Sign-on starts this week (my first opens tomorrow) and everyone on Whirlpool is busy bossing all the first years around, so I hereby declare this week "spam my blog with vaguely relevant first year advice for my non-existent readers week".
Now I am only a second year, but I'm an opinionated second year who likes sharing advice, so (with a warning to take this with a grain of salt) I present:
Kimberley's Top Ten Tips for Trendy Timetables
Or: Wow, I Wish My First Name Began With T
1.
Timetable managers
Unlike school, UQ doesn't give you a timetable - you have to select your tutorials, pracs and sometimes even lectures yourself. Doing it manually is an incredibly stupid way of doing it. Timetable managers were invented for a reason...
Jack Valmadre's
Uni Timetable Manager is colourful and lets you drag and drop your subjects to wherever you want them to go. Unless that 8am lecture is the only one available, in which case you are not allowed a choice, and you stare at the little coloured square forlornly...
UQ Rota is also good, but the colours throw you off a bit and it's not quite as intuitive to use. It does have a pretty cool feature where you can save your timetable, and see other timetables (say, check out a third year law or second year med timetable, if that's the sort of thing you want to do...)
2.
Clump together
The number one, universally agreed-upon rule for timetables is you don't have one-hour tutorials floating around five hours away from everything else. That tutorial will end up abandoned. I like to do 2-3 hour blocks - 4 in a pinch, but it's not optimal. Play around with different block lengths in first semester or something and find your sweet spot. It's not worth going in 3 hours early for one tute, and end up waiting around for hours for your next class. 3 hours of class, then 1-2 hours of break works well for me.
3.
Two-day weeks are a myth
This is engineering. Or maybe geological science or something, but that probably follows the same principle, which is basically forget about having days off during the week. One day off is about as much as you can expect. Pracs alone go for 2-3 hours a week, you usually have 2-3 lectures - and not just one sitting, spread out over 2-3 days, and when you consider that you're probably doing four subjects it's not likely that those 2-3 days for each subject are going to coincide. In other words, lectures alone will probably force you into coming in five days a week.
But some people don't believe in going to lectures, so here's another point: yes, you can cram your subjects into three or four days, if you are willing to pull 8-6 days with no breaks. Which is no fun at all.
4.
Every silver lining has a cloud
For me it's late starts. This semester, I don't think I started earlier than 11, which sounded absolutely great in theory, but you know what? I ended up waking up at 8 or 9 anyway, even when I tried to sleep in, and just lazing around killing time until it was 1 o'clock and time to go to uni. At the end of the day, it was 5 or 6, rush hour traffic, and I was absolutely exhausted even though I'd done four hours of work. Now I'm not saying abandon 11am starts entirely - some people just don't bother turning up at all if it's earlier than that - but think about the side effects of your seemingly perfect timetable before you finalise it!
5.
Trick yourself
Compulsory assessed tutorials are a good thing!
No, really, I mean it. If you are forced to go all the way into uni every week under threat of failing the subject, you might as well take advantage of that and chuck a couple of other classes after that compulsory class. I mean, if you're there anyway, you might as well just go to everything else, right?
It works on me, anyway!
6.
Location, location, location
1pm: Software tute, GP South
2pm: Maths tute, GP North
3pm: Maths lecture, Hawken
What I didn't realise:
GP North is on the other side of campus.
I don't remember exactly what my timetable was, but it was something like that, and I realised about ten minutes after sign-on closed that there was a maths tute at the same time in Priestley, ie, a 100m stroll away from the other two classes. In other words, I doomed myself to 13 weeks of running from one side of the campus to the other and back, for absolutely no reason whatsoever. Look at the rooms! The rooms, I say!
7.
Part time work
This should probably follow (3), about five day weeks, because trying to schedule in part time work is one of the big reasons you'd want to get a day off. Let me preface this by saying I don't have a real job. I do after-school maths tutoring for kids near where I live, which is very different to a six-hour shift at a supermarket in terms of timing, but whatever, apply this to your own situation. I need to be home reasonably early for tutoring, which affects how I arrange my timetable. Maybe if I had a real job, if I couldn't get full days off I'd try to get maybe all afternoon or all morning off? Whatever works.
8.
Friends
I didn't know anyone in first semester, so this didn't apply to me, but in second semester I certainly did this. Try to have at least a couple of classes with your friends - studying is so much more fun in a group (it may or may not be horribly distracting, loud and inefficient) and when you have someone you know to bounce ideas off and interact with the coursework (or something). Just don't choose the friends who have a habit of ditching class and hanging out at the uni bar - unless you want to end up there too, of course, in which case have fun!
9.
Fortnight surprise
Physics pracs only happen every two weeks. I wish I'd known that before scheduling a tute and a prac on one day, thinking I was being very smart for having one four-hour block on Tuesdays. Because that four-hour block became a one-hour tute every fortnight, when pracs weren't on, which became very annoying because MATLAB pracs are assessed and you have to hand in your work in your assigned tutorial. Also: a lot of "Contact" sessions are optional help sessions, one-off Excel tutorials or presentation slots and so on, and they don't happen every week either. Lesson: be aware of the dates of each class!
10.
External forces
Nobody wants to be on the bus at 3:30, when all the chattering schoolkids pile on and loudly take over the back seat. Nobody wants to finish uni at 6 o'clock on a Friday night when all your friends are going out and you just want to collapse on the couch. Nobody wants to have an 11am start, but have to drive in at 9 anyway just to get a park before they all fill up. Consider these things! These are powerful forces of nature and need to be successfully navigated if you are to get through uni without brutally attacking schoolchildren!
Next year I'll probably think this is absolute rubbish - but I've got to start somewhere!
