Have you ever imagined your life as a university student? Which university would you like to apply to in the future? When I was a student in secondary school, I always wondered about my life at the university. Is there a lot of freedom? Will professors blame me if I didn’t hand in assignments on time? I will tell you the major differences as being a student at the City University of Hong Kong.

 

1. Freedom

In secondary school, you are not allowed to skip all the lessons without teachers’ permission. On the contrary, in the university, you can skip lessons if you want. Some of my classmates skipped a majority of lessons in a semester because professors would not care about them. However, they had to bear the consequences of poor results. If someone gets a poor grade in the university, they cannot participate in exchange and internship programs, especially those that require good results. I recommend you not to skip lessons because it will be difficult for you to catch up. Once you skip a theory lesson, you cannot fully understand and apply those theories in quizzes. Eventually, you cannot perform well in the tests.

 

In addition, the timetable is more flexible in the university. In secondary school, you are required to follow the timetable strictly. Their timetables are well-designed by teachers. Also, teachers will design quizzes and tests for students to be well-prepared in the final exams. Sometimes, you may feel anxious because of the hectic quiz schedules. In the university, you can choose your favourite courses and master your class schedules. The lecturers will tell you the important dates such as quizzes, tests and deadlines of final papers. They do not help you prepare. You have to manage your time wisely. Nobody will tell you how to revise and what to prepare. Freedom is granted in the university but the key is that you have to grasp how to allocate your time.

 

2. Venue

In secondary school, most of your lessons are in different classrooms, laboratories and some special rooms (STEM room, technology and living room, music room, etc). Teachers will tell you how to go on the first day of school. All you need is to follow teachers’ instructions and go to the destinations. In the university, nobody would tell you how to go to different classrooms. You have to remember all the places by yourself. More importantly, you have to memorize when to go to classrooms and lecture halls. If you get to the wrong place, you will be embarrassing.

 

3. Assignment

Homework is quite different. In secondary school, teachers would probably like to give you a lot of assignments, particularly during holidays which have a long time. In the university, you only have a few assignments to do. For example, I was a student of the course called “History and Heritage” this semester. I only had an individual paper that requires me to write at least 1,500 words, a group paper (UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage Nomination Form) and two open-book tests. Notably, the workload is almost the same as your holiday assignments if you would like to get a better grade in the university because a lot of time is spent collecting all the information.

 

4. People

Teachers are different in the university. In secondary school, teachers would spend a lot of time answering your questions and talking about your quizzes. If you are lazy, some teachers will blame you because they care about you. They don’t want you to get poor results. In the university, professors will not care about you. If you are not proactive in the lessons, professors may not recognize you as well. Even if you finish your first draft of the final paper and would like to receive suggestions, they will only provide some guiding questions and point out some major problems. They would not answer you in detail.

 

On the other hand, classmates are different too. In secondary school, you have lessons with your classmates. When you get to the classroom, you will see a lot of familiar faces. You can share a lot of unforgettable moments with them. If you do group projects, your classmates are willing to make contributions. In the university, although you have classmates, you will not see them if they do not take the same courses as you. As for doing group projects, you will sometimes meet some free-riders who don’t want to make contributions to the group projects. They even ignore you even if you blame them. You may wonder why there are free-riders in the university. Well…don’t ask me. I don’t know. I encountered some in the university. All I do is report them and blame them on Whatsapp. Ugh…that’s useless if they are still unwilling to do but they will almost certainly don’t want to become my groupmates because they are afraid of being blamed.

 

5. Activity

In secondary school, there are numerous activities. In the student-and-teacher activity week, you can participate in a lot of competitions with your friends and even teachers. Before the Christmas holidays, there is a Christmas variety show for the whole school. In the first and second terms, there are some inter-class and inter-house competitions. That sound quite fun! However, in the university, there are not so many activities for you unless you are one of the committee members of a different society. Although there are many activities organized by the student development service centre (SDS), you may not have spare time to join if you want to get good grades. You have to spend time doing research and consulting professors. Meanwhile, there are weekly required readings in some courses. One weekly reading contains at least ten pages. You may have to consult a dictionary many times when you encounter some professional terms.

 

In conclusion, things are different once you have entered the university. You have to learn how to study strategically and diligently with the help of teachers in secondary school because nobody will tell you how to study in the university. Once you have the right attitude towards studying, you will probably perform better in university. From my point of view, I love secondary more because I have a lot of good teachers and friends! I hope you all can enter your dream universities and further pursue your studies, especially those of you who are preparing for your DSE exams!