um you make your timetable a few weeks beforehand. seeing as you're first yr, you get the first choice in this semester. you try to organisea timetable such thaty ou can meet all your friends. 5 days is normal, 4 days is a blessing. try for 4 days.
first day, you wake up a few minutes early, eat breakfast and attend all your lectures. you walk into a lecture hall and all these first years are there with you. the theatre is packed, you try to find a place for you and your friends. chances are, there wont' be enough seats. the lecturer walks in and greets you, you're surprised by the fact you can talk a little bit and the lecturer doesn't mind. adminstration is stated and then it goes right into it. you have either your lecture pad or notes, you write down every single word he says. you listen like your life depends on it. before you know it, the lecture is over.
you then walk to your tutor. wow, familiar - just like high school, classroom of 30. tutor continues to pick out questions from the homework. he assumes you done it all - but you think, what homework? we didn't get told of any homework? then you realise, noone is here to tell you what to do. everything that is to be done, is acccesible, noone is holding your hand anymore. do it or not, they don't care - they still get paid. they're not worried about your marks, noone is - only you should be. your tutors don't care if you have done the homework, they just continue doing problems.
the tutorial finishes and you wait for another lecture. you run around, looking for the room. this lecturer is weird, quirky - but he seems pretty cool. you might like him, you might not - noone is forcing you to show up.
pretty much - do what you want whenever you want, noone gives a shit. you spend your breaks either fucin around or studying to prevent having to study tonight, or you just don't study at all. noone gives a shit. you got a shit mark? noone gives a fuck. noone is in competition with each other, you should all be helping each other. egos in uni is ridiculously stupid.
for engineering s[ecifically, you'll realise the workload expected is quite high, slacking off for even 3-4 days can leave you behind. the physics isn't what you know in the hsc, there is no content, it is all concepts and math. the mathematics is more formal - you can't assume stuff, you have to prove it.
the transition provides a different way of thinking, you see things that wern't there before. haha you might even get arrogant, as with my experience - we engineers make the world go round.
A quote to leave you all -
"Undergraduates think they know everything, Graduates know more than their manager/boss, but it is the PhD Graduates that know that they know nothing"
Something like that.