Why did you pick the subjects you did/are doing?

[lm21074]

As mentioned in the title, why did you pick the subjects you did/are doing? Keen to hear your thoughts!

[Mada438]

For me, i really really dislike STEM, so this ticked some subjects off the list for me.
I was fairly proficient in English and i wanted to challenge myself, so i picked Advanced English.
I had initially picked advanced maths in year 11 but realized it was one of the worst mistakes of my life after 2 weeks and immediately dropped to general.
I loved history, but wasn't a fan of ancient; so i went with modern history.
I'd been interested in business studies through our trial lessons during year 10 and went with it as it intrigued me.
My last subject was difficult to pick. I was initially going to do Hospitality (our school runs it through TAFE and it counts towards our HSC). But at the subject selection evening, i fell in love with society and culture and so i ultimately went with that!

So that concludes my short paragraph on why i picked the subjects i did. 
In summary: I hate STEM and love humanities! 

[Sine]

VCE
Biology: Relatively interesting and content heavy so did it in year 11
Specialist Maths: Aiming for a high atar so a natural choice along with interest in maths
Methods: Same as spec + prereq for a lot of courses
Chemistry: Prereq for a lot of courses + interesting content
English: Compulsory (in hindsight I would do EngLang alongside it)
MUEP Chemistry: Less work than a normal VCE subject (can be bludged in terms of scoring highly although tougher concepts) - scored well in year 11 3/4 so had the flexibility to not be too worried about what would go into my top 4.

[beatroot]

HSC

Standard English: Mandatory obviously. Though I opted for Standard as I did not survive Year 10 english and knew I wouldn't be able to survive Advanced English in Year 11 and 12
Advanced Mathematics: I felt that I had a Maths in there somewhere because a) scaling (ahaha) and b) the topics of the advanced course appealed to me more than the general course and I was already used to doing parabolas and algebra and whatnot since Year 9 so there wasn't any point in me learning new stuff like taxes in the general course (looking back- the general course is much more practical)
Visual Arts: I love this subject wayyyy too much and I've been an arts nerd since forever.
Society and Culture: I wanted to learn about sociology and how things work and why society does this and that. Plus I was super keen to do the major work for it!
Ancient History: I have a fascination with ancient societies (especially Ancient Egypt) and I knew I had to pick this subject up.
Catholic Studies: Did not count towards my ATAR but still had to do a religious subject as I went to a Catholic school.

Pretty much I chose subjects I knew I was capable of doing and I really didn't care about scaling (besides Maths). I knew if I was interested in the subjects I chose and enjoyed doing them, I would have a better experience as a student

[appleandbee]

Not the most interesting reasons for me:

English: compulsory subject and seem the easiest (wasn't a strong English student back when I was in year 10) and best fit for me out of all the English subjects available

Methods: Pre-req for many courses

Specialist maths: It scales well and wanted to do it since I wasn't doing a language. I also figured that since I was relatively decent at maths when I was in high school, that doing two maths subjects was a strategic option and would require less effort than studying two subjects from different disciplines.

Chemistry: Pre-req for all science courses, I wasn't good at it then nor did I put much effort into it (as a result of the former) In hindsight, I wished I focused more on it given what I'm currently studying at university.

Economics: I was strongly considering studying Commerce when I was in high school and the subject seemed a bit more challenging than the other commerce/business related subjects (an aspect that I enjoyed). Even though I'm no longer interested in Commerce, I still find the economic issues interesting. Also decent scaling for a humanities subject.

History revolutions: Many year 11s did they subject and performed relatively well in it. My school made us do Unit 2 History in year 10 as well. The teacher was very good, even though I didn't enjoy that subject much.

Uni Philosophy: I've always been fascinated by Philosophy (still studying it), and wanted to pursue a university subject.

If I could go back in time, I would still do most of the same subjects; English, Chemistry, Specialist, Methods, Economics as well as Biology and Philosophy (I would also love to do Psychology as well or even Drama but my school wasn't flexible with excess VCE subjects)

[S200]

Hmmm. Limited options means limited students..

English
Compulsory, and I sucked at it, so no chance of going higher. Plus, my school doesn't offer Lit.

Methods
Maths compulsory, and I liked math, so I went up to the highest I could go. Again, School only offers Specialist through distance ed.

VCE VET Business
This one is also compulsory to the school, as it's extremely business focused. It's VET, so pretty easy, but the subject didn't really get me interested at all, so the 1/2 in Yr 10 was good, but my final 3/4 grade (32) was lower than the class average, and I am generally a touch above. So yeah, it was not my favourite subject by any chance.

VCE Accounting
And, a fourth compulsory. This is not counting towards ATAR, as we are doing a specialised course that very few schools do, dropping several units and doing random ones. At the minute, it's prolly my best subject, cause I'm obviously pretty math minded. But yeah, it's pretty easy.

Our school offers electives in Blocks, with about 7-10 options across the blocks. Block A is English Compulsory, Block B Math Compulsory

Physics
This was my block C choice. The other options were History (revs), Geography and VisCom/VCD. Being naturally math-ish, I choose the formula subject.

Economics
My Block D choice, the other options were Legal and PDT. Eco scaled, as well as being a somewhat difficult subject, with relevance to real world, so i was like... Why not?


So yeah, not that interesting, and not much variety.

EDIT - I didn't pick the boring life, the boring life picked me...

[vox nihili]

Biology: the girl I had a crush on was doing it
Chemistry: one of my teachers encouraged me to do it. I had initially wanted to be a psychologist, but she really impressed on me that I might consider med as I got older, so I should take the prereqs needed for it. I was initially reluctant, and my year 10 chem teacher told me I'd fail, but decided to push ahead anyway.
English Language: not really sure tbh. I took this and literature initially, but dropped the latter in favour of Biology. I think I was just interested in linguistics and sick of English.
French: loved it, wanted to continue to learn French.
Methods: initially was going to drop maths in year 11, but a combo of the same reasons above and a lot of pushing by my methods teacher saw me do it.
Psychology: wanted to be a psychologist at the time and had the option of taking a subject early.

[sweetiepi]

Methods- Prereq for most courses I was interested in
Specialist- I did the 1/2 equivalent (back when it was Gen Maths Advanced), and was asked to stay on after year 11 as they weren't going to run the class for 3 people. (Regrets because I shoulda kept psych after year 11 but I had to choose maths over psych )
Physics- I mainly did it because dad's an engineer, and I relatively enjoyed talking to him about the physics of stuff
Chem- I really enjoyed the subject in year 9/10, so I continued it throughout VCE
English- I had no choice at school but to do it

[PhoenixxFire]

I sort of stumbled upon most of my subjects, most of them weren't deliberate picks.

Psychology
I moved to my current school in year 9 and was picking subjects from a spreadsheet. I wanted to do a subject called 'Pre-VCE psychology and neuroscience' but because I moved at the very end of year 8 the class was already full, so they put me in 1/2 psychology Little year 8 me was very shocked that I was allowed to do a year 11 subject in year 9 haha

Math
I picked a subject called 'pre-VCE math methods' which is exactly what it sounds like. I did fine, so I originally went into Unit 1 methods in year 10. Completely bombed it. As in, got 13% on the first SAC because i answered B for all of the multi choice and drew flowers and such on the short answer page, sort of bombed it. I had to fight with school a bit because they didn't want me to drop it then. They finally let me drop it at the end of Unit 1 (i did nothing in class haha). I had the option of going into Unit 2 general then but I was so completely over maths that I picked up a private study instead. Then I did general in year 11 and now further in year 12.

Biology
I did an elective in the first half of year 9, but the elective i wanted to do in the 2nd half wasn't running. The only class that looked remotely interesting was pre-VCE bio which was actually a year long class but they let me join half way through. I had always liked biology but I hadn't really even started to consider what subjects I wanted to do. From there I went into 1/2 bio and then 3/4.

English
In year 9 i did pre-vce english. Went into 1/2 english in year 10. I have always dislike english but I had started to like it again in year 9 (my teacher was awesome). I really, really hated 1/2 english though. Like really, really hated. Over those summer holidays I freaked out a lot about my 3/4 english homework and desperately and hopelessly tried to find a way that I could get away with not doing English. I eventually discovered that there was this subject called English Language and so I changed very last minute to that. I never really figured out how to use the website, I rarely got feedback from my teacher (it was through distance Ed) and I just really hated it and tended to use the time for bio work instead. I passes Unit 3, but didn't submit any work all of term 3 so I failed Unit 4 (oops). And so then I ended up in mainstream English this year (with the teacher who I really like yay).

Enviro science
I found out this existed because of my fish elective. I thought it looked awesome so I signed up. It's not living up to expectations

Outdoor ed
My 1/2 enviro class was really small so it was combined with 1/2 outdoor ed. They were having way more fun then us (they got to play games in class!) and I enjoyed the camps we went on, so I decided to do it for 3/4 (we have separate classes now).

tl;dr Mostly accidentally. It sort of just happened.

[vceme]

English: Compulsory. Sometimes I question whether I would actually do english if it wasn't compulsory. I have a VERY love/hate relationship with this subject 
Methods: Prereq and above average but can do with more work 
Further: Dropped specialist unit 1 after realising that I wasn't as good at maths as I thought I was. My school makes year 11 sacs easy. Further was the only thing running at the same time as specialist and another subject that I cannot remember
Biology: Originally wanted and did apply to do HHD as an advance year 10 subject but it was too full. Was looking on the list and realised biology was on there. I asked a friend if biology was the one that included the body systems and so I did it.
Chemistry: I'm not sure how I got myself to do chemistry when I told myself that I would absolutely not do VCE chem in year 9-10. After realising that Chem is a pre-req to some uni courses and got 100% on my chem test I decided to do Chem 
Business: It was this or HHD. I'm either choosing a commerce or science course in uni so I decided to pick up Business 

[Seno72]

Biology: My advance placement (did it as a year 12 subject in year 11). I chose it because I liked it the most out of the electives I had to choose. If Chemistry or Physics were there, I would have chosen them instead.
Chemistry: I love this subject. There can be a variety of chanllenging questions that can be asked, which makes the content way more interesting. Least favourite part yet is the theory on fuels.
Physics: I also like this subject. I understand why some people dislike this subject, it sometimes gets too shallow (especially on Motion) but relativity, induction, gravity are all interesting. Overall, Physics isn't a hard subject.
Mathematical Methods: Probably the subject I am worse at (or maybe English). In my eyes, Methods is very hard and have a variety of questions to ask. Hoping for a 40 raw in this subject (I am a bit doubtful as no one in my school got above 40 last year).
Further Mathematics: I chose this subject because I dropped Japanese 1/2 (Cause I was terrible at it) and had nothing else to chose. It's a pretty boring subject at class I admit (not much insightful discussion) but when I am doing it myself, it's a very relaxing and enjoyable subject. I'm doing the best at this subject in terms of ranking.

[chicken0909]

I am in year 11 and currently doing Literature, Methods, Chemistry, Biology (3/4), Product Design and Tech and 20th Century History. I am considering dropping Chemistry since I am averaging 20-65%. So in year 12, I am hoping to do Literature, Methods, Ancient History/Chemistry, Revolutions and Data Analytics. Not sure if I should drop chemistry because I enjoy it but I feel like I will struggle in year 23

[AngelWings]

I am in year 11 and currently doing Literature, Methods, Chemistry, Biology (3/4), Product Design and Tech and 20th Century History. I am considering dropping Chemistry since I am averaging 20-65%. So in year 12, I am hoping to do Literature, Methods, Ancient History/Chemistry, Revolutions and Data Analytics. Not sure if I should drop chemistry because I enjoy it but I feel like I will struggle in year 23

I just noticed your signature says that you want to study Monash undergrad med. The prerequisites for this course are English (or an equivalent) and Chemistry, so if you’re still adamant about studying med at Monash specifically (or undergrad Med in Victoria, as it’s the only undergrad med course in the state), you’ll need to keep Chem unfortunately.

The good news is that you still have some time to tackle the issue and improve.

[Ereh]

While most people choose either STEM or humanities subjects, there’s a clear split between my choices. I plan to study Engineering or Medicine at UQ (chem is not a prerequisite).

Literature: I love reading and analyzing texts, so this was a no-brainer for me. Everyone says the class discussions are great as well.

Methods: Prerequisite for the uni courses I’m interested in. Also, I love maths!

Specialist: I figured I should do this since I enjoy maths and studying 2 maths subjects will lessen the workload as they overlap.

Physics: Need to do a science as a prerequisite, also really enjoy learning about Physics (relativity, quantum mechanics...)

Modern History: I was initially going to choose Chemistry but didn’t really like it. The sciences and maths have an end of year exam worth 50% of my grade, and 4 of those seemed too daunting. I also find History really interesting and achieve well in it.

Chinese: I want to go to an exchange program in China at uni, so I have to do this subject at school. I’m doing pretty well in it, so I’m not worried.

I kind of wish we could do more subjects! Then I could pick up Biology, Philosophy, and Music!

Please let me know your opinions, as I can still change them for year 11

[Geoo]

Methods: Only because it was a prerequisite. I don't mind maths, but it isn't my favourite subject.

English: Only because it is compulsory. I love reading and creative writing, but I really hate English. I would have loved to have done English language, but it wasn't offered at my school.

Chemistry: My favourite subject! I love chemistry and always had. I enjoy knowing how things come together and what work with what. VCE Chem isn't amazing, but it is still one of my most enjoyable subjects.

Biology: Also another favourite subject of mine. I use to hate biology due to preconceived ideas about the subject, but once I started it, I really fell love with it, especially unit 3. There are areas that do bore me to death, but overall, a great subject.

Food Studies: I have always loved food, nutrition, and cooking so I thought this was a great subject to do. It is quite light in terms of workload, and I look at it as my "fun" subject.