Interview from post-secondary students ( freshmen vs upper class-men)

Hello everyone, this is blog 2 of the series and for those of you who are not sure of what I’m talking about, this blog is a part of a 6-parts blog series that I have been writing for beat the streets. So far, I wrote some advice for new post-secondary students which you can check out in the blog section.

This blog is basically an interview comparing a high school student entering their first year of post-secondary and a student going into their last year of post-secondary.

Dora

Entering first year of post-secondary in September

Q:     Tell us a little bit about yourself. 

A:      Hey, my name is Dora, I’m an 18-year-old student attending my first year of university this fall where I’ll be studying Health studies. My background is Ghanaian, and I was born in Canada. One thing about me is that I love to dance. I’m not a professional but I love watching dancing videos and recreating them in my room. A goal of mines is to perform at a festival like Afrofest. I am almost a lefty. I don’t know if a lot of people find that cool but it’s whatever to me, I guess. I LOVE BIOLOGY, more specifically genetics or anatomy. The human body is so interesting to me, I just love learning new things when it pertains to science.

Q:      What are the things that you intend on accomplishing in university?

A:       Hopefully, my university life will be like high school, friends wise. I’m pretty shy at first so it’s kind of intimidating making new friends but I can’t wait. I also want to take school more seriously, in the sense of retaining knowledge instead of getting by in a class.

Q:       What do you think university life will be like?

A:       I know university life especially at York is very party-based and can be easily distracting. I just hope that I can stay to myself and put my studies first before attending functions.

Q: do you think you’ll be able to juggle academics and social life? What’s your plan?

A: hmmm… juggling school and social life!! Well, it’s hard for everyone but once you learn time management, anything is possible. During my 11th grade in high school I was working, full-time cheerleader, preparing for my school’s multicultural fiesta as well as the one at York University. The experience was fun but very hectic there were times where I would sleep on the bus to school or after practices *SAD FACE*. That experience taught me how to manage my time and to learn from the mistakes which will be helpful in my future in university.

Lynnette

Post-secondary student entering her final year in September.

 Q:   Tell me a little bit about yourself.

A:    Hi, I’m Lynnette. I’m a Carleton university student. I will be going to my 4th year of civil engineering this coming fall and I’m currently working as a co-op student. When I grow up, I hope to be a great professional engineer working in geotechnical or transportation engineering. Way way in the future, when I have enough experience, I hope to bring my skills back to my birth country and help to improve the infrastructure there. I was born in Zimbabwe, which I left shortly after turning 9 years old, to come to Canada. A fun fact about me is I’m actually bad at doing arithmetic in my head even though I chose a program that’s math-heavy.

Q:    How has been university life so far?

A:    My university experience has been a really fun experience. In my first year, I was wildin!!! I had moved away from Toronto to go to Ottawa (Carleton u), and it was the first time I experienced that much freedom away from my family, so I was doing entirely way too much! But the following years were calmer, and I became more focused on my studies as I approached the last few years of my program. I’m grateful that I got to meet the people I met and was presented with an opportunity to work as a graduate student research assistant where I discovered which stream of civil engineering I wanted to pursue. Overall, it was a good experience looking back.


Q:    Was it anything like what you expected when starting first year?

A:     Honestly, my high school teachers overhyped how serious university is, or at least how serious 1st year is. First-year was literally an extension of high school; it just felt like I was relearning some of the stuff I had already learned. I was expecting it to be way harder than it was. In terms of the social aspect, it was also different than expected; I expected to meet so many different people and make 10037828 friends by first week, but it wasn’t until 2nd year that I actually settled into the friendship group that I’m in right now.

Q:    Were you able to balance academics and social life? How or what went wrong?

A:     In first year, because I felt like the courses I was taking were pretty easy, I sort of neglected all my course work until the very last minute and focused more on the social aspect of university. Those habits followed me into 3rd year, to the point where I almost failed one of my classes because I only spent a few hours studying for the final exam the night before. After almost failing that class, I feel like it was a bit of a wake-up call to focus more on my studies instead of going out with friends or just watching Netflix. I think the best trick to balance your social life and academics is to develop those good habits in the very beginning instead of waiting until you’re almost done with your degree. If I had done that, I could’ve really saved myself from countless stressful sleepless nights of cramming 4 months’ worth of course material in a single night. I find that setting goals for course work each week and choosing a certain day to work on every single one of the goals is very helpful. It helps you see in a structured way exactly how many things you need to get done for each course and you can also set aside a day for other things like your social life.

 

Q:    If you could tell your first-year self anything, what would it be?

A:    I would tell her to join more clubs, and actually stick to them. Not just attend one meeting and never return *LAUGHING*. I wish that I was more involved in my school community, I feel like that would’ve made my university experience much richer and more enjoyable. I am a shy person so the idea of just joining a club by myself, since none of my friends wanted to join, was really scary. So, my advice to first-year Lynnette is to get out of her comfort zone and not to be afraid to try things by herself. Another piece of advice is to befriend your professors!! Having a good relationship with your professors/TAs can be very rewarding; it can open opportunities for you that may help you in your career. Lastly do not stress so much. You are still very young, almost nothing you do is set in stone, there is always a chance to redeem yourself. If you mess up, learn from the mistakes, and use them as teachable moments to do better when confronted with a similar situation in the future. Nothing is EVER that serious, you’ll probably look back and cringe at it a little or, won’t even think about after some time passes.

This is the end of bog #2 of this series and I hope you guys had as much fun reading this interview as I had putting it together. Blog #3 will be out soon! Stay tuned.