University tip 1 - Comments

I think it's perfectly fine to change courses too, especially during or right after first year. I did that. At high school, I hated Microbiology, and reading anything on the uni's website wouldn't have changed that. But I did a basic science first year course, and found out what I liked and didn't like (pretty different to high school) and I'm really glad that it's happened and that I changed courses because I found my true passion. My original degree was so far off from what I actually truly wanted to do. Like I said, no reading on the uni's website could have changed anything, and even now in my second year, a paper sounded really good on their site, but was horrible in real life. I don't feel like my time has been wasted, though. Despite that paper not being what it sounded like, I've still gotten points towards my degree, learned new things that aids me in Microbiology, met new people, and more things, and that's money well-spent.

There is a lot of information out there on uni websites and in prospectus' about the modules and assesments. A lot of the people I know on my course and other courses in my uni have gone to the first week of lectures and have gone "What? This isnt what I signed up for". I'll hold my hand up and admit that I looked at the title of my course and said "Yep, I'll do that" and I'm really lucky that the course IS exactly what I want to be doing. Choosing the right course and the right uni from the off saves time and money is all I was getting at :)

I tried to edit that comment, but it didn't work. Anyway, I just want to clarify the last thing I said because I realized it doesn't make sense. I just don't want people to be stuck with something after indirectly researching it. Experience is how people know if something is right for them, not a Google search.

It's completely okay for someone to change their mind in the first year, especially if the new path is in a similar vein of study. That's when the risk is very minimal because freshman year is pretty much all gen eds, anyway. People shouldn't be scared to experience what they think they want instead of reading it off a computer, thinking it sounds so nice, and then finding out the hard way it's not anything like they imagined.