Tips for new students -- from an old don

The first week of term has ended, and our new students have just gone through the increasingly absurd ritual that is “Freshers’ Week”. I don’t much mind the old-fashioned rites of passage that many of them organise for themselves: a bit too much alcohol and getting off with the wrong bloke to huge, but temporary, embarrassment all round. ("Wrong bloke" nicely illustrated on the left -- but to be fair this isn't a Cambridge ad!)  It’s the ridiculous quantities of “information” that we now feel obliged to impart.

They have lectures, workshops and leaflets on safe cycling, safe sex, how to write an essay, how to recognise meningitis, what plagiarism is, how the library works (in triplicate), how to deal with budgeting, how to have a good time without it getting in the way of the 2.1 of your dreams – and that’s before they have even met their Director of Studies, received their work schedule or been to a lecture.

We must be mad. In the rest of our teaching lives, we are only too well aware of how much information the average highly-intelligent young person can possibly absorb in an hour. At the beginning of term we simply ignore that. Though you only have to look at the behaviour of many of our first years on their bicycles to see that the safe-cycling advice falls on deaf ears. Luckily, for most of them, experience teaches that one.

So why do we do it? It’s partly unthinkingly well-meaning, and partly tick box again I fear. Do you explain to your students about aids/plagiarism/loan management. . . ? asks some higher authority (whether the government or the students’ union). Yes, sir, we can reply.

Left to myself, I’d cut it back down to a speedy hour or so.

But what would you say, if you could give them just one piece of advice?

Obvious: GET A DIARY. That’s the single piece of advice that would lead to most benefit, efficiency, good work routine and happy living over the first year at ‘uni’ (as they now say). You would be amazed to discover how many students try to manage a complicated timetable and routine without one. Overall more classes are missed by simply failing to write down the time and place in a little book (or even a blackberry) than by laziness or whatever.

After that, it’s a bit more difficult to know what to put first. But I would go next for TAKE CARE WITH YOUR FACEBOOK. Yes it’s a wonderful medium of new communications. But your lecturers may well have registered too, you know. So when you say (pace my last point!)  that you couldn’t turn up to your supervision because you were sick – when you have just posted 67 new photographs of that excessive party at which you had such a good time, they will know!

Finally, TREAT YOUR LECTURERS AS THE HUMAN BEINGS THAT THEY ARE.  I get really fed up with being treated as some kind of teaching automaton, programmed to deliver information on Roman history come rain or shine… no feelings involved. On numerous occasions (. .. . oh dear, back to missing classes again) students have apologised for not making a supervision a few days before with a cheery “Sorry I didn’t turn up, I wasn’t well”. You don’t just fail to turn up for a dinner invitation, because you’re ill: you get a message to your host in advance. Same courtesy for us please.

Now a postscript for regular readers of the blog. To continue the crater of Vesuvius theme, there's a great poem on exactly that subject by my TLS colleague Will Eaves – just up on the Tate website, as poem of the month.

Comments

[jjaff]

my god, what academia has come to!; are these comments all that can be said?; changed days indeed..

[Oliver Nicholson]

The only thing I can remember from our Freshman's pep talk by the Dean was the utterance: "You will have to matriculate of course - don't worry, it won't make you blind". I did wonder why no one else laughed. Poor fellows, maybe nobody had told them.

[Peter Taylor]

Does CUSU no longer give Freshers a diary?

As for "You don’t just fail to turn up for a dinner invitation, because you’re ill: you get a message to your host in advance", it's quite possible that you're wrong.

Wes, students can drink legally over here.

[Jenn]

The only thing I remember from my FW was the Domestic Bursar holding a paper towel up in the air and telling us not to flush them down the toilet, but feel free to use them to pull our hair out of the shower plugholes.

[azj]

I guess the illness point is a bit like the notion of politeness. One learns, in good company, that if your guest cannot hold their knife and fork properly, you might emulate them and turn yours the wrong way round, to make them feel at home. So, if someone were to be rude or abusive, as a response, one might reflect and do one's best to comprehend the conduct rather that judge it, reprimand it or indeed spit it out. Such a result is the sign, inevitably, of an unfeeling, uncaring, and completely ignorant
member of society.

[azj]

There is a loophole with the illness point. Critical illness often presupposes a loss of courtesy. It's like an old lady who is incontinent and pees in the street. One would be completely inhumane and fairly thick to misunderstand the immediacy of her needs, or even make it worse through judgment, for that matter. What kind of person does that make one?

[Tony Francis]

After I was out of school and in the "real world", I frequently lamented that I hadn't taken a course in golf or tennis. While in school I had eschewed these subjects in favor of one more math or science class. But in the real world, "herd bonding" of the community leaders occurs on the golf course or tennis courts. (Just one more thing I would do differently, if I could only go back in time!)

[Wes Byrd]

Gasp!! Students in England drink too??? And I thought that was a University of Iowa (US) thing...

[JF]

AZJ & Zareen I'm not decrying a reasoned life. More pointing out that the very strength of the Cambridge system - the highly personalised teaching system - can be its weakness if the personalities involved don't gel. So, any clued up students reading this blog before going up to Cambridge would do well to bear in mind the personality of the person who will shape the three years of their degree.

I was never going to stay in academia, but a combination of what I learnt from three years of classics and all the extra curricular stuff has stood me in much better stead than a degree on its own would have done. A DoS - my former one in particular - would do well to acknowldedge that.

JF

[azj]

The comment about the real world came about a decade ago and it's funny how women store when they fight. Men are more blatant. I think it's called - you've got to know the bitch you are bitching out before you put on the trousers, especially if you're playing off turf.

[Zareen Pervez Bharucha]

Hurrah AZJ! Yes, I agree totally. I made this point to a friend of mine who announced, very confidently, that the whole idea of doing a PhD was - a.)A Waste of Time and b.)Not likely to make a damn difference to my life. But she capped it by saying (and this is what got to me the most): Ooh when are you going to start living the real life?!

This from someone who was until a week ago, writing proposals for a thesis.
Sour grapes, I say.

[azj]

JF's comment is insightful, however not necessarily correct. My director of studies spent the whole of my final year trying to get me to re-write my thesis and then getting me to pedantically put spaces after initials. Tiresome at the time, I have never forgotten it. Some people tell you jealously that you are leaving the imaginary world when you depart from Cambridge. These people are like people who tell other people that directors of studies have not written books and they tend to be wrong. Being in your head IS the real world when using your brain full time is your job.

[Tony Francis]

In regard to Kathleen Bell's comment about the "O" word being subject to Copyright, I noticed the shield images from ancient Sparta were also copyrighted. Since they date from 422 P.C.; BC; BCE; BDE; PX; etc.;
http://www.300spartanwarriors.com
Shouldn't these images be in the Public Domain after all these years?... Same thing with the phrase "Olypmic Games"? (Sorry... didn't mean to put you at risk by mentioning a name from a corporate domain!) Of course, all this excess of copyrighting of famous images only encourages some "irritants to the system" to test the boundaries by making images "similar but not identical". It serves to provide employment for corporate lawyers.

[JF]

Most useful bit of advice was given to me by a guy in the year above at college, about 2 years too late.

First interview with new DoS (who incidentally hadn't selected me) and I proudly announced that while I loved classics I fully intended to try a bit of everything at uni - sport, drama etc. Cue utter disdain from DoS for three years at my ineptitude.

Said bit of advice was casually imparted 18 months on. 'Oh didn't you know?' He said. 'Dr **** hates sport and those who play it. I change out of cricket whites for supervisions, leave the supervision, get changed back and return to the game if I have to'.

So, lesson one. Know thine enemy.

For the record, DoS only admitted he was wrong about me when with a fair wind my thirds in years one and two became a 2.i in finals. And all the extra stuff has been the most useful thing I did at uni when it comes to the real world...

JF

[Kathleen Bell]

I hope you're going to post soon about the O...... word that you are no longer allowed to mention because of copyright infringement. Is this going to affect your teaching? or your publications?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,2185862,00.html

[azj]

Pretty harsh image of Vulcan, Beard. Perhaps an electric blue pool would do him some good or a slit wrist.

[daphne]

Mary what wise advice. I'd also add stick it out because so many of the young people I know are overwhelmed and want to come home.
I blame parents for the lack of manners but (I have to have my back dressed 3 times a week)you'd be surprised how many just don't turn up for the nurse or the Dr and even to see the consultant. Twice now I've bee 30 mins early because of someone not arriving.I'm sure they soon find how human you are.Daphne

[PhilosopherP]

It is both scary and wonderful to know that you have some of the same problems with your students that I have with mine at a US two-year college. So, from Cambridge on down, students are students, eh?