First-Year Students Reflect on Their First Semester on Campus

As the first semester draws to a close, new students shared what surprised them most about university life, from the freedom of an unstructured timetable to the work of making friends outside their own course.

Several students said the academic adjustment was smaller than they expected, and the social one was larger. "Nobody really tells you that most of your week isn't in a lecture hall," one student said. "Figuring out what to do with that time was the actual first assignment."

Student Support Services runs regular drop-in sessions through the first semester specifically for this adjustment period, and staff say attendance tends to rise sharply in the weeks before exams.

A second cohort of first-year students will begin the same series of check-ins next term.