Uni studies tougher than high school

By MEGAN FIU RA’VU
ARE you a high school student preparing for college or university studies?
Do you think you have prepared well for life in a tertiary institution?
Do you think you will survive life in such a tertiary institution in your first year and continue on to complete your diploma or degree?
Well, whether you are ready or not, you can learn from my story.
I entered a university and barely passed my first year and snuck into the second and I want to share some experiences with you all to help you do better and succeed at tertiary level.

Life in university is different
Life after high school is not the same as in any college or university. You may think that when you get out there, everything will be as simple as in high school.
However, that fact is, it is not. Learning in a college or university is totally different and much harder.
I graduated from secondary school with a grade point average (GPA) of 3.6, thinking I would make it into the University of Papua New Guinea, which was my first choice. I wanted to study political science, but I didn’t get in.
However, I was accepted to the Divine Word University (DWU), which was my second choice, to do the Bachelor in Communication Arts programme. At first I was quite upset that I didn’t get picked for my first choice but then I realised that I should be thankful that I got a place at DWU because out of the thousands of grade 12 students who graduated that same year, I was given a place in a tertiary institution.
Being a freshman in university is really exciting. You will get to meet a lot of friends from all over the country, but it is also very challenging.
The very first time I arrived at DWU I was so scared to be among thousands of students from different cultures and backgrounds, especially on registration day.
I was so scared and confused about everything, where to go and who to see, which lecture room to go to and what resources and textbooks I needed.
However, I adapted soon afterwards and I familiarised myself with my schedule.

Social life can distract you
University is a place where you go to get educated, but there are other things that may come between you and your studies. There are no bells that ring and there are no people to tell you what to do and what not to do. It is you to decide for yourself. Friends may influence you, ask you to go drinking or clubbing – they can even make you change from a good person to someone you are not.
In university I met a lot of friends from different provinces. I got carried away with socialising a lot and procrastinating. As time went by, I started to lose focus in my studies.
I would stay up late at night chatting with friends on social media. I would also watch movies until very late and wake up late in the morning, feeling drowsy and sleepy. I started skipping lectures because of staying up and I would do last minute assignments and even last minute studies for tests and consequently end up scoring bad grades. I procrastinated a lot in doing all my work, and I didn’t realise that my marks were dropping. I also wasted time hanging around with friends instead of studying. I thought that I had the freedom and that I could do whatever I wanted to without anyone there to stop me.
It was mid-year when our transcripts came out and I was stunned. I could not believe myself because I scored poorly and the marks shown on my transcript weren’t what I expected. I could not sleep properly for weeks after seeing my marks. It bothered me every time, but I knew where I went wrong and I blamed myself for everything.
After realising what happened I told myself that I would do better in the next semester. In semester two of my first year, I tried my best to do better but it didn’t do much good. My semester one marks were added to semester two’s and the final outcome was bad.

Another student’s experience
I wasn’t the only one in that kind of situation. I interviewed another student from another tertiary institution about his view on university life and obtained similar points in his responses.
This is what Paul McDale, an agriculture student from the Papua New Guinea University of Technology (Unitech), said in differentiating high school from university in terms of work load.
McDale said that in high school the load of school work, like assignments and tests, did not come as frequently as at university, and he had time to spare in participating in extra-curricular activities and other leisure activities.
But now that he is in university, the tests and assignments just kept coming. In university, according to whatever course one is taking, s/he would be required to pass a certain number of subjects in a given limited period of time (that is, in 15 to 16 weeks).
For him as a student studying agriculture at Unitech, taking seven subjects and having to manage the tests and assignments from each subject in order to meet their dead-lines was quite an experience.
Even though it seemed to be a lot, he tried his best in managing them.
“Talking about sleep, even though I had a lot of school work in high school, at least I still got to sleep at nights. But now I’m in university, most times I have to trade my sleeping hours just to do assignments. It’s hard but it’s worth it,” McDale said.
“Being in university feels like the greatest achievement for me. Fitting in was a little bit hard for me at first because of the fact that I wasn’t that much of a talker and someone who liked to socialise,” he added.
“However, as time went by, I got along with the students from other courses as well my own but I didn’t really spend most of my time with them at the start of the schooling year. However, as weeks and months passed, we all started to get along just fine.”
Even though McDale got along well with others, he still didn’t feel like he really fitted into the system and the different groups of people.
He said he didn’t feel like he belonged to the culture group which he was in because the students in that culture group didn’t really make him feel welcome so he lost interest in identifying with that group.
“The overall freshman year at Unitech was quite an experience for me and getting through that year has taught me a lot of things. It has made me evaluate myself and try to break off from my former self, the shy and quiet kind of person,” McDale said.

Losing scholarship benefits
From McDale’s experience as well as mine, I think you get the picture.
University life is not the same as life at secondary school where you can spend less time in your studies and still get by. In university, if you lose focus in your studies, you will sink and your transcript will reflect that lazy kind of effort that you expended while studying there.
When I received my first-year transcript and results, my name appeared on the continuing list, however I lost my scholarship benefits and I was on self-sponsor, meaning my parents had to pay K10,000 for my school fees in the following year and purchase my ticket to travel to Madang. The total amount added up to almost K13,000.
I was so embarrassed to tell my parents about my poor performance and the amount of money they were going to spend on me but I had no choice. After thinking about a very good explanation I sat with my parents when I got back home for holidays, and explained everything to them.
I apologised a number of times for losing my scholarship and I promised them I would do better in the following year. Thank God, they understood me and agreed to pay for my fees to continue my studies in my second year. However, it was very hard for me to get over it. It bothered me for weeks. Later I had to accept the fact that sometimes we do not choose failure but we fail nonetheless and have to learn from our mistakes.
Hopefully, we learn from our mistakes and do better next time.

• Megan Fiu Ra’vu is a Communication Arts student at the Divine Word University.