Hey Coffee! Sorry (it's a little out of context) but I've been meaning to ask a Monash student this: how are the courses on literature at Monash in your experiences so far? I've been looking into it over the past few days, but I haven't had anyone's comment on how it's run yet. I'm just very curious, as I'm considering maybe doing literature or philosophy at uni. Thanks in advance!
Hey! I absolutely recommend philosophy. It's been one of my favourite units so far- even if it does frustrate me sometimes!
Literature is great too, the lecturers are really knowledgeable and go above and beyond. If you're doing VCE literature, the assessments are quite similar so I don't think you'll have a hard time adjusting. If you're not, I'd recommend speaking with your tutor about essay structure early on, because, at least in my case, there hasn't been any in-class support or lessons on essay structure- so you'll need to seek this out if you want to know.
You don't read one book per week but the pace is still much quicker than VCE, of course.
In regards to the actual course structure- you'll probably have one 1 hour lecture in person, one 1 hour online lecture, and one 1 hour tutorial.
I thought I always wanted to be an English major but personally I just haven't been enjoying this unit as much as I thought I would. Possibly because it's an introductory course and I would rather focus on specific points in literature. But I'm also just a little over it. What I'm doing is basically the same as last year and while I'm good at it and enjoy it when I really get stuck into writing an essay, the initial motivation isn't there- which is for some of my other subjects. Don't let this put you off though! It's a good course and I think a lot of people are enjoying it, it just hasn't worked out for me as I thought it might would.
Don't be afriad to have a read of the unit handbook on the Monash website either! You can take a read and see if its something that might interest you.