Hey guys,
I'm here with another journal. I made one during my HSC and one during my 3 month break so I decided to make one for uni so I can sit here and ramble just to get stuff off my chest. If you couldn't tell from my horribly amazing Star Trek pun in the title, I'm studying Aerospace Engineering at UNSW, and I'm freaking excited to start.
Why Aerospace Engineering?
I know right! It is a narrow field of engineering. Long story short, I actually fell in love with physics back when I was in primary school. I would steal my sister's science textbooks and read it for fun. Yep, you read it right. For fun. (Now that I look back, it's actually kinda sad lmao) I even bought two Stephen Hawking books. Did I understand it? Not really, but it didn't stop me from reading it. Fast forward into junior school, I knew I wanted to go into engineering because it was the perfect place for me to use physics, but I didn't know which field. It wasn't until my math tutor told me one day that engineers still don't know how flight works. I was really confused. How can we still not know how flight works even though it plays a significant role in our daily lives? And that was what motivated me to go into aerospace engineering. I started reading a whole bunch of stuff on Bernoulli vs Newton's theories on flight and even bought a physics textbook. Ever since then, I knew I wanted to do aerospace engineering. It's been a long journey, especially since I didn't really perform well in maths and physics during high school (although I did perform much better in physics than math but my HSC results say otherwise). But it didn't stop me from doing aerospace engineering so now I'm here!
Why UNSW?
For a while, I actually considered USyd as well since they offered a space engineering program as well. However, their ATAR was 99. Technically, you could still do space engineering if you don't get the 99 ATAR. You end up doing mechanical engineering for a year and then you can change to do space engineering but you don't really get as much opportunities as those who got the 99 ATAR straight up (i.e. they're exposed to more challenging projects). I don't really like that kind of approach. To me, it's like their separating the students who survived high school into an elite group. This was part of the reason why I wanted to go to UNSW. Another reason was because I had a different math tutor back in Year 8 and she was bantering with another math tutor who was a USyd student, and she was like to me "Fun fact: UNSW started of as an engineering school." That intrigued me. Ever since then, I researched a lot about UNSW. I even went to Open Day in Year 9 and spoke to an aeronautical engineering student. Plus, UNSW has a really big engineering department. I was also unimpressed with the engineering department at USyd. When I went to the USyd Open Day, I was shocked that the Engineering block was an old, bricked building tucked away from the pretty law buildings and near the car park. I mean, isn't engineering all about innovation? So why haven't they updated the engineering building? Anyway, it really solidified my decision to go to UNSW. I just had to make sure I got the marks to get to UNSW.
Here are the units I'll be taking this term:
MATH1131
PHYS1121
ENGG1000
I've also attached my timetable here. It's a bit annoying that I have to go to uni everyday (and also annoying that it says there's a clash, though this issue is already solved) but hopefully my timetable get's a bit better next term.
I'm really nervous to start uni (especially over my maths and physics skills) but I am looking forward to uni! (Watch my chipper attitude change in two weeks lmao)
See you soon!
- Olivia