1) i enjoy english/ bio/ artsy stuff
Not to discourage of course but make sure you actually enjoy these things and not the idea of them. Not only enjoy them either, enjoy studying them in an academic way. There were some subjects which i thought i would really like but i didnt like studying them or looking at them academically. I do enjoy reading about them in my own time though.
So, make sure you don't have a distorted view of sorts (and we all do to one degree or another going into uni).
That said if you think you'll like it then go for it!
BUT I am a westerner....there fore it takes me 2+ hrs to there. Which means: the hours are crazy! 8am starts... 5pm finishes. (approx). By then, i wont be home until 8. So then, i'll have to study into the wee hours of the morning...
I also live in the west (i've noticed the amount of western suburbs people at monash is fairly low, mainly eastern kids who knew each other from highschool, well so i've seen anyway) so i know what you mean.
My first year just finished and i thought many of the same things you do right now.
The travel you get use to. You read or listen to music or look out the window or whatever you feel like. The actual travel isn't actually that bad. For me the killer was just the sheer time it took. I'm a massive nightowl; i really hate getting up in the morning before like 10am = i'm up untill very late. Going to a 8am lecture and having to take 2 hours to get there, compared to someone who lived 20 minutes away is a massive difference.
Thats what killed me the most really, having to get up early.
You'd be hard pressed to find all that many lectures at 8am. I wouldn't worry about that all that much as someone who is in science and studied arts units.
I think you probably have a couple misconceptions, you get to choose what times your lectures are, you get to choose your timetable to a certain extent.
So, say for chemistry, they might repeat the very same lecture 2 or 3 times throughout the week, partially due to the sheer number of students but also because of clashes with other subjects and things like that.
So the same lecture might run Mon 11am/Tues 3pm/Wed 10am. So, you have some flexibility to choose what you want. If you put a lot of effort into engineering your timetable just right, you can usually get a decent one. I got at least one day off a week (For me a day off is either no subjects at all or a day with no tutorials/labs which are compulsory but maybe a lecture or two but they're recorded. It wasn't really worth 4 hours of travel to go to 1 or 2 hours worth of lecture).
Unless you're unlucky though, you'll have the opportunity to take at least one day off if you wish in most cases.
3) alternatively, i can do arts at unimelb...but no science (except for breadth, which wont really count for much)...which is okay, because i like arts...BUT...i think im bad at essay writing AND arts wont really lead anywhere unless i get into masters....which i have no idea what to do...
I didn't quite get what i needed to get into UoM but i was close, so i went to monash. As time went by i came to realise several things you don't realise being fresh out of highschool. Uni is much more than rankings and prestige alone.
To be honest, for undergraduate teaching, the teaching quality and content of most uni's in victoria is around the same level. It's not like the teachers at UoM have some hidden knowledge the teachers at RMIT don't have. They all have PhD's and they dont just hand those out to anyone, so they're still all very good.
My original plan was to transfer out of Monash to UoM. I had a lot of things happen during the year which impacted on my uni scores quite a bit and my marks weren't quite what i needed to transfer but to be honest i'm doing OK here. They still teach very well. They have some things unique to the science program that UoM doesn't have. Plus you have to meet a whole bunch of new people and things like that. The distance doesn't kill me as much as it use to.
I skipped a lot of lectures, barely went. For some this is good if you watch them that night and catch up. Like i said a lot of things were going on during this year and i was pretty disrupted, i didn't go but i didn't listen to them either. So, it can be a dangerous way to think but if you do actually listen to them that night then its fine. In some cases (EG. 2 hours of lectures on a particular day, 4 hours of travel) it can actually save you time if you don't go. Just make sure you don't bomb out like i did though.
You can skip your really, unavoidably early ones and just go to the later ones, everything will be alright.
Breadth is about 6 units isn't it? Thats roughly the equivalent of a major, so its nothing to be sneezed at.
I wouldn't worry about a job too much if its going to be a job you hate anyway.
If you do well enough there will be work for you.
Arts isn't all dead ends.
My philosophy professor, Graeme Oppy for instance got into medicine but he switched out because it wasn't what he loved:
"
After I completed high school, I enrolled in an undergraduate medical program at the University of Melbourne. I found that I was much more interested in reading philosophy than in studying embryology--in particular, my copy of The Portable Nietzsche was much thumbed--and, at the end of my first year, I transferred to a combined arts/science degree with majors in mathematics and philosophy, and minors in physics and history and philosophy of science. "
http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/graham_oppy/whynot.htmlTheres a significant amount of essay writing in the arts. You may like to think about this a little and its impact on you. That said if you're motivated enough you can definitely do it.
4) or i could do science at unimelb...but no arts (except for breadth, which wont really count for much)...i could potentially get a job...BUT i dont want a job in science, nor do i really enjoy lab work...
If you don't want a job in science it doesn't seem advisable to only choose a science degree. All science isn't lab work, you could work in government advising/pharmaceutical sales/teaching (secondary, university)/textbook writing. There's so much more to science than just lab work. The universities tend to have pages mentioning possible careers, you might want to look into that.
5) or i could just choose something random...commerce at unimelb? that could get me somewhere...but not really fond of it....
That doesn't seem like a very good idea now does it. No use being in something you like, you won't want to work hard at it or be interested in it. Your career will also (likely) not be all that fun, unless you discover or develop a sudden passion for it.
Do something you like, not what you think you should do or what others would like you to do. Recipe for success.
Happy to answer any questions you have.
Home
Help
Search
Login
