Wow, what a fantastic response. Thank you very much for three helpful responses. ATAR Notes truly is a fantastic community. I owe you all!
I honestly don't think honours is worth it unless you plan to do something in research (or academia, PhD etc). I'm in a similar situation as yourself. I am planning to do the Master of Teaching and this is my final year of my IT degree as well. There is however an option for me to enter into honours but I personally can't see any benefit other than having the extension on my degree title (or futureproofing just incase I decide I hate teaching and want to continue on with a PhD or something..)
I like this plan. My objective when I entered my IT degree was to have this only as a backup (and to use it as a tool to get into MTeach) but not to sound cheesy, I've really enjoyed uni (much more than school). Teaching was always a dream of mine.
If you want to teach, I think you should just proceed with MTeach next year. There is no need to be overqualified. Also remember that some universities offer cloud/online courses or night school so this is an option as well if you find teaching isn't right for you.
That's the problem: I very much
may wish to pursue something in research or academia. I'm just not sure what (or even which major to pursue should I do Honours). But I agree with you in that if I decide that that's not something that I'll want to do, Honours is probably just an unnecessary year of likely frustration.
I've enjoyed uni too, particularly in the last year. Actually, that is a necessary qualifier, because I absolutely loathed it during my first year. Considering you've enjoyed IT at uni, do you think you might pursue that instead of teaching?
One option for you to do would be Teach for Australia, which is a one year program that qualifies you with a Masters of Ed (I think), but sees you earning 40k+ actually teaching in schools while you do it. I think it sounds like a pretty great program. You get a qualification that you can always come back to, and it functions as a nice 'interim' year where, if you want to study more, you've set yourself up with a bit of money (as well as the 'back-up' qualification that will always be there), and you get a pretty good experience of teaching and whatever else.
I have read about Teach For Australia a lot, and I was actually set on applying for it for a long time. But from what I can glean from their website, it appears to be a two year commitment. Admittedly, I haven't looked at it much recently, so I may just be misreading that.
It sounds like an amazing opportunity, though. What put me off slightly was a) I'm wary of the potential necessity of moving out, which I don't think I particularly want to do at this stage; and b) I don't think I am eligible to teach much, anyway. If you have a look at the
learning area eligibility on their website, you will see that the requirements are quite specific. I would be most interested in English, Health and Humanities. For English, I need a Linguistics major (check) plus other studies in Literature or Literary Studies (nope). For Health, I need to have "[covered] the areas of Health, Human Development, Family and Nutrition" (nope). For Humanities, a major in any number of areas would suffice, including Anthropology, Cultural Studies, History, Philosophy, Politics and Sociology. Unfortunately, my major (International Studies) is not listed; however, it does seem very similar.
I wonder if I could somehow get my uni subjects approved to be able to teach English and/or SOSE/Humanities. If I could, I would be very, very interested in applying for intake in 2016/2017. I'm not sure if you will know, but say I have completed some units that were listed as both International Studies and Philosophy. If, hypothetically, I were to need a minor in Philosophy, could I use some of those overlapping units to contribute to the Philosophy 'minor' (even though I don't actually have a Philosophy minor)? That is, if I have completed four Philosophy units, and those units are not being taken away from any other required major/minor, would that be acceptable? Apologies if that made absolutely no sense.
Are you considering applying for the program yourself?
For my own reference:
Personally, I've been getting very interested in learning to code. It's sort of amazing how valuable it is. Like, when I look at these interests, I'm like "wow, coding would be useful there (as well as web-based design). Health promotion/nutrition is just inviting a cool website [marketable]. Anyway... a bit tangential and probably not realistic for you, but if I studied further, I'd like to integrate some sort of IT into it.
I think with a linguistics major, any further study (copywriting certificates and stuff like that) might be less worthwhile regarding things you could write for. Like; marketing based study would be more beneficial in that regard, because it would complement linguistics but add a whole new element to you as an employee, whereas directly furthering your writing skills/qualifications, whilst valuable, might not be as valuable as something else. As far as health promotion and nutrition goes; I feel as if studying these things extensively is more of a "getting employed in that field" type of thing. If that's the case, we reduce the conundrum to "do you want to work in that field?". Here, I think even marketing based study could be beneficial for health promotion (leading to work for a company?), but probably no more or less helpful than direct qualifications. Marketing and IT based study could be pretty cool. Gives you lots of options... you could always start your own small business/initiative/website or again just proceed to work for a company.
I've never really considered IT or coding (more along my brother's line of interests), but that is an interesting thought. I wouldn't be adverse to completing an IT unit or two in order to enhance career prospects, but I'm actually a bit of a technology novice. And good advice in regard to the Linguistics/Marketing thing, too - you're completely right.
A diploma of science would really neatly fit your interests. *At this point in writing, I pause for 5 minutes, scroll down, and see "Haven't studied since Year 10". Seeing that you've other scientific interests pushes me in that direction
. Don't worry about the lack of study, you'll be fine. Especially after already doing an undergrad. lol. Can you imagine going back to first year in a generalist degree? Science makes a lot of sense here. (Also... coding)... (Okay, I'll stop shoving my fad obsessions into your face).
Honours... I'm neither here nor there. Re: 'worth it'... What's the outcome? Is the outcome worth it? You want to study more, but do you want to go deeper into the same stuff, or extend outwards? Honours seems like a 'stall' to me atm (without knowing further information).
Anyway, I'm out of thoughts. Have fun!
Diploma of Science. I like the sound of that. In looking at Monash's Diplomas, I'm quite interested in the
Graduate Diploma in International Health. So many options!
Again, thank you for your detailed and thought-provoking response.
If these things interest you, have you thought about doing some health science/health promotion/epidemiology related stuff? These are covered extensively in the Bachelor of Health Science at an undergrad level, but a lot of people from Arts to Biomed (and Med) do an MPH (Master of Public Health) as postgraduate study to gain access to epidemiology- or health-related careers/research positions. I'm personally considering doing the latter at some stage because epidemiology is awesome.
Epidemiology, health sciences and health promotion are all obviously very broad fields with myriad aspects to focus on, but if you don't mind approaching the scientific side of things (to varying degrees, depending on what you're working on and what field you enter), this might be something to consider. Plus, if you decide to do the MPH you can continue with your Arts degree and give yourself more time to think things through.
Let me know if you'd like me to expand on anything 
And a Master of Public Health sounds similarly interesting! What would be better here, do you think: a Graduate Diploma, or Masters? And how common is going from Arts into Med? Medicine itself interests me greatly (its content and applicability), but I don't have much interest in putting myself through the stress of the course. My girlfriend is doing her MBBS, and I have no desire to follow in her footsteps. I guess that's a bit of a shame, really.