School, university and study habits

Hanna is a second-year student at a university in Addis Ababa, where she is studying economics. When she first arrived, she found university life much harder than secondary school, because the lecturers gave fewer instructions and expected students to study on their own. In her opinion, the biggest change was learning to manage her own time. During her first semester she often started her assignments the night before the deadline, and the results were disappointing. After that difficult start, she decided to change her study habits. Now she revises her lecture notes every evening for thirty minutes, and on Saturdays she meets a small group of friends at a quiet cafe to compare answers over a cup of buna. She believes that explaining ideas to other people helps her remember them far better than reading alone. Although she still finds some subjects difficult, especially statistics, she is no longer afraid of asking her lecturer questions. Hanna says that the most important lesson she has learned at university is not a fact from a textbook, but the habit of studying a little every day.