Hi everyone! Long time no talk.

I thought it would be cool to look back on this weird time in my life and what better way than to make a journey journal 😃

I'm currently in my second year of uni studying a Bachelor of Science at Monash. I started off in Science / Arts but then decided to switch to the single Science degree.

As of yet, my plan is to major in Psychology. My initial plan was to do the extended major, which would qualify me for honours (if I get the grades 🙁) and then further study to become a psychologist. I was considering educational and developmental psychology, potentially to pursue a clinical career. However, some shit went down last year and I ended up failing a psych unit that was required for the extended major, and I really don't want to have to repeat that unit. It's not a bad unit per se, it's just that I'd rather explore other interests.

That or secondary teaching, which was my childhood dream career. As much as I enjoy teaching, I'm not sure if a career in the classroom is for me. Maybe I've just been discouraged by the people around me, but the idea of secondary teaching is appealing less and less to me nowadays 🙁 I think it might be my family trying to talk my out of it.

Lately the idea of research has appealed to me, particularly topics such as ADHD and neurodiversity, psychopharmacology, and more broadly, stem cells, neuroscience and fetal/pre-natal development and women's health. I'd have to revoke credit for a couple of units so I can double major in psych and physiology (this seems to be the major that gives me the most options) or potentially developmental biology or pharmacology. A tutor I have for psych suggested doing the lecturer / clinician / research route, which would be very cool, but I feel like I'm too stupid to do any of that. But we shall adopt a growth mindset one day.

The other careers I've been considering are healthcare related (nursing, med, sonography) and also commerce related (even though I haven't touched commerce since Year 10). I actually enrolled in first-year marketing this semester, thinking I'd enjoy it as it's got roots in psych, but I didn't give it a chance and dropped out after the first tutorial. I also enrolled in a first-year education subject but ended up underloading and focusing on science. I underloaded for mental health / ADHD treatment reasons and also ended up doing an internship with a government department. The internship made me realise that the 9-to-5 desk life might not be the best fit for me, and the team you're working with really can make or break your experience, sometimes even more than the work (that is, when you're doing generic admin-type work). It was fun being in the city though, so any postgrad study I do will probably be at the city-ish unis like ACU, UniMelb or RMIT.

I think I just have too many options.

This semester, I'm enrolled in:
DEV2011 - Early Human Development
PHY2011 - Neuroscience of Communication, Sensory and Control Systems
PSY2071 - Developmental Psychology

And next semester, I'm planning to do:
DEV2022 - Human Anatomy and Development: Tissues and Body Systems
PHA2022 - Drugs and Society
PSY2041 - Psychological Testing and Assessment
PHY2032 - Endocrinology / PSY3032 - Abnormal Psychology / BTC1110 - Commercial Law (a bit random, I know)

The neuroscience subject is all open-book and has many low weighted assessments rather than an exam. This is good because it encourages you to keep on top of the content. The practice quiz questions are also the same as many of the real quiz questions, which has almost promoted memorising answers over having a very good understanding of the content 🙁 Nonetheless, I'm enjoying the subject.

Developmental psych is going okay. The assessments don't have an awful lot to do with the content so I'm just going to start using the lectures (that have been uploaded, some parts haven't) as podcasts during my commute to uni.

Dev bio is pretty interesting, and it's been cool hearing about the research that the TAs are doing. Like induced pluripotent stem cells, where bodily cells can be engineered to be similar to embryonic stem cells, which can be become many different cell types. Imagine how much regenerative medicine can progress with them.

I've only got two assessments during the exam period, both open-book quizzes, so not really exams to me. I'm enjoying the lighter load but am lowkey freaking out about doing four units next semester. Then again, I don't know if I should be complaining because my friends doing engineering and biomed seem to have it worse.

    lm21074 eeeeee I'm so excited to keep reading your journal! I'm in the first year of my Bachelor of Science, so this is super cool to read! Is PHY2011 good so far? I've been thinking of maybe taking it in second year, since it sounds pretty interesting in the course handbook (although I guess I might have to if I decide to major in pharmacology haha...honestly I like too many things so who knows what I'll end up doing)!

      ATAR Notes Thanks Sophie! How are you enjoying uni and your course so far? 🙂

      PHY2011 is great and I'd highly recommend it! The content is pretty interesting (imo) and the lecturer has won multiple teaching awards for the unit 🙂

          lm21074 it's been pretty good so far. Really enjoying bio (was a given since I've always loved bio). Chem advanced has been hard, but its quite interesting and I actually really love the labs (my TA is so nice haha). My other units are also pretty interesting too. Uni's a lot, and I'm definitely still getting the hang of things, but it's so nice to study more things that I'm passionate about, and see where they might lead to in the future (which is kind of overwhelming, but also exciting)!

            lm21074 Have you joined the Ramesh-simping cult yet? It seems to me that everyone in the PHY2011 Messenger group chat is a member already. FYI PHY2032 will be so good since you get Julia and Craig. I did the biomed equivalent (BMS2031), which has labs in common with PHY2032. The lab component is intriguing since you get to see an isolated rabbit ileum contract on its own, and the workshops (dry labs) are run so well

                Billzene

                I've almost been sucked into the Ramesh-simping cult just through that chat alone 😃
                The very first time I saw Ramesh in person, he knew my name. And he called someone in my lab by his full name, including his middle name. I was perplexed.

                That sounds super interesting about the rabbit ileum! You might have heard about the cell profile report that's in dev bio - I'm looking at smooth muscle cells. I hope the labs next sem are better than the labs this sem. We wear lab coats in dev but no actual experiments go on.

                  Write a Reply...