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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 #10: 05-12-2019

Currently, I'm back in the Fatherland enjoying some freezing cold weather, backpacking through Erlangen in -2°C heat. Tomorrow I'm returning to Nuremberg (my hometown) for very early Christmas celebrations with my parents and sister. I was meant to update this before I left Australia but as usual I got lazy ;D. But better late than never - here's my final update of 2019.
Semester 2 Results

Official results release is tomorrow, but all my results came out by late November. I’ll cut the crap and get straight to the important news — I passed economics! By only 3 marks, but I passed, and that’s all that matters.

Results:
Economics: 53 - Pass
Science history: 72 - H2B
Politics: 90 - H1
Archaeology: 93 - H1

Overall, I'm really pleased with politics and archaeology, relieved with economics, but disappointed with science history. I really loved the subject, pity the feeling isn't reciprocated.

Anyway, continuing the tradition from last semester, below I’ve put brief reviews of my four units. Click on their names for the full review in the UniMelb Subject Reviews and Ratings thread.

HPSC10001 From Plato to Einstein
Rating: 4/5
A fun and relatively chill subject and a great choice of breadth/elective if you are majoring in maths, physics, or history. The subject goes through the history of science in four main time periods: ancient/antiquity, medieval, early modern, and modern science - and when I say "science", I mean maths and physics with a sprinkle of chemistry.

POLS10003 Introduction to Political Ideas
Rating: 4/5
I was unsure of this unit at first but it turned out to be really enjoyable. The unit goes through key debates and schools of political thinking such as sovereignty, equality, liberty, democracy, social contract, conservatism, liberalism, human nature, feminism, postcolonialism etc. This unit is an absolute must for anyone thinking of majoring in politics/international relations or philosophy.

ANCW20025 Archaeology of the Roman World
Rating: 4.5/5
This. Subject. Was. Extraordinary. It had a healthy combination of archaeology/art history and history/historiography. Content-wise I found it was challenging as there were heavy emphasis on the history of the Roman Empire which I am not familiar with, but it was a great learning experience. I would give it 5/5 but there wasn't enough pracs.

ECON10003 Introductory Macroeconomics
Rating: 2/5
Micro was better. Contrary to popular opinion, I found macro to be so much more content heavy. In micro you literally only need to learn to draw the supply and demand graph. In macro, there seemed to be a new graph introduced every lecture. Don't even get me started on Solow-Swan or growth accounting. The maths in macro is easy, but the theory is mind-boggling.

2019: A Reflection

As we wrap up the year, I thought I’d use this space to briefly reflect upon my first year of tertiary education, and hopefully sum up some tips along the way for any class of 2019’ers who are about the head on to uni on what to and not to do.

SpoilerIn hindsight, Semester 1 was a mess. It started off with me, fresh out of high school, being overly excited to finally be with the big boys while being completely disorganised in the process.

O-Week was a fun wallet-drainer as I spent most of my money on parties and club events. And here comes the first tip: Go to at least one major O-Week party. Even if you’re not a social person, at least get a taste of what it’s like. They're amazing social events and I met many great friends through them.

Aside from parties, I probably spent about 70 bucks on club sign-ups. Most of them were wasted (I deadass joined a Llama appreciation club), but a few, mostly faculty clubs, were definitely worth it.

>>>  Join faculty student societies, don’t bother too much with other clubs.
Bonus tip: Join a commerce club and a political club to max your networking game.
Bonus tip 2: For UoM students: joining MASS and SSS is a must. They do free BBQs for members on alternating weeks all year round. Joining both clubs costs $9, meanwhile one regular meal at uni costs around 10 bucks. You do the maths.

Anyway, along comes March when uni starts for real. I was one of 3 students from my high school going to UoM, and we swore to catch up throughout the year. In week 1, all of us were excited beyond belief, by week 2 the enthusiasm has died down and another week later I was the only one still at uni. By then I was entertaining the idea of dropping out too, especially seeing my less-than-satisfactory grades.

Oh yes. Grades. In year 12, I was the top of my class in every subject. In uni, I’m now among thousands of others who had all been the top of their class, from schools way better than mine. In year 12, I averaged high 90s on my essays. On my first essay at uni, I got 55.

My grades did eventually stop plummeting thanks to the feedback from my tutors. One thing I’m glad I did was to book an appointment with my tutor after each assignment, no matter how well or how badly I did. This definitely helped me improve the most.

>>> Always go to your tutors for additional feedback.
Bonus tip: You can challenge your grade if you think you were marked too harshly. My history research assignment was raised from a 68 to 75 after I asked the tutor about it.

My biggest takeaway is realising exactly how little VCE results matter. You could’ve been spectacular in year 12 and still flunk uni, or vice versa. In my case, despite doing well in humanities subjects in high school, my best in uni was maths, by a mile! Meanwhile, my essays received mediocre results.

But on the whole, semester one was a huge mess. The whole “dropping out for music” thing was very distracting and did no service to me whatsoever.

During the break, aside from turning 18, getting red P’s, and going back to Germany to visit the parentals, I also did a 2-week volunteering program at a history museum. Hands down the best decision I made this year. I was lucky to get a full time position at said museum afterwards.

>>> Try to volunteer/work at somewhere relevant to your degree.

And then comes semester 2, which went much more smoothly despite being twice as busy due to working and studying full time. I think the main difference was being a lot more focused. Before, I just kept thinking about music. In sem 2, even though both uni and work were very demanding, by pushing myself to do both I was in fact able to achieve just that. It was stressful, but in hindsight I’m grateful for it.

>>> Balancing work and uni will be stressful (especially if you are doing both full time). Embrace the challenge and use it as an opportunity to improve your work ethic.

Academic-wise, in semester 2 I did my very first level-2 subject - archaeology - to give myself an additional challenge, and some exposure to more demanding subjects. It really helped me see the raised standard in comparison to first year and I am so glad I did it.

>>> Do at least one second year subject in first year.

In week 9, I also impulsively ditched uni for a week to go on a spontaneous trip to Egypt with friends. Looking back, I honestly cannot say whether that was a dumb decision, or a smart one. The week before I left was the most stressed I've ever been, rushing to complete all my major research essays before my flight. But the break itself was also much needed and stopped me from burning out before exams when I came back.

>>> Take some time off during the semester. Also, missing an entire week of uni really isn't a big deal (follow this at your own risk)


So, that's my first year! 8 subjects down, 16 more to go. 2019 went by so quickly, I can't believe I'm already 1/3 of the way through undergrad! My grades were *extremely* inconsistent (getting 94 and 53 in 2 units from the same major is the epitome of inconsistency) but overall this year was productive. Did volunteering, found full-time work, ran my first marathon, got red P's, did a musical, passed all 8 units, and somehow didn't go broke despite all the enticing restaurants in the city (dear Dragon Hotpot, why you gotta be so expensive?)

Overall, 2019 was a great year, but it was mostly thanks to semester 2. Sem 1 was a mess.
I'm getting back to Australia in early January as I will be doing intermediate microeconomics as a summer intensive course, which starts January 7th, so I can finish the unit in 6 weeks instead of 12.
Had this been a VCE journal this would’ve been the final update. But it’s university, so two more years to go boys.

hums_student:
Update #11: 11-03-2020

Wow okay, I was gone for a while! My excuses for my absence are (i) I was overseas and (ii) the summer intensive was - well - intense (who would've guessed?).

But, considering that it's week 2 now, plenty of interesting stuff has been happening at uni and I'm running out of excuses to put this off.

A(n updated) self-intro for 2020Hello! I'm in 2nd year Bachelor of Arts (History/Economics) at the University of Melbourne. History because that's my passion; Economics because an arts grad is synonymous with leeching off of Centrelink but econ is technically commerce.

Last year, I did one history subject, two economics, one maths, and four arts electives ranging from archaeology, to political philosophy, to science history because I'm that unfocused. My 2019 adventures included almost dropping out to pursue a music career, nearly discontinuing economics after failing two "easy H1" tests, and leaving the country for 2 weeks instead of attending my compulsory classes without asking for leave. Unbelievably, I still passed.

This year I plan to continue with my double major, but hopefully with a more focused mindset.Summer Term

In Jan-Feb, I did a summer class - Intermediate Microeconomics. The content was meh, but the lecturer made up for it. She opened up her first lecture with a passionate 30 minute monologue against socialism, so of course that got me on board.

I was thrilled to get a H1 in micro, especially after almost failing econ last sem. However, I doubt I'll ever do another holiday subject. It simply dragged on for too long (spanning from the first week of January until the second last week of February) and I should definitely give myself a proper holiday next time.

ECON20002 Intermediate Microeconomics subject review

(By the way, I've added an index in my opening post which links all my reviews in the UoM Subject Reviews and Ratings thread, along with an overview review of my degree. Hopefully someone finds them useful.)


This year (specifically semester 1)

Due to my summer class, I only need to take 3 subjects this sem, which are as follows:

HIST20013: The Holocaust and Genocide
Cheerful topic, isn't it? So far, I am enjoying this the most. I'm especially keen for discussions around the genocide in Indonesia in the 1960s, which I think is an area that always gets glossed over.

HIST20069: Modern European History 1789 - 1914
As I'll mostly be doing European history subjects next sem and in 3rd year, I figured this would be a good intro. The subject is packed with content - we whizzed through the entire French Revolution in 30 minutes.

ECOM20001: Econometrics 1
Watch me die. According to a reliable source (Reddit), it's apparently one of the most brutal subjects at uni. We're supposed to learn the computing language 'R' - guess who struggled with even just downloading the software?

Next semester, my planned subjects are
   - HIST20060 World War II
   - HIST20010 First Century Islam
   - ISLM20015 Middle Eastern Politics or POLS30018 Politics of the EU
   - ECON20001 Intermediate Macroeconomics

So that's what's been going on with me for the past couple of weeks. Another thing I didn't really touch on above is the peer mentoring program - so far, not much has happened. I met my group of mentees at the Arts Commencement Ceremony, and we're having our second meeting next week.

So far, I'm quite optimistic about this semester. My goals are to (i) get my WAM back to H1; (ii) really involve myself with campus organisations; (iii) properly learn 'R'; (iv) capitalise on free UMSU barbecues. My progress (or lack thereof) will be updated.

Bri MT:
Hey,

I'm also learning R for uni - I assume you're also using RStudio as your IDE?

I've been wanting to learn R for a while and even started an online course using it to analyse Australian marine data (which assumed you already knew a bit about R, rip)  after first year uni but I've unfortunately struggled to find time to continue that course and haven't really progressed much. I have a little bit of programming experience from early high school (just enough for things like R being 1 indexed and automatically inserting spaces when you concatenate strings to throw me off) but R seems to be pretty beginner friendly compared to other languages. If you haven't already I definitely recommend checking out some of the free resources online for it.

I'll be using R a fair bit for BIO3011 which I'm really looking forward to - I have a lab on R tomorrow and I am keen. We'd used R in labs in 2nd year but it was just copying and pasting code without really understanding it.

I'll also be taking an economics unit this semester so will probably end up seeing if I can practice R in that - if you find that's anything especially useful when using R for economics please lmk :)

hums_student:

--- Quote from: Bri MT on March 12, 2020, 04:21:34 pm ---
--- End quote ---
Yep we're also using RStudio. So far we've only covered the very basics of descriptive statistics - like you said we've only been mostly copy pasting our tutor's codes at the moment, but it's definitely making me feel very accomplished!

R does seem to be quite beginner friendly - we were thrown into the deep end in tute 1 with the tutor going through various codes and plotting/editing graphs and tables, but after a couple of tries it becomes straightforward. Of course I'm only dealing with the very foundations of R at the moment, in future weeks we'll be learning to use R for regression, forecasting, and time series analysis.

It's interesting to hear how different fields can use R - I initially thought it was strictly for econometrics - do you by any chance also use R for maths and stats?

www:

--- Quote from: hums_student on March 12, 2020, 11:28:03 pm ---It's interesting to hear how different fields can use R - I initially thought it was strictly for econometrics - do you by any chance also use R for maths and stats?

--- End quote ---

I'm learning R this year in psych honours for coursework and for my thesis, and my lecturer is a huge R advocate and keeps saying that R specifically is incredibly powerful and a skill (paired with knowledge of data science techniques and interpretation of stats) that is sought after (or at least, makes you a very attractive candidate) in basically any field that involves data analysis. With the right packages, it can do various things for different fields and areas of study. So far, it's pretty fun to work with.

If you're expected to know how to work with novel data sets (especially big and dirty) from the importing stage, all the pre-analysis work (importing, cleaning, manipulation, etc.) seems to be the important part to be comfortable with as it can be tedious and can jeopardise the later analysis. I've been warned that the data set I'll be working with for my thesis is going to huge, so I'm a little concerned. Otherwise, the analysis itself and things like graphs are apparently very straightforward once you recognise the syntax and properties of the packages you're using - sounds like you're getting comfortable with it already!

(side note: str() and summary() are everything)

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