I was on the timetabling unit on the Sydney University website, looking at what my prospective timetable will be. The official timetables don’t come out until O-Week (25th of February?), but I would like to have it significantly earlier so as to arrange hours at work. They have been asking me about it as they are getting worried about having 5 of the 12 regular employees suddenly drop tools and return to studies.
Anyway, I was looking at what has been arranged for the subject I’m enrolled in, in terms of when the lectures are on and when the tutorials are running, and to be honest, I would not like the job of arranging all those subjects so as to get as few clashes as possible. I used to think it was a reasonably easy job. But with all my calculating and mismatching, I came up with only one possible version of my timetable. All my tutorial options were eliminated because of fixed lectures – and I was only ever left with one tutorial I could go to without skipping lectures.
Of course, I have managed to get a very good mark in a subject without having attended more than 4 lectures out of the 20 or so that were run. Last year, first semester, I had a clash between my history lectures. One lecturer was an ass and refused to help me out by taping his lectures. The other was doing it anyway and uploading them onto the uni website. I decided I would skip the taped lectures and attended the untaped. I also fully intended to listen to the tapings.
I didn’t listen to any tapes what-so-ever. And come the end of the semester, I went to the last three lectures, because my other history course had no exam, and all assessments were in, while this one did have an exam (take-home, but still). I performed rather well for that subject, all things considered. Especially on the exam. I was somewhat amazed (only somewhat – I am Thomas after all).
Anyway, if the same sort of situation were to arise this semester, I don’t know what I’d do. It seems to be so jam-packed that timetable that there isn’t much wriggle room. I hope that it all resolves itself so that I don’t miss out on anything crucial. I also don’t want to miss out on my history subjects this semester (American civil war and Australian social history post-WWII) – I believe that these are my last Arts subjects until 5th year (two years time). That means a whole heap of Education subject. Subjects like ‘Teaching History 1′ and ‘Teaching English 1′ – the two subjects that I’ll also be doing this coming semester. What happens in them (other than what the course name suggests) is a mystery to me. They are interesting from my current perspective (that is, not having started them yet), but who knows what they’ll be like in three months time.
What I’m most looking forward to is getting to uni and seeing what (if any) fallout remains from the Ruddslide. Will there be a more upbeat and lively feel to university now? Or will it be the same-old, just with abuse and insult directed at a new target. Here’s hoping it’s all changed for the better. I could use a good year.
Thomas.
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