Wow it's been a while since I last posted! I guess that's a testament to how little time I had during the semester. With a mixture of working and uni, I was very much flat out, but I made it through.
My weekly schedule was a bit like:
Monday: screw around for the morning, potentially do a bit of work if I hadn't finished it the previous weekend. Watch my FIT1045 lecture and write notes, probably cry a bit about not understanding the content. Then go to tutor my methods student. Finally, come back home, watch my MTH2021 lecture, write notes and relax for the night
Tuesday: Leave at about 8:15 am for my 9:30 am class. Do my MTH2021 applied class and complain about how hard the proofs are, and teach the content to people who haven't watched the lectures. Then watch my MTH2010 lecture that was from the night before. Have lunch, usually with someone but every so often alone. Go to my CHM1051 workshop and finish all the work early. Then, if it was a lab week, have a lab that goes for 3 hours 30 minutes(but we would often leave up to 45 minutes early, sometimes even before the CHM1011 kids). Once the lab was finished, I would go home at about 5:00 pm (which would take a LONG time because it's peak hour) and try to do as much of my lab report as I could. If it was a non-lab week, I'd leave after my workshop at about 2:00 pm and be able to relax, potentially catch up on a lecture, but most importantly, would do the pre-lab work for the next week.
Wednesday: Watch my MTH2010 lecture in the morning if I hadn't the day before and generally relax. Do my zoom FIT1045 tutorial where things actually made sense. Watch my FIT1045 lecture and cry because nothing made sense. Watch my MTH2010 lecture if I had time. Otherwise, relax and do other work needed
Thursday: Leave at 6:55 am for my 8 am class. Go to my FIT1045 lab and usually complete the work within the class, sometimes earlier. Have an hour break where I watched my MTH2021 lecture. Go to my MTH2010 applied class and struggle to stay awake. Then, go home at about 12:40 pm. At home, I'd eat lunch, have a nap, and get ready to go to work. I would do my swim teaching work from about 4-6 pm, but it was still training so I didn't usually have my own class(instead I would be with another teacher helping out). I would often go out afterward on a Thursday night, so I would often be rushing to complete a FLUX poll from a particular class and then would go out with friends or family. If not, I would head home and be pretty drained so didn't do much
Friday: my day off! I would watch my MTH2021 lecture from the day before and do my CHM1051 pre-workshop work(which was probably about 3-4 hours of work, depending on who the lecturer was). I spent a lot of time writing notes, which made it take extra long.
Saturday: Go to work. Hours varied but would start as early as 7:45 am and finish as late as 11:30 am. It was a mixture of swimming teaching and admin, with me eventually getting my own classes. After work, I would have lunch and go to my psychologist appointment. Then, I would do a lot of assignment work.
Sunday: Sometimes go out, spend most of the rest of the day doing uni work.
For me personally, a lot of the time I spent relaxing in the week was trying to replenish my energy from being so drained and so it doesn't feel like that time was used at all if that makes sense. But yeah, I definitely didn't have a lot of time to do things I wanted to do, especially in weeks where there were like 2165784567 assignments due
Subject thoughts:
I've done much longer reviews in the Monash thread so these will be a bit more opinion based. Also mentioning how I found specific classes
CHM1051: at times, this was my favourite class and other times my least favourite. The content was good, although it wasn't my favourite part of chemistry. I sometimes found it overwhelming(especially when reading the workbook content, which was up to 40 pages
. Also, the CHM1051 specific content was often hard to grasp) but I really enjoyed revising the content for my exam, as well as doing the questions in the workshops. It's an odd subject in that there's a lab report every 2 weeks(which often coincided with my other assignments being due) but it was the lightest load of assessments and the easiest to do well in. I mean, you get two attempts on the weekly quiz! The lab report only has one section that's hard to do well on. The prelab work gives you unlimited attempts. Overall, my insemester mark was 96%. The exam was also open-book which was helpful(but it did mean the questions were harder).
I struggled quite a bit trying to write an adequate discussion in 300 words. I'm sure there were places that could help me but that takes a lot of energy which I do not have. For the classes, I probably didn't need to go to the workshop and would've skipped it if I didn't know anyone there. They upload the entire workshop so I could've just watched the content online and done the questions at home. You are meant to discuss questions with people sitting next to you but I generally found I didn't need to. I didn't enjoy the labs. I think at least 50% of the annoyance was from having to wear masks(as well as wearing glasses, meaning my ears really hurt) and having it finish so late. But in general, the labs are just really long and it can get quite tiring. It's definitely a lot more independent than high school but I'm just not generally a practical person so did struggle to use a lot of the equipment. I appreciated that the lectures were not scheduled and instead just released online, as it worked with my schedule better
FIT1045: despite all my complaints above, I did like this subject. It was the only subject I took this semester that I had pretty much no experience in. I don't think it's the best subject to introduce coding and computer science but it is what it is. The basic python I did on the holidays really helped me in the first couple of weeks which means that I didn't struggle as much as other people did. But there was a lot of content that was hard to wrap my head around. This subject probably had the most work, with weekly tasks(that granted were easy), two assignments that took up a LOT of time, and two tests. I did appreciate the tests for forcing me to revise the content. At least things were mostly marked nicely and I ended up with an in-semester mark of 95%. There was a lot of content to study for the exam and it was quite hard at times but I think I'm happy that I took this subject in the end. For classes, the lectures were quite hard to understand, but one lecturer was better at explaining than the other. I often left the lecture feeling very concerned and upset. The tutorials were there to help with understanding and were pretty much vital to go to. It was fine for me to do it online but the breakout rooms were often very awkward. Workshops were pretty useless to go to and I ended up skipping a few towards the end so I could sleep in and just doing the work the night before.
MTH2010: probably my favourite subject. I found the content really interesting, especially after I understood it more. It definitely wasn't an easy subject by any means but the assessment wasn't too bad. It was my only subject not to have weekly tasks, but it did substitute it with a lot of assessments. Quizzes were generally pretty easy. Assignments did take quite a long time to do and there were 4 of them, which meant the assignments for this subject were quite stressful to complete, as they just kept coming. The midsemester test was the exact same as the practice, which I appreciated. There were a few marks for participation and lecture polls, which I did have to try hard to get but it was fine in the end. The lecture polls were up for 48 hours, which was helpful but sometimes the lecture wasn't uploaded for a while. I ended up with an in-semester mark of 95%. The exam was also really similar to the practice exam and the final question was one the lecturer did with us for revision. The lectures were pretty well-formatted and I generally enjoyed them, but I found I didn't need to pay a lot of attention to them(but maybe if I did I'd understand things more
). The applied classes were generally helpful and many questions in assessments were based on them. I found it quite hard to work as a group, especially because some of the members of my group were very confused and took a while, which meant we never finished the questions, while most other groups did. I liked to be able to discuss more before my tutor interfered but it didn't always happen, due to our class being pretty small.
MTH2021: this subject was quite similar to one I did last year, but that didn't mean I found it easy. There were definitely some concepts I was already aware of but most of it was as hard and sucky as it was the first time I did it. I enjoyed learning all the applications(which were new to me), and there was definitely some cross-over between this subject and FIT1045, which was helpful. But there were SO MANY proofs and I absolutely hated them. I'd often turn off a lecture not understanding the proofs but not caring enough to try. One good thing about this subject was only having two assignments. It meant that life was hectic for me when there was an assignment, but chill when there wasn't. The assignments were very hard and the lecturer often gave us a lot of hints, just so we could at least attempt it. We had weekly quizzes, which meant you had to be up to date on the content. They weren't easy but you could at least have the notes to help. We had a midsemester test which wasn't too hard but I definitely had to spend a lot of time trying to understand the content. There were also participation marks and lecture polls, which were only up for 24 hours and I definitely had to really try to answer the polls on time. I ended up with an in-semester mark of 91%, my lowest of all the subjects I took. The exam was similar to the practice but was still quite difficult. The lectures were very boring and I was very lost for a lot of it. The applied class helped me with understanding some of the proofs but I definitely took a long time to understand them. This applied class was a little easier to work as a group because I was as confused as other people, and I had a pretty small group.
General notes/comparisons to what I've said:
I watched pretty much all my lectures as a catchup. Lectures were all done online this semester because of covid so it didn't make a difference. But I found that being able to pause the lectures to write extra notes and to put it at 2 times speed for the particularly slow talkers really helpful.
Two of my classes had marks that you had to attend at least 8 classes to get. But the uni would say not to come if you were sick? I don't think there should be participation marks during covid. It seems counterintuitive. Personally, I found myself coming in when I should've stayed home, just to get the marks.
My belief that it takes 30 minutes to get to Monash was very misguided. Peak hour traffic, parking, and the long walks contributed to my travel time of about 1 hourish. I have still not learned to park properly so I like having early classes to go to the eng carpark and be able to park with no cars nearby. The problem with the engineering carpark is that it's on the opposite end of campus to many of my classes. I've just gotten used to leaving early and walking. At least I can pretend like it's adequate physical exercise.
I didn't end up making a lot of friends at uni. I met a few people at my advanced camp that I could meet up with but other than that, it was pretty much it. I would talk to people in class but we never made plans afterwards and I doubt I will ever see a lot of them again. I did join clubs but nothing really worked out. Nothing I joined had events I felt comfortable going to by myself. I did go to a MASS^3 event but they don't hold a lot of them. I went to one dance class but it was on a non-uni day so I found it too hard to go in.
I ended up dropping down to 1 student that I tutored because the other one was too much for me to do.
I studied as much as I did in high school, which probably was unnecessary but I do enjoy studying and trying to do my best so *shrugs*. I also did want to try to do as well as I could in the semester so if I struggled in the exam, I could still get a HD, or at least a D.
I did pretty much no studying until SWOTVAC, which wasn't bad because we were in lockdown and my exam schedule was spread out. But I don't think that's sustainable so I definitely need to look at starting earlier.
Overall, I did enjoy this semester, especially with learning a lot of new things. I made less friends than I thought but that's life
. I wish I had more time in general, which will be something I'll be looking at next semester.
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Topic: hairs9's fancy science degree journal (Read 7662 times)