18 Mistakes Every Fresher Will Make

18 Mistakes Every Fresher Will Make:  It is a must! It is compulsory! As you move from the cozy and comfy lives at home to facing a big and harsh world of the university might be overwhelming and daunting and you will make your fair share of mistake. Whether it is upsetting your bunk mates or attending all the freshers events organized.

We did a great deal of investigation and clean out every skeleton of in the closets of ‘beginner’ errors. The entirety, 18 to be exact!

And it is time to share them to you, with the hope that you wouldn’t make the same mistake that we did.

Forgetting The Necessities

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Packing the entire things you need for the whole semesters could be a very tiring experience, so it is inevitable that you might forget some things.

Yet they are some things you must take along like your credentials and other important details.

 Bringing Useless Things You Do Not Need

Image result for over packed truckBy the same token, don’t pack every single item you own, just in case you might want to bring that television antennae at some point… even though you might not need a television.
Not only will it occupy space in your locker or wardrobe, there’s also a chance that it would make you forget something very important.
To put things straight- If you’re an English student, you might not need a math set. Trust us.

Worrying About Next Year’s Accommodation

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Most universities in Nigeria prioritize accommodation for first year, do not be scared though! You won’t be homeless next year.

The first step is to carefully decide who you want to live with (for at least one whole year). It’s easy to make friends in your first semester but for your future sanity, take some time to work out who your long-term friends  could be. Be very choosy about that.

When the big accommodation hunt starts (somewhere around the end of the session to the beginning of the new session), stay calm and don’t rush into doing anything rash. You could pair with a friend in an alternative accommodation arrangements or vie for hostel accommodation.

Hiding in your room

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When you first move into your new accommodation, and there are lots of strange people moving about and maybe, hollering. It can be tempting to withdraw yourself, be on the defensive and act belligerently.

But the truth is, you’re going to need to make friends and live with this people for a whole year. Making friends is also the ideal time to bond over bunk, room leadership and the general cleanliness of your room.

Just try to be a bit social.

Upsetting Your Room-mates

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It’s going to happen at a point in time. Maybe your loud-speaker booming so loud or your praying very aloud, it’s all too easy to forget there are humans living all around you.
We all know what boisterous Nigerian music sounds like, and often you’ll be the one facing it whilst reading late at night trying to finish an assignment.
So don’t make the mistake of upsetting the room mates, it will come back to bite you!

 Attending every single freshers event

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Now, don’t get us wrong, we are familiar with the phrase “have fun when you are young”, but you know, sometimes sleep is pretty good too.

Freshers night is billed as one of the most exciting, memorable weeks of your life. And it probably is. So understandably, it’s tempting to want go to every single event on offer.

Yet aside from leaving you broke for the rest of the term and with a serious case of the memory relapse, dragging yourself to every party going will not only take the fun out of the events you do want to go to, but is also just plain unnecessary.

Signing up for every single organization

Admittedly, if they have a book club at the university you should totally check it out, but while university is all about trying something new, you therefore shouldn’t sign up for everything going.

Think about the fantastic options that interest you, then pick a select few you think you’d actually be committed to attending. There’s a much greater chance you’ll actually see them through.

 Thinking you have to hang out with the first person you meet, forever

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You’ve maybe, heard everyone saying you that you’ll meet your friends for life at university. As a result of this sort of chat, many freshers find themselves in a wild panic after apparently having not discovered these special people just a few days in. First of all, calm down!

Please don’t believe there’s a need to stay attached to the first friendly person you meet forever more.

Though many great friendships are made in the first few weeks, many, many more are made throughout the year and there will be plenty of opportunities to meet your future soul-mates.

Leaving everything until the night before

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So why is it that the minute even the most diligent students get to university, all sense of planning goes out the window?

Contrary to popular belief, the best time to finish that essay is not 3am the morning it’s due. Somewhat unsurprisingly we can reveal that a little forward planning can help improve your grades and decrease your stress levels.

It will also give you an amazing sense of satisfaction as you head off to bed while your course-mates are still battling with their assignments.

For more tips on beating procrastination and other study tips read: here , here and here

 Not backing up your work

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You will hear this regularly from lecturers, friends and foes alike that backing up your work in the university is really, really important.

As we’ve already mentioned, students have a bad habit of leaving things until the very last minute and if something unexpectedly happens at the wrong moment can turn a stressful situation into a truly horrendous one.

It’s worth noting too that there tends to be zero flexibility on university deadlines so man up, invest in a flashdrive and sign-up to some free online storage sites like Dropbox or Skydrive.

 Leaving your referencing until the end

It’s probably a fact  that referencing is everyone’s least favourite part of writing a term paper or essay, but trust us on this one – write your reference list as you go along.

if you have a fairly recent version of Microsoft Word to write your essays on, learn how to use the automatic referencing system – the added bonus with this is that it will save you an insane amount of time by putting together your bibliography for you!

 Sleeping through your lectures

We all love sleep, but the harsh reality is that you came to uni to learn, not snore in class, so make it worth you time (and money!).

A perfect morning is sequel to a perfect learning experience.

 Never Calling home

You might have started your new exciting life at university now, but that doesn’t mean you should forget the people who’re important to you back home.

It’s more than likely that everyone at home is missing you and would really appreciate updates on how you’re doing as well as some reassurance that you haven’t forgotten about them!

 Never budgeting

So we know that University life is likely to be one of the best time of your life, but that doesn’t mean that all the rules should go out of the window!

Fail to budget in the university and you could find yourself financially ruined for the whole semester, which is the complete opposite of best-times.

Set yourself a budget for each week and stick to it.

 

 

 

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