Subject Reviews Semester 1
PSYC1001 (Psychology 1A)
Ease: 9/10. Content is simple to understand and you don't need much background knowledge in order to achieve high marks. It's pretty much like a gen ed course except more contact hours. Textbook helps clarify information from the lectures, but other than that, lecture notes are all you need to read for a high mark. Instructions for the ILS assignment was vague and unhelpful, especially for first year students. Thankfully its only worth 7%. Studying the lecture slides and summaries of the textbook made the multiple choice mid semester and final test pretty breezy. The Half Research report however is quite brutal if you have never done a scientific report before, but luckily the structure of the report is explained well in the tutorial slides.
Content: 9/10. Most topics are interesting. Psychological perspectives was okay, just gives a broad overview of the different types of approaches in psychology. Developmental lectures are only interesting if you want to learn about the psychology of infants. Consciousness was boring. Personality was okay. Emotion was okay. Health lectures were the most interesting followed by social psychology lectures. You even learn how to pick up girls in one of the social psychology lectures
Lecturer: 7/10 All the lecturers were decent but tended to read off the slides, with the exception of the Health Psychology lecturer; Lenny Vartanian. He knew his topic inside out and expressed himself clearly and simply. Also listening to the consciousness lecturer (Joel Pearson) talk made me fall asleep half the time. But probably because his topic was already boring to begin with.
Tutor: Sule 5/10. Boring, has a weird foreign accent and just reads off the tutorial slides. Her feedback on assignments were quite helpful though.
Overall: 7.5/10. Fun course, not too difficult. Only downside is its more contact hours compared to arts or commerce subjects.
CRIM1010 (Introduction to Criminology)
Ease: 7/10. Content is fairly straightforward BUT it is not explained well in the lectures. Rely on the textbook! Although, without the textbook you can still do very well if you have background knowledge. I did HSC Legal Studies for example. The only (non-formative) assessments you do for the whole semester is a major essay and a final exam, both of which can fuck you over. Essay is not hard, BUT you are given little support and instructions. And as I said before, content is not explained well, so studying for the exam requires reading from the textbook if you have no prior knowledge. Marking for the essay is quite strict and expression accounts for a good proportion of the marks given.
Content: 4/10 Pretty dry at times. Its much like the Crime topic in HSC Legal studies but more in depth and you have to learn a bunch of useless theories and a bit of methodology.
Lecturer: Sanja Miliojevic 3/10. Obviously knows her stuff, but she is so boring to listen to and not to mention, half the stuff she says is just repeating what is said on the lecture slides, but in a tad more detail.
Tutor: Sanja 1/10. Learned nothing in her tutorials. Furthermore, the feedback she gives for the essay outline and essay is too vague.
Overall: 3.75/10. A course that really requires you to rely on yourself, but otherwise is not too difficult. If you're good at improvising and have read some of the textbook, you should be fine for the exam. If you're good at researching and writing essays, the essay should be okay given that you include 'critical analysis'..something my tutor explained very poorly.
ARTS1810 (International Relations: Conventions and Challenges)
Ease: 8/10. Not a difficult course. Content is well explained in the lectures and textbook is useful for clarifying these concepts. Exam was straightforward and you will achieve high marks if you answer the question and have a clear argument. The final analysis is quite tedious though and does require a fair bit of research. Know the concepts and theories and how these can relate to what is currently going on in the world. It also helps if you have a good grasp on modern history and contemporary politics. But it is by no means required at all.
Content: 7/10. If you like learning about theories, this is the course for you. It is full of them. Personally, I didn't mind the theories and some of them made some sense while others were full of shit.
Lecturer: Laura Shepherd 8/10. Great lecturer. She explained everything well and clearly. I was madly writing down almost everything she was explaining. Only drawback regarding her teaching style is that she does tend to go quite fast when she speaks and is a little too verbose sometimes. This was sometimes a problem because it was difficult keeping up with her. But she improved on this in the second half of the semester! Because of her, I aced the final exam by only studying a night beforehand, using my lecture notes and a few pages of the textbook.
Tutor: Stephen Mcguiness 9/10. Best tutor I've had all year. His tutes are fun and he is genuinely a funny and approachable guy. Not only do you also learn a lot from the discussions that he starts with the class, but if you want your questions answered, he is willing to allocate time to help his students privately and encourages students to see him. Only downside is that the feedback he gives for the assignments are not particularly helpful. But I couldn't complain since I did quite well for them.
Overall: 8/10. One of my favorite courses. The content itself however, is slightly hard to grasp at times but Laura and Stephen explain them thoroughly throughout the semester.
ARTS1452 (Introduction to Chinese for Background A)
Ease: 1/10. Not a very fair course, considering the outline stated that its for individuals with a Chinese background that know fewer than 50 Chinese characters. However, most of the students already know a decent amount of Chinese and a good portion know a LOT of Chinese. I was an idiot for picking this course. Luckily my friends helped me throughout the course or I would have without a doubt failed.
Content: 1/10. You learn Chinese.
Lecturer: Mu Yang 6/10. Funny guy but it is not worth sitting through 2 hours of his lecture. Cracks a few jokes here and there but doesn't exactly teach us much. Goes through like 3-4 characters per lecture.
Tutor: One old Chinese lady and another young Chinese lady (1/10). Not fun for someone like me who was struggling.
Overall: 2/10. Don't take this course unless you already have a solid foundation of spoken and written and read Chinese OR you are willing to study for hours each week to learn the language. Keep in mind you will be competing against many students who are already competent at Chinese but are taking this course because they want a WAM booster. Or maybe its just me. You might be naturally skilled at learning a language. If that's the case go for it!