The City Council’s newly elected members were treated to a crash course in city government yesterday during a college-style orientation session, minus the hazing and heavy after-hours drinking.

Seven of the eight members who will be sworn in at the beginning of January – Daniel Garodnick, Melissa Mark-Viverito, Darlene Mealy, Rosie Mendez, James Vacca, Thomas White, and Inez Dickens – heard from experts on the city’s budget and were given presentations on everything from the city’s demographics to how to handle the press. The other newly elected member, Jessica Lappin, was out of town.

The current speaker of the council, Gifford Miller, who ran unsuccessfully in the Democratic mayoral primary and is being termed out of office, told the attendees to keep perspective.

“You can’t do everything, and you can’t become an expert on everything,” he told them in a seventh-floor lecture room at Baruch College. “If you want to be effective, try to pick a few things that you want to make a change on and focus on those.”

Mr. Miller advised the politicians to hold off on making all hiring decisions right away; to focus first on getting their district offices running smoothly; to send a letter to somebody whenever a constituent calls about a problem, and to refrain from letting decisions be driven by re-election concerns.

“You’re going to get re-elected,” he said. “Everybody gets re-elected. People that don’t do a good job get re-elected. You’re going to do a good job so you’re definitely going to get re-elected.”

The orientation, sponsored by the Baruch College School of Public Affairs, was started four years ago when more than two-thirds of the 51 members were forced out by term limits. While the council is not losing its collective institutional knowledge this year, the idea of explaining rudimentary facts was deemed a good one.

The 90-page introductory guide distributed yesterday touched on things as basic as what the city charter is (“The Charter is effectively the City’s constitution”) to specific tax policy issues.

“Becoming a council member is a little overwhelming,” Mr. Miller’s chief of staff, Charles Meara, said. “New members have to hire staff, they have to find an office, they have to decide on committee assignments. There is a lot that comes at them in a matter of weeks. We want them to be prepared.”

Term limits is one of the first major issues the new members, who start with a $90,000 base salary, likely will face. Most of the current members are in favor of extending the maximum term to 12 years from eight, and the likelihood that the body will act at the beginning of the next session appears to be increasingly probable.

One of the newly elected members, Mr. Garodnick, who is replacing Eva Moskowitz in Manhattan’s 4th District, said hearing from existing members about office organization was particularly useful.

“Now is the time when I’m considering staff needs and opening a district office, so this information is coming at the right time,” he said in between panel discussions.