch it, and for that hour it’s Walking Dead time. Going to the gym and being active, being with friends – it’s all about balance, right? I know that can be really challenging to do.
Generally speaking, what do you think your role is in a student’s academic transition?
Well, first and foremost we’re educators so I think that for us it’s about the actual teaching and delivery…thinking about different ways to deliver material that can facilitate learning for very diverse students. For me that’s very important. The onus is on us to do our best to teach in ways that set students up for learning and for success.
Being an educator, in my mind, is also very much aligned with being a mentor. University is not just about academics. It’s certainly a huge part, and academics is tied to identity and self and future, all that stuff. So, given that we have positions of power as academics, it’s really important that we recognize the power and authority that we hold and we use it wisely…that we help to mentor students through the transition to university and through the journey that is university – and then help support and mentor students for life after university – grad school, employment, talking through students’ options. I think it’s important to mentor students as students, as learners, and as human citizens.
We’re older and more experienced, so some students have the, oh my god you’re a Prof type of mindset. To that I say, “Come on.” I’m always trying to break down that stereotype. We put our pants on one leg at a time just like you do. We need to be available to support you but I can’t force you to come talk to me. I would say to every student: get to know your Profs. Go talk to them, they’re great people.
Any other tips for first years who don’t know what to expect when they start class in the fall?
You’re not alone. If you’re feeling anxious there are dozens of others who are also anxious. If you’re feeling unsure…same thing. There are a lot of commonalities around the first year experience.
Second, look around and use the resources that are available to you. We’re all here for you – come to us. You’ll be amazed how much a visit to Student Success or your Prof’s office hours can calm you. There are lots of supports put in place to help you transition to university and to help you be successful. All you have to do is ask.
What, personally, have you found to be the biggest difference between classes in high school and classes in university?
KC: Probably the tests. You have like, an exam’s worth of content on a midterm or on a paper – and sometimes they’re cumulative. The amount of work is different too, and time management is really hard.
AS: Yeah, I’d say time management outside of class is big. Before I came to university I could get away with procrastinating and then doing an assignment the night before it was due and getting a good mark – it’s just who I am – so it’s been a huge transition and something that I’ve had to work on. Sometimes I haven’t gotten the mark I wanted so it’s been tough to figure out how to balance that. It’s been a lot of scheduling assignments week by week – which is so weird for me – but it’s been working.
AB: Probably the worst thing is trying to balance work with university life as well. In high school it was pretty easy, like most people had a part-time job and the teachers all worked together to create the exam schedule – whereas here it’s just so huge and it’s hard to get into that groove and actually find time in between classes to do readings. I’m finding that I’m doing a lot of speed-reading because that’s the only way I can get it done.
KC: …and readings are very difficult because it’s usually a chapter from each class every week – there’s no let-up.
MH: Midterms in high school often aren’t even a thing, and you don’t have to consolidate all of your knowledge until exams, which you have so much time for. Here, if you get behind in any of your classes it’s so much harder to get caught up.
AB: Yep – I missed the first week of classes because I had the flu and I had so, so much to catch up on.
Is the homework different?
KC: Yeah, it’s a lot more independent work.
AS: I didn’t do homework in high school… (Laughs) Like, I did when I had to, but I never had a lot of homework to deal with. That’s where all the time management stuff comes in for me. Another thing that’s tough is the variance. I have a class that I go to Monday, Wednesday, Friday and it’s not too tough to break the readings down, but then I have 100 pages to read for my 3-hour class on Thursday nights and it’s so hard to make myself do those readings.
KC: And a lot of the time it’s a constant pressure. In high school I’d have weeks where I didn’t have to do anything but here, I’m always in the mindset of “okay, I have to do readings, an assignment, more readings…”
MH: Yeah, there’s a lot of readings in Arts. My classes last term were really heavily based on writing and now my classes this term are really heavily based on testing, so that’s a lot of reading to go along with lectures. Every week there’s at least 2 or 3 hundred pages of reading that I have to go through for all my courses, which is a lot.
How would you compare teaching styles?
KC: I think it varies with classroom size. I know that in most of my bigger classes, I’m less likely to ask questions, but I was in a 30 person class in the fall and I was way more engaged and less afraid to ask questions in that class.
MH: I think it depends on the class too. My smaller classes have been really similar to high school, where there’s a lecture but also the opportunity to ask questions – like English 109 [Academic Writing], the teacher walked around and checked in with everyone. Big lectures are quite different because you just come in and take the material down. That varies from prof to prof too – some use slides, some don’t; some post information online, some don’t.
AS: You really have to understand how each professor teaches to do well in their classes. Understanding the style of their lectures, assignments, readings… even their personalities.
How about tests?
AB: For me, personally, I’m in French and it’s a lot different than high school. High school was a lot of discussion-based learning and assessment – here it’s been tests and essays. I wasn’t used to that and I struggled. The course had an oral lab as well, where you just went and spoke and did presentations – my mark in the lab was 30 percent higher than in my actual French courses. It’s frustrating because I know I’m fluent, but the way I was evaluated was just so different than what I was used to.
MH: There’s definitely not as many assignments here – I know like, people in Math and Science have a lot of them – but in Arts, at least in the courses I’ve taken, there haven’t been any. It’s either been essays or multiple choice tests, there’s not a lot in-between.
KC: And the weighting’s sooo much different than high school. Midterms are worth more than my final exams were in high school. We’d have assignments in high school worth 10 percent and I’d be panicking – but now it’s like, 10 percent? That’s nothing. One of my finals was worth 60 percent of my grade for that course and I realized, “Oh, that’s a lot,” but then I thought back to high school and realized, “that’s A LOT!”
If you had one piece of advice for a high school student who’s preparing to start university in the fall, what would it be?
KC: Get an agenda and stick to it!
MH: Honestly – scheduling is so important – and then do your readings.
KC: Yeah, write everything down after your first day of classes. Just have an idea of time.
AS: Also, don’t stress too much. I was so anxious when I got here. You’re going to meet people – don’t worry.
AB: It’s a huge shift but it’s so much fun when you do get the hang of it. It’s so rewarding, especially when you’re in a good class and you’re studying something you’re passionate about. Don’t be afraid to be yourself, and don’t be afraid to talk to someone if you need help.■
Interviews by Jon Franchetto.
*This article is composed of condensed and partially edited versions of the original interviews.*