I did both living systems and psyc 1002 in second semester this year - with living systems being my 'elective' type subject (I needed psyc for second year). Personally I found living systems quite easy provided you kept up to date with the lecture content. It's divided into 3 areas: animals, plants and ecology. Animals was very similar to HSC bio and first semester bio subjects (I did human bio and even though they talked about animals, the concepts were basically the same) so that required very little extra effort. Plants (for me anyway) was not very hard, just a bit dull (but then again for people interested in it that would be different). Ecology was pretty much memorising some conservation stratagies etc. The course was really well organised with lots of little assessments throughout the semester meaning that the final exam wasn't worth too much. The pracs were also well structured and generally interesting.
Psyc 1002 was very interesting but I found it much harder to stay on track with. I kept falling behind in lectures which made it hard to catch up study wise in terms of the final exam. The exam itself was worth a lot and even though it was multiple choice - it's written by psychologists haha! The assignment was worth a lot and I (along with many other people) really struggled with it. So in terms of difficulty I would rate this as the harder subject. However, bear in mind I have a biology background and psyc was brand new to me.
If you're doing psyc 1001 in first semester you'll probably have a good idea of whether you find it an easy(ish) subject or not. Psyc 1002 is almost identical to that except for different content and a different format of assignment. Personally, I'd go for living systems - I really enjoyed that course despite only choosing it as a 'fill in' subject.
Hope that helped!
