QCE Stuff > Queensland Education Discussion

Nick's Ask Me Anything

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caffinatedloz:
What's your favourite type of weather? Justify your answer by way of an example. ;D

Joseph41:
Thanks everybody for the questions so far! :) More than happy to answer questions from anybody. If you're currently reading this but haven't yet got involved in the ATAR Notes community, see this as a sign. ;) If you don't yet have an account, you can make one here super quickly (and for free).


--- Quote from: PhoenixxFire on November 06, 2019, 06:11:13 pm ---^My dogs can find toys but not fetch haha - they pick them up, drop them, come running back to me, and then expect me to throw it again even though they've left it wherever it landed. You should try teaching him how to shake your hand, it's quite useless but fun.
--- End quote ---

Would love to get him to shake hands! I always find that adorable. We haven't worked on that at all yet - good call.


--- Quote ---Which state do you think has the best system for year 11/12?

--- End quote ---

I'm only really familiar with HSC, QCE, and VCE in any sort of detail atm. All of the systems are quite similar but also quite different. For example, even if you just look at ATAR calculation:

> HSC: top 10 units (necessarily including English)
> QCE: top five subjects (not necessarily including English)
> VCE: top four subjects (necessarily including English), plus 10% of fifth and sixth best subject if applicable

There are obvious differences here, but the basic idea of each is pretty similar - to get an overall snapshot of high school performance. I'm most familiar with VCE's system because I studied in it myself, but I actually think QCE has been set up quite well. It's a really big change going from the OP to the ATAR and everything that comes with it (external examinations, inter-subject scaling etc.), but the system looks pretty tight to me as an initial iteration.

Something I don't really like for QCE (and also HSC) is starting Year 12 in Term 4 of the year prior. It doesn't really make sense to me, and just makes things messy IMO.

Joseph41:

--- Quote from: Owlbird83 on November 06, 2019, 06:21:17 pm ---Hi Nick!  ;D

How did you find the university workload compared to year 12?
--- End quote ---

Howdy! I found it different, and less time-consuming. So much less time-consuming, actually, that I really struggled to deal with the transition from Year 12 to first-year uni for quite some time. I don't think I really felt comfortable at my second year at the absolute earliest. Lots of things were different: class structure, work expectations, time commitments, independence, new location, new people etc.

For most of my degree (Arts), I had probably anywhere between 8-15 contact hours per week, which is very low relative to other degrees. That means 8-15 formally structured classes (lectures, tutorials etc.), but practically none of the lectures had compulsory attendance. I usually only had classes scheduled for 2-3 days per week.

This was good and bad. Good in the sense that I had a fair bit of time available to study independently. I'd have to say I used the time pretty well, usually studying on campus when I wasn't working or doing other things. My opinion is that you could probably pass my degree without investing heaps of hours into it, but doing really well in each specific unit takes quite a lot of time.

But it was also bad in that I felt I'd lost a lot of the structure I had through Year 12. Through high school, I felt like I was working toward something (final exams/ATAR), worked really hard, had school five days per week, had familiar teachers and friends, and so on. I didn't have any of that at uni, and honestly started to unravel a bit until I started to re-build that structure. My first semester at uni was definitely the hardest for me, and then my next semester.

In my fourth year, I was doing Honours. For the first semester, I had a couple of classes, and in the second semester, I was exclusively writing my thesis. This was my favourite year of all, and really got me excited about academia (I'm a little more jaded now but still think I'll return to academia at some point, for some reason, studying some subject - all to be confirmed haha).

Anyway, to answer your question, it wasn't really the workload that I found difficult - more everything else that came with the transition to uni. But my circumstances were very different to a lot of other people's. Some people would have had 3-4 times as many contact hours as I had, just based on what they were studying. I found Arts quite independent (lots of readings, lots of self-study, lots of essays), whereas other fields are more dependent on labs and additional classes, further to assignments. My partner studied Medicine, and their uni experience was definitely very different to mine. So I think it's quite field-specific.


--- Quote ---Also, I've heard that it's harder to make friends in uni because there's so many people. Do you have to put a lot of energy into creating social connections?
--- End quote ---

Good question. I made virtually no (lasting) friendships until Honours. In my first three years, all of my classes were quite big. That is, typical university lecture theatres (hundreds of people), pretty good anonymity as a student, and no incidental contact with people through the day as you have with school. Classes were 12 weeks long, and not everybody attends every lecture, so it was difficult for me to make ongoing relationships, even if I managed a good chat with somebody in a specific week.

Tutorials are more conducive to friend-making, because they're smaller in student numbers (talking more like 10-20 students from my experience), and more like a classroom/discussion setup that you're probably familiar with. But with Arts, there are so many subjects to choose from (which is great for flexibility) that it's not uncommon to go through an entire degree and never have class with the same people again. One of my friends studied the same degree at the same university, and we only had one subject together across the three years - and that was only because we specifically designed it that way.

Honours was different because I had a cohort. From memory, there were 8 of us going through the same thing across the year, so it was a very different dynamic. The other difference with Honours was that I actually started to take initiative a bit. For most of uni, I actively avoided units that contained group-work, I never attended any social events, and didn't really try to make friends in all honesty. In my last year, I volunteered quite a lot (and even went on a camp as part of this, which is so horrendously unlike me haha), got a little bit more involved with LingSoc (Linguistics Society), and just enjoyed campus life a bit more.

Some people make dozens of friends from their first semester and don't slow down from there. Others (like me) don't. But it's probably one of those things where the more you try, the more you get out of the whole thing. I didn't try to get involved, I didn't push myself out of my comfort zone, and I didn't actively try to make friends for the first three years, but I have no doubt my experience would have been entirely different if I started uni with a different attitude.

P.S. I think my attitude actually changed a bit at the end of my third year, when I was on exchange in Malaysia. I had quite a lot of time to think, and thought I should really try to make the most of Honours - and I did!


--- Quote ---Have you drifted apart from friends you were close with in highschool?

Thank you!  ;D

--- End quote ---

For sure, but that's probably to be expected. I graduated in 2012, so I'm now seven years out, which is actually longer than the amount of time I was at high school (that was a super weird realisation to make - not sure how I feel about it haha). But that's quite a long time, and a lot of my friends from high school have now moved interstate or overseas, have full-time jobs, are married etc.

I still keep in contact with a few (my partner and best friend mostly). It's just a lot harder without having the commonality of school, and seeing them 200 days per year. There are many I'd be more than happy to catch up with over coffee - it's just logistically a challenge.

About 15 or so of us went out for dumplings the other month. It was quite surreal. I hadn't seen some of these people since Year 12, but it felt like not much had changed.

I drifted a bit socially through high school, too, so didn't have an obvious group until nearer the end, so that probably plays into things, too. To my understanding there are still several groups from my year level who are super tight and catch up regularly. :)

Joseph41:

--- Quote from: Calebark on November 06, 2019, 06:36:50 pm ---What would you consider the most substantial differences between education in Victoria, New South Wales, and Queensland?
--- End quote ---

There are, naturally, differences from state-to-state in terms of subjects offered, how scores and the ATAR is calculated and so on, but the biggest difference to me is kinda general perception toward study and school. I guess cultural differences rather than ones pertaining to technical stuff or anything academic necessarily.


--- Quote ---Also, would you like to tell us a story? Perhaps a humorous tale about a dashing duo of cunning chevaliers as they gallivant across the land seeking some semblence of humble refuge?
--- End quote ---

I've started telling an epic story here. To be continued.

Joseph41:

--- Quote from: r1ckworthy on November 06, 2019, 06:39:05 pm ---Hey Nick!
What interested you about linguistics? What aspects of linguistics resonated/ attracted with you the most?


--- End quote ---

Good question. I'm not 100% sure what attracted me initially. I didn't even know what a verb was until like Year 11 haha. Linguistics was my last-chosen subject in my first year of uni. I was always decent at English so I think I probably just wanted to know more about words and stuff. My first year subjects were:

> Psychology
> Human Rights Theory
> International Studies
> Linguistics

So it was something a bit different to what I was already doing, too.

I fell in love with Linguistics literally in the first lecture, which was taken by Kate Burridge. Over time, I developed a really strong interest in the social side of linguistics - how language is used for various functions, how it resonated with people, the impact it has. My thesis looked at the ways Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard were linguistically framed in media coverage through their prime ministerships, and how those representations may have impacted voters' choices. I really enjoyed the intersection of linguistics, gender, media, and politics, and this is something I'd like to pursue more.

I'm also interested in the "harder" areas, like phonology and syntax, but I was, in all honesty, just not that great at them. I find them fascinating, and have considered speech pathology at various points, but I just don't have a knack for them like some people do.

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