Hi guys! I hope you’ve had a really great week so far, I know for a lot of us at uni, we’re currently gearing up for final exams (good luck everyone!). Also here’s some of the cool stuff going on in halls ->
Recently, UH took part in pink shirt day to stand against bullying 💕
When you thought you had escaped clans in high school…. we were wrong……. we now have colours for each of our floors to compete with each other!!! (up floor 1+ 2 UHA!!!)
I think the best part of uni is definitely waking up to that possibility of meeting someone new, learning something new, and doing something new.
So Uni is kind of like high school, where we always have heaps of work do, whether it’s prepping for the stuff we’re doing in the course (such as labs or tutorials) or for stuff for the finals (final exams). I think some of the vocabulary I’m using might be confusing, so I’ve compiled a list which might help you in the future 🙂
1.Tutorials -basically kind of like highschool classes, usually from anywhere between 20-40 and can last from 1-2hrs. These would probably be the smallest teacher:student ratio you will ever get, so use this time wisely! Most tutorials usually count for a percentage of your grade, or you have to attend a tutorial in order to for a quiz to count as a percentage of your grade
Picture after my final biosci 107 lab :'(
2. Labs – Kind of like high school labs, except these last 2-3hrs and count for 3-4% of your grade. You’ll need a labcoat and saftey glasses, and will have anywhere from 30-45 people in your labs (I think). You’ll get a really nice lab supervisor and great lab assistance people in whatever paper you’re doing 🙂 Personally, I really enjoyed labs (I mean who wouldn’t when you have hakuna matata playing in the background while making an embryo?)
Biosci107 with over 500 people start of the year compared to now (around 50)
3. Lectures – These, unlike tutorials and labs, are not compulsory to go to. Some people say that lectures can cover a whole ncea paper in 1-2 lectures. Which I think is not at all true and just over exaggeration. For example, you could probably cover a whole lvl 3 english external (written or visual text) in 1-2 lectures, because a lot of it is done out of class (i.e writing essays, viewing the movie etc) but for stuff like lvl 3 chemistry or level 3 bio, I think it would take at least 2-3 weeks of lectures (6-9 lectures) to cover it all. This is because lectures are very condensed, unlike high school where you only learn 1-2 things, lectures will probably have 4-5 things you need to understand. So don’t worry guys! Lectures aren’t all that bad, you will probably learn more (but it’ll be stuff you’re interested in, so you’ll enjoy it more too), but at least you don’t need to remember it for the whole year! (i.e you don’t get taught something at the start of the year that you’re expected to remember it till November).
I wonder which is the correct answer….. (one of the questions for our biosci 107 pre-lab)
4.Grades – This is a pretty obvious one, but in Uni you won’t have excellence, merit and achieved. Instead you’ll have A+,A,A-,B+,B…. etc. However, what you need to understand is, is that to get A+ for your WHOLE paper, you need 90-100% (I’m pretty sure there’s rounding, so if you get 89.5% that counts as A+). Therefore, if you get a C for instance in a test, which is 55-60%, and that test counts for 15% of your grade, overall you would have only lost 6.75% of your grade (which means you can still get an A+! Just means you have to work harder though).
Working on our presentation (It’s amazing how close we’ve become since day 1)
Currently, for those doing health science and biomed,we’ve finished all our mid-sem and incourse tests (woo hoo!). We all have a Population Health 111 presentation due in the next two weeks, where we have to present a disease (ours is anorexia) and present a strategy to identify and prevent the disease. In the next three weeks we’ll have our final exams, so wish us luck!
I’ve also recently been thinking about maybe continuing health science or switching to science, and maybe doing post-grad entry for medicine. This year has been an absolute blast, but I feel like I need to a little bit more time to figure out what I actually want to do in the future. Uni, I have found, is a great place to get a lot of knowledge and skills for the future, but the biggest benefit it has given me, is to discover what I’m like as a person and what I want to do with my future. In my opinion, going on a Gap year or working would never have given me the same opportunities to discover how I cope with pressure and what I’m actually interested in learning about and how I want to change the world.
And like my biosci 107 lab supervisor said – Whatever you do, just be happy, ’cause it’s not worth, waking up to a good salary, when you don’t enjoy what you’re doing every single day.
Lily