This week, students are heading back to school. It is an exciting time of year. I am very lucky because I get to be part of the orientation for new students. My colleague Mark Groulx and I give a lecture to the students to discuss the academic part of their experience and it is always a highlight of the year to meet the new cohort.
I have explained a number of times that the transition to university is a major change in most students' lives. It is not only a time of independence and learning how to care for oneself but there is a fundamental shift in the approach to education that can often come as a surprise to many students: we are not high school. University is not better than high school, it is not worse than high school, it is just different.
First, university classes are as much about being in class as they are about being out of class. We tell students to expect three hours of study for every hour of lecture.
This time will not only be dedicated to assignments but also to reading and, in the case of subjects like mathematics, practice.
Second, students need to think about reading and studying in a new way.
Of course, like high school, they will have textbooks for different courses but they will also be introduced to academic readings. Reading, what we call "scholarship," can be a very daunting transition. Yet the readings are a major component of the course material. Without sounding patronizing, I like to think of the first few years at university as an invitation to the grown up table at a family gathering. I always say that despite the common belief that "high school students are not prepared for university," I argue that, in fact, they are very ready. They just need to know that they aren't going to be doing the same things they did in the past. So "an invitation to the table" is a way of saying that scholars working on different questions in their respective fields of study are essentially having a conversation.
They talk to each other through their scholarship. They read each others' work and they add their contribution.
Third, students will need to become familiar with the library in a fundamentally different way than they have been in the past.
So much of what is available today is available through a computer interface. I use this expression (computer interface) to distinguish between a simple search on the internet and the use of the complex, yet extremely useful, databases that students have access to as a part of their student fees.
Google Scholar, for example, can be accessed through the internet but when students find articles that will help them with their research they will often be asked for payment. Using the university database however gives students access to these articles through their fees.
Fourth, new university students will find that semesters, and in fact time itself, will have a whole different feel. By mid-October they will have had their first exams.
So my advice is: "Don't lose September." Students need to start to read and study right from the first week. A 13-week semester will fly by.
For parents sending their child to university, I would give this advice.
I know we think of this time as an important transition to independence but the first six weeks of university are truly a major transition. It's OK to text them, to ask how it's going, to remind them that first semester is a time of transition. And despite what you may have heard, professors do care about their students. We look forward to sharing in the conversation with the remarkable students we have the privilege to teach.
