It’s come to the stage of the year when Murdoch starts accepting the mid-year enrolments. A lot of students who take a break after high school find this to be the best time to get into student life. However it can still be a pretty intimidating time and you probably have a lot of worries and doubts. With that in mind Murdoch asked me to write three articles tackling the most common worries you guys face. If you have any questions about enrollment I advise you to check out Ask Murdoch.

“I haven’t studied in a while and I’m lacking confidence.”

I’m told that 60% of Murdoch students are over 19 when they enrol. Maybe this statement could apply to you? Maybe you took some time off between finishing school and enrolling to travel or earn some money. Perhaps University didn’t seem like your first choice when you wrote your last exams but now it seems like a pretty attractive option. But you’ve been away from studying for a while now and you’re not sure if you could write an assignment or research a paper. I was in the same place when I first started at Murdoch, although admittedly my exile from the books had only been for 8 months. Thankfully there were a few things that helped.

Foundation Units

When you enrol you are required to take a foundation unit in your first semester. These are usually aimed at teaching you to write critically about a myriad of different subjects. My foundation unit was FDN130 or “Age of Information” and was basically about how different communication technologies had influenced our development. It sounds pretty full-on but in reality these units are really there to make sure you develop the research and writing skills you need to succeed at Uni. Provided you go to your tutorials and you do the readings you shouldn’t have any major problems getting back into the swing of things.

Workshops

Throughout every semester there are always a lot of voluntary workshops run to help students deal with issues such as stress, essay writing and research tips. These workshops usually don’t last longer than an hour and they cover a wide range of topics. If you’re having trouble with something the chances are there is a workshop that can help. More importantly these can help refresh skills you’ve already learnt and that can give you a bit more confidence in your assignment writing.

Other Students

When all else fails it can be really useful to talk to the others doing your unit. These guys will probably be going through exactly the same stress with the material that you are and a problem shared is a problem halved. It’s easy to feel alone when everyone else is going on about how easy an assignment is going to be but most of that is just posturing. The person that boasts about how quickly they wrote 5000 words is either lying or just super smart. Talk to others and their support will see you through.

Student Learning Centre

I mentioned in the last post that Murdoch has an entire department to help people succeed. The Student Learning Centre has people on staff that will help you. It’s also a great place to find out about the workshops I mentioned and get one-to-one sessions to help you out. These are the kind of resources that you can really find useful when you reach the end of your tether but they are best used throughout the semester. A stitch in time saves nine and all that.

Overall

It’s really easy to feel like you’re an idiot the first time you sit in a lecture and that’s not a feeling that goes away quickly. The turning point comes however when you realise that everyone else feels like an idiot, whether they’re willing to admit it or not. So however long you’ve been away from study it’s very likely that there are at least 20 people in your class or on your course that are in the same boat. Studying is like riding a bicycle, to dust off that old chestnut, and though you might be a bit wobbly at first it will all come back to you.