First day at university as a mature student

Sticking out like a sore thumb

Going back to uni for the second time was an intimidating experience. There was a strong feeling of failure associated with the experience. Furthermore, going back there at the age of 27 felt exactly like that Steve Buscemi "How do you do fellow kids?" meme.

At least for myself, I knew immediately that it would be better to keep a low profile and try not to act like "that one mature student who sits in the front row and always argues with the lecturer or brings unnecessary examples from their life".

Studying something is a very different mode of thinking, unique to other tasks

I was lucky (or unlucky) in that I had a chance to work in a wide range of jobs through my life. I worked in construction when I was high school. This is an intense job physically but it did not require much thinking, so to say.

Another job I held at around the same time was at an after-school care centre. This job was way less physical but it required a lot of focus, as I was responsible for the well-being of the children under my care. I can honestly say that both jobs were equally demanding, just in a different way.

Dedicating a whole hour, day, week, 3 years to study something is an experience that is very similar in intensity and to add to that, it requires the brain to work in a different manner, having to constantly process large volumes of new information, be able to understand it and try to remember it. It probably took me a whole first year to get used to that.

What helped me most, is that I reduced the amount of memorization of course content. Instead, I focused on understanding the topic at a deeper level and understand the logic behind a particular question of an assignment or test. It required a lot more effort and time and in the end, the quality of learning was much better.

It also did not work all the time if I did not manage my time well, was distracted by something (and oh boy, life sure tries to get in the way) or just generally felt unmotivated.

Is motivation important?

I think what made me enjoy university less during my first degree, was the fact that I expected to be interested in everything that was covered. If something was deemed to be boring - off I went to spend my afternoon in DOTA. This was a somewhat bad approach.

Certainly, if most of the course seems to be boring to you - it could be a strong indicator that this course might not be for you.

On the other hand, there will be boring topics for any given unit, or a wholly boring unit that one just needs to power through, and try their best to get something positive out of it. And usually that positive something is working on two skills - solving problems and information gathering.

Solving problems hopefully sounds straightforward enough - given any problem that you face - find the most elegant solution to it.

Information gathering often will be part of the problem solving process. Find enough information about the problem to truly understand it, find contextual information, find information that will help with the solution etc.

These two can be practised in even the most boring classes.