Newfound Appreciation for My University Time
Before the month had even begun, I knew that February was going to kick my butt. I awaited it with some apprehension and a subtle undercurrent of emotions that made me worry if I would make it through with my sanity intact. The month isn't quite over but I feel like I'm approaching the homestretch and I'm placing much better in the field than I had anticipated.
The main focus of the last couple of blog posts has been my new flat. It's exciting and new and while I still have not officially moved in, there has been a lot of hours already poured into the moving. A lot of things have arrived at the flat, the bathroom should be finished by Friday and then the painter just have to finish up early next week and I'll get to move in. It's been something that has claimed a fair bit of my weekends this month.
Most of my time during the week has been spent at my university. I have a lot of classes this month and the study cafes I'm running too. The reading load is still heavy and it will probably continue to almost crush me. Mark that word. Almost. It hasn't crushed me yet and I have missed a minimal amount of texts. Barely anything at all. I get so much of the long and complex texts done on time. I prioritise it heavily and I will sit and try to read even when I'm tired and would rather do something else.
I took an extra lecture hosted by the writing consultant from my university's library late yesterday. I had been there since 8 AM and I left at 7 PM. That's a lot of hours. And it actually turned out that this lecture, lamely titled How To Know Things were somewhat similar to one that I had taken a year before. But still, I'm glad I went because while some of the knowledge was repetitive in nature to me, I still walked away with something that reinforced the growing sense of appreciation that I have felt for a couple of weeks now.
While talking about what it is to know things, one of the things that the writing consultant said was that it is to be able to hold your own in a conversation with a knowledgeable person. And he said that obviously we shouldn't expect to hold a conversation on equal footing with our professors but rather the knowledgeable person he was speaking about was one of our fellow students. The student who did all the readings, showed up for every class, always participated in discussions and talked to the lecturers about the topics in the break or afterwards.
It dawned on me in that second. I'm that person. That's been me so far this semester. I'm the student who reads practically everything. I have showed up for every single class so far and even taken on an additional lecture and signed up for Bridge Building, which is essentially more classes. I raise my hand in almost every single lecture, exercise class or workshop and when silence falls over the room when the lecturer asks a question, I'll still raise my hand with my heart rate spiking and give my best educated guess. I love talking to the lecturers and I have had conversations with every single one so far, if it was a ten minute chat or just a pass-by comment.
And you know the oddest part?
I like it. It's hard as hell and some part of my brain worried if I'm annoying the other students by raising my hand so often. But to be fair, there's not a lot of engagement from my fellow students and it's a shame because man, do you learn from participating. And for me, the foundation for participation is that I have read the text or my brain will run in circles around itself and I'll get too anxious to open my mouth. But I have been putting in the hours (so many freaking hours) and I'm so happy to rediscover how much I still love what I study.
I had the weirdest exam period at the end of the 1st semester but as I hoped, I have entered the 2nd semester with a newfound energy and more so appreciation. It hit me recently that this will be my final year of regularly attending classes like this. Just one more year, two semesters, and it's just thesis writing from then on out. Being a student is such a big part of my identity and of my life and I just feel like I haven't been taking enough of advantage of it and that realisation has fuelled my insistence to work harder than before.
How amazing is it that I can get an education for free? And not even that, we are lucky enough to get monthly student grants all throughout our education? We get access to all of these incredible, smart and accomplished professors and we can just chat to them like normal people? The whole institution is right there to help you, with advice, improving your skills and so much more if you know how to use it. It's a blessing to be able to live this life and I am clinging onto this newfound appreciation with all of my might because it makes me a better student and thus I learn a whole lot more.
It's easy to moan about the workload, boring texts, early classes, lecturers that we don't like and so much more. It might be because I have moved to the next level of my education but I don't think like that so much any more. Sure, the workload actually intensified but now we're reading the texts that have been referenced to in all the books aimed at undergraduates. Some of the texts are so complex that it'll take longer to read and understand them but the topics are often fascinating and it is only a minority of the texts that feel irrelevant. The 8 AM class happens a bit too often for my liking but at the same time, it gets the day started early and I've actually gotten better at getting up in the morning over the course of this month. And don't get me started on the professors. Like... fuck, so many of them are so great and knowledgable and they are just there trying to teach us what they know and that makes me feel happy.
We have had a collection of different lecturers for the Project lectures but there is no doubt that they all really know their craft, even if their audience isn't always interested or their particular type of research might not be relevant for some of them. For negotiation, both the lecturer and the exercise teacher has so much actual experience negotiating and you can hear they care about the craft and techniques that make a great negotiator and they want to make us like that too, also the lecturer literally wrote the book on it. And for KM, both of the lecturers are obviously fascinated with their subject of study and even if managing knowledge is complex and tricky, they manage to pick the old texts apart and engage us, if you're willing to play ball. And for OrgComII, I am throughly impressed with the anthropologist professor who is still quite young and engages with us on a very real level and he even stroke out some of the irrelevant reading after hearing that we were worried about the reading load.
When I took half a year out of university to recharge and avoid developing stress, I came back with renewed energy to finish the last two of my courses and get my Bachelor degree. That was around the time when the photo above was taken. I can see on the time stamp it was taken before 8 AM on the fourth week of the semester. It was that final semester of my Bachelor that I started talking to my professors, instead of just ducking my head and hurrying out of class when it finished. I'd still participate in class discussions, something I really grew into a university in general, but I would also sit in silence when the lecturers did that slightly hopeless stare as none of the many students in front of them would even try to reply to what they had asked. I started being the "annoying" person who speaks constantly and I can't bring myself to regret the change.
I think I lost my edge a bit on the first semester of my Master but I feel like I have found it again. However, I know that I should also be careful not to fill up my metaphorical glass only to have it spill all over everything again. I have to remind myself to pause, breathe and relax. I cannot work all of the time and if I miss a text here or there, it will be fine. I will be fine.
But I should try to do my very best. I might have three part-time jobs but my main and most important job is my education. It's a full time job and lately, I've really been putting in the hours. It's a somewhat scary thing. People say that you're in charge of your own education in university. It's undoubtedly true because it's your job to read the texts, to show up and to participate but I see so many of my fellow students behaving like they are still teenagers in school. Like spending the whole lecture on Facebook, as if it would be enough to just show up and then the lecturer's words might magically get absorbed into their brain. I know about bad days and I would be willing to excuse those but there's too much silence when a question is asked. There should be so many hands.
Have we all forgotten how privileged and lucky we are? Are so many of us failing to exploit the possibilities unfolding in front of us? Is being a student just something we do because it's a rite of passage and it might secure us a higher paying job at the other end?
At the lecture by the library, the writing consultant reminded us that we can come to the library with any questions. We can book a librarian who can help us gather sources for our projects. We can book a meeting with the writing consultant and get feedback on our academic writing. All those things are right there. Wonderful resources right within our grasp and I would wager that too many of us don't utilise them. I certainly don't and I should. Our university can be a guiding and helping hand and all the people employed there will be thrilled to meet an engaged student.
I can tell whenever I talk to the professors. They love students who care about their area of expertise and want to converse about it. I think they see a few too many vacant stares while teaching that they just love when someone is genuinely interested.
I'm not the perfect student, despite appearing to be the knowledgable person you should be able to converse with to know something. I think I might appear like that to my fellow students sometimes. When I expressed that I wasn't very prepared for an oral exam, they all put on an overbearing smile and said I would do fine, which thankfully I did. When I told someone I had gotten a D on another exam, they were extremely surprised because I always participated so much in the classes. I think there's a stigma attached to the active student. A university example of the teacher's pet. I might be a mixture positive or negative biases but either way, I sort of hate that my fellow students might be walking around with a very specific categorisation of me.
I don't like being boxed into assumptions, despite liking being an active and engaged student.
I needed to write this post because I know that I have a few posts on here where I feel very overwhelmed by university life. It's easy to rant and record the low points but it's not often enough that I take the time to appreciate and revel in the high points. The euphoria when I can say something that I can hear comes out intelligently or when I gain approval from my professors.
I have to be careful not to make myself burn out. Like I mentioned in the beginning, February is freaking tough and I cannot let myself slack off now. I might slow down momentarily to catch my breath but I can't let my feet stop moving. If I properly stop, I fear that I will be dead on my feet and this semester is far from over.
I'm proud that I've taken the time to recognise and appreciate my privilege. I think that's such an important thing. I'm happy that I have this reflection right now, while I'm still at university and have a chance to throw myself into it wholeheartedly instead of getting this feeling in five years when university and student life is behind me. Well, I better finish this post and get back to those texts that needs reading.
The main focus of the last couple of blog posts has been my new flat. It's exciting and new and while I still have not officially moved in, there has been a lot of hours already poured into the moving. A lot of things have arrived at the flat, the bathroom should be finished by Friday and then the painter just have to finish up early next week and I'll get to move in. It's been something that has claimed a fair bit of my weekends this month.
Most of my time during the week has been spent at my university. I have a lot of classes this month and the study cafes I'm running too. The reading load is still heavy and it will probably continue to almost crush me. Mark that word. Almost. It hasn't crushed me yet and I have missed a minimal amount of texts. Barely anything at all. I get so much of the long and complex texts done on time. I prioritise it heavily and I will sit and try to read even when I'm tired and would rather do something else.
I took an extra lecture hosted by the writing consultant from my university's library late yesterday. I had been there since 8 AM and I left at 7 PM. That's a lot of hours. And it actually turned out that this lecture, lamely titled How To Know Things were somewhat similar to one that I had taken a year before. But still, I'm glad I went because while some of the knowledge was repetitive in nature to me, I still walked away with something that reinforced the growing sense of appreciation that I have felt for a couple of weeks now.
While talking about what it is to know things, one of the things that the writing consultant said was that it is to be able to hold your own in a conversation with a knowledgeable person. And he said that obviously we shouldn't expect to hold a conversation on equal footing with our professors but rather the knowledgeable person he was speaking about was one of our fellow students. The student who did all the readings, showed up for every class, always participated in discussions and talked to the lecturers about the topics in the break or afterwards.
It dawned on me in that second. I'm that person. That's been me so far this semester. I'm the student who reads practically everything. I have showed up for every single class so far and even taken on an additional lecture and signed up for Bridge Building, which is essentially more classes. I raise my hand in almost every single lecture, exercise class or workshop and when silence falls over the room when the lecturer asks a question, I'll still raise my hand with my heart rate spiking and give my best educated guess. I love talking to the lecturers and I have had conversations with every single one so far, if it was a ten minute chat or just a pass-by comment.
And you know the oddest part?
I like it. It's hard as hell and some part of my brain worried if I'm annoying the other students by raising my hand so often. But to be fair, there's not a lot of engagement from my fellow students and it's a shame because man, do you learn from participating. And for me, the foundation for participation is that I have read the text or my brain will run in circles around itself and I'll get too anxious to open my mouth. But I have been putting in the hours (so many freaking hours) and I'm so happy to rediscover how much I still love what I study.
I had the weirdest exam period at the end of the 1st semester but as I hoped, I have entered the 2nd semester with a newfound energy and more so appreciation. It hit me recently that this will be my final year of regularly attending classes like this. Just one more year, two semesters, and it's just thesis writing from then on out. Being a student is such a big part of my identity and of my life and I just feel like I haven't been taking enough of advantage of it and that realisation has fuelled my insistence to work harder than before.
How amazing is it that I can get an education for free? And not even that, we are lucky enough to get monthly student grants all throughout our education? We get access to all of these incredible, smart and accomplished professors and we can just chat to them like normal people? The whole institution is right there to help you, with advice, improving your skills and so much more if you know how to use it. It's a blessing to be able to live this life and I am clinging onto this newfound appreciation with all of my might because it makes me a better student and thus I learn a whole lot more.
It's easy to moan about the workload, boring texts, early classes, lecturers that we don't like and so much more. It might be because I have moved to the next level of my education but I don't think like that so much any more. Sure, the workload actually intensified but now we're reading the texts that have been referenced to in all the books aimed at undergraduates. Some of the texts are so complex that it'll take longer to read and understand them but the topics are often fascinating and it is only a minority of the texts that feel irrelevant. The 8 AM class happens a bit too often for my liking but at the same time, it gets the day started early and I've actually gotten better at getting up in the morning over the course of this month. And don't get me started on the professors. Like... fuck, so many of them are so great and knowledgable and they are just there trying to teach us what they know and that makes me feel happy.
We have had a collection of different lecturers for the Project lectures but there is no doubt that they all really know their craft, even if their audience isn't always interested or their particular type of research might not be relevant for some of them. For negotiation, both the lecturer and the exercise teacher has so much actual experience negotiating and you can hear they care about the craft and techniques that make a great negotiator and they want to make us like that too, also the lecturer literally wrote the book on it. And for KM, both of the lecturers are obviously fascinated with their subject of study and even if managing knowledge is complex and tricky, they manage to pick the old texts apart and engage us, if you're willing to play ball. And for OrgComII, I am throughly impressed with the anthropologist professor who is still quite young and engages with us on a very real level and he even stroke out some of the irrelevant reading after hearing that we were worried about the reading load.
I don't take photos at university often and this one is from almost exactly a year ago
When I took half a year out of university to recharge and avoid developing stress, I came back with renewed energy to finish the last two of my courses and get my Bachelor degree. That was around the time when the photo above was taken. I can see on the time stamp it was taken before 8 AM on the fourth week of the semester. It was that final semester of my Bachelor that I started talking to my professors, instead of just ducking my head and hurrying out of class when it finished. I'd still participate in class discussions, something I really grew into a university in general, but I would also sit in silence when the lecturers did that slightly hopeless stare as none of the many students in front of them would even try to reply to what they had asked. I started being the "annoying" person who speaks constantly and I can't bring myself to regret the change.
I think I lost my edge a bit on the first semester of my Master but I feel like I have found it again. However, I know that I should also be careful not to fill up my metaphorical glass only to have it spill all over everything again. I have to remind myself to pause, breathe and relax. I cannot work all of the time and if I miss a text here or there, it will be fine. I will be fine.
But I should try to do my very best. I might have three part-time jobs but my main and most important job is my education. It's a full time job and lately, I've really been putting in the hours. It's a somewhat scary thing. People say that you're in charge of your own education in university. It's undoubtedly true because it's your job to read the texts, to show up and to participate but I see so many of my fellow students behaving like they are still teenagers in school. Like spending the whole lecture on Facebook, as if it would be enough to just show up and then the lecturer's words might magically get absorbed into their brain. I know about bad days and I would be willing to excuse those but there's too much silence when a question is asked. There should be so many hands.
Have we all forgotten how privileged and lucky we are? Are so many of us failing to exploit the possibilities unfolding in front of us? Is being a student just something we do because it's a rite of passage and it might secure us a higher paying job at the other end?
At the lecture by the library, the writing consultant reminded us that we can come to the library with any questions. We can book a librarian who can help us gather sources for our projects. We can book a meeting with the writing consultant and get feedback on our academic writing. All those things are right there. Wonderful resources right within our grasp and I would wager that too many of us don't utilise them. I certainly don't and I should. Our university can be a guiding and helping hand and all the people employed there will be thrilled to meet an engaged student.
I can tell whenever I talk to the professors. They love students who care about their area of expertise and want to converse about it. I think they see a few too many vacant stares while teaching that they just love when someone is genuinely interested.
I'm not the perfect student, despite appearing to be the knowledgable person you should be able to converse with to know something. I think I might appear like that to my fellow students sometimes. When I expressed that I wasn't very prepared for an oral exam, they all put on an overbearing smile and said I would do fine, which thankfully I did. When I told someone I had gotten a D on another exam, they were extremely surprised because I always participated so much in the classes. I think there's a stigma attached to the active student. A university example of the teacher's pet. I might be a mixture positive or negative biases but either way, I sort of hate that my fellow students might be walking around with a very specific categorisation of me.
I don't like being boxed into assumptions, despite liking being an active and engaged student.
I needed to write this post because I know that I have a few posts on here where I feel very overwhelmed by university life. It's easy to rant and record the low points but it's not often enough that I take the time to appreciate and revel in the high points. The euphoria when I can say something that I can hear comes out intelligently or when I gain approval from my professors.
I have to be careful not to make myself burn out. Like I mentioned in the beginning, February is freaking tough and I cannot let myself slack off now. I might slow down momentarily to catch my breath but I can't let my feet stop moving. If I properly stop, I fear that I will be dead on my feet and this semester is far from over.
I'm proud that I've taken the time to recognise and appreciate my privilege. I think that's such an important thing. I'm happy that I have this reflection right now, while I'm still at university and have a chance to throw myself into it wholeheartedly instead of getting this feeling in five years when university and student life is behind me. Well, I better finish this post and get back to those texts that needs reading.
Comments
Post a Comment