First Year Arts Courses - difficulty UNDERRATED? (1 Viewer)

[DMT]

Hello everyone!

Im doing an engineering/arts course this year, however im picking all arts subjects this year to hopefully achieve a high enough WAM for an internal transfer to law next year. English was my favourite subject in high school (4 units of it) and would like to know some comparisons whether the workload will be overwhelming like im getting from previous threads where essays pile up on you and also what it will be like. For example will there be 200 pages of text or critical mat. to be read every night vice versa.

Im doing:
1. Introducing Moral, Social & Political Philosophy - ARTS1360
2. Global History: The World in the Making - ARTS1270
3. Sociology and Anthropology - SOCAB13403
4. Introduction to English: Literary Genres - ARTS1030

Cheers

 

[Kittikhun]

For history, I'm guessing that you're doing the first year world history one, yes? If so, for that you get a weekly reading in which then you have to answer some questions on it by the end of the week. The readings aren't quite long (20-50 pages, relatively medium print), but all those wanky jargon words used by the authors can be quite annoying sometimes, causing you to get out that good old dictionary again and to flick through all those pages to find that meaning of the word which, when found, most of the time has a meaning that you don't understand, so then you have to flick through the pages again and again...you know what I mean. You can skip some weekly readings, but I think three or four was the max you can skip. There are two 1500 word essays to do, if I recall correctly, one to do during the mid-sem break, and another at the end, and then the final test.

 

[DMT]

For history, I'm guessing that you're doing the first year world history one, yes? If so, for that you get a weekly reading in which then you have to answer some questions on it by the end of the week. The readings aren't quite long (20-50 pages, relatively medium print), but all those wanky jargon words used by the authors can be quite annoying sometimes, causing you to get out that good old dictionary again and to flick through all those pages to find that meaning of the word which, when found, most of the time has a meaning that you don't understand, so then you have to flick through the pages again and again...you know what I mean. You can skip some weekly readings, but I think three or four was the max you can skip. There are two 1500 word essays to do, if I recall correctly, one to do during the mid-sem break, and another at the end, and then the final test.

This one: Global History: The World in the Making - ARTS1270
Also, i didnt take up yr 11 and 12 history so do you think it will be struggle to be interested in the content? Because i found yr 7-10 history to be alright. Im sort of tossing with this and psychology. If you know my the diffculty of PSYC or think its more worth picking? Is it a hard cours and if you dont mind me asking, how did you do?

Cheers mate

 

[Shadowdude]

I did ARTS1030. Depends how well you can analyse texts (or feign deep and contextual analysis), and how much you like reading the books themselves (or just reading the Sparknotes or whatever and trying to get some good points to write about for your essays).


Also course structure changes often, so... not sure about assessments.

 

[so_what]

I did 3 of those courses.
ARTS1270 is easy. You need to keep up with the readings and do weekly writing tasks but it isn't difficult to get at least a high credit for it. You need not have done any history in high school as the stuff covered in this course is not in HSC history. It's all very hunter-gatherer and shipwreck treasures sorta stuff.
Sociology and Anthropology is boring as shit. I chose it because it sounded interesting, big mistake. I found it really stupid. But, I'm not big on that stuff. So, while it was very boring it was not difficult at all. I got 70+ (can't remember exactly, it was two years ago) even though I hated it.
ARTS1030 is okay. If you're good at essay writing and that stuff, it should be pretty easy. It was sorta like high school stuff but more reading. Again, not overly difficult if you keep up with the readings.

Basically, if you keep up with the readings for all of them and do the weekly work, you will be able to get at least 70 without really straining yourself that much. You need to use your time wisely as most of these courses will have major essays or the equivalent major assessment due around the same time.

 

[DMT]

I did 3 of those courses.
ARTS1270 is easy. You need to keep up with the readings and do weekly writing tasks but it isn't difficult to get at least a high credit for it. You need not have done any history in high school as the stuff covered in this course is not in HSC history. It's all very hunter-gatherer and shipwreck treasures sorta stuff.
Sociology and Anthropology is boring as shit. I chose it because it sounded interesting, big mistake. I found it really stupid. But, I'm not big on that stuff. So, while it was very boring it was not difficult at all. I got 70+ (can't remember exactly, it was two years ago) even though I hated it.
ARTS1030 is okay. If you're good at essay writing and that stuff, it should be pretty easy. It was sorta like high school stuff but more reading. Again, not overly difficult if you keep up with the readings.

Basically, if you keep up with the readings for all of them and do the weekly work, you will be able to get at least 70 without really straining yourself that much. You need to use your time wisely as most of these courses will have major essays or the equivalent major assessment due around the same time.

Socio and anthro does sound a bit weird. But overall how did you do across these subjects. Sounds easy to get a credit etc but to get a D or HD? DO you think it would be difficult? Also instead of socio and anthro, what would you recommened?

 

[Kittikhun]

This one: Global History: The World in the Making - ARTS1270
Also, i didnt take up yr 11 and 12 history so do you think it will be struggle to be interested in the content? Because i found yr 7-10 history to be alright. Im sort of tossing with this and psychology. If you know my the diffculty of PSYC or think its more worth picking? Is it a hard cours and if you dont mind me asking, how did you do?

Cheers mate

I found the content very interesting as the course makes you realise how connected everything is in history, no matter how small the event is. Though it is a bit rushed, by the end of it, you'll have a good all-round knowledge on world history and the dynamics (I think that's the right word) that influenced it to make the world that we know today. And as said by so what, you don't need to have any previous HSC history study to do the course. I recommend that you don't actually go to the lectures, and instead listen to them online and type up notes from that. However, there may be a problem with this since they changed the lecture recording system last semester, and the new recording system makes the lectures barely comprehensible.

PSYC1001 is a very interesting course, but I think the course has already run out of spots as it is a very popular course to do and is open as a general education course. I may be wrong though. It depends on what you're more interested in. For Psych, you get to learn about the history of psychology, consciousness, developmental psychology, social psychology (which also includes some pretty good tips on how to pick up a member of the opposite sex), and health psychology. For Psych, assessment consists of a mid-sem MC, a half-research report (which is a pain in the ass to do), psych experiment participation (basically you're a guinea pig for post-graduate psych study), and the final big test, which is 100 MC questions. To be honest, I found Psych to be a more interesting subject, but that is only because by the time I was doing it I was already kind of well read in history through my own reading but not so for psychology, which was an entirely new subject for me to learn. Oh, and for reading, 90% of the questions in the test are from the content in the lectures and not from the textbook, so you don't have to do much reading. The only substantial reading is from the report, wherein you have to read some really annoying journal articles to finish it (you will hate, abhor, scorn, despise, and detest reading journal articles after a few weeks at uni).

History is hard in the way how the tutors and lecturers mark strict. I thought that I did awesome on my final test. In fact, by the time I walked out of the lecture hall after the exam, I felt super awesome as it was honestly the best essay I've ever written under exam duress. In the end though, I only got 6 out of 10 for it, .

I did OK for history, just scraped a distinction.

 

[so_what]

Socio and anthro does sound a bit weird. But overall how did you do across these subjects. Sounds easy to get a credit etc but to get a D or HD? DO you think it would be difficult? Also instead of socio and anthro, what would you recommened?

It really really depends on you and how you approach it. I hated socio and anthro and therefore did the bare minimum of work and got a credit. However, for the other two, I enjoyed them a little bit more and then did better. It goes down to you and how willing you are to put in the hard work. If you actually do the readings, attend the lectures, and do all the work to a good standard and not leave it to last minute, you can get a D. A HD is fairly hard to do in an arts course because it means blitzing that final big essay which can be hard as you have all your other majors due at the same time. That being said though, you can do it, I did and I did not find it hard at all.

I cannot give you any other suggestions sorry. That's the whole of the arts courses I did in sem 1. Though I hear politics is difficult. Don't know if that i true. I hear first semester beginner language courses are interesting and can be okay if you put in the work.