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Many non-school leavers know things; they possess knowledge gleaned from their working lives, earlier educational experiences, years of wide reading, or from 'life experience'.
However at uni, knowledge is constantly challenged and under review. Studying at university, unlike studying at school, will require you to reassess, modify, or reject what you already know. This can be a difficult and frightening process— however it is fundamental to learning.
The wealth of prior knowledge and experience you bring to university can be both a benefit and a drawback. It may be both a launching pad and a millstone.
You might not have any recent academic experience, and therefore think that you are completely unprepared for university life. However, some of your prior experiences have given you some important skills. The professional, workplace, and social skills that you have developed will help you more than you might think.
Computer skills
If you have developed computer skills through work, you'll find that many
are readily transferable to a tertiary
learning environment.
Vocational or professional skills
If you are going to study for a vocational or professional degree,
then the knowledge that you have accumulated through your work experiences
will really help you. Time management, self management, motivation and
project planning are skills commonly developed in the workplace. They
are also crucial to sucessful study.
Interpersonal skills
Your experiences of dealing with others, with understanding
the complex rules and regulations that are a feature of most work environments,
or organising a family, will be very useful at university.
Life skills
Your ability to reflect critically on your own actions and thoughts,
to be self-disciplined, resilient, and independent are all trump cards
that you can play at university and can help
compensate for a lack of recent study experience. You have skills that
school-leavers have not had the opportunity or time to develop, so use
them to your advantage.
Your previous knowledge and experiences will often be a real advantage to you at university. However, there are circumstances where they may get in the way.
'Rusted-on' attitudes & opinions
You might find that your experiences at work and in life conflict with
the knowledge you acquire through study. Sometimes you may be tempted
to reject these new ideas simply because they are new.
Remember that relying on personal experience alone is a narrow way of knowing about the world, because it limits our knowledge to the things we have, ourselves, experienced.
At uni you will be confronted by a lot of new ideas. It will be very difficult for you to learn anything if you reject every unfamiliar concept or new piece of information you come across, without thinking seriously about it yourself. If you are not going to experience and learn new things why are you at university?
Suspicion of theories
‘Mature students have the advantage of having life experiences but
the question is can they actually convert it into the conceptual
side of things' (lecturer cited in Merril, 2001:14).
In your professional and personal life you may have developed a very practical and concrete way of thinking about the world and your place in it. However, at university you'll often be required to go beyond the concrete towards something more conceptual, theoretical or historical. You may find this quite threatening because it often challenges your 'everyday knowledge', knowledge that might be adequate in other circumstances. However, much of the value of academic knowledge is to be found in the way it allows us to escape from our 'common sense' understanding and consider different views and ideas.
Inflexibility
You may often be used to doing things 'your way' at work and
you may indeed be very effective. However, methods
which may have worked perfectly well to this point, may not work in a tertiary
learning environment.
Therefore, you must be prepared to change what you do and think when change is necessary: you must learn to be flexible. This is often made apparent when you learning contradictory things in different classes: how do you reconcile the two different views you have been given?
From knower to learner
You may occupy a position of authority at home
or in your workplace. You may, for example, have been employed in a role
where you were responsible for training or teaching others to do your job.
This can make the transition to university life, where you'll be learner
once more, a little difficult.
It is important to remember that knowing how to do something is not the same as knowing how to research and write about that activity—being a good sports' commentator is not the same as being a good player (as many ex-sports stars have found out). You can be very good at one, but be average at the other.
In an academic environment you often find yourself being a commentator, a role that requires different skills from those that make a good player. As a result of this change from knower to learner you may find yourself having to follow instructions or work as part of a team. You may find that you'll have to seek help from others where you are more used to people asking you for help. Taking instructions, especially from younger people, may be something you've not done for some time.