Uni Stuff > The University Journey Journal

A turtle's exploration of the world of science & leadership

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K888:
Re: letters for building names at Peninsula - yep, should have said it's easy once you know which building is which haha. Which doesn't take long because there's not many buildings. Before you learn of each building it is definitely confusing lol

Congrats on all the things you've achieved this year, Bri. It sounds like its been a massive year for you and I'm excited to hear about your adventures next year. Your ability to multitask a lot of responsibilities has made me reconsider my abilities and wonder about challenging myself a bit more!

Bri MT:

--- Quote from: K888 on November 27, 2019, 10:13:26 pm ---Re: letters for building names at Peninsula - yep, should have said it's easy once you know which building is which haha. Which doesn't take long because there's not many buildings. Before you learn of each building it is definitely confusing lol

Congrats on all the things you've achieved this year, Bri. It sounds like its been a massive year for you and I'm excited to hear about your adventures next year. Your ability to multitask a lot of responsibilities has made me reconsider my abilities and wonder about challenging myself a bit more!

--- End quote ---

Thank you!

I'm looking forward to seeing what you get up to next year too :)

Bri MT:
Really quick update from me as I haven't posted in here for ages.


Had a pretty hectic summer and just finished Week 1 (since Monash removed o-week, pushed back semester start and made week 1 online due to coronavirus).

Atm I'm most keen for BIO3011  Research methods in biology, then ECC2-some-numbers-I-can't-remember Prosperity, poverty and sustainability (Also known as PPS), and then BIO3111 Applied ecology. I probably should feel more keen for applied ecology than I do right now and I'm guessing that'll build throughout semester but yeah...   Also, BIO3111 and BIO3011 are VERY easy to confuse when I'm reading an email, timetable etc. so maybe some of my enthusiasm for BIO3111 will be transferred through that :P

In mass^3 we did some rescheduling and replanning due to semester dates being thrown off by the coronavirus decisions but now have a timetable for the semester. We also did a working bee / mini renovation of the common room so hopefully it'll be a good welcoming space for the new advanced science students when they'll probably visit for the first time soon :D


Anyway, that's the speedy update done. I've been unwell recently but am better now and will scramble to catch up on things before returning for a more comprehensive update.



2020 has been a long 3 months; best of luck to everyone for whatever the next three throw at us.

Bri MT:
Heyo, update here

Ok so I've kept that order of which units are my favourites but after the first lecture applied ecology did get much better and I am learning valuable info in it. Had the first assessment for it due this week (which is mid sem break) which was pretty straightforward except for the incredibly restrictive wordcount.

On the same day as that was due I was trying to fix my settings for backing up files to OneDrive automatically which included temporarily losing 2 years of files from my laptop. Now I know how to avoid that but yeah... wasn't great. I was hoping that fixing that would fix an issue I've been having where RStudio hasn't been loading the tidyverse package. I've now invested many hours in trying to fix that googling solutions, changing pathways, uninstalling and reinstalling things etc. Still haven't fixed whatever the issue is.

On the plus side I can use the RStudio cloud version for my research methods assessment instead and I'm not having the same issue there so it's not like I'm going to lose marks on my assignment due to this. I've done all the coding work on my assessment and was able to copy this across, just need to do figure captions and written statements interpreting the data. I find saving on the cloud version to be unreliable so I am still going to keep trying to fix my issues with using the desktop version.

Prosperity poverty & sustainability hasn't had a big assessment yet but we do get marked on "discussion logs" on a Moodle forum where we collaborate in groups to make reading summaries & discuss the ideas from the readings etc. Marking is individual based on your contributions but I still think I'm lucky to have a pretty good group. There's 1 person who hasn't contributed much at all but that's a lot more manageable than if most of the group didn't engage.

I'm waiting out the shutdown at mum's place rather than in my sharehouse. I had been really liking being able to go on campus to study in the early days of semester but it's not exactly essential for me to study there so I haven't done that recently. Online learning is pretty ok for me so that's not a big issue. After doing eng lang in year 12 through DECV this is much easier than that ahaha. Kinda sucks not being as able to learn the practical skills in Applied Ecology from actually going into environments, identifying taxa, making transects and quadrats etc. but it's not like I'm doing any wet lab (what most people probably think of as a lab)  heavy units like chemistry.

The thing that's hardest for me in this situation is not the direct effects on me but how it's impacting others. In my course, the only time you can go on exchange is the 1st semester of 3rd year, so this year most people in my cohort had exchange planned. As you can imagine, those plans that were carefully made and constructed to fit within our course map have been disrupted with the need to return to Australia while they still could and as their host unis closed. I feel for the high school students and teachers who are adapting on the go with lots of uncertainty - particularly in the qce system where there's the added stress of it being the first year with external assessment. I've got a cousin going through year 12 VCE atm too and can see how this is influencing his learning. My heart especially breaks for people who are having their wellbeing seriously disrupted by this and/or don't feel comfortable and safe in their homes.

Bri MT:
Hey everyone,

about to start sem 2 and a lot has happened so here's an update!

I did fix the issue with tidyverse not loading (uninstalling and reinstalling some more fixed it up).

Those assignments went well, only lost 1 or 2 marks in the research methods one and got 100% on the discussion logs which was cool. In the end I didn't maintain my grades being that high and ended up with HDs for the bio units and distinction for PPS. All of those units would've benefited from me studying them in a time where I was better able to put time and energy into them but I thought they were all pretty well run regardless.

I'd be very surprised if research methods in bio isn't my favourite bio unit in terms of coursework at the end of my degree. A frustration I did have is that it was clear that the tutor marking my work for the last assignment didn't have much aptitude for code and didn't really understand mine - c'mon guys, a loop nested inside an if statement is not exactly that complex (esp for a week 12 assignment)... and when a (different tutor) marked my report some of their comments went against what I had been told by the lecturer or were otherwise objectively wrong. Some of their comments were completely valid but it still sucked and at the time I was too busy stressing about end of semester to chase up people whose emails I didn't have. Again, I can't complain too much as I did end up with a HD anyway and far more importantly I learnt a lot but it was still a bit upsetting to get those marks back in a unit where I'd had multiple students say they learnt more from me than the staff. I really believe in the unit and I'd still encourage people to take it, I could tell a lot of thought went into the design of the unit and the teaching staff very genuinely believed in what they were teaching, and I think the skills gained from it are very important etc.

I got off a bit on the wrong foot with applied ecology as it felt to me a lot like it was preparing students to go out and get a consulting job after uni (and that's not what I'm interested in, I don't really want to be getting my pay from developers etc... ). When I step back and look at the content it is things that if I'd seen in earlier units I would've loved, like how you decide which areas of land should be put in a reserve and the different algorithms used for this. In a different semester I think I would've really enjoyed this unit and it sucks that we missed out on the practical skills side of things. I would've liked to be able to pick a research problem and choose between data sets (like we could for research methods) for our report but I understand why that wasn't practical. It also would've been impossible for us to go and collect the data ourselves like in previous years. I clearly remember at the start of semester attending a lecture in person (- seeing the pieces of paper marking out where we were allowed to sit for distancing -) and the lecturer brightening when they saw they actually had an audience. To me that almost represents the whole unit, they tried what they could for it being online but this is a unit that really struggled with that.

Prosperity, poverty, and sustainability was an interesting unit. This was my first non-science unit in my degree but in the end when talking about things like climate change it was a pretty big bonus to already be pretty exposed to topics surrounding that, how anthropogenic climate change works etc. It was weird to be on the other side of economics saying "Look at me! I'm a science! See look, I use data!" and felt like a role-reversal of when I'd been the only psych student in my physics class. The difference of course being that psych is a science and economics (as far as I can tell) is not (evidence based decision making doesn't have to be scientific in nature??? why fight so hard for something that doesn't truly fit?? you don't need to be science to be worthy of respect??). There were videos posted up for each topic rather than lectures which I thought worked well and the peer-marking system was great (lots of feedback since you have multiple people marking your work) but on the other hand having tutes/workshops be videos + forum rather than real-time didn't seem to work. It's very hard to have a conversation rather than comment-and-never-look-back when people are on at a whole range of different times. I would've preferred tutes to be ran like the help sessions with students then going into discussion together after the content (which could be recorded and posted as a video) so that we could actually discuss.


In semester 2 I'll be studying trends in ecology, indigenous studies, macroeconomics, and impact through science 3b. I have more to say but this is long already so I'll leave it here for now :)

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