UoM General Chat

[Whynot123]

Major reason it's causing the least headaches is because pharm is an absolute dog of a subject.

Damn...what's wrong with it ?
I really can't wait to do PHRM30008 ahaha

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do we order the academic transcript for the dent application for unimelb now or later?

[Shenz0r]

Later because they need your 2015 Sem 1 results. Needs to be received by GEMSAS before 31st July I believe

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shit just realized i got 3.5/7.5 for bioinformatics midsem Anyone got any tips specifically for the exam since its 70%

[MelonBar]

shit just realized i got 3.5/7.5 for bioinformatics midsem Anyone got any tips specifically for the exam since its 70%

really have to know the content I guess because all short answer q's as mahler said. Im quite worried as well. I know I brought this on myself for not turning up to lectures but wth does john silke do with the mic? so hard to hear what he is saying in his lectures after #1.

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yeah can't hear his lectures at all. Just gotta rote learn it and read the textbook to let it sink in a guess kind of glad the exam is worth so much lol

[Stick]

why do future job prospects have to look so bleak in nearly every industry....sigh....

I guess we should be thankful that we're not in the situation other countries are in. My family's from Italy, and it's very common there to work the same job your whole life - that means the job you may land as a teenager becomes your lifelong profession. The luxury to pursue what you want is not available there, and the chance to change jobs is extremely rare.

[Belgarion]

I guess we should be thankful that we're not in the situation other countries are in. My family's from Italy, and it's very common there to work the same job your whole life - that means the job you may land as a teenager becomes your lifelong profession. The luxury to pursue what you want is not available there, and the chance to change jobs is extremely rare.

I understand that but the job situation in Australia is getting worse and worse due to the amount of graduates being pumped out of universities nowadays. I am planning to do medicine but there is a medical student tsunami which will only get worse as the years go by. My back up/alternative was becoming a dietitian (which i would really love to do) but that is just as over-saturated with graduates...

[notveryasian]

I understand that but the job situation in Australia is getting worse and worse due to the amount of graduates being pumped out of universities nowadays. I am planning to do medicine but there is a medical student tsunami which will only get worse as the years go by. My back up/alternative was becoming a dietitian (which i would really love to do) but that is just as over-saturated with graduates...

Is it pretty bad in the sciences? I know that job prospects in law are awful right now...but surely there's a demand for medicine grads in Australia/especially in rural areas?

[Shenz0r]

Is it pretty bad in the sciences? I know that job prospects in law are awful right now...but surely there's a demand for medicine grads in Australia/especially in rural areas?

There is a demand, but the problem is that too many medical students are coming out of uni and that's putting stress on the number of internship places, so it might be possible that they might not get one at all and that renders their degree useless for the time being. It would be alleviated if the government made more hospitals etc.

And even though there is a demand for doctors in rural places not many are willing to spend time in bush. Career opportunities might be far greater in metro areas due to more networking, resources, etc.

Medicine still is in a better position than other health sciences such as Pharmacy and Optom. Dent could be going on the same pathway too though.

Research job security also sucks because employment is pretty much dependent on grants.

[Stick]

I understand that but the job situation in Australia is getting worse and worse due to the amount of graduates being pumped out of universities nowadays. I am planning to do medicine but there is a medical student tsunami which will only get worse as the years go by. My back up/alternative was becoming a dietitian (which i would really love to do) but that is just as over-saturated with graduates...

It's not ideal but as far as I'm aware it's still pretty good compared to most other professions and compared to other countries - remember we have an ageing population and there will be a consistent demand on the health sector, so it hopefully won't be a nightmare. It is a concern, but there's little you can do about it other than being aware of the circumstances you are getting yourself into. If you work as hard as you can you will stand out as a graduate and more doors will be open to you. Remember that hard work almost always pays off.

[notveryasian]

There is a demand, but the problem is that too many medical students are coming out of uni and that's putting stress on the number of internship places, so it might be possible that they might not get one at all and that renders their degree useless for the time being. It would be alleviated if the government made more hospitals etc.

And even though there is a demand for doctors in rural places not many are willing to spend time in bush. Career opportunities might be far greater in metro areas due to more networking, resources, etc.

Medicine still is in a better position than other health sciences such as Pharmacy and Optom. Dent could be going on the same pathway too though.

Research job security also sucks because employment is pretty much dependent on grants.

Hmm that sucks then. I have a few friends in BSc who are already thinking about doing another undergrad degree or doing Masters in another discipline because they don't think they can make the cut for postgrad and are not interested in research. And to think that they aren't guarenteed a job even if they do make it. 

Remember that hard work almost always pays off.

Haha, I love how you added that caveat "almost".

[mahler004]

really have to know the content I guess because all short answer q's as mahler said. Im quite worried as well. I know I brought this on myself for not turning up to lectures but wth does john silke do with the mic? so hard to hear what he is saying in his lectures after #1.

yeah can't hear his lectures at all. Just gotta rote learn it and read the textbook to let it sink in a guess kind of glad the exam is worth so much lol

Your best resource is (arguably) review articles as well - particularly follow up on ones that he's highlighted in the lectures. That said, they won't ask about anything that's not explicitly mentioned in the slides (unless they've said something to the effect of 'the contents of this article is examinable.')

What is this guy lecturing on, anyway? I think he's new this year.

Hmm that sucks then. I have a few friends in BSc who are already thinking about doing another undergrad degree or doing Masters in another discipline because they don't think they can make the cut for postgrad and are not interested in research. And to think that they aren't guarenteed a job even if they do make it. 

The 'problem' is that there's been a reasonably large increase in biomedical/science graduates over the past few years, and no obvious cause in terms of job numbers. It's not like some other fields where the two tend to follow each other (say, Law and Engineering, although don't quote me on that.) My gut feeling is that it's caused by the move to make a lot of health/medicine degrees postgrad degrees, so more people are talking a general science degree first.

There's not just jobs in (academic) research and health (medicine) as well. Industry/biotech is an option too (although it's much less developed in Australia, compared to overseas,) even things such as public policy, consulting, etc (although a less clear path just from a science degree.) There's also 'lab tech' work - for diagnostic labs and the like, although this may be a bit dull.

Really, the most important thing is to try and get some practical experience/a related job to go along with your degree. It's much less common in science compared to say, commerce.

[vox nihili]

Anything to do with genomics is seriously just an invitation for me to start my 60 mins of thoughtless zone-out time. Must...fight...urge...to...sleep...

Bacteriology? A mate showed me those notes... you guys got fucked hard...

[vox nihili]

Btw, have you been going to the lectures? It sounds like john silke's been drawing stuff on the whiteboard or something, I dont know if Ive missed anything important.

Whoops didn't see these before I posted my last reply!

Haven't been going to John's lectures, apart from the tute. In the tute he definitely writes stuff on the board though. I posted the diagrams he put up on our Facebook group so there should be no troubles there. Not sure about the lectures though, I didn't get the feeling he had been.

He was interesting but I'm bloody scared for his part of the MST/exam now because he was all over the shop...

Damn...what's wrong with it ?
I really can't wait to do PHRM30008 ahaha

The teaching for the most part is laughably terrible (there are exceptions though). Remind me later and I'll post a good example.
Really terribly coordinated. I mean, we have an assignment due tomorrow at 8am and were only told about it on Monday at 2pm (yes, this Monday). Take that as one of many examples about why it's a complete shamozzle.
Another favourite is that we had to submit a draft assignment and then submit our "full" assignment two weeks later, building on the advice in the draft. So it's been a week since we had to submit the full assignment and the draft still hasn't come back...