People say it doesn't count because it literally doesn't. What you do in first year does NOT affect your final grade at all in most courses. You'll find out if the first year goes towards your final grade at the start of the year, your tutor should be able to let you know. In my course all you had to get was a pass of 40% to get onto 2nd year, although you needed at least 60% if you wanted to do a sandwich year. The weighting of the final grade for my course was 30% 2nd year grade and 70% 3rd year grade, so first year had absolutely 0% influence.
A lot of people take on the attitude that first year is where you do all your crazy uni socialising and then concentrate on grades in 2nd and 3rd year. It may not be the best of ideas to scrape in on 41%, but it's a very good idea to get the crazy partying out of your system before the real work starts. Arguably, first year is the only year you can go out 4 or 5 times a week without it affecting your final degree class.