What has actually changed
- Nobody checks. You can not do the reading for eight weeks and no one will say anything. The first feedback signal is an exam, and by then it is late.
- Contact hours collapse. Perhaps twelve hours a week. The other twenty-eight are yours, unsupervised, and they are the ones that decide your degree.
- Lectures are not lessons. They introduce material; they don't teach it to mastery. The learning is expected to happen afterwards, alone, and this is genuinely not explained.
- The reading list is a menu, and treating it as a contract will bury you.
What to do in the first month
- Read the syllabus. It tells you what the exam contains, and nobody reads it.
- Map the deadlines and find the collision week. It exists; the only question is when you find out.
- Start a review habit in week two. Not week nine. Spacing compounds and can't be recovered later — this is the single highest-leverage decision of the year.
- Go to office hours once, early, with a specific question. The room is empty and it will change how you relate to the department.
The trap of the first term
Everything feels fine. There are no deadlines yet, the material is introductory, and the freedom is intoxicating. The debt accrues invisibly and is paid, all at once, in a single terrible fortnight — which arrives precisely when everyone else's does.