Really bad mark on first assignment Watch

So from experience, the first few pieces of written work that most new students hand in are c***. Its not because they are in any sense "bad students", they just have no idea what they are doing at the university level and are still in "A level tick the boxes mode". Your lecturers will know this and have a plan for how to fix it .

Those initial low grades are a very useful wake up call. They tell you (1) the level of competition just went up because everyone else on the course did just as well at A levels as you did. If you were good at school, you automatically just became average. (2) Expectations for quality, structure, referencing, critical analysis etc all went up several levels. Its ok not to understand that on day one, but there should be plenty of guidance, both written and via feedback to get you up to speed.

The key thing is to read those feedback comments CAREFULLY, make sure you know what they tell you to fix and how to do it. Bad referencing ? Ok, that's a standard "thing", plenty of guidance on how to do that. Unlinked paragraphs - lots of students write like the BBC web site, 1 and 2 sentence "paragraphs" with no flow. Easy fix, longer paragraphs, make sure information and ideas are neatly linked together.

When you fix those obvious structural and technical issues, things become much more interesting. The lecturer doesn't have to waste time telling you to reference properly and add a date and page numbers. They can move on to meaning and style. Nothing more pleasing than seeing a students marks ramp up over time .