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“It was Monday, early October, warm morning, blue t-shirt. Sitting near the back of an auditorium filled with about 150 people, this was my first day as a university student. In the sea of unknown faces I recognized two colleagues from my high school, whom I knew vaguely but was not friends with. Exactly at 9:15am, The Dean of the Faculty of Sciences came in, together with another person I thought was his assistant. The Dean took a microphone and said: “Welcome to the University of Zagreb and to the Faculty of Science. I wish you all best in your studies of mathematics. Here, next to me, is professor NN, who will deliver your first lecture.”

That was it – my entire “orientation” as a university student lasted less than 30 seconds! Soon after, I was taking my notes, trying to capture important things in the linear algebra lecture that was moving fairly quickly. Absolute silence, except for a calm voice of the professor. No one asked a single question. Forty-five minutes and seven pages of notes later, the lecture was over. Dazed and confused, with “what the **** just happened” look all over our faces we filed out of the auditorium.

Within a week, I was sitting in a cafe with a few colleagues from my linear algebra and analysis courses, talking about math, and our lives as math students. As the term progressed, the number of coffees increased, and so did the number of colleagues I was talking to. What we realized on that first day was that our life now is our responsibility. Nothing will be done for us – unless we take action, unless we assume control of our lives, nothing will happen. We exchanged hints on how to best take lecture notes, because we realized that our professors would not slow down (no one dared to ask them to do so); we compared notes to make sure that they were correct and complete, knowing that they were our most valuable resource for studying. As courses did not use textbooks, we had to fish libraries, bookstores and used-books places for references we deemed were appropriate. We lent notes to whose who missed a lecture so that they can copy them. Through all of it, we realized that we were not in this alone, that our life – not just academic, but all of it – is a collective effort”.

Miroslav Lovric
Department Of Mathematics & Statistics