University: What did you do for you?

Do you look at your career sometimes and think university was great and reel off all the great things about it and realise none of the things were related to academia? Do you talk about societies, that time you got drunk, the friends you met and how you almost missed that deadline? or is it that the biggest lesson from university is based around your ability to be flexible, have contingencies in your planning and multi-task. Which are all apart of your developement but nothing to do with your course, you course is just a vehicle to a higher learning? right? it's wear you learn about yourself more than any subject - you find out how mature you really are by throwing you in a room the size of a prison cell and a tight budget and making yourself survive for 3 years.

My little sister is leaving to study at a university in southampton in few weeks and my parting messages will be.

1. Get a job - being poor far away from home isn't fun!
2. Befriend your tutor - Those last minute hints and tips when no one is around will be of value.
3. Be Socialble - meet as many people who are not like you as possible - they may come in handy.
4. Buy 2nd hand books - there cheaper.
5. Manage your money - bank charges eat away at your budget.

The lesson isn't in the deadlines and reading 11 books a year - its in the survival - when you take that mentality into a workplace you can excel because your have built some charecter, lived a little and then you apply that to the principles of the company your work for.

The thing is all the stuff you have learned in the books won't make any sense until you are actually working in the sector and you will have to go back to your books (2nd hand) and make sense of it all. There is a belief that you learn things to get you through and them store it deep and far away from conciousness. Thats probably the best trick in education - you learn all the information needed to pass take the exam and then forget it all. It never completely goes as when you need it your brain will trigger a recall and it can come back to you. That is how I got my 2:1 (almost a 1st) - just remember enough information for the task ahead and then store it away.