Subject: Business Management 1&2
Workload: Really, really chill. I over stressed myself because it was my 'only 1&2' when it really wasn't necessary, and probably didn't make a difference to my final Year 11 marks.
Was it interesting?: It was! I do hear a lot that BusMan is 'common knowledge' but I also hear from those same people that 'common sense isn't all that common anymore' so I guess practicing some 'common knowledge' didn't hurt
I do have other gripes with the BusMan 1&2 study design, however, which I'll touch on further down in this post.
What did you expect: I expected a greater workload initially. We had 5x43 minute classes roughly, and I didn't need to do any more than 3-4 hours of homework/studying a week alongside the revision for each topic 'test' (for some reason they call them SACs at our school, even at Year 11), which were around twice a term. I still managed to keep an A+ average for these tests and the mock exams we did mid year and at the end of the year. However, the stress I placed on myself in the days before those tests/exams was unhelpful at best, and really unnecessary considering it's only 1&2!
We only got to do one assignment for the year, which involved creating a marketing campaign to do with a fiction business that we had created. I found that the most fun I had the entire year, as it allowed us to really expand on our ideas and apply our knowledge, fairly different to the memorisation mantra that is driven into many of us.
What were you surprised by: I'll expand on two points here. Firstly, I was really surprised by the careless approach by many of my peers, especially those (most of the class!) who were in the year level above me. The amount of banter throughout the whole year from many of them really shocked me. Heaps of 'off-topic' discussion, to put it lightly, to the point of the teacher getting visibly frustrated wasn't how I envisaged any VCE class. Despite this, the teaching was phenomenal, and I sincerely wish this teacher had ended up teaching 3&4 BusMan classes in 2018 at my school.
However, this leads to my second point. I ended up with a rather rude shock in Year 12, as I realised after the first few weeks that the 1&2 course has very little relation to the 3&4 course! If I'd been aware of this prior to picking subjects for Year 11, there's no way I would've done BusMan early, or I would've instead pushed to do 3&4 BusMan in Year 10, which I probably had the marks in my other subjects to do.
What was the social environment like: As mentioned above, it was super chill, which looking back was a really good thing. Just need to be careful about which subjects you do choose early, as when you're not entirely familiar with the above year level, you never know what personalities you may encounter...
What would you do differently/keep the same? I certainly wouldn't have done BusMan early, it's definitely a subject you can pick straight up as a 3&4 and do extremely well. If I was to change something in my initial 1&2 year, it would've been to place less focus on 1&2 content and read up on the 3&4 study design earlier, and really get familiar with the theory that I ended up doing in Year 12. Once you're in Year 12, it's less about the quantity of work and more about the in depth 'quality' of how you study and practice SAC/Exam questions IMO.