Overview: Our Getting Off To A Good Start Guide is a collection of tips and advice for new or returning students who want to start the academic year as best they can. Originally a print guide, it is now a series of interlinked blog posts that you can bookmark and return to at any point and resume reading. Living online, the guide is constantly updated. Last updated 5/1/26.
Getting Off to a Good Start Guide
✨ Explore the sections:
🔗 Introduction |
🔗 Know Your Way Around |
🔗 Start Your Studies Well |
🔗 Looking After Yourself |
🔗 Your Support System |
🔗 Further Reading |
🔗 Final Words
Hello!!
On behalf of Student Life (which includes Health, Counselling and Disability Services, Oasis, Student Association, International Student Services, Student Engagement and Success Unit and BetterU), welcome to Flinders University! (or welcome back if you are returning)
My name is Gareth. I am the eMental Health Project Officer, and I handle a chunk of the wellbeing focused student communications coming out of HCDS.
Student Life provides an extensive range of support services to current students at Flinders. You can check out this post to learn more about the specific services and resources we provide.
Having helped a lot of students, we have a pretty good idea of what kinds of things get in the way of having an enjoyable and successful university experience as well as what things contribute to a positive experience.
In this brief (ish) guide, we want to share with you some of what we’ve learned along the way.
Whether or not you are coming straight from high school, or returning to study after a longer absence, we realise that coming to university is a very big step in your life. For some of you, it has meant leaving your home, family and country to come and study in Australia. For others, you are the first person in your family to study at university and it is all a bit of a mystery.
As a result, we know that you are probably a mixed bag of emotions right now: excitement, trepidation, exhaustion, optimism, frustration, surprise, relief, worry.
A really important thing to remember is that for most students, most of the time, university is a rewarding and fun experience. Yes, it is hard work, and yes there will be some challenging times ahead, but modern universities, like Flinders, have a lot of supports in place to help students through those times and also a lot of opportunities you can take advantage of.
This guide is all about the practical things you can do to get off the best start possible, as well as being an introduction to the many services that are available to you, should difficult times arise.
We’ve broken the guide into sections so it is easier to digest and so you can take a moment between sections to connect what you are reading to your own experience. If you bookmark any individual section, you can revisit it later and resume your reading, as each section contains links to all others.
Certain recommendations are marked with a 🟢 (we think they are some of the key ones) and we’ve pulled all of these together in the ‘final words‘ post.
So sit back, grab a beverage, and spend a little time with me as I go through our tips for starting university well.
Getting Off to a Good Start Guide
✨ Explore the sections:
🔗 Introduction |
🔗 Know Your Way Around |
🔗 Start Your Studies Well |
🔗 Looking After Yourself |
🔗 Your Support System |
🔗 Further Reading |
🔗 Final Words
Section reflection 🤔
How are you feeling about starting university? Is it a single emotion/feeling or a mix of them? What are you looking forward to? What are you nervous about?
Feel free to sound out in the comments below. You will need to sign in with your FAN and password to comment.
