Dear Freshwomen and dear Freshmen,
in these days you are entering the first academic year of your studies, thereby starting a new life experience in a different environment and at a time, strongly marked by the corona virus pandemic, all of that in a different country – Slovenia. Your decision to study and to get a university degree is worthy of our respect. Among us, I want to especially welcome all foreign students who are getting acquainted with Slovenia these days – I wish them successful work at the Faculty.
From high school benches, you are coming to faculty lecture halls and laboratories. You are about to start the path of several years of the Bologna two-cycle studies, but also interesting and exciting student life. In order to make the study and living environment at the Faculty safe in these epidemiological conditions, we will take the utmost care for our common health and the safety of each individual. We will adapt successful studies in strongly changed study conditions to health recommendations and, as far as possible, carry them out live in direct contact with you, while respecting safe distances and hygiene recommendations. Let’s maintain our health and study successfully because we simply know how and can do it!
With your own enthusiastic work, you can get in 3 years a university or professional diploma in an engineering field, which will help you find a job on the labour market. Of course, just some paper (diploma) is not everything, employers will ask for both knowledge and skills – now everyone is talking extensively about the competences of graduates when seeking for a job. Try to understand how things work and not just to blindly learn using tools.
Entering the university is therefore a particular challenge for you. I recommend that you start with the student work seriously and enthusiastically from the first study day forward, let us call it continuous studies. At the Faculty of Civil and Geodetic Engineering, being known to be demanding, only those students can succeed who know that student life is beautiful and diverse, but also requires work in faculty classrooms and labs, as well as late-night learning, computing and writing computer programs, tests, home works, seminars, mid-terms and exams.
In your work and effort to find a successful way in the next study year, we share an idea and a common desire to develop all of you, dear students, into technical intelligentsia – in future you will need to think with your own heads, to look for new solutions to existing problems and, together with other stakeholders, to steer the development into more prosperous society for all citizens. Studying is not only about acquiring knowledge; it is much more – a growth into a mature personality of an engineer, who confronts each new problem in an original but also potentially effective manner, with high probability of a good and quality solution.
The Faculty will, with all its resources, effectively back up your study efforts and endeavours, including through the support of the tutorial and mentoring system. However, we will expect from you commitment, honesty, respect and that you regularly meet the academic requirements, without shortcuts and sideways. Since the academic requirements are high, and the earned reward in the form of a first-degree diploma is a good starting point to your professional life, you should arrange your free time wisely, maintain good physical and mental condition and take care of your health and body.
Upon entering the University of Ljubljana and at the beginning of the academic year 2020/21 I wish you all a successful start of the studies and maintain your health.
Vivat Academia! Vivant professores!
Professor Matjaž Mikoš, Dean, UL FGG