Following a superb second Freshers' week – the free pizza was much
appreciated it seems! – this week has seen the resumption of every student's
favourite activity: attending lectures.
The mountain of pizza boxes formed at the Freshers' Fayre!
From a personal standpoint, I’m pleased to be back into the lecture
routine, and am relishing the prospect of getting stuck into the course this
year. Reflecting on the academic side of last year, I guess I worked reasonably
hard throughout – well, the course demanded I did, anyhow! I was pleased to
average the equivalent of a First classification overall (although it doesn’t
count towards my final mark), but I know that I could’ve done more in plenty of
instances, such as by adding more extensions to some courseworks, or by
performing more independent research prior to exam period – just going the
extra mile necessary, in truth. So there’s plenty for me to improve upon
heading forwards, and I hope that I can rise to the challenge now with the
increased pressure and difficulty of second year.
This wish should hopefully be facilitated by a slightly more forgiving
timetable this term. One of the most common sights on social network newsfeeds
when timetables are released are comparisons between students of how many hours
of lectures they have, and, following that, how many days they have to start at
9am. Being frequently dormant creatures, you do find that the average student
dreads the prospect of being in the lecture theatre early on when the warmth of
the duvet and pillows at home seems so inviting, but the dynamic world of
university doesn’t wait around for you, and so last semester we first year
Computer Scientists found ourselves heading to four 9ams or, on a good day, a
10am – no rest for the wicked! This time, however, we’ve been handed three
afternoon starts to balance two early ones, so it’s seemingly a case of
timetabling karma in action.
Regardless of the timing of the lectures, I’m grateful to have had the
opportunity of first year to adapt to the style of teaching on offer during
them, as it varies hugely from that in the classroom at school. Whereas the
latter is very much a collaborative effort to ensure a collective understanding
across the entire class, with teachers asking you example questions and setting
homework to test your comprehension, lectures rely more on the attendees mining
relevant information from condensed and often fast-paced commentaries on the
syllabus, delivered by experts in their relative fields, so although it’s all
too easy to lose it, focus is the key.
This is again something I could improve on, as I tested various methods
of note taking throughout the year in order to learn how to retain
concentration. At first I tried writing every crucial detail present on the
lecturer’s slides to ensure I engaged with the material, but I soon found that
although I picked up the earlier topics quite well, towards the end I would
fall behind, and before I could catch up the session would have ended. I also
tried doing this with my laptop, before deciding that it simply was impractical
to be moving it around campus – my fault for being a huge gamer and bringing a
chunky powerhouse of a machine rather than a light notebook!
At the other end of the spectrum, I experimented with only noting
things that the lecturer said but did not include on their slides.
Unfortunately I discovered that not writing or actively engaging with the
material made it difficult to be attentive throughout the duration of talks,
and I would sometimes drift into thought on other matters and completely lose
track of what was being said.
Things can move very quickly during lectures, so I found it’s important
to discover your best noting system and practise it!
Having had such a chance to experiment, this year I’m hoping to tread
the narrow line between the two, using good old pen and paper to note the
absolutely pivotal things like definitions of terms and symbols which might
help me later in the lecture when things really do pick up pace (and, in Computer Science sessions at least, it’s all too easy to fall behind!). After each
lecture I’ll do my best to revisit and research topics covered to produce more
comprehensive notes which summarise both my own scribbles and the lecturer’s
neater slides. I’ve also uncovered the value of copying down examples performed
on the whiteboard, as, when it came to revising, they often helped to further
illustrate points later on.
So if you’re just coming into the world of lectures, my advice would be
just to experiment for a bit and find what works best for you – and stick to
it!
And in many cases I was grateful that, despite the wake-up call they
enforced, I attended lectures, because, however corny it sounds, there really
is no replacement for them. When it came to exam time, it was much harder to
revise content I’d not previously encountered because of missed lectures (due
to illness and the like, I should clarify!), and reading the powerpoint slides
completely dry, without any guidance notes at all, was much less fruitful for my
understanding.
Plus, I’ve always found that anecdotal teaching, which often stems from
both the lecturer and coursemates, works effectively for me – I still remember
the formula for quadratic equations from school in song form, for example! This
is particularly useful when I have to be able to recall facts and formulae
under the pressure of the exam. Without one of my lecturer’s simple rhymes,
“Break the line and change the sign”, I’d probably have forgotten de Morgan’s
Laws of Logic when I most needed them; “NOT(AB) = NOT(A) + NOT(B)” doesn’t have
quite the same ring to it!
Thus in a strange way, I’m quite looking forward to the lectures and
workload approaching – although I don’t know to what extent I’ll agree with
myself in mid-November when coursework deadlines are piling up and I’ll have a
role to perform in a show!
Ah well, as they say: keep calm and carry on!
Robin
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