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I came, I saw, I fell in – A hums student's journey through BA

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hums_student:
Update #3: 08-03-2019

Good news – I survived my first week of university.
Bad news – my wallet did not.

I may or may not have spent the first three days of uni eating out all the fancy restaurants in the city, and today I had to do my friend’s reading for him in exchange for a cheeseburger meal at McDonalds.
General uni stuff

Uni started on Monday 4th of March, and I had my first classes the day after. For the most part, it didn’t feel like I was at university at all. Maybe it’s because I spend so much time walking around South Lawn, but the campus honestly felt more like a park than an educational institute.

One thing I’ve noticed over this week is that it’s incredibly easy to get to know others on campus – but maintaining that friendship is a different matter. It’s so easy to walk into your lecture, say hi to the person sitting next to you, chat and get to know them, say ‘see you around’ when the lecture’s over, and then never see that person ever again.

Okay, enough with the chit-chat, here’s the more academic side of my first week of uni –

Arts Foundation – Power

I was quite unsure about this subject at first – after all, how different can it be to VCE global politics? Added to the fact that I’ve heard nothing but crap about AF subjects, and that my Plan A had been Reason, this was easily the subject I looked forward to the least.

Plot twist – this subject is awesome! To be honest, it’s more philosophy than politics. Readings include Foucault, Weber, and of course – the legendary Karl Marx. For our second lecture, we had to look at the similarities between McDonalds and Nazi Concentration Camps (yes, you read that right). Tutorials start next week and I can’t wait to see what more absurd craziness happens in there.

The World Since WW2

I feel like this is the only subject that I can fully keep up with at the moment. After all, it’s my only history subject for the semester. Learning about modern history such as the Cold War is definitely a refreshing change from human sacrifices of ancient Mesopotamia and crucifixion methods of ancient Rome. We also have to look at Karl Marx for this subject – I’ve heard this guy’s name more times in this week than I have in my entire life.

Introductory Microeconomics

This subject has two lecturers – there’s Tom, who for the first lecture prepared 23 slides written in Times New Roman, half of which went through actual content; then there’s Phil, who had 13 ‘welcome’ slides written in Comic Sans. Most of my friends in this subject are BCom students who did econ for VCE, and the message I’m getting is that so far all the content had been a repeat of 3/4 economics. I kind of regret not continuing this subject into 3/4 now.

We didn’t do much in our tutorial, it was mainly introducing ourselves and doing a groupwork task just so that we can learn to work in groups or something. There were around 15 people in my tutorial and I was the only non-commerce student. My tutor full-on squinted at me for half a second when I said I'm doing Bachelor of Arts.

Quantitative Methods 1

And finally, the legendary QM1. From the first lecture I could tell that this subject will definitely be demanding. Methods was by far my worst subject in VCE, and QM is nothing but maths and statistics.

In lectures we went through mean, median, mode, and range. The maths so far hasn’t been hard, but the way they set it out make it seem like rocket science. There was one slide with formulas that looked so mind-boggling I could feel my brain collapsing onto itself. After pages of working out and some solid cursing, I finally realised that it was basically saying ‘negative and positive makes negative’ – essentially, year 7 maths.
Spoiler
Translation: that whole blob is positive if the two smaller things are either both positive or both negative. The whole blob is negative if one is positive and the other is negative.

In our very first tutorial we had a maths test. As soon as the teacher announced this, the guy sitting next to me let out a barely audible but highly relatable groan. The actual test wasn’t too bad – it was mainly year 9 maths with some basic calculus. There were however, a few questions concerning this fancy Greek symbol thing that looks kind of like the letter ‘E’ with a number thing on top and some a fancy ‘i’ thing in italics at the bottom (I’m doing a great job explaining this, aren’t I?) and I was completely clueless about what on earth it was asking me to do.

I was also the only BA student for my QM tute, not that I mind. I’m all for low expectations from others.
So yep, that was my very first week of university. So far, not to bad! The workload isn’t heavy, the content isn’t too hard, and I love the atmosphere of the campus. The maths might cause me a lot of headaches but I’m sure I’ll learn to embrace it eventually. Travel time has been alright – I get a lot of reading done on the train. I’m really loving uni life right now.

Hope all my fellow first-years enjoyed their first week of university! See you all next time ;D

Bri MT:
Glad to hear you're loving things so far! 

Marx is a name you'll likely continue to hear/see around campus (even if you weren't an arts student!)

Do you understand summation notation now? (The thing with the sigma aka "weird E thing") - happy to explain if you're a little lost :)

hums_student:
Update #4: 04-04-2019

It’s been a while… I was planning to follow the update schedule of once-a-fortnight which worked well during VCE. Unfortunately, your boi was not prepared for the monstrosity that was uni.

Uni reminds me of the time my dad tried to teach me to swim by chucking me into a 3m deep pool without a floatation device.

Anyway, let the update begin.
Arts Foundation: Power
In my last update I said that despite my initial low expectations, AF was a nice surprise. Now that we’re one month in… it’s is easily my favourite subject. The content is questionable (*cough* genocidal burgers *cough*) and it’s without a doubt the least applicable subject I have – but I love it nonetheless.

I’m just going to go off on tangent here to talk about the lecturerAndrew Dawson is easily the coolest academic on campus. I live for his hilarious stories about the personal lives of the thinkers we learn about – such as how Das Kapital was the product of Karl Marx’s overly excessive public alcoholism and how Louis Pierre Althusser strangled his wife in “an act of mercy” so that she wouldn’t have to deal with his BS.

Don’t even get me started on the time he proudly recounted how he used to throw pudding at his high school teachers; or when he blasted (and happily lip-synced to) God Save the Queen by the Sex Pistols mid-lecture.

In one lecture I was sitting in the front row, and Andrew, while trying to make a point about why those in positions of power should avoid abusing authority, unleashed a series of derogatory words in my direction. While the whole theatre roared in laughter, he gave me the cheekiest wink.

I think he’s the only person who, without fail, receives applause at the end of each lecture. He really knows how to end things on a high note.

With such an awesome lecturer, it makes dealing with words such as antidisestablishmentarianism much more bearable.
Post-WWII History
Is it weird that, despite being my only history subject, I’m not too crazy about it? Don’t get me wrong – it’s great, and I love the readings and the lectures. I guess it’s just not as fun and exciting when compared to AF. Still greatly enjoy it on the whole though.

Our first assignment was a 500-word essay analyzing a telegram for anyone interested: either George Kennan’s Long Telegram and the Novikov Telegram with reference to two secondary sources, to draw conclusions on why it was historically significant and how it influenced US / Soviet foreign policy. All that, in 500 words! I ended up having to edit every ‘United States’ to ‘US’ and every ‘Soviet Union’ to ‘USSR’, just to cut down my final word count.

Our second assignment is a 2000-word research essay. The topic I chose is 'How did the global political and ideological conflict of the Cold War impact everyday life on either side of the Iron Curtain’.
To quote my dad, “Let me tell you about the time I TOTALLY climbed the Berlin Wall for a dare.

Microeconomics
*laughs nervously* no no no I’m not struggling in this subject at all what do you mean I need help
Easily my worst subject. Most of the theory is quite intuitive but trying to understand all those fancy terminology and graphs is impossible. Our first assessment was a multiple choice test worth 5% of our final grade, which I scored a 5/8 on.

Our second assignment is a 750-word report where we have to answer four questions regarding a case study on tax on tobacco sales. And no, I don't even know how to start this.

Quantitative Methods
We’re going to keep going downhill for a while…
The lecturer is definitely the most monotone one I have this term. I don’t even know his name. He has a knack of saying “You would’ve already learnt this in your finance subject” or “You’ll learn the details in marketing” whenever he skims over content, and I’m just sitting there like CAN YOU NOT? Sadly, my desperate pleas go unanswered.

Oh and I have a test in an hour. An actual math test. I still remember walking out of methods exam 2 last year, unable to stop myself from grinning as I thought I’ll never have to do math again for the rest of my life. Boy oh boy was I naïve…
All in all, still loving uni. Does that need to be said? It’s different to high school and the workload is monstrous but I’m loving campus life. At the same time, I’m at a bit of a crossroads situation – still trying to figure out whether or not university is for me, I guess. I’m still not 100% committed to the idea of going down this path. But still, it has been enjoyable and for now, I think I’ll be sticking around.

Let's hope I do a better job of updating next time. Have a good week guys ;D

Joseph41:
I can really relate to what you've said about your Arts Foundation lecturer. Not because I've had that lecturer myself, but because I've had lecturers where I've just been in awe and it's fundamentally changed the university experience. I'm glad you're experiencing something similar!

Good luck for your test!

appleandbee:
I get what you mean with Andy Dawson since I'm doing an Anthropology major :). Many of the other lecturers in the major are a bit eccentric like that. There is another one who uses hair to floss their teeth :P

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