“So are you going to die today or make it out alive?”

— League of Legends, Phoenix

Entering university is, admittedly, not always a smooth, easy transition. This likely doesn’t surprise you. How many times have you heard someone exclaim, “Your poor study habits won’t work in university!” or “University is a whole other animal!” — if you’re like me, probably too many times to keep track of. 

Nonetheless, I don’t think that the transition to university should be something to be afraid of. Everyone has a different experience, of course. Some find it laughably simple… others find that they have (either literally or figuratively) been thrown into the middle of a foreign country, left for dead.

As a Canadian IB alumna, I went into university expecting to fall into the former category. I came out of my first month realizing that I actually fell into the latter category. I had made the choice of entering the Science One program, a so-called intensive, double-term “course” worth 27 credits. Essentially, it was an all-honours physics+chemistry+biology+math+some research projects… course. The workload was unlike anything I had ever experienced, even in IB, and I must say that I was shocked. Yes, I had heard that Science One would be hard. Did I believe it? No. Because, of course, people had also told me that IB would be hard… and I survived it perfectly fine. 

So psh, if the notoriously difficult IB was a breeze, then surely the same would be true for Science One, right?

Except I was wrong. Very wrong. The first few weeks were a breeze… almost as if they wanted to lure us in and give us a false sense of security. The withdraw deadline soon passed and then the storm hit. 

Now, to be fair, I have no experience taking first year science courses outside of Science One. I cannot say for certain that my unpleasant transition into university was due to Science One. I have no point of comparison. Perhaps I would have struggled regardless. What I can say, however, is that my workload seemed significantly greater than my non-Science One friends. We had frequent math/physics WebWork assignments (which took several hours), written math/physics assignments (which also took several hours), weekly biology quizzes (which, as you guessed, took several hours to study for) and so on. 

We also had the opportunity to learn some coding! This can be seen as either a good or a bad thing depending on your level of love for programming. Either way, computer science did not actually count for marks. Not directly, at least. However, we did need to apply what we learned to create graphs and very rudimentary programs for the other subjects (math/physics/chemistry/biology). It’s nothing too complicated and you get a fair amount of guidance.

Anyways, the purpose of this post is to convince you that transitioning into university isn’t scary. It really doesn’t have to be! Because while I could drone on and on about my bad experiences in first year, it’s quite telling that I’ve survived long enough to tell you the tale. You will survive first year.* 

If it’s any encouragement, I managed to get a solid A in Science One despite feeling hopeless and lost for parts of the term. I even seriously considered dropping out of the program and cutting my losses; accepting the W (withdraw) status on my transcript and falling behind by a year. After having a series of existential crises, failing a chemistry test, and trying to convince my parents that becoming a university-drop out isn’t the end of the world, however, I ultimately decided to persevere to the end. And I’m so glad that I did.

The point is: No matter how bad things may seem in the moment, you will get through it.* Things usually work out, eventually. It might not always be smooth sailing— it could be, if you’re lucky!— but no matter what, your life will go on.* It’s okay if you make mistakes and face difficulties along the way. This doesn’t mean that you’re a failure, nor does this mean that your university career is over. Whenever I started to lose hope, I just thought back to all the other times I felt hopeless, and reminded myself: I somehow made it past those struggles to get to where I am now.

Of course, there were also so many wonderful things that happened during my first year. I don’t want you to get the impression I spent the entire year continuously falling into and climbing out of a pit of despair! I met numerous wonderful people with whom I still meet up with regularly during my second year, for example. There’s also much more freedom in university, and a beautiful campus to explore! (Unfortunately, the beauty of the campus is tarnished by the near-constant construction that is going on.) I tend to focus on the pessimistic side of things, but there’s definitely a great deal of positive changes that came with my entrance to university. 

So I hope that you, whoever you are, have an exciting, fun, not-scary-at-all transition into university. And if you’re already in university, then I’m not sure why you read up to this point— stop procrastinating and get back to work! Just kidding, I welcome everyone to my blog: future, present, past and non-students alike. Thank you for taking the time to visit!

*Disclaimer: This statement is probably true, but YMMV so please don’t come back and haunt me if you end up dead.