A New Beginning - My University Journal

[Caitlynk_22]

Hello, many of you may know me from both my HSC Journal and My Gap Year Journal, now I am here. Almost ready to start university. Isn't that exciting?

For those of you who don't know me, my name is Caitlyn and I graduated high school in 2018 then took a gap year. I enjoy art, reading, writing and sleeping. I don't like the heat and I thrive in cold weather.

 In a few days I am going to be moving up to Newcastle to go to University and I will be studying a Bachelor of design (Architecture) at UoN. And no, I didn't have to worry about my marks (HSC) to get into the course. Early entry is great, don't forget to apply for it.

In first semester I have three subjects/courses:
- ARBE1201 - Communication in the Built Environment
- ARBE1102 - Construction Ecology
- ARBE1222 - Studio 1

Most people will have four subjects and courses but I only have three due to studio being a 'double' (thats what I call it). It has a 1hr lecture and two 3hr studio times a week. My classes are set out pretty good this semester as I only have Lectures, Tutorials and Studio from Monday - Wednesday.

I'm really looking forward to Uni, looking to get out of my small boring town and getting out into the real world. I only got a taste of it last year. Though, I think my parents will really miss me. My brother still lives at home too but I get the feeling he'll miss me too.

My packing has sort of paused. I have no idea what to pack. I've packed the essentials like linen, cooking utensils, stationary, my art supplies etc. My dad insists that I pack up my whole bedroom and put it in boxes in my cupboard but that's a lot of work.

The one thing I noticed I'm going to miss is air conditioning. 

I'm going to stop writing now otherwise I won't get anything done. Bye for now!

[Caitlynk_22]

Hello again!

So I moved into university and I tell you I was a nervous wreck when we were having breakfast that morning. Move-in was quite smooth and I like where I was assigned. It's a pretty nice room. My blockmates are really nice too, everyone that I've talked to has been pretty open about where they're from and what they're studying so it's great.

I've only been here a week and the amount of community activities is massive and tiring. It starting to slow down now since O-Week is next week. The community aspect of my residence is amazing. I feel bad for people not living on campus, there are so many of us that will have the advantage during O-week since we had time to meet people already.

Also, it has pushed me out of my comfort zone a lot. Bring on more socialising!

I think I'm ready to establish a routine at uni now. Just to keep me busy. You know? It's actually been quite tiring so far. I'm missing home a lot more too now but luckily I've got my mum still ringing and texting me.

My first rent payment went out on Thursday too and at the moment I feel like I'm watching money go down the drain. Hopefully it levels out when we start classes..

Anyway, I hope everyone elses start of semester and O-week goes well!

[Caitlynk_22]

Hello!

Long time no see. I must say it's been a roller coaster of a year so far. Class was going really well before this Coronavirus started impacting how we are learning. I must say it is slightly annoying... I know it's a serious thing but it's just really sad it happened in the first year of uni. Literally hoping they find a cure or a vaccine soon so everything can go back to normal.

I wanna go through what I've been up to so far:

Construction Ecology-
 - The worst one I'd say.
 - Did a quiz, got 9/10 worth 15%
 - Handed in another assessment two weeks ago still haven't gotten results.
 - There's a quiz this week so not looking forward to that.
 - First online lecture was pretty bad, in the sense that the lecturers are also trying to get used to online.

Visual Communications-
 - Walked in first day and lecturer says draw EVERYTHING. Like no words. At all.
 - Started trying to do modelling from home and it's going horribly.
 - Honestly have no idea whats going on now.

Studio-
 - Probably the best one only when it's in person.
 - Studios were long and tiring but they were fun and interesting.
 - I don't know how this is going to go online. This course was designed be just face-to-face.
 - We got 78/100 on our Group assignment which is actually really good. It's a distinction! The Crits went really well for us.
 - Our next design project now has to include social distancing rules.
 - Zoom is not working.
 - Love my tutorial group even if we were put together by luck.

Living On Campus-
 - The best thing about uni so far. I have had the time of my life and I am so sad to see it crumbling away.
 - Most people have left, but there are still about half left in our blocks. I have decided to stay mainly due to my grandma being at home and that I really don't want to go back. It's kind of weird actually. I feel like Newcastle has turned into my home. Lots of people have moved out to save money.
 - Sem 2 better be the best semester on the planet if the Virus slows down.
 - I was thinking of going home for easter then coming back but it's looking like lockdown is going to get worse... I don't really mind honestly.
 - The people I live with are like my family, even the other block we share an RM with. I feel like I live in two different blocks right now.


Overall-
Everything is going amazingly. I didn't realise how much I would change once I got here and I'm loving it! The course is great 10/10 would recommend if someone's thinking of a uni to go into architecture.

I think I'll stop writing here. I'm supposed to have a zoom tutorial but its not working sooo don't know what's gonna happen.

Byee!

[K888]

So nice to hear an update from you, Caitlyn! I'm glad that things are going well for you despite these challenging times.

Nice to hear about living on campus going well - I definitely felt a strong community bond between the people I lived with on campus, it was really nice to be a part of, and really nice to have a home when you can't live at home anymore.

[The Cat In The Hat]

This is interesting: I'm curious to hear more.

[Caitlynk_22]

GREAT NEWS!  (I know its been a while)

It's been what, six months since I last posted? I guess that's a bit shoddy on my part. I survived semester 1! That's the good news. I'll go over what has happened in the last six months of uni.

So as I said in my last post most people left on campus living but there were 17/30 left in my block so yipee! I think we're now down to 14 or 15 since they've reduced occupancy. The rule is that there is only two people per bathroom in the shares and sadly we only have one bathroom for the four of us so our great room mate who moved out is no longer living on campus. Maybe returner year will be better?

During quarantine we managed to meet up a whole bunch which wasn't technically allowed but since we lived together it was mostly allowed. And good news again, there hasn't been a new case of Covid in Newcastle for a whole month! That's pretty great!

And yes, I did survive semester 1 coming out with two HD's and one D.

 Communication in the Built Environment - HD

• The course was interesting and there was a heavy focus on drawing. This was compulsory for all first year students starting the Bachelor of Design (Architecture) which was good since you would get to see the same people in all other courses. You did get the odd teaching degree kids but other than that it was mostly architecture.
• It was on the artsy side of things as well which was very good as most of us had done art at some point in high school.

 Construction Ecology - HD

• Was not my cup of tea and was very theory based. The lectures were long and I didn't end up watching the lectures once they went online, mainly because there are no exams and you could easily skim through the content to see answers to quizzes.
• The larger assignment worth 40% was the killer. It took me almost a month to write the report and there was a heap of research involved.
• If you like how you can choose to build buildings with ecologically safe and sustainable materials, then I'd recommend this course.

 Studio 1 - D

• I enjoyed this course but it was by far the hardest one I did as it was worth 20 units. We went into how to go through the thinking of designing a building and how different design practices come into play.
• There was a lot of hand drawing involved in this course but you could do either hand or electronic. The advantage to this course was since it is first year they said go as wild as you want because more and more restrictions will come into briefs. You won't always have a $1,000,000 budget.

Overall, I was pretty happy with semester 1. I feel a lot more confident with presenting now than I did at the start of the year. I think once we get back to presenting in the studio next semester that will change slightly as we are still half online. I had my face to face studio today and I really miss them all being like that.

This semester I am doing:

ARBE1103 - Digital Communications
ARBE1104 - History and Theory in the Build Environment
ARBE1220 - Studio 2

Aaannnd once again studio is worth 20 units. How exciting.

Digital Communications is stressing me out a lot. I am sooo behind already, we're on what week 6 and I haven't caught up on week 4 stuff. I chose to work with Revit instead of ArchiCAD because I think eventually I'll learn to use ArchiCAD.

I'm loving history, the lecturer is so passionate with her teaching and it really helps. Though the three hour lectures are something to not look forward to especially since they're on zoom.

Studio 2 is currently a lot of work as this semester is completely different to semester 1. It's more focused on weekly projects and presenting those in the face to face studio. We also have to have two log books for this one so yay.

Disappointingly all subjects have logbooks that go weekly. I have not started on my history one...........

Oh geez, I've written so much! It feels so good to write on here again. It's been a while since I've just sat at my laptop and gotten my thoughts out of my head regarding uni. It's been great.

Alrightly, have a good one everyone!!

[Bri MT]

Congrats on semester 1!

Great to see you around again

[Caitlynk_22]

I do not know why I'm awake at 1:25am in the morning on a Monday when I have uni tomorrow 

BUT

I have been reading my HSC journal and my Gap year journal and I found this quote:

But as much as I studied, I didn't reach my goal. Even as I studied my ass off. I would like to thank all these people who I have looked up to, help and support me throughout this journey. Yes, you got higher marks than me but you inspired me to work so much harder than I would have before. I want to thank ATARNotes for helping me through this tough time. There have been laughs and there have been tears but no matter my ATAR I am not going to look back on this time as a bad one. I am proud of myself. I am proud of how hard I worked.

It's almost been two whole years since I graduated from high school, I'm two years older, maybe two years wiser? But anyway, its so unbelievable to see how far I've come in the last two years. I'm now in a place where I am (mostly) enjoying what I'm learning about. To hell with it, I made it to uni!

Some of my friends only graduated high school last year and still think of their ATAR and their HSC marks but I'm at a point where I'm grateful for where my experiences took me.

Now I work my ass off and get the marks I am extremely proud of.

[Caitlynk_22]

I will start off by saying hello.

Yes this is a form of procrastinating... but I thought since it's getting towards the end of semester I might give you a little update.

Dig Comms
- I did a quiz worth 20% and got 29/30. Pretty proud of that, though it was a really easy quiz where you could google the answers and some were pretty obvious. They asked us to identify a power supply?? Which is confusing why they'd ask that.
- I submitted an assignment worth 40% for Revit, and the renders took ages on my laptop. I'm getting a desktop next year to help with this aspect of my degree.
- Another assignment worth 40% is due on the 20th Nov so I've still got ages. Still got heaps to do for it though!

History + Theory
- Got my marks back for the first assignment, only got a 73/100 which I wasn't too pleased about. I lost a few marks on referencing and decided I didn't want to make the same mistake on the next assignment.
- Wrote an essay and got 80/100 so it brought my marks back above a D which is good. I was actually quite proud of this essay especially since I haven't written an essay in two years.
- The last assignment for this course is the largest and the one I'm currently procrastinating. Whoops. I made notes every lecture to help me with this assignment but I'm still very far behind. I'm going to knock most of it out this weekend and see how I go. I need to do a ton of drawings for it as well.

Studio 2
- Currently the bane of my existence. Two assignments for this 20unit course were due in the SAME week. How ridiculous. They ended up pushing one of them back into another week as we had a massive one for a different course due the same week.
- Due to this stress, the group assignment was pushed to the back of our minds. Then we all got stressed and didn't do as well as we had hoped. 72/100. Which isn't bad but it's not amazing, lowest mark for my studio courses this year.
- Assignment 2 went really well surprisingly, crits were the week after so we had time to prepare. Still waiting on marks for this one.
- A3 is due in two weeks and its a huge task. I've got to have an iteration for this one on Monday, then another for Thursday.

At this point, I'm not bothering to turn up to the lecs for History and Dig Comms and watching the recorded ones later on. Studio is full on.

And in good news! I got accepted to on campus accom again next year. Really happy that I get to spend another year on college and make a ton of new friends again. I thought I'd move off for the next year but my friends don't want to move off until third year plus its easier to not have to worry about paying for utilities and the wifi is very good on campus.

A tip though, if you have applied for On-Campus accommodation at Uni of Newcastle and have a car:
If you get Bara - DO NOT buy a parking permit, free parking is legit next door to it.
If you get Teds or IH - Buy the Res permit or none at all, there's heaps of parks outside Teds and IH and free parking is a couple minutes away.
If you get Evatt or the Towers - Buy Student permit or Res permit, though if you pick Res permit there will be no parking spots at all as the car park is small. It's always a fight to get a parking spot. Student parking isn't far away.

Overall you could just park in free parking and walk at most 10mins to the residences and if you buy a Student Permit then you can park around the whole uni if you're too lazy to walk to class.

Anyways back to writing this history thing. Nice to type again.

[Caitlynk_22]

Hello everyone!

As of the 20th of November, I finished the First year of Architecture. Go me! Took a lot of stress, particularly in the last week where I had three assignments to get done and were all worth 40+ percent. Overall I think I've gone okay. Results are released on the 11th of December so not long now.

I'll give you a little run down of my last few weeks for each of my courses.

Studio 2

It was the most stressful one to date but I am extremely proud to say that I think my critique went great. I was confident in my drawings and my presentation so it came across to the tutors pretty well. We had to base it off Eames house and I took it a completely different direction to most people. For the last assignment they said to take it outside the box, so I did. Fingers crossed for a great mark!


History + Theory

I enjoyed writing the last assignment, though towards the end it became quite a drag and I just wanted to hand it in. I had to do weekly summaries for each of the lectures as well as drawings. I ended up doing over 40 drawings for the whole assignment and a total of 4444 words as well as referencing. I was so happy with the end result!


Digital Communications

The revit assignment was stressful and I didn't do as well as I had hoped. I got 73/100 which is okay considering the average was 62 and the mean was 66. I just hoped I'd done better, they didn't do individual feedback either so I didn't know what I did wrong. Oh well. I hope to continue to learn revit over the bread to get better at it.
Our final assignment for this course was the 2000 words report which had to be on an Innovative technology that may impact the built environment in the future. I chose 3D printing which was actually quite interesting to research. Hopefully, I get a good mark for the assignment as it was worth 40%.


Overall Living on Campus

Best experience of my life. Need I say more? See you next year UoN.


What now?

Home to work, of course, I arrived on Sunday and started work on Monday. Had some car troubles which I had to ring for help in the middle of the mountains, dad came and picked me up. Though, I may never see my car again which is a bit sad. Oh well. Tonight I have been cleaning up my room after dumping all my stuff in it, getting rid of a few clothes, and changing the orientation of my desk which has made a huge difference.

Anyways, I must be off! I hope everyone has a great Christmas and wish everyone a happy new year. See you all next year!

[Bri MT]

Congratulations on finishing first year!

Good luck for your report & fingers crossed for your car.

Great Christmas and happy new year to you too

[Caitlynk_22]

Let me just start by saying...  report didn't go as well as I'd hoped.

BUT

I have successfully completed the semester! Surviving semester 2 I came out with 3 Distinctions. Not as well as last semester but I'd say I tried really hard particularly in improving my studio marks.

Studio 2 - Distinction - 80.2

Extremely happy with the improvement of this mark, from a 76 to an 80 was great. I ended up getting an 85/100 in the final assignment which I was very happy with since it was the highest mark I'd gotten in a studio course so far. Grateful for my tutor that guided me through the semester.  I kind of wish I let go earlier like decided to go out of the box but there's always next year!

History & Theory - Distinction - 78

I ended up getting a 79/100 for the final portfolio which is actually pretty good considering I was so stressed in the last two weeks. I thoroughly enjoyed this course even though my marks may not seem like it sometimes. I guess it was the writing part and the fact that it was only three assignments. I'm happy with this mark.

Digital Communications - Distinction - 76.2

The course that was the bane of my existence this semester. I am honestly glad that I don't ever have to do this course again, I submitted my concerns and criticism during the Course Experience Survey. They had only given us general feedback and not personalised feedback, I get that there is a lot of students in the course but we're paying for it aren't we?
I got a 69/100 for the report. I almost wanted to cry, I had worked so hard on that assignment but when I calculated my final mark it was a sigh of relief that it was still in the distinction band. The average was 69.5 and the median was 70. Oh well, I'll try to improve based on the general feedback.


Anywho, I must be off for the year. See ya'll in the future

[Caitlynk_22]

Also thinking about posting some info in the University of Newcastle page (On atarnotes) to guide first years in accommodation, o-week etc? Yes/no?

[Caitlynk_22]

I know its been a while but so much has happened and I won't bore you. I was excited to find out today that I got a job offer! I've been looking for one since the start of January and FINALLY have one. Exciting stuff.

Uni this semester is extremely boring as one of the courses I am doing this semester is quite similar to the basics of Engineering Studies I did back in Highschool. So hopefully it'll be ok. It's a lot about regulations of building sites and things like that this sem, getting down the nitty-gritty which is a bit sad. At least they put the boring ones all in the same semester.

Alright, I'm in a lecture right now and it is not going well. I really want to go back to bed not gonna lie.

[Justin_L]

I know its been a while but so much has happened and I won't bore you. I was excited to find out today that I got a job offer! I've been looking for one since the start of January and FINALLY have one. Exciting stuff.

Uni this semester is extremely boring as one of the courses I am doing this semester is quite similar to the basics of Engineering Studies I did back in Highschool. So hopefully it'll be ok. It's a lot about regulations of building sites and things like that this sem, getting down the nitty-gritty which is a bit sad. At least they put the boring ones all in the same semester.

Alright, I'm in a lecture right now and it is not going well. I really want to go back to bed not gonna lie.

Congrats on your job offer, definitely sounds exciting! How are you planning to balance work and study? I feel like time management is such a hard thing in uni so I'm curious how you're getting it all done. Architecture sounds fun (apart from what you said about the paperwork and nitty gritty) which I didn't expect!