Surviving your first year might be a daunting prospect for anyone.

Fortunately for first-years at the UFS, the Vice-Chancellor and Rector, Prof Jonathan Jansen, spoke to this year’s class about the hard lessons learnt by a first-in-the-family university student. Prof Jansen’s address, which took place in the Economic and Management Sciences Auditorium on the Bloemfontein Campus on Tuesday 21 April 2015, focused on the lessons he had to learn to get where he is today.

Here are his 10 lessons for all first-years at university:

1. There is nothing wrong with you
   “The problem is in your head,” said Prof Jansen. “The problem is with 20 years of people telling you what you cannot do, instead of what you can.”
2. Go to class
   “Don’t oversleep. Be prepared to go to class every day.”
3. To really succeed, work harder than anyone else
   “No matter how clever you are, be sure to work harder than anyone else.”
4. Get organised
   “This is not high school, it is university. Sometimes you might have four tests on one day. Find your body rhythm, and get yourself organised.”
5. Go forward but keep an eye on the rear-view mirror
   “When you get tired, the alternative to pushing forward must scare you when you look back. If you do not look in your rear-view mirror, you make bad choices going forward.”
6. Be really good in at least one thing; it is the best motivator
   “Everyone cannot be good at everything. Find that one thing you are really good at and build on that.”
7. Imitate the successful students
   “Make sure your friends are smarter than you and lift you up. Look for clever kids in class and hang out with them.”
8. Beware of falling into victimhood; it will destroy you
   “We are a country of victimhood. When jobless, we kill our foreign national neighbour. Poverty and dead parents don’t mean you will fail. Many graduated last week at the UFS who could have been stuck in bad circumstances. But they walked across the stage.”
9. If you fall, stand up again, but in a different place
   “If you fall, stand up again. It is not the end of the world. As was said in A Bug’s Life: ‘Gaps happen’.”
10. Ask before it’s too late
    “You’re not stupid when you ask questions. Ask them, everyone else wants to know as well.”