Year 9 electives choice - what do I do?

[OckTheOctopus]

Once you get to year 9 at my school, you take electives. Years 7 and 8 have subjects that you have to do, while in year 9 you have "core" subjects that you have to do (maths, english/EAL, science, humanities, health/PE and "living and learning" (which is just wellbeing or something?)) and up to 5 electives. The electives are subjects that you have the option of doing, you must do at least 1 elective and every elective (except for languages) lasts for 1 semester.
1 of the electives must be food technology (meaning I have to try not to burn myself in the kitchen trying to cook for one semester), which means I have only 4 slots to fill next year.

The thing about my school is that they keep us in the dark until the last minute, they just told us yesterday, and we are picking them who knows when. I have looked at last year's elective list for guidance and there are a few categories in them:

*This does not include the whole list
- Arts; this includes digital art, painting, drama, music, etc.
- Humanities; law(#), economics, business and history.
- Health and PE; no clue what is going on here. Everything here is paid and include things like "Duke of Edinburgh's Award" and Survival Skills.
- Languages; Chinese (beginner, intermediate and advanced), French and Italian.
- Maths and Science; Research science(#), psychology and mathematical modelling(#).
- English is just creative expression(#).
- Design and technology; Wood, textiles and systems engineering (someone explain that to me please)
- Information technology; Digital technologies, creative computing and game dev.

Things that I marked with a # have entry requirements, although what they are I have no idea.

About me: I am a person with no life and enjoys sitting in front of a computer screen all day rather than go outside and enjoy the sun. I am really into IT and taught myself how to code and am currently teaching myself hacking and penetration testing with a goal of getting a job in cybersecurity. I am also really into politics and modern news and events and tend to follow them very closely. I have 0 art skills and I am pretty good with socialising with people, although I am a bit shy.

The main focus points for me are the IT subjects and the humanities subjects. I despise arts, so crossing them out is a no brainer for me. I have been doing Italian in years 7 and 8, but I have the option to switch languages (although I am 99.9% sure that I won't) or drop Italian. If I do drop Italian I cannot pick it up again in year 10, which would be a not good idea if decide I want to do it in VCE.
The shortlist for subjects that I feel would be of benefit for me are: All the IT, Law, Psychology, Italian, Econ and business.
Since I only have 4 choices and 8+ choices to pick from, what do you guys think will benefit me? The year 9 electives have no impact whatsoever on VCE, although all of these electives have a VCE subject or a similar VCE subject to it offered at my school.

[lm21074]

Hey there!

Does your school have a handbook you can read with descriptions of these electives and what VCE pathways they could lead to? If you haven't already, it might be helpful to look at this to get a feel for what you will be learning about! Alternatively, perhaps it also might be helpful to speak with the teachers of these electives to help with your decision.

Based on the shortlist you've made: All the IT, Law, Psychology, Italian, Econ and business, I have some questions for you.
1. Do you enjoy Italian? If you are interested in doing it for VCE, that's one spot down and three more to go. By doing Italian in Year 9, you can get more exposure to the language at a higher level and see if it's something you want to do for VCE.

2. Are there limits on the number of subjects you can do in one area?

3. What subjects would you be interested in for VCE?

4. Do you have the option to do any similar electives for Year 10? My thought process here is that if you don't end up picking one now, you could always try it out in Year 10 (with the exception of Italian).

IMO, diversifying your electives can really help you gain an idea of what you enjoy, which can help with your subject selection for VCE. In saying that, subjects like VCE legal, psych, and business don't ~really~ rely on what you've learnt in previous years as much as subjects like methods.

Something that might help you make a decision on which to pick is by making a pros and cons list for each once you've done your research on the electives and (mildly) thought about future pathways. Then, maybe you could break your shortlist into a shorter list and then a shorter list after that.

Hope this helps you out a bit! Let us know what you end up picking (or does your signature give it away slightly? ).

[Bri MT]

Imo you're probably going to benefit more from also taking things like humanities electives you are interested in but haven't already been self-studying than just focusing into IT. You may already know this, but maths will be important for your future studies in IT. That doesn't mean you have to be brilliant at maths but it is relevant for your planned pathway.

I didn't do systems engineering but from what I know it's a pretty hands-on subject focused on making stuff. Think applied physics. Systems engineering is also a VCE subject so you could look at the study design for it on the VCAA website to get a better idea.

[OckTheOctopus]

Hey there!

Does your school have a handbook you can read with descriptions of these electives and what VCE pathways they could lead to? If you haven't already, it might be helpful to look at this to get a feel for what you will be learning about! Alternatively, perhaps it also might be helpful to speak with the teachers of these electives to help with your decision.

Based on the shortlist you've made: All the IT, Law, Psychology, Italian, Econ and business, I have some questions for you.
1. Do you enjoy Italian? If you are interested in doing it for VCE, that's one spot down and three more to go. By doing Italian in Year 9, you can get more exposure to the language at a higher level and see if it's something you want to do for VCE.

2. Are there limits on the number of subjects you can do in one area?

3. What subjects would you be interested in for VCE?

4. Do you have the option to do any similar electives for Year 10? My thought process here is that if you don't end up picking one now, you could always try it out in Year 10 (with the exception of Italian).

IMO, diversifying your electives can really help you gain an idea of what you enjoy, which can help with your subject selection for VCE. In saying that, subjects like VCE legal, psych, and business don't ~really~ rely on what you've learnt in previous years as much as subjects like methods.

Something that might help you make a decision on which to pick is by making a pros and cons list for each once you've done your research on the electives and (mildly) thought about future pathways. Then, maybe you could break your shortlist into a shorter list and then a shorter list after that.

Hope this helps you out a bit! Let us know what you end up picking (or does your signature give it away slightly? ).

Thanks for your post!

I have been stalking the school website and handbooks, although the handbooks don't go into too much depth (it is a general handbook for years 7-9, and the subjects I pulled out were from the handbook).

1) I enjoy Italian but I feel like I would enjoy other subjects more and get good grades in them, but so far in Italian I am getting 95%+ on average, which is a very high score compared to the school average; although my Italian teacher told me that the year 7 & 8 Italian is just a sort or warm-up to see if people like the subject or not, and after that it gets much harder.

2) I'm fairly certain that there is no limit on the number of subjects I can do in a specific area (except maybe languages).

3) Law, Politics, IT. Same as now I guess? I am open to most other subjects like Physics and Chemistry (as long as I don't have to do art!)

4) The year 10 electives are similar-ish to the year 9 ones, they add some new subjects and kind of merge some of the pervious ones together (IT is just software and application development, which is one of the VCE subjects that I'm gunning for.)

I'm overthinking the whole electives thing because I really don't want to go into a VCE subject that I thought I would like or do well in but then want to drop out of it after the first semester.
I have been making a list of subjects from year 9-12 (because I have no life) and how they relate to each other, and my shortlist has come down to that.
The main focused focus point at this point is whether to drop Italian or not. My mother seems to think I should while my dad says I shouldn't, while I'm not really sure whether I should or shouldn't.

(My signature is kinda a giveaway, I saw others putting their VCE subjects in them so I decided to get in on the action. Will update when I pick my electives).

Imo you're probably going to benefit more from also taking things like humanities electives you are interested in but haven't already been self-studying than just focusing into IT. You may already know this, but maths will be important for your future studies in IT. That doesn't mean you have to be brilliant at maths but it is relevant for your planned pathway.

I didn't do systems engineering but from what I know it's a pretty hands-on subject focused on making stuff. Think applied physics. Systems engineering is also a VCE subject so you could look at the study design for it on the VCAA website to get a better idea.

Math is really important in IT, although it's mostly number theory (unless I end up doing some crazy thing with it), but the one math subject is mathematical modelling, so I'm not that keen on it, and I feel like I would benefit more from picking another subject. I will definitely diversify my electives choice. The thing that is driving me crazy is that I have so much that I want to do and told I can pick only a few of them.


Thank you all so much for your input!