Mental Murmurs

admin June 27th, 2008

So it’s officially the holidays now for this poor old uni student… Let’s have a little recap of my whole semester.

Where to start? I guess at the uttermost beginning?

Well, it has been quite a tough semester for me (tension headaches, lack of appetite, lack of sleep, exhaustion), and I know I’m not the only one because my friends have been pretty stressed out themselves (2 threw up… stress-induced).

Ok, scratch tough, it was HELL! And that doesn’t even begin to describe it! No exaggeration. Usually I love studying, it has been hard but nowhere, nowhere, nowhere near this!!

Let’s see… let’s start with changes that occurred to the uni itself this semester:

• 14 week semester has been reduced to 12 weeks
  Implication: same amount of work in less amount of time, which is crazy mad for us… we have at least something major due or a quiz/exam/test each week! The average for me was 3 assessments a week…
  I had to miss out on a Porcupine Tree concert to study for the mid-semester exams (I had 3 that following week)… and anyone that know me well will know how important this was for me, how little I go out regardless, and how badly I broke down because I couldn’t make it! Their first tour in Australia, and they’ve been around for 20 years! But I’ve been convinced they’ll be back, someday soon.
• Cutback on our STUVAC (study vacation)
  Was initially about a week, now checking my student diary consisted of a Saturday, Sunday, Monday and Tuesday - barely enough time to go through 4 full third year subjects!
• Winter sessions taken away
  Implications: overloading (below).
• BSc (Adv) and BMedSci WAM (weighted average mark) increased from 65 to 70
  A few of my friends from Bsc (Adv) and BMedSci who has a WAM below 70 received warning emails, informing them if they don’t increase their average, they will get dropped down to BSc… Ever since knowing the possibility of dropping down to BSc, I had been feeling the pressure more than ever!
  A BMedSci friend later told me that they have been told that changes have only been applied to newcomers, which relieved me for a bit before she told me that it mightn’t be the same for BSc (Adv)!! (Thanks so much.. ><)
• Examination changes
  Here’s an excerpt of the email we received. But to sum up, we are having:
  • Shorter exam period
  • 3 exams per day schedule
  • Exams on Saturday
• Mid-semester break between week 2 and 3
  After 3 months of break, having a uni break after the 2nd week of uni is rather… y’know. So after that is a period continuous studying for 10 weeks.
  BUT, this didn’t concern me as I had to attend lab 9 to 5 daily for bacteria and disease laboratory work (which I really enjoyed, don’t get me wrong! In fact, I thought it was the best part of the course!)

So that was already giving me a hard time. Ranting on, these were the things I found personally stressful for me:

• Overloading
  As if four full subjects wasn’t enough on my plate, I (stupidly) decided to overload, another half subject (3UOC general education) instead of trying to do it in the summer session in case it spots get filled up since winter session has been taken away
• My final exam timetable (5 exams in 7 days)
  • 13/06 MICR3041 (Immunology)
  • 16/06 BIOC3111 (Molecular biology of proteins)
  • 18/06 BIOC3261 (Molecular biology of nucleic acids: theory)
  • 18/06 MICR3081 (Bacteria and Disease)
  • 19/06 BIOC3261 (Molecular biology of nucleic acids: practical)
• Changes towards the end of the final exams
  Full story here - but basically, I was a victim of 2 exam rescheduling:
  • 18/06 MICR3081 moved to 19/06
  • 19/06 BIOC3261 moved to 21/06

So there you have it, a summary of what I had gone through in the past 13-14 weeks. Don’t be discouraged from third year science after reading this because rest assured, people do survive from things like this… (just barely in my case)…

Hope all students enjoy their hard earned, much needed holidays!

• Bad , Melodrama , Me , Uni , Holidays , Friends , Exams , Panic attack , Random thoughts