There is life after VCE!

[killer_bot]

Only thing that's not so good is when i have 9 hour days with pracs

What first year uni subjects are you doing?

[Starlight]

bio, chem are for the pracs

[greenbeans]

I don't like the time aspect.

I live 30 mins away, that's if I'm in a car and there's no traffic.
Taking the bus and then another bus.. or finding an alternate route... well the quickest I've ever got home is 1.5 hours, the longest around 2 hours.

I work around 25 hours a week between two part-time jobs, and so I can only really afford to go to uni 3 days a week. At the moment I do 2.5 days, but my Monday is from 9am-5pm, my Tuesday is classes from 9am-4pm, then music rehearsal on campus from 6ish - 9.30pm, then get home around 10. On Thursdays I have 1-6pm which isn't as bad, just it takes ages to get home.

I find it hard having energy throughout the week, let alone having time to revise, study and complete assignments! And you can say, yes drop your work shifts or some of them, but I am saving up for a car so that I can slice that travelling time in half, at the very least! *Sighhhhhh*

[Truck]

I don't like the time aspect.

I live 30 mins away, that's if I'm in a car and there's no traffic.
Taking the bus and then another bus.. or finding an alternate route... well the quickest I've ever got home is 1.5 hours, the longest around 2 hours.

I work around 25 hours a week between two part-time jobs, and so I can only really afford to go to uni 3 days a week. At the moment I do 2.5 days, but my Monday is from 9am-5pm, my Tuesday is classes from 9am-4pm, then music rehearsal on campus from 6ish - 9.30pm, then get home around 10. On Thursdays I have 1-6pm which isn't as bad, just it takes ages to get home.

I find it hard having energy throughout the week, let alone having time to revise, study and complete assignments! And you can say, yes drop your work shifts or some of them, but I am saving up for a car so that I can slice that travelling time in half, at the very least! *Sighhhhhh*

Well in that case, short term pain for long term gain! As soon as you have that car it'll all be better so I suppose that's all the motivation you need .

[greenbeans]

Thanks for your inspiration, teewreck!

[golden]

I was watching Insight earlier this week (highly recommended, it was a good episode on education) and a uni lecturer on the programme made the point that high achievers at high school knew how to play the system and focused on what was on the exam, to the exclusion of other things. As a lecturer, she got quite frustrated by students who were trying to learn to the exam and constantly asked what was going to be on the exam, because in the end by just studying for the exam you may do really well, but you're missing out on a lot of stuff and of part of the fun of education.

In my experience as well, in a lot of subjects at uni, there is a degree of creativity. It's good to approach a question or problem in a way that nobody else approached it. For students to actually be able to do that requires a fair bit of knowledge and a deep understanding.

+ Over 9000.

Just because you get a high score in VCE doesn't necessarily mean that you're 'smarter' in anyway.
It just means that you are able to have specifically the VCE exam skills, understanding how VCAA asks questions etc.

To some degree it was mainly the English subjects that somewhat allowed me to express my creativity - for those who didn't think so you probably had more resources than me lol - it was the only subject that I did that more completely allowed me to go where I wanted to go in answering the question and at the same time possibly get marks for it.

Maybe they should introduce more creativity into every subject as opposed to who can best churn out the same exam questions every time.
Because every year people get better at doing the same homogenous thing and they may make the exam harder and faster. Looking at some past exams may or may not show this trend. What is viewed as hard these days is what requires creativity. People get really angry when something that isn't explicitly on the study design is examined.

Because there is less time to answer the questions and to learn the course etc. people feel like they are wasting their time with the other stuff.
I mean especially if you're one of those people like me who only knew what definite integrals were mid - late in year 12 (yes I did specialist). As much as you would like to do it sometimes people don't have enough time.

Can this be changed?

[happycat]

I was watching Insight earlier this week (highly recommended, it was a good episode on education) and a uni lecturer on the programme made the point that high achievers at high school knew how to play the system and focused on what was on the exam, to the exclusion of other things. As a lecturer, she got quite frustrated by students who were trying to learn to the exam and constantly asked what was going to be on the exam, because in the end by just studying for the exam you may do really well, but you're missing out on a lot of stuff and of part of the fun of education.

In my experience as well, in a lot of subjects at uni, there is a degree of creativity. It's good to approach a question or problem in a way that nobody else approached it. For students to actually be able to do that requires a fair bit of knowledge and a deep understanding.

+ Over 9000.

Just because you get a high score in VCE doesn't necessarily mean that you're 'smarter' in anyway.
It just means that you are able to have specifically the VCE exam skills, understanding how VCAA asks questions etc.

To some degree the English subjects somewhat allowed me to express my creativity - for those who didn't think so you probably had more resources than me lol - it was the only subject that I did that more completely allowed me to go where I wanted to go in answering the question and at the same time possibly get marks for it.

Maybe they should introduce more creativity into every subject as opposed to who can best churn out the same exam questions every time.
Because every year people get better at doing the same homogenous thing and they may make the exam harder and faster. Looking at some past exams may or may not show this trend. What is viewed as hard these days is what requires creativity. People get really angry when something that isn't explicitly on the study design is examined.

Because there is less time to answer the questions and to learn the course etc. people feel like they are wasting their time with the other stuff.
I mean especially if you're one of those people like me who only knew what definite integrals mid - late in year 12. As much as you would like to do it sometimes people don't have enough time.

Can this be changed?

Looks like people need to appreciate knowledge more, otherwise it doesn't make sense and yes I can relate to the lecturer's frustration, a lecturer prefers a student who wants to learn as oppose to just get through and forget about it afterwards. Which kinda makes learning pointless if you're gonna be like that.

[greenbeans]

I think that these two posts above me really resonate well with how I feel about VCE.

I felt that personally I enjoyed my Englishes the most out of all my subjects. Even though they were the most challenging, they were the ones that I got the most out of and they were the most intellectually stimulating because I had to extend my thoughts to "outside of the box" or the VCE guidelines and study designs.

I had the same teacher for both these Englishes and I have so much respect for her for how she taught us to really "think", such as how to think analytically, open-mindedly and critically depending on the circumstances. *These* are the skill sets that you need to equip yourself with in university and beyond, and I can imagine myself years later after VCE fondly reminiscing over some teeny tiny piece of information about language or whatever that has stuck with me since Year 11 or 12. I think it's fabulous that you can come away from the last years of high school and still have that sophisticated knowledge bank that can be put to use for the rest of your life, not just chunks of info needed to devour and spurt out on a page during the exam period.