The Odd and the Wonderful

Survival 101

28 Feb 2011 Leave a Comment

by Silbena in Personal Tags: enthusiastic rambling, optimism, ponderings, study

Hey guys, guys, I just survived my first day of university! … Yeah, I know the title of this post isn’t necessarily the most clever one I’ve ever come up with, but who asked for your opinion anyway?

*cough* Moving on: my survival. Granted, it wasn’t much of a survival, because I only had three lectures and no labs/tutorials/pracs whatsoever. But! Still! Though this is kind of looking to be a sort of “dear diary” entry that I usually loath to publish, I think I’m going to have to share this experience with you. So bear with me while I share my thoughts related to studying and my plans in life.

Before I start delving in detail into how I feel about everything and what I’ve liked so far and what not, I suppose I should provide you with some detail about what I actually study and where. I may have mentioned this before, in passing, but I think a re-iteration should take place, to put all the information in one place. I study at Monash University, Clayton campus, in Melbourne. From what I can gather, this is one of the (if not the) best universities in Australia to study science at. This comes from the testimonies of a couple of acquaintances, recent monetary grants from the government to the university and the claims of the faculty representatives themselves — and from the feeling I get when I listen to any science orientation lecture. And yeah, as you can gather, I study science — but also biomedical sciences, because at the last minute to change applications, I foolishly added a double degree as my first preference, instead of just running with my original plans, which was just to do a single bachelor of science, instead of this double degree that I’m enrolled to at the moment.

Look, I know I’m being judgmental, since I’ve not even fully begun studying, but there’s so much to the whole degree than just the subjects matters of the units I’m enrolled in. There’s the feeling I get when I’m around people doing biomed, and in any contact with the organisational body of my degree, the lecturers of the biomed units… I just don’t feel like I belong there at all. However, I don’t think that the subject matter itself is going to be a problem for me to study — the two biomed units that I’m doing this semester are a biology equivalent (which scares the hell out of me, since I haven’t done any biology since year 9, and I already feel like I’m light-years behind; the fact that my first lab/prac/tute is a lab for this unit really, really, really doesn’t help — I’ll come back to this a bit later) and biochemistry, for which I haven’t even had my introductory lecture yet. They’re a bit out of my depth, true, but that’s exactly the thing I had in mind when I enrolled into a double degree — to expand my horizons and try out as many things as I could. Maybe I’m not as excited about studying these two subjects as I could be, but hey, at least I’m not overly apprehensive — except maybe against my fellow students.

What I am excited about, though, are my two science units: geosciences, and chemistry. Chemistry, as some of you may know/have gathered, is pretty much my thing — the thing I rave about and love and am good at. My lecturer for this unit is great, too, very inspiring and an energetic fellow. He moves pretty fast, though, or at least he did today — I’ll have to work through the same things a bit slower when I’m alone, just to get a good hang of them. Geosciences excites me as well, though I’ve never really done anything of the kind: you can see from the enrollment of about 400 people that it’s one of the popular & exciting units, where we study things like dinosaurs and plate tectonics and volcanos. The lecturer for this unit is pretty damn cool as well — just as excitable as my chemistry lecturer, and very attuned with the present time. She also seems to have a sort of geeky mindset that really, really appeals to me — and as she said earlier today, she believes in teaching in pretty pictures.

Like this.

Hell yeah.

Anyway. Universally, I’m already relatively in love with the whole study system of university. Admittedly, it kind of feels like they’re expecting us to get into the whole system as fast as possible (though they ARE providing us with the appropriate resources & help classes and everything), but I venture forth with an intelligent guess that they won’t really be as hard on us as I’m fearing. So, the good side of having to figure things out is the freedom that I now have. I already adore lectures. I was never worried that I wouldn’t be able to learn in that method — a few of my teachers, in fact, those that I liked the best already used this format in high school. And even better than that, in high school the teachers expected a little proactivity of their students, instead of just sitting & listening & taking notes and learning — and now I’m free to be in my small, private learning bubble as much as I want. Ah! The only problem I MAY come to have with this is how to organise my notes — but as of now, I’m formulating some sort of system where I just jot everything down that I may need, and then later compile them into an electronic form in the manner of revision. A similar method worked out relatively well for me last year in chemistry, so.

The only thing I’m genuinely worried about at this point in time is labs/pracs/tutes, mostly, though, because I’m unfamiliar with the concept of learning through doing. Forever when doing science, I remember I hated pracs, mostly because we were always given the answers as to what the things we were experimenting upon were supposed to do, instead of learning through hands-on activity. It is possible that that will change, so that excites me a little bit… But I’m still a more book-based learner than anything else. Coming out of my study bubble isn’t fun for me. But! Should be brave and venture forth and that sort of thing; wouldn’t be much of a scientist in the future if I didn’t, right? Though, like I mentioned before, it really doesn’t help my fears that upon receiving our unit guide for my biology class, my first lab (which takes place on wednesday, so I only have tomorrow to prepare)  was outlined and there was really not much that I understood in this outline. Gotta stay positive and think that it’s the first one, we’ll be fine… Right? *chews on nails*

Ok, I think that’s basically all I came to say. In lots of words. However, feel reassured, because I’ve challenged myself to, from now on, include at least one illustrative picture (that I will very often shamelessly steal off the internets)

Like this one. Here, have a completely pointless diagram. For illustrative purposes, see?

in each of my posts for those of you with short attention spans when it comes to my long (though hopefully vaguely exciting/interesting) drawls about… stuff. Generally.

Soooo, that’s it for me, folks! I’ll go arrange my diary (that’s something that happens a lot) and go read LOTR (almost finished Fellowship!) and play Phoenix Wright (if you don’t know that which I speak of, I both shun you and encourage you to find out right now — they’re possibly the most awesome games made for the ds, and I’m a fan of pokemon) or other videogames. So many videogames, so little time!

Peace and love and awesome videyagames, everyone.