BA Hons English at DU: Advice from Students Who Have Been Through It

Key Highlights

• Reading ahead of your professor, not waiting to be told what's important, is the single most repeated piece of advice
• Internal assessments are some of the easiest marks available, and a lot of students still waste them
• Seniors are a genuinely underused resource for notes, past papers, and honest context about specific professors
• Some professors are noticeably stricter about referencing and citation, and it's worth knowing this early, not after losing marks
• The workload spikes predictably before every exam season, and it shouldn't catch you by surprise if you've seen it coming

Every batch of students figures out the same handful of things the hard way, usually a semester or two after it would have actually been useful to know them. I've heard versions of the same advice from so many students who've already been through this, and it's worth passing on directly rather than letting the next batch rediscover it independently.

This is that advice: the things no one officially tells you before you start, why internal assessments are easier marks than they look, how to actually use seniors strategically rather than just socially, the reading habits that genuinely save you at exam time, and when the workload spikes happen so you can see them coming instead of being blindsided.

What does no one tell you before you start?

The single thing students consistently say they wish they'd known earlier is to read ahead of what your professor is currently covering, rather than waiting to be told which texts or sections matter most. By the time a lecture flags something as important, the most useful window for absorbing it slowly has often already passed.

This isn't about racing through the syllabus. It's about not treating the lecture schedule as your only signal for when to start engaging with a text. If you know a play is coming up in three weeks, starting it now, even slowly, beats starting it the week it's actually being taught, when you're also trying to keep up with everything else happening simultaneously.

A second thing that surprises a lot of students: how much referencing and citation conventions vary by professor. Some are genuinely strict about exact citation formats, even in regular essays and internal assignments, while others care far less. Finding this out early, rather than after losing marks on something you assumed didn't matter, saves real frustration later.

A few smaller things students consistently say they wish someone had told them sooner: office hours are genuinely underused, and most professors are far more approachable one-on-one than they seem in a lecture hall full of people; sitting somewhere you can actually engage in a tutorial, rather than at the back out of habit, changes how much you get out of the discussion; and asking a clarifying question in class, even one that feels obvious, almost always turns out to be a question several other people in the room had too.

Why are internal assessments the easiest marks most students waste?

Internal assessments are some of the lowest-pressure, most controllable marks in the entire degree, since you get real time to plan and revise before submitting, and a lot of students still waste them through late submissions or rushed, last-minute work. This is consistently one of the most regretted oversights students mention once they look back.

The fix is almost embarrassingly simple: treat every internal assignment with the same seriousness as an exam answer the moment it's assigned, not the week it's due. Start it early enough that you have time to revise it once before submitting, rather than writing it once under time pressure and calling it done.

If you're behind on internals right now, or have already missed one, it's worth talking to your professor directly about it rather than letting it quietly go unaddressed. Being proactive, even after a slip, tends to go better than students expect.

How do you use seniors and their notes strategically?

Seniors are one of the most underused resources available to you: not just for notes and past papers, but for honest, specific context about which professors are stricter, which papers tend to be harder than they look on paper, and what actually shows up in exams versus what feels emphasised in lectures. Making genuine connections with seniors in your department, not just borrowing notes once, pays off repeatedly.

The most useful way to approach this isn't transactional. Asking a senior for their notes the week before an exam gets you notes. Building an actual relationship, asking questions across the semester, offering help where you can, gets you ongoing context that's far more valuable: which questions repeat across years, which critical readings a specific professor favours, what genuinely surprised them in their own first year.

Past papers specifically are worth collecting deliberately rather than hoping to stumble across them. Seniors, departmental resources, and sometimes your own professors are all reasonable sources, and having two or three years of past papers per subject gives you a much clearer sense of question patterns than guessing blind.

Which reading habits actually save you at exam time?

The reading habit that consistently saves students at exam time is building a running, usable summary per text as you go, rather than relying on memory and trying to reconstruct your understanding from scratch during revision. A text that felt clear in week three of the semester is genuinely harder to reconstruct cold in week fourteen without something written down to return to.

This doesn't need to be elaborate. A short summary capturing the core argument, two or three major themes with evidence, and a handful of strong quotes per text is enough to make revision dramatically faster later. The Literature Talks' notes follow roughly this structure if you want a model for what a useful summary actually looks like, condensed rather than exhaustive.

The second habit worth building early: writing at least a few full practice answers across the semester, not only in the final weeks before exams. Students who've already written under time pressure once or twice before the real exam consistently describe the actual exam as feeling far less overwhelming than students attempting a timed answer for the first time on exam day itself.

When do workload spikes happen, and how do you prepare for them?

Workload spikes happen predictably before every exam season, when internal assessment deadlines, presentations, and revision all converge in the same few weeks, and they shouldn't come as a surprise if you've been through even one semester already. Knowing this pattern in advance lets you plan around it rather than being blindsided every single time.

The practical move is to front-load whatever you can before the spike hits: finish reading you'd otherwise be doing during that period earlier in the semester, get ahead on any assignment with a flexible deadline, and treat the few weeks before the spike as genuinely valuable preparation time rather than a stretch to coast through because exams "aren't close yet."

If you know your college's typical exam season timing from previous semesters, mark it now and work backward from it when planning your reading and practice schedule, rather than reacting to the spike once it's already underway.

A few more small things worth knowing early

Some of the most useful advice doesn't need a full section of its own. A quick round-up of smaller things students consistently mention:

• Keep a physical or digital folder per paper from day one. Scattered notes across notebooks and random documents are far harder to revise from than one organised folder per subject, and setting this up takes ten minutes in week one versus hours of searching later.
• Don't skip the first lecture of any paper, even if it feels introductory. Professors often outline exactly what they'll emphasise and how they'll grade in that first session, information that's easy to miss if you start attending properly only once things "get serious."
• Befriend at least one or two classmates outside your immediate friend group early. A wider, slightly looser network of classmates, not just your closest friends, is often where you end up hearing about a missed deadline, a changed venue, or a useful resource in time to actually act on it.
• Keep a small, running list of unfamiliar critical terms as you encounter them. A term that feels obscure in semester one becomes assumed knowledge by semester four, and a simple running glossary you build yourself sticks far better than looking the same term up repeatedly from scratch.

Conclusion

Most of what genuinely helps in BA Hons English isn't secret or complicated. It's reading ahead of the lecture schedule, protecting your internal assessment marks from week one, building real relationships with seniors instead of only borrowing their notes once, keeping usable summaries as you go, and planning around the workload spikes you can already see coming from one semester to the next. None of this is advice you'll find in a prospectus, which is exactly why it's worth hearing from people who've actually lived through it.