If you could go back and choose your VCE subjects again...

[Mariamnourine]

if I could go back into the past, I would not choose any VCE subjects. I would just stay home and enjoy my life while everyone suffers with year 12. 

[-elcee]

I wish I had chosen English instead of Literature. Although Literature was interesting, the teacher could have been better and she encouraged us to write on a new, difficult text that we all did badly on which meant none of us did well.

Yeah I picked up Literature this year. It was okay bc I was getting good grades but my teacher's performance really went downhill as the year progressed. She got lazy (sorry to put it bluntly). One time she was talking about binging a tv series on the holidays but she said she didn't have time to mark our small cohort's sacs over that holiday (she gave the sacs 4 weeks after btw). I try to talk to her and see what I need to improve on but she says "I'm really under the pump" or, "I can't, I'm busy" (throughout the year). Honestly I only think I'm doing well because she's sort of biased/has fave students.

I'm so scared for the lit exam, I wish I just stuck with English, but whatever, I might as well try my best while I'm here.

[-elcee]

I wouldn't change a thing! I chose my subjects according to what I loved, not what other people think are the 'smart' subjects. A lot of people expected me to choose methods and I ended up not doing any maths at all! I have enjoyed all of my subjects and have no regrets!

Choose what you are passionate about and what will help you with your dream course/occupation 

That's great ! I'm glad you're happy with your choices
I seriously would not do methods but I need it for my course //sigh

[-elcee]

I wish I stuck with further for 1/2 in yr 11. It was an extremely unwise choice picking methods up for the unit 2 part. It also sucks that I was placed in that situation because the school messed up my subject selection.

Story time: So I had to do further unit 1, while studying myself on methods unit 1 at the same time and do both the exams (I need to score high in both as well). I then was placed in methods unit 2 and just barely passed the SACs (except one where I got ~65%). I then bombed my exams (I failed both of them).

End result: My stress levels reached an all-time high, I have never cried more in my entire life, I was left in a dark mental place, a toxic mindset around teachers, maths and my school.

You're amazing ^^ I'm so proud of you for getting through that.

[cookiedream]

Tbh, I wish I had known about long distance education in Year 10, so that I would've chosen to study VCE Japanese SL through this pathway rather than Spesh. I genuinely enjoy Japanese, but because of my Japanese teacher, I had been dissuaded from pursuing it in VCE (my Jap teacher doesn't teach well at all! So his students end up having to practically self-learn the entire course!!).

I didn't enjoy Specialist this year at all, but it was the only option left since I had absolutely no interest in any of the other subjects and I thought that by doing Methods last year, I would do well in Spesh this year. Turns out that I was wrong ahaha.

[strawberries]

ooh interesting thread!

I would've done:
English, Chemistry, Methods, Specialist, Physics + something else idk (EngLang? Further? Uni Extension?)
Mainly because I probably would've gotten better study scores and ultimately a much higher ATAR

But then again, I didn't pay attention in like Year 9/10 science so it would be hard work but I'd probably do better at these subjects than say like, humanities, business or arts.

[Sine]

happy with all my subjects

Biology, Methods, Spesh, English, Chemistry and university chemistry.

Probably just would've added EngLang

[appleandbee]

I happy with most of the subjects I chose (see below in my sig), I would only change Revs and Uni Philosophy. I'm not really a History person, only did it because a lot of year 11s in my school did it and the study scores in my school were good. Russian rev was pretty interesting but I didn't like French (the others aren't really appealing to me either). I mainly chose Uni Philosophy, because I liked Philosophy but my school doesn't let students complete more than 6 subjects at the school (it's a public school so they rely on government funding). Uni Philosophy 1st year subjects at Unimelb aren't very well taught or planned, VCE phil looks considerably better.

If I were to go back, I would do English, Chemistry, Methods, Spesh, Psychology, Economics and Philosophy. Algorithmics and Media look awesome and extremely applicable as well though. Even though the VCE maths content isn't exactly riveting, the work ethic you build up (if you want to do well) is pretty useful and skills in mathematical thinking are very applicable in scientific research, economics, philosophy, data science and stats (which is currently a big field). It also got me the scores. English still seems better than Literature, because I don't really like analysing plays, short stories and poems, and the texts on the Lit list doesn't really interest me. It's also easier to get a good study score in. I prefer English under the current curriculum though, because I prefer analysing texts as opposed to context. Context was just difficult to prepare for with the unpredictable prompts.

[spectroscopy]

yeah i liked my subjects. I switched HEAPS in unit 1/2 and did a single unit of heaps of subjects. For example i did unit 1 of eng lang, unit 2 of lit, and decided i would do neither in year 12 and switched to mainstream english (best decision ever). I started year 11 doing specialist and methods, but dropped spesh cos it was way too hard and picked up further cos it had a great effort to marks correlation (and kept methods). I started year 11 doing physics cos i thought it was cool then  thought "what if i want to do med" so i dropped physics for chem in unit 2 (big mistake failed every chem sac) then dropped science all together in year 12 cos i didnt like it.

Most people dont switch through subjects alot when they are unsure and just put up with something they hate but im glad i did it because i ended up finding the best balance in year 12 and I knew what I wanted to do: english (wanted a mix of eng lang and lit LOL), further (thought it was easy), methods (had to for pre-reqs), history (fun and rigorous), economics (thought it was easy and i enjoyed it so no brainer), and psych 3/4 in year 11

[K888]

I wish I did more humanities subjects - I would have loved to do ancient history or classics something.

Probably would have dropped methods but I mean the statistics part of it has been helpful with understanding research at uni so maybe not.

[Aaron]

Wishlist:
- Do IT right from the beginning (Unit 1+2) rather than only in Year 12
- Maths Methods. I really shot myself in the foot by not doing it initially. I managed to catch up in uni though
- Swap PE for an Accounting/Economics subject
- If Algorithmics was a subject when I did my VCE, I would've chose that.

Alot of my subjects in Year 11+12 were chosen based on limited availability and ignorance.

I guess it isn't really the end of the world.. given VCE is only an extremely short period of time in your life which you can make up for later on in uni (e.g. choose to do that subject you've always wanted to do).

[zhen]

If I could go back and change my subjects, I probably wouldn’t change any of my subjects. Dealing with subjects that I’m just naturally terrible at (staring at you Chinese) and dealing with my unique teachers has been a good learning experience. Last year I tried incredibly hard for Chinese (probably much harder than I’ve tried in any individual subject in year 12) and I did really badly. But, because of this, I was able to grow and change. I’ve always considered changing Chinese and physics, which are subjects I didn’t really enjoy and I’m not great at. But, I feel like if I ended up choosing different subjects, I’d be a different person because the experience has shaped me in many different ways. If I was able to go back in time and retain my memory from these subjects, I might decide to change physics and Chinese for accounting, economics or psychology.

[dankfrank420]

Probably switch out Further --> Spesh considering I ended up taking calc 1/2/3 and lin alg at uni, would have saved me time and money.

Also physics --> economics, as I went into commerce and I actually enjoy the course so I probably would have enjoyed it in year 12. VCE Physics is a bit of a joke, and I learnt nothing except how to read off a formula sheet. You don't even need to learn the theory, you just print it off and bring 4 sides of A4 notes into the exam.

[plsbegentle]

If I could go back and change my subjects, I probably wouldn’t change any of my subjects. Dealing with subjects that I’m just naturally terrible at (staring at you Chinese) and dealing with my unique teachers has been a good learning experience. Last year I tried incredibly hard for Chinese (probably much harder than I’ve tried in any individual subject in year 12) and I did really badly. But, because of this, I was able to grow and change. I’ve always considered changing Chinese and physics, which are subjects I didn’t really enjoy and I’m not great at. But, I feel like if I ended up choosing different subjects, I’d be a different person because the experience has shaped me in many different ways. If I was able to go back in time and retain my memory from these subjects, I might decide to change physics and Chinese for accounting, economics or psychology.

HAHAAH, chinese made a joke out of my life. I was in a class with my younger sister and bunch of people who were 2 years under my age group, i manage to fail basically every test, dropped out and can't write my own name in chinese anymore.

[Sam M]

I'm mostly happy with all my subjects.

However, if I could choose again, I'd probably not do literature by distance ed (or at least do the 1/2 and not just make the sudden decision of picking it up in year 12 to drop chemistry ).

As much as I enjoy the subject, I probably would've performed better in another subject with more traditional classes and teachers -- which I am used to. Alternatively, I could have pushed harder to get the subject to run at my school, as many people wanted to do it but didn't realise that if they all put our names down we could have made a class. Plus we would have gotten a really good teacher. But oh well I've enjoyed the books we've read.