Alright, just so this makes sense, I'll put down what my VCE course looked like:
AngelWings' VCE subjects
Year 10 1/2s: Psych, General Maths, CSL
Year 11 1/2s; Eng Lang, Chem, Methods, JSL, Economics
Year 11 3/4: only Psych
Year 12: Eng Lang, Chem, Methods, JSL, Further.
So you can see that I gave up
two 'advanced' subjects after Year 10 (italicised). Why?
Reasons
1. I sucked at CSL and was starting to hate it. I had only done it out of parental pressure and a few smaller reasons.
2. I had considered a career in commerce in Year 10. In fact, I was fine being your 9-5 office worker and was striving for it. I thought I was very average and boring. That's why I said this later on:
- Caring about what everyone else thought about me and adhering to others' methods, instead of doing things my way.
as one of my biggest regrets.
I decided to do Economics*, because Bus Man wasn't as appealing. I wasn't willing to drop any of my other subjects, so that left no room for Further. I figured I could pick up Further again later on.
3. I didn't really see how I would care about Further. I thought it would end up being a bludge subject.
4. I just wanted to focus on Psych. Psych had cost me a lot of time in Year 10 and I figured it would project into even more time in Year 11 (as Units 3/4), since it had a lot of content and I'm not the best at those. I was much more interested in Psych and really just wanted to keep it.
5. Further just was a filler. It wasn't important for later studies (I needed Methods and Eng Lang, potentially Chem - I didn't want to limit many options).
In retrospect, I see that I made the right choice. (I ended up caring and enjoying it.) It was:
- the right subject to comfort me whilst my other subjects made me feel overwhelmed.
- a good break from said subjects.
- something that my friends and I did in common. (My friends were/ are humanities-based or very artsy people.)
I had interest in my other subjects, but I had little talent and these were supposedly still my best subjects besides Further, so that was saying something!
I definitely think that if I had chosen to do Further in Year 11, that I would've been very unhappy, not done as well as I could have and I would have no choices in Year 12 that I would've been happy with (only Bio, but I had mixed feelings there **).
* I dropped Economics for Further in Year 12 for several reasons. Nevertheless, I learnt a lot of study techniques and content there, so I don't have any hate.
** I regret not doing VCE Bio because it contained some of the content which they rushed in first-year (e.g. immunology). However, I still think I wouldn't have chosen Bio if I were to do VCE again, since I wouldn't have coped with something too content-heavy alongside my other subjects.